|
 |
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
The Vanishing Hitchhiker
(The ‘vanishing hitchhiker’ legend is a reported strange and mysterious occurence in which people travelling by vehicle met with or are accompanied by a hitchhiker who subsequently vanished without explanation, often from a moving vehicle without leaving a trace.)
by
Norman A Rubin
The question is asked over and over again – is it possible for a person that is seen and heard one minute totally disappeared within a flash the next, never to be seen or heard from again?
It is also strange that it seems to happen only during the dark of night , through the loneliness of the hour and an equally quiet roadway. The figure poses as a hitchhiker. The motorist with good intentions then stops and asks the man or woman to where he or she is headed. “Hop in, going that way." The journey proceeds, sometimes in total silence, and at some point the passenger seems to vanish while the vehicle is in motion.
This mysterious legend has been with us for many years in various forms. Tales of these spectral passengers (usually young and rather beautiful women) are often attached to bridges, dangerous hills and intersections and cemeteries, especially those grounds in lonely spots. There are stories of "vanishing hitchhikers" dating as far back as the late 1800’s, when men would tell stories of ghostly women who appear on the back of their horses. Those spectral riders always disappeared when they reached their destination and would often prove to be the deceased daughters of local farmers. Very little has changed from those days, outside of the preferred method of transportation.
According to folklorist Jan Brunvand, the legend of the vanishing hitchhiker evolved from earlier European stories, usually about travelers on horseback. He states that in Hawaii, the hitchhiker became associated with the ancient volcano goddess Pele, travelling the roads incognito and rewarding the kind.
Along the East African coast the hitchhiker takes the form of a beautiful girl who is picked up by cross country truckers: At some point the truck driver looks over at his beautiful passenger and discovers to his horror that she is a ‘jini’ and has goat's legs. At this point the girl or jini laughed and disappears into the void.
What could be the reasons for these strange happenings? Actually there might be quite a few reasons for these occurrences. It could be an illusion seen by the driver or perhaps the driver was in his cups (drunk) . Other theories abound from extraterrestrial beings, or an actual ghost or spirit that neared his or her place of rest, usually near a cemetery.
Are these stories simply "urban legends" with no basis in truth - or is there more to the enigma than meets the eye? What if a somewhat true incident of a vanishing hitchhiker was retold to the point that it lost many of the elements of truth? As the story spread from one locale to another, it was embraced by people all over the country and became a part of their local lore.
Time and time again there have been sober witnesses to a ghost of a beautiful young girl who had been appearing along the road near Greensboro since 1923. She stands in the gloom of the coming dusk next to US Highway 70 underpass in a white evening gown and wave s frantically for someone to pick her up.
Those hapless motorists who stop are introduced to a young and pretty girl who says her name is Lydia . She asks them to take her to an address in High Point. Her story is always the same - she has spent the evening at a dance in Raleigh , and is anxious to get home. She confesses that her date had gotten mad when she stopped his advances . He then made her get out and walk.
She doesn't say much on the way. When drivers approach the house , the girl vanishes from their car, never opening the door and getting out.... just simply ... there one minute and gone the next.
The drivers who inquire are always told the same thing... Lydia died in a car wreck many years ago, coming home from a high school dance in Raleigh and perishing at the US Highway 70 underpass.
A similar story exists concerning Highway 48 in South Carolina. Some motorists claim they ha ve seen a vanishing hitchhiker in the form of a young girl carrying a suitcase and walking along the road signaling with her thumb. They stop and offer her a ride and she t ells the driver she is going to visit her sick mother in Columbia. As she enter s the vehicle , she g ives the address of her destination, but throughout the journey she remain s quiet, not uttering one word. Then suddenly at the outskirts of the city she vanishe s from the auto along with her suitcase. One motorist who picked her up went to the address and described the girl to a man who lived there. He said that it was his sister and that she was killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking to visit their sick mother. This happened to several independent witnesses over a three -year period in the 1950’s.
Another type of legend pertaining to the vanishing hitchhiker comes from a tale haunting the Green Mountain Cemetery south of Bellville in Illinois. As the story goes you can pick up a ghostly rider if one would drive around the cemetery three times on a stormy night with door to the car opened. The legend goes on to say that on the third trip, a ghostly woman will appear in the passenger seat, soaking wet from the rain and dressed all in black. By the time one has finished making the third round, the spirit will have vanished, but a pool of water on the passenger seat will remain.
These legends would not be baffling enough, but consider the biblical text of a "Vanishing Hitchhiker" story in the New Testament in which the Apostle Philip baptizes an Ethiopian who picks him up in a chariot, then disappears. “When they came out of the water, the Spirit snatched Phillip away....” (Acts 8:26-39)
The spirit of religious evangelism continues this very day. New Zealand's Christian community was abuzz with reports of a mysterious hitchhiker who had been thumbing rides on the North Island. The bloke they've picked up will say something like, " Did you know the Lord is coming back?" Then he vanishe s from the speeding car. He has appeared on several main roads, always to young Christian couples. Some have said the stranger was wearing immaculate white clothes, although no one has been able to describe his exact appearance.
There are several versions of this story that were seen and heard throughout the world by motorists traveling on a road in the dark of the night hours. This ethereal person, usually dressed in white, usually fascinate s the motorist. At some point, the hitchhiker says something like "Jesus is coming soon , " then disappear s. And such reported incidents continue to be told till this very day....
