When the time came for the next person in the group
to tell their story, no one jumped up and volunteered like Evan
did. The room was silent for a good
five minutes before anyone worked up enough courage. A boy around
Evan's age very reluctantly raised his hand.
"I guess it's my turn," he said. Dr. Kriegel
gave him the nod to proceed.
"Well, my name is Ronnie Lewis and I drove about
three hundred miles to be in this session today," he said.
"My story is about ghosts also, but my story isn't
as straightfoward as Evan's. This lasted a whole night and I
didn't realize what I was dealing with until it was too late."
Ronnie started to hesitate and looked towards the
ground in rememberance of his horrific experience.
"Go on," Dr. Kriegel encouraged him.
"Okay, here goes nothin'. I got off work late
one night about two and a half weeks ago, probably around
midnight. My boss was really thrashing me during my whole shift
so I wanted to get out of there pretty bad. Anyways, after the
long shift was finally over I walked out to my car to drive home.
I was more tired than I had ever been, so I thought the drive home was
going to be equally difficult. I got into my car, shut the door
and started to drive off. I also want to mention that it was
raining that night, which didn't exactly help out the situation
any. I had gotten about halfway home when I noticed someone
walking on the side of the road - it looked to me like a
hitchhiker.
I didn't want to stop at first, but my conscience
was nagging at me so I pulled over.
I rolled down the window and yelled at the person
whom I realized now was a woman. I was stunned when we finally
made eye contact. This woman did not look normal. Not only
was the rain pounding on her skin from every angle, but it looked as if
she was bleeding from somewhere on her scalp underneath her hair.
The blood was running down the side of her face, but it didn't seem to
faze her one bit. Regardless, I opened the door to let her
in. I asked her what she was doing walking out in the rain, but
she didn't respond. To break the awkward silence, I asked her if
she knew she was bleeding. Once again, no response. Her
silence was unnerving me to say the least. I decided to keep my
eyes straight forward and concentrate on driving. No more than
five seconds later I heard a cracking noise like that of branches
breaking in the woods. I turned to find out what was making the
noise, and when I looked over to the girl she looked as if she had
heard nothing.
I drove for about an hour before I finally got her
to speak. 'Just take me home,' she whispered, 'Take me
home.' Her voice was extremely raspy and I could hardly
understand her. So I asked her where her home was and
where she wanted me to take her, but she refused to say anything
else. I think I drove for another hour or so before I had to pull
over to get gas. I shut the engine off, stepped out of the car
and kept my eyes on her the whole time. As I was filling up the
car, I saw her start to move around in the car. The glare on the
windshield was bright, so I couldn't tell what she was doing. I
knocked on the passenger window to make sure she was alright, but I was
getting used to not receiving a response. The tank was full, so I
jumped in the car and started driving again.
Once the car was far enough away from the gas
station, she started to cause trouble. She started swinging her
arms around furiously and slamming her head into the head rest! I
had no idea what to do. I heard the cracking sound again, but
this time when I looked her way her head was spinning in a full
twist! I slammed on the breaks and jumped out of the car as fast
as my reflexes would allow. I looked in the window to see if she
had calmed down, but what I saw blew my mind...nothing. There was
no one in my car! I ran around to the other side of the car and
there was nothing. The door wasn't open, there were no
footprints, no sign whatsoever of any kind of rustle. I couldn't
believe what I was seeing. Having no other choice, I got back
into my car and started driving home.
When I got home I ran inside my house and locked the
door behind me. As I was walking past my living room, my dad was
asleep on the couch with the TV still turned on. The news was on
and as soon as I walked by, I noticed that the same woman who I had
just had this terrifying experience with was on the television! I
stopped in my tracks and caught myself staring at the TV. Come to
find out this woman was found dead this morning with lethal blows to
the head! I had either picked up a person who everyone thought
was dead...or someone who was actually dead."
"So it sounds like you and Evan have both had
encounters with 'ghosts' here recently. I hope when all of you
have finished your stories I will be able to further explain these
happenings," Dr. Kriegel said.
"I hope so too," Keith said from across the
circle. Keith was the next to tell his story.
Author's note: In the original urban legend, The Vanishing
Hitchhiker, the haunted person does not realize he is traveling
with a
ghost until the end of the trip, much like the story I wrote. In
the original, the ghost was not violent at all, but instead the
hitchhiker calmly tells the address she wants to go to, and when the
driver gets there she disappears, and the driver learns from someone
living at that address that the hitchhiker has been dead for a long
time! In my version of the story, however, the ghost
had somewhat of an outburst near the end, which I added for more
suspense. I made the ghost bleeding from the scalp because if you
were to pull up to someone on the side of the road who was bleeding
you would automatically assume that they had been in some kind of car
crash. In my story, on the other hand, the hitchhiker was not
injured, but dead. The original urban legend can be retold in
many different ways, and I chose to add blood and a little bit of
exorcist type horror into mine!
Image information: The A9 Lost
Highway
Bibliography: "Vanishing Hitchhiker." Snopes.com: Rumor
has it.
