Vanishing hitchhiker

The Vanishing Hitchhiker (or variations such as the ghostly hitchhiker, the disappearing hitchhiker, the phantom hitchhiker or simply the hitchhiker) story is an urban legend in which people traveling 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, with many variants. The popularity and endurance of the legend has helped it spread into popular culture.

Public knowledge of the term expanded greatly with the 1981 publication of Jan Harold Brunvand's book The Vanishing Hitchhiker,[1] which helped launch public awareness of urban legends.[1][2] In his book, Brunvand suggests that the story of The Vanishing Hitchhiker can be traced as far back as the 1870s and has "recognizable parallels in Korea, Tsarist Russia, among Chinese-Americans, Mormons, and Ozark mountaineers."[3]

The archetypal modern vanishing hitchhiker is a figure seen in the headlights of a car traveling 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. In many cases, the hitchhiker vanishes when (normally) a vehicle reaches the hitchhiker's destination.

Variations

A common variation of 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 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.

Other variations reverse the scenario, in that the hitchhiker meets a driver; the hitchhiker later learns that the driver is actually an apparation of a person who died earlier.

Not all vanishing hitchhiker reports involved allegedly recurring ghosts. One popular variant in Hawaii involves the goddess Pele, traveling the roads incognito and rewarding kind travelers. Other variants include hitchhikers who utter prophecies (typically of pending catastrophe or other evils) before vanishing.

Paranormal researcher Michael Goss in his book The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-Hikers discovered that many reports of vanishing hitch-hikers turn out be based on folklore and hearsay stories. Goss also examined some cases and attributed them to a hallucination of the experiencer.[4]

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 analyze them.

The Beardsley-Hankey survey elicited 79 written accounts of encounters with vanishing hitchhikers, drawn from across the USA.

They found: "Four distinctly different versions, distinguishable because of obvious differences in development and essence."

These are described as:

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 localized 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.

Ernest W Baughman's Type- and Motif-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 traveling bag in the car.)"

Baughman's classification system grades this basic story as motif E332.3.3.1.

Subcategories include:

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 Evangelist being transported by God after encountering the Ethiopian on the road (Acts 8:26-39) is sometimes similarly interpreted.[5]

Prophetic hitchhikers since 1970s

The vanishing hitchhiker phenomenon took on a decidedly divinatory cast during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Cultural references

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Langlois, Janet L. (July–September 1983). "The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings by Jan Harold Brunvand". The Journal of American Folklore 96 (381): 356–357. doi:10.2307/540959. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
  2. Ellis, Bill (1994). ""The Hook" Reconsidered: Problems in Classifying and Interpreting Adolescent Horror Legends". Folklore (Taylor & Francis, Ltd on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd) 105: 61–75. doi:10.1080/0015587x.1994.9715874. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
  3. Fine, Gary Alan (April 1982). "The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings by Jan Harold Brunvand". Western Folklore (Western States Folklore Society) 41 (2): 156–157. doi:10.2307/1499791. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
  4. Schmetzke, Angelika. (1988). The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-Hikers by Michael Goss. Folklore, Vol. 99, No. 2. p. 265
  5. Wechner, Bernd "Hitch-hiking in the Bible". Retrieved on 2009-12-30.

Books

External links

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