Have we seen the last of phantom hitchhiker?

[rashore]

Quote

You probably encountered the very idea of ‘urban legends’ thanks to the labours of Jan Harold Brunvand, retired Professor of English and eminent folklorist. He did more than anyone else to promote awareness of those short, perfectly-formed morality tales that were told as true, but whose ultimate source – a ‘friend-of-a-friend’ – was distant enough to make the story unverifiable. This urban legend story form is now well enough known that listeners may identify anecdotes as urban legends simply by their story structure.

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2021/01/have-we-seen-the-last-of-the-vanishing-phantom-hitchhiker/

 

[papageorge1]

Hitchhiking was quite a thing when I was a kid and then quickly disappeared as almost everyone has a car and we have become more danger alert. Never pick up a hitchhiker was the danger alert during the transition stage.

I still hear ghost stories of phantoms taking taxis. I remember a collection of stories from Japan about people wanting rides to areas devastated by the tsunami and then vanishing in the taxi driver's back seat. They even showed taxi logs of rides started but never completed. As one who also thinks skeptically I was impressed by the quantity. quality and consistency of those stories. I am one though already convinced this is a complex universe beneath the surface.

[Meridian O]

The highway ghost tales that I've heard about are as follows:-  

Port Wakefield Ghost

The Port Wakefield Ghost has been reported at various times since the 1940’s.  Most often it’s a dark & stormy night and people are driving along Highway 1 between Port Wakefield & Adelaide.  

One story tells of a couple who picked a young male hitchhiker, dressed in an air force uniform.  He sat in the rear seat and when asked, he said he wished to be dropped off at an address in Adelaide.  When they arrived at the address they looked around and he was gone; they went into the address and spoke to the woman who lived there.  When they told the woman the name which the young man had given them, she said “that’s my son who was killed in a plane crash during a training flight out of Mallala during World War 2”.  It is believed his body was recovered and buried in an unknown location, and that his spirit is still trying to get home to Mum.  

Another tale is that of a local businessman, who recounted how the ghost was picked up one night heading into Port Wakefield.  He related how he was entering the toilets at the Shell Service Station behind a man in a RAAF uniform. The uniformed person went inside first and when the businessman entered the room straight after him, the man had disappeared!  

A third account was some motorcyclists had encountered the ghost on the road between the Hummocks (Kulpara area) and Port Wakefield. 

The Telly Savalas ghost encounter TELLY SAVALAS MEETS WITH GHOST - YouTube

Edited January 23, 2021 by Meridian O

[Matt221]

In kent at Blue Bell hill in the 70s there was a flurry of reports of people stopping to pick up a young girl hitchhiker only for here to disappear before they reached her destination,she was supposedly the ghost of a girl killed in a car crash the night before her wedding day.A classic tale if ever there was one.

[+Hammerclaw]

I'm always on the lookout for the Hash-slinging Slasher.

[openozy]

I was on a pig hunting trip near Warren in Western NSW and stopped to pick up an old guy hitching, he looked like an old time swagman complete with blue cattle dog. It was on an old dirt road with open paddocks. I pulled up just past him but he didn't come up to the ute and I couldn't see him in the rear view mirror so I reversed up and  he had vanished, no bushes or trees around to hide in just short, dead grass. I took off confused and about 80km down the track the same guy was hitching, I slowed down and he just looked straight through me. I looked back and he had vanished again.