The Vanishing Hitchhiker

A man was driving home from a country-club dance late one Saturday night. Out of the corner of his eye appeared a lovely young girl, dressed in the sheerest of evening gowns, beckoning him for a lift. He jammed on his brakes, and motioned her to climb into the back seat of his sedan. "All cluttered up with golf clubs and bags up here in front," he explained. "But what on earth is a youngster like you doing out here all alone at this time of night?"

"It's too long a story to tell you now," said the girl. Her voice was sweet and somewhat shrill -- like the tinkling of sleigh bells. "Please, please take me home. My car broke down a few miles back and I have been trying to get help for the longest time. I live up the road about 5 miles. I do hope it's not too far out of your way."

He drove rapidly to her destination, and as he pulled up before the house, he said, "Here we are," and turned around. The back seat was empty.

"What the heck?" he said to himself. The girl couldn't possibly have fallen from the car. Nor could she simply have vanished. He rang insistently on the house bell, confused as he had never been before. At long last the door opened. A gray-haired, very tired-looking man peered out at him. "I can't tell you what an amazing thing has happened," began the doctor. "A young girl gave me this address a while back. I drove her here and . . ."

"Yes, yes, I know," said the man wearily. "This has happened several other Saturday evenings in the past month. That young girl, sir, was my daughter. She was killed in a car accident two years ago in the spot where you picked her up.

Variations:

Sometimes the ghost leaves a book or scarf in the car, which the bereaved parents then identify as belonging to their lost daughter. Sometimes the driver spies the hitchhiker's photograph on the family piano, wearing the
party dress in which she died (and which she was wearing when he picked her up).

In versions where the hitchhiker disappears when the vehicle drives past a graveyard, the driver discovers the coat he lent his passenger draped over the tombstone of a girl who'd died in a car accident a few years earlier.

Another version of what happens the next day:

After he got home he remembered that Lavender had borrowed his coat. The next day he went to her house and knocked on the door. An old woman answered and he asked her if Lavender Blue was at home. He went on to explain that she had borrowed his coat and he came to get it back and to talk to her if she was there.

The woman had a sad look and asked him if this was some kind of joke. He insisted that it was no joke. She informed him that Lavender Blue had died 5 years before after she had been out on a date. Her date left her in the middle of no-where and she was hit by a truck while walking home on a dark road.

Tom looked so confused when she told him this story that she told him that she would show him Lavender’s grave, as she was buried in their back yard. They walked around the house and in the back corner of the large property there was a small cemetery and in the center was Lavender’s tombstone. Both the woman and Tom were surprised to find Tom’s coat folded neatly laying on the grave.