The Wreck
Kitty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Winterjoy: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Wreck
Fred and Jeanne went to the same high school, but they met for the first time at the Christmas dance. Fred had come by himself, and so had Jeanne. Soon Fred decided that Jeanne was one of the nicest girls he had ever met. They danced together most of the evening.
At eleven o’clock Jeanne said, “I have to leave now. Can you give me a ride?”
“Sure,” he said. I’ve got to go home, too.”
“I accidentally drove my car into a tree on my way over here,” Jeanne said. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
Fred drove her to the head of Brady Road. It was in a neighborhood he didn’t know very well.
“Why don’t you drop me off here,” Jeanne said. “The road up ahead is in really bad condition. I can walk from here.”
Fred stopped the car and held out some tinsel. “Have some,” he said. “I got it at the dance.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll put it in my hair,” and she did.
“Would you like to go out sometime, to a movie or something?” Fred asked.
“That would be fun,” Jeanne said.
After Fred drove off, he realized that he did not know Jeanne’s last name or her telephone number. “I’ll go back,” he thought. “The road can’t be that bad.”
He drove slowly down Brady Road through a thick woods, but there wasn’t a sign of Jeanne. As he came around a curve, he saw the wreckage of a car ahead. It had crashed into a tree and had caught fire. Smoke was still rising from it.
As Fred made his way to the car, he could see someone trapped inside, crushed against the steering column.
It was Jeanne. In her hair was the Christmas tinsel he had given her.
*****
Schwartz cites multiple pieces of reading material for this story, as the story of the vanishing hitchhiker is extremely prominent in all folklore. Sometimes the person is picked up by a driver, and sometimes they are given a ride home after an event or dance.
In his book, Schwartz cites Beardsley, Richard K., CFQ 1:303-36, and CFQ 2:3-25
The CFQ, of course, is California Folklore Quarterly. He is referencing volume 1, pp. 303-36 (October 1942) (1) and volume 2, pp 3-25.
In the first, (and the first of the two articles we will be talking about) Beardsley gives many short examples of the vanishing hitchhiker story. He goes on to say that he and his colleagues’ purpose was to find the stories which had the oldest elements to figure out what is as close to the original vanishing hitchhiker story as possible. He compares different elements of the main 4 categories of vanishing hitchhiker stories, which is interesting. I highly recommend reading this article if you are interested in this subject.
As a point of reference, in the bare bones of version A, a man gives a young woman on a street corner a ride, and by the time he gets to the address given, she is gone. He goes to the house and asks after her, and finds that she has been dead for years.
Version B is very much like A, but it is either a middle aged or old woman, and it is always a group of people who give her a ride, rather than a single driver. It’s always in the daytime, and the woman always gives a prophecy or warning about somewhere that the group is going.
Of the four main vanishing hitchhiker stories, ours is of version C. It is not typical of the other three, because the girl is not really a hitchhiker at all, but is met at a party or dance or bar or some other place of entertainment, and always is dropped off somewhere, rather than straight out disappearing from the car. She always leaves something tangible as evidence of the encounter. It is discovered that she had died some time before.
Version D are Hawaiian tales in which an old woman carrying a basket is picked up or is not picked up, and it is later revealed that it was Madame Pele. She is the goddess of fire and volcanoes, and it is bad luck to upset her in anyway.
In all, this 1942 paper that was published in California Folklore Quarterly (now called Western Folklore) suggests that version A is the original format of the vanishing hitchhiker story, and all others are just offshoots of that.
*****
Now we’ll go on to the variants of our particular version, Version C.
Los Angeles, California, 1940. — This actually happened to a fellow I know. He and his friend were in a beer joint in downtown Los Angeles. They met a young woman there. She asked them if they’d take her home because she lived in the same neighborhood (Belvedere Gardens). So they all got in the car and she sat in the back seat. It was a very cold night and she borrowed one of their overcoats. When they reached the Evergreen Cemetery, she asked them if they’d stop a minute. So they stopped and let her out. They waited. When she didn’t come back they thought she had stolen the overcoat. They got a little aggravated and went out to look for her. They went into the cemetery and looked around. They they saw the overcoat draped over a headstone.
North Riverside, Illinois, 1939.— (This story was told to the narrator by a man who said he knew the boys concerned very well.) These boys went to a public dance. It was in a small town and they knew most of the people there. They saw a very attractive girl in a white dress, and one of the boys asked her to dance with him. Her hands were so cold that he thought she was ill. However, after the dance was over they offered to take the girl home and she consented. They got into the car and she gave them her address. But when they got to the Oak Ridge Cemetery the girl said, “I forgot. I promised I’d get out here.”
