History Main / BewareOfHitchhikingGhosts

* One story inverts this trope - a living hitchhiker is picked up by a trucker who gives him money for coffee and tells him to go to a certain coffee shop, with the instructions to say that '(trucker's name) sent me'. When the hitchhiker does so, the coffee shop owner tells him how that trucker died because he drove off a cliff rather than hit a school bus, and then refuses to accept payment for the coffee, instructing the hitchhiker to keep the money in memory of the trucker. So in that story, the ghost is the driver rather than the hitchhiker.

** This may be more properly an example of GodWasMyCopilot (though less divine.)

* "Phantom 309" by Red Sovine depicts Sovine thumbing a ride with a trucker. When the driver lets Sovine out a nearby truck stop, he tells him to inform the truck stop crowd of who sent him. Silence overtakes the truck stop before one of the patrons tells Sovine the story of the driver, who died after crashing his rig to spare a group of teenagers he hadn't seen in time to stop after topping a hill. (The song was later covered, with slightly different lyrics here and there, by Music/TomWaits on his album ''Music/NighthawksAtTheDiner'')

* Music/TomWaits' song "Big Joe and Phantom 309" tells the ghost trucker story listed under Folklore above.

* Inverted: [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1337 SCP-1337]] of the Wiki/SCPFoundation's started out as a traditional hitch hiking ghost, down to the last detail of the traditional American version of the myth. [[JerkAss Then (without authorization) the head researcher of that particular SCP project had her elderly parents killed, and her gravesite destroyed, arguing that if she has nothing to return to, she'll stop coming back.]] She stopped coming back... for a time. Then she started appearing again, but now as a horrible, malevolent spirit that brutally kills people who drive past her without stopping. [[AssholeVictim The researcher was her first victim.]]

* The "aaparition in front of a moving car" is used -- sort of -- in the VideoGame/NancyDrew game, ''The Haunting of Castle Malloy''.
* The "Apparition in front of a moving car" variety appears in both the videogame and movie versions of ''Franchise/SilentHill''.

* GenderInverted and ZigZagged in the ''Podcast/AliceIsntDead'' episode "Alice," wherein an elderly man stuck in a GroundhogDayLoop which confines him to the mobile VanishingVillage of Charlatan [[InvokedTrope attempts]] an escape by manifesting in the cab of the visiting {{Narrator}}'s truck and silently pointing to the road out of town. The silence as he enters the truck suggests that he's [[OffscreenTeleportation intangible]], and may be a ghost. [[spoiler:The Narrator escapes the loop, but sees the man restored to his usual mark in her rearview mirror.]] Unusually, the Narrator is unable to make sense of events, and never gets an answer as to the nature of the town or its people.

* The Phantom Hitchhiker a very common urban legend in several parts of the states, but the stories do seem to center around Chicago, where she is affectionately known as Resurrection Mary - from Resurrection Cemetery, where the final scene of the story takes place. A girl would be found on the side of a road; a friendly man (it's usually a man) would offer her a ride and take her to an address. Usually he turns around and she's gone, leaving a wet seat. Some stories follow up by having the man go to the address and learn that the girl has been dead for years (usually her death is reported as a traffic accident). Sometimes he visits her grave and finds the coat he lent her draped neatly over the headstone. In one particularly grisly variant, he actually digs up the grave, and finds the girl's remains wrapped in his coat.
** The story usually takes place on Archer Avenue near Resurrection Cemetery.

* ''WebVideo/BedtimeStoriesYoutubeChannel'': The entire premise of the episode "The Uniondale Hitchhiker", where the ghost of a woman named Maria Roux is often picked up by random drivers and motorcyclists, only for her to disappear as suddenly as she got onto their cars and bikes. Several other examples of this phenomenon are also discussed, with the hitchhikers ranging from old women to young boys.

* ''Manga/DetectiveConan'': The Japanese legend of the ''yuki onna'' (snow woman) is discussed by Shinichi's father as a subtle clue as to how the murderer set up the crime scene so he could have an apparently air-tight alibi. In his version of the story, a man unwittingly picks up a yuki onna on his way home, and though she was intending to freeze him to death, his concern for her causes her to melt instead.

* The outdoor humorist Creator/PatrickMcManus parodied this trope in one of his short stories: Pat and his fishing buddy Retch Sweeny pick up a strange young hitchhiker while returning from a day's fishing. It turns out the guy is totally still alive and steals their tackle boxes.

