Years ago, I worked 2nd shift and drove 30 miles home in the dead of night, five days a week. The route I took was a country highway which was the most direct route with the least traffic. It passed through a few towns along the way, but it mostly wound through cornfields and dark woods. It wasn’t the kind of road where you’d expect to encounter a hitchhiker but that’s exactly what I saw. Or, so I thought.
The first time I saw him, I was about halfway home, approaching a point on the highway where it curved left to cross a bridge over a river. As I rounded the curve, I suddenly saw a man in my headlights. He was standing on the shoulder of the road with his thumb out. He was elderly. Very tall and skinny with gray hair. He was wearing a distinctive red blazer. What I remember most is how ghastly white he looked against the black woods. White skin. White hair. Pale eyes looking right at me. I was so startled that I almost hit the brakes but I instantly thought better of it and continued on. As I drove past him, I could see his hair looked wet even though the night was dry.
About a week later at the same spot, the same man came running out of the woods into the highway about 100 yards ahead of me, waving his arms and shouting. I had to swerve around him, I barely missed him and nearly drove off the road, skidding to a stop on the shoulder. I could hear him running up the road behind me, shouting something crazy about the world coming to an end. IT’S THE APOCALYPSE! IT’S THE END OF DAYS! I hit the gas and drove away as fast as I could. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw nothing.
I stopped at the State Police barracks that night and made a report. They asked me what he looked like, and how he was dressed. I described him. They told me other people had seen him along the highway. He was probably homeless or mentally ill, they said. They were keeping an eye out. I felt relieved that I wasn’t the only one who had encountered him.
About a week or so after, I was approaching the bridge and I felt somebody tap me on my shoulder from the back seat. I nearly crashed the car pulling over! Terrified, I jumped out of the car and ran about 100 feet down the road but, of course, there was nobody else in the car. I knew that. I drove the rest of the way home that night with the dome light on and the radio blasting.
I’ve thought really hard about that particular experience. That wasn’t my imagination. I hadn’t fallen asleep behind the wheel. It was three deliberate taps—tap, tap, tap—on my right shoulder, like from a long bony finger. I shudder thinking about it today.
Not long after that night, I read an article in the paper. A missing man from a nearby town had been found in his car, sunken in the river under that bridge. He was a hotel desk clerk who had vanished earlier in the spring after leaving work one night. His family thought he’d met with foul play and police thought he’d just run away. As it turns out, he’d missed the curve and had driven down the embankment into the river below. Road workers saw tires poking out of the water and when they winched out the car, they found him inside. I imagined he was still wearing his work uniform, including the red blazer. And for him, the world really did end that night.
So, during those weeks when I was seeing the crazy hitchhiker, that poor man was right there under the bridge, waiting to be found. I’m still not convinced that I saw his ghost, not really. I’m very agnostic about these things. But I learned to take the long way home on a well-lit, well-traveled interstate highway. Even today, I avoid driving on country drives in the dead of night.
And sometimes I wonder if those lonely people I sometimes see along the side of lonely highways are all ghosts just trying to find their way home.