The highways of America (and everywhere else, for that matter) are haunted. Tales of white ladies who seek rides only as cover for the brutal revenge they seek on those who abandoned them. The "homecomers" who only want to go home to one that no longer exists.
And then, there are the hitchers. The ghosts who can live for a day in a borrowed coat, who long only for a ride, the feeling of wind in their hair, and some greasy diner food. A small taste of the life they lost on the road, longing to have seen more, done more.
Some have their own stories. Some have many, many stories, with a grain of truth hidden under layers of sleepover ghost-stories and campfire tales.
Like the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Dress. Professor Laura Moorehead has written a lot about this particular urban legend, one that seems to transcend the little township of Buckley, Michigan where Professor Moorehead has traced the most likely living name for the story. Rose Marshall, who was run off the road in 1953 at the age of 16, on the night of her prom.
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Tonight finds Rose in a diner and truck stop at the outskirts of the boroughs, a little place at that boundary where the arteries that are highways and interstates feed into the smaller veins of streets, bringing in all the things a city needs to live that it can't produce itself.
She has a jacket, but there are only a few hours left until dawn. She'll either get herself a ride, or fall into the Twilight, the spirit realm, for lack of a better descriptor. One way or another, she won't be here too long.
Now. If she could just get someone to buy her a burger.
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And then, there are the hitchers. The ghosts who can live for a day in a borrowed coat, who long only for a ride, the feeling of wind in their hair, and some greasy diner food. A small taste of the life they lost on the road, longing to have seen more, done more.
Some have their own stories. Some have many, many stories, with a grain of truth hidden under layers of sleepover ghost-stories and campfire tales.
Like the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Dress. Professor Laura Moorehead has written a lot about this particular urban legend, one that seems to transcend the little township of Buckley, Michigan where Professor Moorehead has traced the most likely living name for the story. Rose Marshall, who was run off the road in 1953 at the age of 16, on the night of her prom.
-
Tonight finds Rose in a diner and truck stop at the outskirts of the boroughs, a little place at that boundary where the arteries that are highways and interstates feed into the smaller veins of streets, bringing in all the things a city needs to live that it can't produce itself.
She has a jacket, but there are only a few hours left until dawn. She'll either get herself a ride, or fall into the Twilight, the spirit realm, for lack of a better descriptor. One way or another, she won't be here too long.
Now. If she could just get someone to buy her a burger.