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[[quoteright:350:[[Franchise/TheHauntedMansion https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/HitchHiking_Ghosts2.JPG]]]]
[[caption-width-right:345:Going Our Way?]]

UrbanLegends of vanishing hitchhikers are very widespread around the world and quite old: In the oldest ones, the vehicles picking up ghosts were still horses and carriages. The basic outline is the same:

* The first sign that the MindScrew is starting in ''Film/DeadEnd'' is when the family picks up a mysterious woman in white carrying a baby, which is later revealed to be dead.

** Going into a bit more detail, the car is haunted by the dead soldier, who took pleasure in riding along with the new owner (just at the edge of the man's sight) whom he had left a letter to (via the glovebox), encouraging whoever claimed the car to enjoy it, as he had wished he could have before he shipped out and died. The song is a bit of a TearJerker.
*** In the end, when the accident happens, Private Malone repays the new owner for the rides by dragging him free of the crash. A bystander claims to have seen a soldier rescue the driver, but didn't get the man's name. The driver ends the song, thanking God that the soldier was tagging along with him, knowing he wouldn't have survived otherwise. [[ManlyTears Sniff]].

* Series 17 of the Toys/LivingDeadDolls was inspired by {{Urban Legend}}s, and includes a Vanishing Hitchhiker.

** It's also used -- sort of -- in the VideoGame/NancyDrew game, ''The Haunting of Castle Malloy''.

* In the opening dream sequence of ''VideoGame/AlanWake'', the title player character runs down a phantom hitchhiker, who then proceeds to menace him with an axe.[[/folder]]

* The "Apparition in front of the car" variant is used again in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' - the Batmobile turns a corner and Batman thinks he's just managed to run Robin down, though in fact it's a hallucination caused by the Scarecrow's fear gas.

%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample * Used in ''Anime/YuugenKaisha''.

* Subverted in ''[[Creator/JunjiIto Anything But A Ghost]]''. The mysterious, blood-covered girl standing by the roadside ''isn't'' a ghost. She just [[spoiler: eats them. Presumably she made a meal of a classic example of the trope.]]

* Inverted in ''Film/PeeWeesBigAdventure'': Pee Wee Herman is lost in the countryside and hitches a ride with a truck driver. Just after they get going, the driver tells him the story of a terrible accident she witnessed. At one point, she shows him how badly managled the driver's body was by shifting into a NightmareFace. After she drops him off, she says "Be sure to tell 'em 'Large Marge sent ya!'" Pee Wee then walks into the nearest restaurant and tells the patrons "Large Marge sent me." They react in shock and horror and one tells him the same story of the accident. He also reveals that night is the anniversary of said accident which killed Large Marge. Pee Wee then realizes he got a ride from her ghost.
* The "Apparition in front of a moving car" variety appears in both the videogame and movie versions of ''Franchise/SilentHill''.
* Although ''Film/TheHitcher'' has a living HostileHitchhiker, John Ryder [[spoiler: has no social security number, driver's license, or any other indication that he exists]]. Oh, and he's a psychopathic killer that beats down anybody he pleases.

* Hilton Edwards directed a 1951 movie called ''Film/ReturnToGlennascaul'', starring Creator/OrsonWelles, which centered around a Vanishing Hitchhiker event. Two women, an older lady and her younger daughter, hitch a ride home with a man and invite him in for tea and drinks. He returns and finds the house abandoned, eventually discovering that the two women are long dead.
* 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.

* ''Film/DustDevil'', 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.
* A popular UsefulNotes/{{Bollywood}} horror movie of the 1970's ''Bees Saal Baad'' has the sequence where the leading man gives a lift to a beautiful woman on a stormy night. Her manner is mysterious and answers questions vaguely and she asks to be dropped off at a gate. He says "But that's a cemetery!". She looks at him, smiles enigmatically and gets off the car and walks into the cemetery. The gate opens automatically for her.
* ''Film/FieldOfDreams'' has an inversion: the protagonists are on their way home when they pick up the hitchhiker, and they take him home with them, rather than to a destination of the hitchhiker's choice. An added twist: the ghost is a younger version of someone they've already met ...