The boys saw her go through a hedge. They waited, but she didn’t come back. They went into the cemetery and looked around but found nothing. They saw a man and a woman leaving, but couldn’t find the girl. Worried, they went to the address she had given them. The people there said, “Are you sure she gave you this address?” They showed the boys some pictures and the boys recognized the girl at the dance. “That’s even the dress she was wearing,” they said. Then the people told them that the girl was their daughter and that she had died two years ago. This happening preyed so on one of the boy’s minds that he went to the Elgin hospital for the insane and died about six months later.
South Pasadena, California.— A musician and two friends went to a dance. They saw a pretty girl all in white who looked as if she were floating on air. Bill, one of the friends, made the girl’s acquaintance and danced with her. He took her home and since the girl “felt cold” he had her wear his coat; she forgot to return it. He returned to her home for the coat, hoping also to renew her acquaintance. The girl’s mother told him her daughter had died three years ago. She offered to show him the grave. They went to the cemetery and found his coat on the grave. The young man and the mother returned to the home, where he met the sister of the spectral dancer. She told him, “Linda (the dead girl) and I always waved to you on our way to school and went to every dance we could. Linda loved you, but of course you didn’t know.”
Bill died two months later. The other friend went insane and the narrator “came close to it.” (He closes his story with the observation that he remembered that he had not seen the girl’s image in a mirror at the dance. “You can’t see a ghost in a mirror.”)
*****
I had so much fun reading these stories. I hope you did, too. Since I liked this one, I’m going to add a few more out-of-the-ordinary vanishing hitchhiker stories from the article that I found creepy.
Georgia, 1912 (somewhat abridged).—A young man was riding in his buggy through a strange part of the state on business, trying to reach a certain inn by midnight. Just as he was passing a grove of giant oaks, he saw a girl in a light dress that seemed of a bygone period, standing beside the roadway. He at once stopped and asked if he could assist her. In a low, sweet voice she told him she had been left alone in the grove and desired to be taken home. As he assisted her into the carriage he was amazed at the lightness of her body; in fact there was a strange dreamlike quality about the whole affair. He also observed a dark stain upon her frock.
They drove a few miles up the lonely road, and her home proved to be the ruins of an old Southern mansion, its white columns cold and ghostly in the moonlight. The floor of the verandah had fallen in, but the girl floated up the old stone steps and across the place were the floor had been, the stain on her gown showing too plainly that it was moonlit blood! As the young man watched in horror she disappeared through the ruined doorway, whereupon he drove his horse, which had been rearing with fright eve since the girl appeared, at a rapid pace up the roadway to the inn. The innkeeper told him that he had been with the neighborhood ghost, a girl who had been murdered by her jealous lover many years before, just at midnight, in that very grove. On moonlight nights her spirit lingered there, and any traveler passing just at midnight would be accosted, and requested to take her to the old family mansion where she lived, which had now long lain in ruins.
Du Quoin, Illinois (undated).—(This story was told to the narrator by a cousin who knew one of the two drivers of the bus in question.) It seems that two boys were bringing a bus from one town to another. They had to pass through several towns. It was raining hard—almost sheets of water; it was also cold. The boy shad been driving since early morning. It was now evening and they were very tired. They kept talking to keep awake. The bust was empty. Suddenly one of the m saw about a hundred feet in front the figure of a girl. She had on a white gown and was standing very still by the side of the road. They stopped the bus and asked her if she would ride. She nodded, whereupon she got in and sat down on the floor in the aisle. They asked her to have a seat but she refused and also refused a raincoat which one of the boys offered her. As the bus drove along she became talkative. She told them where she was going, which was the next town, and even gave them the street address. The boys continued talking to her, but they did not look at her since the rain had now become heavier and it took both of them to watch the road. Presently, they drove over a bridge and as they drove over they asked her a question. She did not answer, and, as one of the boys turned, he saw the girl was gone! This rather unnerved them, for the bus had not stopped and they had not opened the door. They continued their trip, arriving in town in about thirty minutes. They parked the bus at the station and went quickly to the address the girl had given. It was late evening, but when they rapped a woman came to the door and asked what they wanted. They told her the episode and she thanked them for coming. She told them that at the spot where they had picked up the girl, her daughter had been killed in an auto accident four years before. They were the third party to come and tell her of the same episode which had happened each year.
Washington, D.C. (undated).—A Washington man’s wife was very ill in the hospital and died. She promised him she would return. So each year there is a tale that a woman gets into a taxi and tells the driver to go to a certain house, and to be sure to go up and ring the doorbell no matter what happens. When the driver arrives at the address there is no one in the car. He rings the doorbell of the house. The husband comes to the door, says nothing, but pays the taxi driver.
