Fangirling and Writer-Nerd Chaos

what do you know about vanishing hitchikers? are they found worldwide? are the majority of them harmless/harmful? are there any common factors in stories involving them? how do they look?

I love vanishing hitchhikers, so I know a fair bit.

I have not looked into every country on the planet, naturally, but I have heard stories from all over the place. they are definitely present in the UK, and I've read many accounts from various different countries on every continent bar Antarctica (for obvious reasons). there was quite a lot of attention on them in Japan a decade or so ago, when there was a spate of sightings in towns that had been destroyed by the tsunami. taxi drivers were frequently reporting picking up passengers who would give them an address in an area that had been completely wiped out; others reported their passengers vanishing before they got to their destination. one taxi driver reported arriving at the destination -- which was just a flat foundation on the ground, the house having been swept away -- to find his passenger looking at him in horror. she asked him "I'm dead, aren't I?" and when he nodded, she vanished right in front of his eyes.

other people would report this, as well -- not just taxi drivers, but people in vehicles that had pulled over or stopped at a light. somebody would wave them down, or appear in the back, before vanishing at some point.

in every account I've read, no harm has come to the driver directly from the phantom hitchhiker. some apparitions have been scarier to look at, or have acting threatening/said threatening things, but no driver has been physically harmed by the phantom hitchhiker. some drivers may be startled by a sudden appearance and run off the road, or swerve to avoid one stepping out, but the phantom hitchhiker has never itself caused direct physical harm. naturally I've not read every account, so some of them could be malicious, but most are just unnerving. many people do not even realise that the person they picked up is a ghost until after they vanish -- they appear completely solid and communicate like a living person would.

the most frequent factor I see is that the deceased is trying to get home. they either died on their way home, or far from home, and they're trying to get back. they often give a home address, but vanish before they get there. they also often seem to have died suddenly and/or violently: a car accident, a murder, a suicide, or a natural disaster. the suddenness and the violence of their death may have displaced their spirit, as suddenness/violence is much more difficult to come to terms with. I imagine most of them will fade as they accept they're dead (or, in the case of that one woman, when they have their death confirmed -- they may not even realise), but some have apparently been around for a long time.

it varies! they can be men or women; they can be dressed in typical hitchhiker wear (dressed for travel, backpack, etc) or they can be in work clothes, night clothes, casual clothes, party clothes... they can be dressed from different eras, though in all of the stories I've heard, they've been from eras where cars were common. I haven't heard of any hitchhikers specifically being dressed in extremely old clothing styles. they also do not tend to hold any signs, such as a real hitchhiker might; some of them will signal or hold out a thumb, but many seem to just stare and, being out alone in a remote place, a driver will stop out of concern -- especially when it's a woman.

most of them appear like real, living people: they're not transparent or partially formed. many of them speak, but are not overly talkative, and I have read accounts of phantom hitchhikers being completely silent. some of these types will communicate with pointing, nodding or shaking heads, etc, but some of them don't even do this. they don't tend to become transparent or visually unusual in any way -- they just vanish suddenly. sometimes this is unnoticed by the driver, other times they'll vanish when the driver is looking at them. they can vanish at any point in the journey -- sometimes when the car passes the place where they died -- or they'll vanish at the destination.