* [[CrustyCaretaker Graveyard Gus]] tells a story about a couple who have [[OffWithHisHead a rather nasty encounter]] with Mary Hatchet's ghost, which they pick up one night in ''Film/BloodNightTheLegendOfMaryHatchet''.
* The first sign that the MindScrew is starting in ''Film/DeadEnd'' is when the family picks up a mysterious woman in white carrying a baby, which is later revealed to be dead.
* ''Hell's Highway'' has a sexy but homicidal goth chick hitchhiker who keeps coming back after being killed, though the twist ending reveals [[spoiler:she was the subject in a government experiment involving cloning, and escaped with several of her duplicates]].
* A hitchhiking ghost features in the Chinese ghost movie ''Who's the Ghost in Sleepy Hollow''; hitching a ride on a motorcycle and then vanishing as the bike passes a cemetery.
* An early scene in ''Film/TheFog'' has a young woman appearing in this manner, but she turns out just to be an ordinary person who just happened to be out on a particularly eerie night.
* ''Film/InTheMouthOfMadness'' had a rather twisted variant on this in that it wasn't a hitchhiker but ''the passenger'' [[spoiler: who happens to be the protagonist's girlfriend]] [[BodyHorror whom it turned out there was something horribly wrong with]].
* ''Film/ForgetMeNot'': Of the standing in the middle of the road variety.

* One of the victims of the Abaddon Hotel in ''Film/HellHouseLLCIITheAbaddonHotel'' was hitchhiking to the disastrous opening of the Film/{{Hell House|LLC}}'' and has continued to lure victims to the hotel by standing on the roadside looking for rides.
* In ''Film/JackTheReaper'', Railway Jack appears multiple times along the side of the road: visible only to Jessie. Then he appears in front of the bus, causing the bus to crash.

* Inverted in the Creator/StephenKing novella "Riding the Bullet", where the hitchhiking hero gets picked up by a ghost.
** This version is also used in ''Literature/{{IT}}'' when a dead Belch picks up Henry...in a [[Literature/{{Christine}} 58 Plymouth Fury]].

* OlderThanPrint: A variation appears in ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms''. Merchant and future Liu Bei supporter Mi Zhu picked up a woman in his carriage. His [[ChasteHero genteel behaviour]] during the trip caused the woman to reveal that she was a fire spirit, sent to burn down his home in the night. She wasn't allowed to shirk her duty, but she did tell him that if he hurried home he would have time enough to evacuate his family and valuables, before vanishing. Mi Zhu took the advice, so when his home did burn down later that night, everything important was saved.

* The ''Literature/GhostRoads'' series is written from the point of view of the ghost. She's not malicious, but she frequently shows up for a driver who's going to crash soon, so she gets a bad rap (she's actually attracted to people who are about to die on the road so she can save their life or, if that's not possible, act as a {{Psychopomp}} to prevent ''them'' from becoming a malicious ghost). The story also ties together several variations of the "vanishing prom date" subgenre and provides a plausible explanation for the borrowed jackets.
* ''Literature/AnnaDressedInBlood'' opens with Cas hunting this type of ghost.
* ''Literature/NinaTanleven'': ''The Ghost Let Go'' references and plays with this - it has Nine, Chris and Nine's father get in an accident because of what they initially suspect might be a hitchhiking ghost, with Nine and Chris theorizing that she caused them to crash rather than ask for a lift because the driver wasn't alone. The "ghost" later turns out to be the very much alive Dolores Smiley. Her ''mother'' is a ghost, who was accidentally struck and killed by a car almost identical to the Tanleven's (Dolores mistook their car for the one from long ago, which is why she ran out in front of them and caused their accident), and Dolores goes out every year on the anniversary of Mrs. Smiley's death, hoping she'll find her spirit wandering the road where she died so that she can finally apologize for the last, hateful words she ever said to her mother.

* The ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "Roadkill", where we see it from the ''ghost's'' perspective. For that matter, it happened in [[Recap/SupernaturalS01E01Pilot the pilot]].
* In ''Series/TheMightyBoosh'' season 1 episode "Hitcher", Howard Moon picks up one of these.
-->"I'm the Hitcher! Lemme put you in the pitcha!"
* In the "Girl on the Road" episode of the obscure TV series ''TheVeil'' hosted by Boris Karloff, a motorist aids a girl stranded on the highway. After she vanishes, he searches for her, eventually discovering she had died years before in a wreck on the stretch of road where he met her.
* A ''Series/HappyDays'' episode has Fonzie getting involved with a girl who he comes to believe might be a ghost. (It turns out [[spoiler:to be AllJustADream.]])
* A longer timeframe than usual, but [[spoiler:Kara Thrace]] in ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003''. [[spoiler: Dies, turns up again and hitches a lift, gives mystical prophecies and information, vanishes into thin air when her "task" is done.]]
* In the pilot episode of ''Series/TheGreatestAmericanHero'', Ralph and Bill keep passing the ghost of a dead man in the desert.
* ''Series/GrowingPains'': In a Halloween episode, Mike claims he had met [[CuteGhostGirl a beautiful teen-aged ghost]] named Kara, who had died 17 years earlier in a car accident. An in-joke in the episode is that, along the way, Mike and Kara stop at a roadside bar, where a talent show -- featuring all of the guests dressed as dead celebrities -- is taking place. Mike's making up the tale.
* Played with in the ''Series/{{Freaky}}'' episode "Hitcher". Picking up hitchhikers while driving at night never seems like a good idea. Especially when the hitchhiker tells creepy ghost stories. Maybe Dad and Michael will have the last laugh when they share a story of their own...

