Over the decades, one of the worldwide urban legends has been that of the vanishing hitchhiker. The stories go somewhat like this. A driver of a vehicle offers a ride to a person hitchhiking. After spending time in the car, the stranger seemingly vanishes without any logical explanation. There are numerous versions of this unbelievable story, too. One of those is the traveler is someone who before disappearing offers the motorist a prophecy.
In 1933, the Glens Falls-Lake George Road (Route 9 in Warren County, NY) had its own variant of the vanishing hitchhiker tale.
During the 1930s, hitchhiking was rather common as many people during the Great Depression could not afford to buy a car or truck. So, they often tried to “thumb a ride” to get around.
On January 26, 1933, a short story was published in the Glens Falls Post-Star newspaper about a “mystery man” who frequented the Glens Falls-Lake George Road securing free-vehicular trips.
The news article reported the hitchhiker “suddenly disappeared after telling the driver” that the economic depression would soon end. Because other people in Warren County reported similar encounters, it finally was reported in the local news.
However, the phantom hitchhiker’s revelation of forthcoming prosperity was wrong. It took several years for the global-economic downturn to end.
The so-called “mystery man” was also said to have frequented the Hudson Falls to Whitehall highway (Route 4). Then suddenly these tales of the puzzling rover also apparently disappeared from the record.
Nonetheless, there was a growing concern about hitchhikers on Warren County roads. In May 1933, the Adirondack Motor Club asked the State Police to crack down on “bumming a ride” considering it dangerous and an impediment to traffic.
The following month, a motorist reported he observed 41 hitchhikers on the heavily traveled roadway from Glens Falls to Lake George and on to Warrensburg. A few days later, Corporal J. V. Minnicki, a State Police trooper stationed in Lake George, arrested three people in a single day for “bumming a ride” on Route 9.
Paranormal enthusiasts who have examined the phantom-hitchhiker phenomenon have offered several possibilities for these peculiarities. One scenario is the wanderer is an apparition who periodically travels along the same road where he or she was killed years earlier.
Believers might cite the proximity of Route 9 to the colonial-era military trail, the latter with its history of bloody warfare, as the reason for the vanishing hitchhiker.
Read more about hitchhiking in the 1930s.
A version of this article first appeared on the Lake George Mirror, America’s oldest resort paper, covering Lake George and its surrounding environs. You can subscribe to the Mirror HERE.
Illustrations, from above: Walker Evans’ photograph of a man and woman hitchhiking near Vicksburg, Mississippi in March, 1936; and a postcard “Approaching Lake George from the South” showing Route 9.
Interesting story.
The Hitchhiker is one of my favorite episodes from the radio show Suspense.
Here’s another:
Albany’s Graceland Cemetery is home to one of the oldest urban legends: Hattie the Hitchhiker. It was a cold, rainy night when a man driving on Delaware Avenue saw a girl in a prom dress standing outside of the cemetery. He offers her a ride home and she obliges. Noticing she’s cold, he also offers her his jacket. After he drops her off, he realizes she still has his jacket.
The next day, the man goes back to get his coat. When an old woman answers the door, she tells him that she doesn’t have a daughter anymore; her daughter passed away on her prom night when she got hit by a drunk driver. Where was the girl buried? Graceland Cemetery. The man thinks this must be some sort of joke. He doesn’t believe it. So, he takes a trip to the cemetery, and off to the side he finds a tombstone… with his jacket draped over it.
I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. In July the GE plant, where my dad worked, would shut down for 2 weeks and that was designated vacation time for the employees. In those hot humid 2 weeks we would visit my grandmother in the Alabama mountains. One year, my dad took my mom and me to my grandmother’s house but received a message that he was needed to work. He went back to Memphis, returning when our 2 weeks had ended, but this time he had a story about a ‘vanishing hitchhike.’ He never picked up hitchhikers but saw a man, probably in his 30s, walking in the hot Alabama sun along a long highway. The man turned with his thumb up and my dad felt that it was OK to help him along his way. The man sat silent for a while but then began to share a lengthy prediction about my dad’s work place and coming politics of lay-offs and strikes, giving him a few hints on how to survive a long strike. My dad pulled into a gas station, got out to pump the gas and looked inside the car. The man was gone. It was a barren landscape around the gas station and a long visible road. The man was nowhere in sight. My dad did not share the story with us until after the then unexpected strike occurred at GE and until after it was over in the timeline shared by the man. My dad followed the suggestions for surviving and finding groceries and odd jobs suggested by the vanished stranger.