The vanishing hitchhiker (or phantom hitchhiker) is a reported phenomenon in which people travelling by vehicle meet with or are accompanied by a hitchhiker who subsequently vanishes without explanation, often from a moving vehicle. Vanishing hitchhikers have been reported for centuries and the story is found across the world, in many variants.
Description
Basic form
The archetypal modern vanishing hitchhiker is a figure seen in the headlights of a car travelling by night with a single occupant.
The figure adopts the stance of a hitchhiker. The motorist stops and offers the figure a lift. The journey proceeds, sometimes in total silence, and at some subsequent point the passenger appears to vanish while the vehicle is in motion.
Variations
A common variant on the above involves the vanishing hitchhiker departing as would a normal passenger, having left some item in the car, or having borrowed a garment for protection against alleged cold (whether or not the weather conditions reflect this claim). The vanishing hitchhiker can also leave some form of information that allegedly encourages the motorist to make subsequent contact.
In such tellings, the garment borrowed is often subsequently found draped over a gravestone in a local cemetery. In this and in the instance of 'imparted information', the unsuspecting motorist subsequently makes contact with the family of a deceased person and finds that their sometime passenger fits the description of a family member killed in some unexpected way (usually a car accident) and that the driver's encounter with the vanishing hitchhiker occurred on the anniversary of their death.
Not all vanishing hitchhiker reports involved allegedly recurring ghosts. One popular variant in Hawaii involves the goddess Pele, travelling the roads incognito and rewarding kind travellers.
Another variant found in on the East African Coast where the local Bantu culture is heavily influenced by Arab Muslim culture involves paranormal beings called "djinni" (English genies). The story typically takes the form of a beautiful girl who is picked up by cross country truckers who are looking for some way to stay awake on their long journeys. At some point the truck driver will look over at his beautiful passenger and discover to his horror that she has goat's legs - like the god of mischief Pan. At this point the girl or djinni laughs and disappears, although in the worst case scenario, the driver is so shocked that he causes the truck to crash, which was the original intention of the djinni.
Other variants include prophetic hitchhikers who utter prophecies (typically of pending catastrophe or other evils) before vanishing.
Classifications
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.
Beardsley-Hankey
The Beardsley-Hankey survey elicited 79 written accounts of encounters with vanishing hitchhikers, drawn from across America.
They found: "Four distinctly different versions, distinguishable because of obvious differences in development and essence."
These are described as:
- A. Stories where the hitch-hiker [sic] gives an address through which the motorist learns he has just given a lift to a ghost.
- 49 of the Beardsley-Hankey samples fell into this category, with responses from 16 states of the USA.
- B. Stories where the hitch-hiker is an old woman who prophesies disaster or the end of World War II; subsequent inquiries likewise reveal her to be deceased.
- Nine of the samples fit this description, and eight of these came from the vicinity of Chicago. Beardsley and Hankey felt that this indicated a local origin, which they dated to approximately 1933: two of the version B hitchhikers in this sample foretold disaster at the Century of Progress Exposition and another foresaw calamity "at the World's Fair". The strict topicality of these unsuccessful forecasts did not appear to thwart the appearance of further Version 'B' hitch-hikers, one of whom warned that Northerly Island, Michigan, would soon be submerged (this never happened).
- C. Stories where a girl is met at some place of entertainment, e.g., dance, instead of on the road; she leaves some token (often the overcoat she borrowed from the motorist) on her grave by way of corroborating the experience and her identity.
- The uniformity amongst separate accounts of this variant led Beardsley and Hankey to strongly doubt its folkloric authenticity.
- D. Stories where the hitch-hiker is later identified as a local divinity.
Beardsley and Hankey were particularly interested to note one instance (location: Kingston, New York, 1941) in which the vanishing hitchhiker was subsequently identified as the late Mother Cabrini, founder of the local Sacred Heart Orphanage, who was beatified for her work. The authors felt that this was a case of Version 'B' glimpsed in transition to Version 'D'.
Beardsley and Hankey concluded that Version 'A' was closest to the original form of the story, containing the essential elements of the legend. Version 'B' and 'D', they believed, were localised variations, while 'C' was supposed to have started life as a separate ghost story which at some stage became conflated with the original vanishing hitchhiker story (Version 'A').