* In an inversion of this trope, David Allen Cole wrote a song "The Ride" where he is given a lift to Nashville by the ghost of Hank Williams, who gives some advice on how to become a country music star.
** Keith Bryant's version of "The Ride" is about an amateur Nascar driver that gets a ride to Daytona International Speedway from Dale Earnhart. At the end of the ride Earnhart cried when they arrive at Daytona, pulling onto the track he says "This is where you get out boy, cause Number 3 ain't comin' back."

* "I Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore", the above song by Blackmore's Night.
* "State Road 25" by [=ThouShaltNot=], which is sung from the point of view of the ghostly passenger.
* "Phantom 309" by Red Sovine depicts Sovine thumbing a ride with a trucker. When the driver lets Sovine out a nearby truck stop, he tells him to inform the truck stop crowd of who sent him. Silence overtakes the truck stop before one of the patrons tells Sovine the story of the driver, who died after crashing his rig to spare a group of teenagers he hadn't seen in time to stop after topping a hill. (The song was later covered, with slightly different lyrics here and there, by Music/TomWaits on his album ''Music/NighthawksAtTheDiner'')
* The Swirling Eddies released a song on their ''Outdoor Elvis'' album (1990) called "Urban Legends." In the lyrics, the narrator decides to believe any and all urban legends following an encounter with a vanishing hitchhiker.

* The Literature/{{Child Ballad|s}} of "The Suffolk Miracle" (Child #272) has this plot (with a horse instead of a car). In the ballad, the hitchhiker is the protagonist's lover, who died of grief when her father prevented him from seeing her; it also makes use of the reappearing garment device (in this case, a handkerchief which shows up in the man's grave).
* Country Joe [=McDonald=] wrote and performed a song about a vanishing hitchhiker called "Hold On It's Coming", later covered by New Riders of the Purple Sage.
* Stan Ridgway's "Camouflage" is a very odd variant where the ghost of a dead Marine helps another Marine survive a battle in Vietnam.

* "The Road to Thunder Bay" by Stompin' Tom Connors tells of a driver picking up a "young man with a small blue guitar," and carrying him on some distance down the road before coming to a wreck where a man of the same description died, not much earlier. The apparition disappears, but the ghost's song lingers as the narrator drives on.

* In the Direct to DVD sequel to ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'', the team is driving through the Arizona desert when they pick up a mysterious Shoshone man who they appear to pass several times. Turns out he is a Wind Spirit guarding a mass trove of ancient artifacts, and his search for a stolen pot is what's causing the mess in the southwest.

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* In the Direct to DVD sequel to ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'', the team is driving through the Arizona desert when they pick up a mysterious Shoshone man who they appear to pass several times. Turns out he is a Wind Spirit guarding a mass trove of ancient artifacts, and his search for a stolen pot is what's causing the mess in the southwest.

* Inverted in ''Film/PeeWeesBigAdventure'': Pee Wee Herman isn't a ghost, but Large Marge, who picks him up, is.
-->"Be sure to tell 'em ''Large Marge sent ya!''"

* ''Magazine/ForteanTimes'' has collated these stories from around Great Britain, ones which began almost as soon as the first cars rolled off the rpoduction lines and those which seem to go back even further and have been "repurposed" for the internal combustion engine. The legend of the phantom hitch-hiker on Bluebell Hill in Essex, for instance, appears to date back to the 1950's but the ghostly girl hitching a lift has been seen and reported on so often that this now has all the status of myth.

* In the Direct to DVD sequel to ''Disney/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'', the team is driving through the Arizona desert when they pick up a mysterious Shoshone man who they appear to pass several times. Turns out he is a Wind Spirit guarding a mass trove of ancient artifacts, and his search for a stolen pot is what's causing the mess in the southwest.

-->[[{{Earworm}} "I'm the Hitcher! Lemme put you in the pitcha!"]]

* ''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.