Honolulu, Hawaii, 1936.—(This was told aboard ship leaving Honolulu in 1936 as happening to a friend of one of the crew.) The friend was a reporter on the Honolulu Star, new to the Islands in 1934. As you go out Fort Street you come to Nuuanu Boulevard, which runs out toward the falls that drop over the Pali. This reporter, who lived in Nuuanu Valley, where the homes of the wealthy are spread in the hills above Honolulu, had been out on an assignment and was driving home late in the night. He came to a stop at an arterial, where Fort Street comes into Nuuanu, when he heard a feminine voice. He looked around and saw a girl, who asked if he would river her up the road. He asked her to get in the car, noticing that she was an attractive girl in evening clothes, with a cowled black velvet cape over her head and shoulders. She said her father’s house was up the Nuuanu, almost to Pali Road. He proposed that they drive out for a drink and a dance before going home, being ready for what might come along. When she accepted, he drove back through town and out to a road house, where they had several dances. But she would not drink even when he ordered for her, nor would she take a cigarette. And he noticed that she did not take the cowl of her cape from her head. The place closed soon and they had to leave. They parked and “necked” for a bit on the Pali road. He noticed again that she smelled strongly of perfumes and cosmetics, and that she continued to wear the cowl. Finally she said, “I’d better go home now.” So he drove her back to Nuuanu. At a place where there was no house in sight for a couple of hundred yards, she said, “You can stop here.” When he questioned this, she said, “I can make it all right.” The last he heard was a silvery laugh as she went into the darkness. He had learned her name, Marian Crawford. So the next day he looked for “Crawford” in the phone book, but didn’t find it there. Later a friend mentioned the Crawfords, saying that they had left for the mainland after the death of their daughter. The reporter described the incident. His friend grew pale and said, “Marian Crawford was killed in an auto accident on Nuuanu Boulevard.” The girl had been given to high living, drinking, and cutting up—she had been killed on the way home from a wild party.
……..And one more, which I thought was kind of funny, especially the ending.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1937 or 1938.—It seems that a friend of a friend whom none of us ever actually met had gone to a dance and after taking his girl home, he started for his home which was out in a suburb called Frankford. It was raining and misty and as he was passing a cemetery (I have forgotten the name of it) he saw a girl in a white satin evening dress standing by the road. He asked if he could help her as it was quite late and she said she wanted to go to her home and gave him the address. She insisted upon getting into the back of the car alone. The boy claims to have taken her to the address she mentioned, but upon arriving there, discovered that she had vanished. His car was a two-door sedan and he couldn’t figure out how she had gotten out without his seeing her. He went up and knocked on the door of her house; her mother answered the door and said that he must have picked up her daughter. The daughter had been killed in an automobile accident just at the spot where he had picked her up and she had been wearing the clothes he had described. Her mother told the boy to forget about it as it happened every few months and that it wasn’t anything unusual to her.
Kitty
- In what environment did you read the story? Next to my snoring dog, who is watching cartoons with me. He loves Toon In With Me with Toony and Bill.
- Do you remember having read this story as a kid? Yes, but I didn’t remember the gruesome detail of her being “crushed against the steering column”. Chilling.
- Analyze the actions of the characters in the story. Did they make sense? Would you have done anything differently? It seems a little weird that the girls says she crashed her car into a tree on the way to the event, but the boy doesn’t even bat an eye. You crashed your car and are here unscathed? Totally normal. Also, the reason for his going back to her road is really weird. If you forgot to ask her name and number, just call one of your friends and ask about her. You don’t go back after dropping her off.
- Which was your favorite and least favorite characters and why? My favorite character was the person who organized the dance. It sounded like a pretty successful event. My least favorite character is the boy for not asking followup questions like “are you ok?” “how did you get here if you crashed your car?”
- What did you think of the storytelling style? Pretty straightforward. It was normal.
- Examine the art for the story. What are your thoughts on it? I don’t like it. I hope the original drawing was better looking than this. It’s just a bunch of blotches!
- Your overall rating and why: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ for the scary description of the wreck.
Winterjoy
- In what environment did you read the story? In my apartment. About to make popcorn and watch a scary movie on this drizzly afternoon off.
- Do you remember having read this story as a kid? Yes, it’s very familiar and I’ve heard various versions of it.
- Analyze the actions of the characters in the story. Did they make sense? Would you have done anything differently? So many things leave me with questions. Do school dances really go PAST 11pm?? She casually mentions she drove her car INTO a tree and he’s like “oh, ok”?? What’s the deal with tinsel? How did he forget a telephone number? Couldn’t he find out through someone at school??
- Which was your favorite and least favorite characters and why? Fred is a little dim-witted but nice. Jeanne is aloof for not knowing she was dead but was also nice in warning Fred about the road. She probably only took the tinsel to be nice.
- What did you think of the storytelling style? It’s fine and straight-forward.
- Examine the art for the story. What are your thoughts on it? It’s spooky how the crash site is in focus and the surrounding area fades out.
- Your overall rating and why: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ because it’s a beloved story!