One of their conclusions certainly seems reflected in the continuation of vanishing hitchhiker stories: The hitchhiker is, in the majority of cases, female and the lift-giver male. Beardsley and Hankey's sample contained 47 young female apparitions, 14 old lady apparitions, and 14 more of an indeterminate sort.
Baughman
Ernest W Baughman's Index of the Folk Tales of England and North America (1966) delineates the basic vanishing hitchhiker as follows:
"Ghost of young woman asks for ride in automobile, disappears from closed car without the driver's knowledge, after giving him an address to which she wishes to be taken. The driver asks person at the address about the rider, finds she has been dead for some time. (Often the driver finds that the ghost has made similar attempts to return, usually on the anniversary of death in automobile accident. Often, too, the ghost leaves some item such as a scarf or travelling bag in the car.)"
Baughman's classification system grades this basic story as motif E332.3.3.1.
Subcategories include:
- E332.3.3.1(a) for vanishing hitchhikers who reappear on anniversaries;
- E332.3.3.1(b) for vanishing hitchhikers who leave items in vehicles, unless the item is a pool of water in which case it is E332.3.3.1(c);
- E332.3.3.1(d) is for accounts of sinister old ladies who prophesy disasters;
- E332.3.3.1(e) contains accounts of phantoms who are apparently sufficiently solid to engage in activities such as eating or drinking during their journey;
- E332.3.3.1(f) is for phantom parents who want to be taken to the sickbed of their dying son;
- E332.3.3.1(g) is for hitchhikers simply requesting a lift home;
- E332.3.3.1(h-j) are a category reserved exclusively for vanishing nuns (a surprisingly common variant), some of whom foretell the future.
Here, the phenomenon blends into religious encounters, with the next and last vanishing hitchhiker classification - E332.3.3.2 - being for encounters with divinities who take to the road as hitchhikers. The legend of St Christopher is considered one of these, and the story of Philip the Apostle being transported by God after encountering the Ethiopian on the road (Acts 8:26-39) is sometimes similarly interpreted.
Art/Fiction
- The Stephen King short story, Riding the Bullet is an example of an opposite version of this story, in which case, a dead man picks up a young hitchhiker, tells him of his mother's upcoming death, and subsequently disappears.
- Hilton Edwards directed a 1951 movie called Return to Glennascaul, starring Orson Welles, which centred around a Vanishing Hitchhiker event.
- In 1942, the radio show Suspense broadcast an episode titled The Hitchiker in which Orson Welles plays a man who repeatedly sees a mysterious hitchhiker while driving cross-country.
- The Twilight Zone aired an episode titled "The Hitchhiker" which was based on the radio show. One point in the Suspense show written by Lucille Fletcher who also authored "Sorry, Wrong Number" and the Twilight Zone episode the DRIVER is dead and the Hitchhiker is the Angel of Death
- In the 1960 British horror film The City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel) actor Valentine Dyall plays a centuries-old warlock who hitches a ride with two different characters in the movie and then vanishes from the car as soon as they reach an ancient New England witch village.
- Dust Devil a 1993 cult film by Richard Stanley set in South Africa was, according to the DVD commentary, inspired by the director's memory of being told the Vanishing Hitchhiker legend as a youngster.
- The 1985 film Pee Wee's Big Adventure includes a scene that is a variation on "Phantom 309". While hitchhiking across the country in search of his stolen bicycle, Pee Wee (Paul Reubens) thumbs a ride with a truck driver named "Large Marge" who relates to him the story of "the worst accident I ever seen." When Pee Wee announces to the truck stop that Large Marge sent him, one customer recounts that this particular evening is the anniversary of said accident. It is also explained that this accident happened to Large Marge herself.
References
- Bielski, Ursula, (1997) "Road Tripping" from Chicago Haunts: Ghostlore of the Windy City (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1997).
- Brunvand, Jan Harold, (1981), The Vanishing Hitchhiker (ISBN 0-393-95169-3)
- Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, A Case of Identity, an adventure in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes describes something similar to this concept.
See also
Sources
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