The appeal of vanishing hitchhiker stories lie in the nature of the encounter -- an interaction with a ghost occurs not because the main character went looking for the supernatural, but because it came to him. Such tales and legends underscore the belief that representatives from the spirit world can be encountered at any time and by anyone.
There are those who would want to relate in their claim to be witnesses to just such a phenomenon. But where do those vanishing hitchhikers go? How is it that time and again they seem to defy the very basic laws of nature? Sometimes logic cannot explain the very nature of the event, so it is labeled an unexplained mystery. Perhaps one day in the future we’ll have the answers. But for now we are only shrouded in questions about the ‘vanishing hitchhikers’.
NOTES:
1) Vanishing hitchhikers appeared in numerous songs and in the 1951 Orson Welles' short film ‘Return to Glennascaul’ the 1985 movie Mr Wrong, and the 1824 Washington Irving novel “The Lady With the Velvet Collar”. (www.snopes.com)
2) The Stephen King short story, “Riding the Bullet” is an example of an opposite version of this story, in which case, a dead man picked up a young hitchhiker, that told him of his mother's upcoming death, and subsequently disappeared.
3) The Twilight zone television series aired an episode entitled ‘the Hitchhiker’, based on a variation of the tale, written by Rod Sterling and based on a radio play by Lucille Fletcher.. And in South Africa in 1992 there was a cult film ‘Dust Devil’ by Richard Stanley that featured a vanishing hitchhiker..
4) One must be aware that these tales of meeting ‘vanishing hitchhikers or seeing ghostly phenomenon’s in varied cemeteries are tales referred to as ‘urban legends’. They are stories that have been told and told, either in ballads or related as somewhat true experiences of the present day and have no real basis in fact... or do they?
5) The first proper study of the story of the vanishing hitchhiker was undertaken in 1942-3 by American folklorists Richard Beardsley and Rosalie Hankey, who collected as many accounts as they could and attempted to analyse them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1) Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia.- ‘en.wikipedia.org’
2) Peake’s Commentary on the Bible – H.H. Rowley, Old Testament Editor, Matthew Black New Testament editor, Nelson Publishers, England.
3) The Vanishing Hitchhiker – Jan Harold Brunvand – W.W. Norton, New York -1981.(excerpts in Wikipedia Encyclopedia)
4) Big Book of Urban Legends, Paradox Press – New York – 1994
5) Encyclopedia of World Mythology, Forwarded by Rex Warner, Octupus Books, Ltd, London 1970-71
SIDEBAR:
One of the Midwest's, and America's, favorite ghost stories is the tale of ‘Resurrection Mary’, the vanishing hitchhiker. The cemetery, located in Justice, Illinois has been home to this famous spirit since the 1930's.
The story of ‘Resurrection Mary’ is considered one of "the most famous ghostly legends in the city of Chicago. "The story began on one cold Winter night in 1934 when a young girl was killed in an auto accident while on her way home from the O’Henry Ballroom (now the Willowbrook Ballroom) on Archer Avenue in Justice, Il., a southern suburb of Chicago.
She rested peacefully for the next five years, but in 1939 a cab driver picked up a young girl on Archer Avenue wearing a white gown, her face as white as her garment. It was a snowy January night, but the girl was not wearing a coat. She jumped in the front door of the taxi and sat demurely by the driver. She gave him instructions to get her home, saying that he needed to go north on Archer. Suddenly, she told him to stop and the driver looked out the window to where she had pointed. He turned to the passenger seat and saw that the girl had simply vanished from the cab...and the door had never opened. The taxi was directly in front of Resurrection Cemetery, where the girl had been buried after the accident.
Over the years, sightings of Mary have been frequent. Many eager young men even claim to have picked her up and taken her dancing with them. Some very reliable witnesses say they have kissed her and found her lips chilled with cold. As they take her home, she always disappeared when they reach Resurrection Cemetery. Those stories were taken with a grain of salt, as they might have been spoken in the dregs of drink.
One night in 1977, a passing motorist saw Mary holding onto the bars of the cemetery gate. He called the police, thinking a girl was trapped inside of the locked cemetery. Investigators found no one inside when they arrived but two of the bars in the gate were bent apart and small handprints were etched into the iron. Supervisors at the cemetery had the sections of the gate cut out to keep the curiosity seekers away. They were embarrassed into welding them back into place a year later as the handprints reappeared. Between the time they were removed and then replaced, the bars were analyzed by a lab for trickery. It was determined that on one would have made those handprints without applying extremely high amounts of heat. The indention can still be seen in the gate today. Over the years, sightings of Mary have been frequent.
As the years have passed, sightings of Mary have continued. Taxi and truck drivers, motorists, reputable witnesses like police officers and ministers, and ghost hunters of all callings have reported the spirit as she walks along the side of the road or vanishes from the interior of moving automobiles. She has become one of the most famous ghosts of all time. Does she still haunt the gates and roadsides near Resurrection Cemetery?
Note: Resurrection Cemetery is located along Archer Avenue in Justice, Illinois. Follow 95th Street to Roberts Road, which goes north to Archer. The cemetery is located at 7600 South Archer Avenue. This street will also take you to Mary's favorite haunt, the Willowbrook Ballroom, formerly the O’Henry Ballroom.
TO COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE CLICK HERE
© Rubin,2007
Tala Bar is a former teacher turned writer. He holds an M.Phil. degree in literature from the London University, and has had a number of books, stories and articles published in Hebrew and English, both in print and on the Net.