Lost Traveler

The lost traveler is the ghost of someone who died suddenly while traveling away from home. These ghosts often appear pale with a cold appearance wearing the same clothing from their last night alive. The ghost is sad but friendly. They are inclined to keep conversations brief but do talk about where they are traveling to or ask questions about their current location.

The most common forms of these traveling ghosts are phantom hitchhikers. Phantom hitchhikers are ghosts who stand at the edge of the roadway at night trying to flag down drivers to help them reach their final destination. The ghosts appear distraught and anxious. The lost-traveler ghosts are reaching out for help from beyond the grave. They need the help of the living to reach their final destination and seek the comfort of human companionship.

Various types of lost-traveler ghosts can be found in the legends of every culture dating back thousands of years when these phantoms would appear on horse trails. These ghosts are stuck in a cycle of a recurring nightmare. The ghosts will never reach their final destination. Nothing can be done to recapture those precious last moments of life. These ghosts are trying to complete a journey that has already ended.
Story of a Lost Traveler

Michael was driving home after a hard day of work just after midnight. He was traveling alone on a long stretch of country road when he noticed a strange white glow next to the side of the road. As he drove closer, Michael could see a woman, maybe twenty to twenty-four years old, seemingly in distress standing near the edge of the roadway. He slowly pulled the car over to see if the woman needed help. She stared at him blankly for a moment and then asked if he would take her home. Michael agreed and she got inside the car. He asked her if she was okay or if she had been in an accident. She would only say that she was tired and that she had not been home in a long time. Michael thought the woman was acting strangely. He asked for her name and where he was taking her. She said that her name was Elizabeth and that she lived a few miles down the road.

Michael said that the woman never made eye contact in the car. She stared impatiently out of the car as if she was expecting to see something on the road. Michael continued to drive and make small talk but it was not long before she interrupted him by saying, “We are almost at the end.” Michael did not understand but thought they must be getting close to the woman’s house. He could not see a driveway or mailbox to turn. He turned to the woman who looked like she was almost in a panic. She was grabbing tightly at the seat and the dashboard of the car. She was breathing heavy and her eyes were open wide. She was terrified.

As Michael was about to ask if everything was okay, the woman let out a bloodcurdling scream, the likes of which Michael had never experienced. He slammed on the car’s breaks. The tires squealed and the car slid sideways but Michael kept control of the skid and brought the car to a safe stop in the middle of the road. Michael took a deep breath. Anger rushed into him and he was ready to yell at the woman for nearly killing them but as he looked over to the passenger seat, the woman was gone. Michael did not hear or see the door open but he was concentrating on keeping the car from crashing. He hurried out of the car believing the woman had jumped or fallen out. He searched for nearly an hour yelling out the woman’s name but he could not find her. He reported the incident to the police who also searched in vain for the missing woman. She was gone. She had disappeared from the moving car without a trace.

Michael was traumatized. He could not stop replaying the events of that night in his head. A few days later, Michael returned to the accident scene in the middle of the daytime to search for missing clues. He found the spot on the road where his tires had left skid marks. He parked his car and walked the area searching for anything that would help explain what happened. As he poked around the roadside for evidence of the missing girl, he noticed a small forgotten cemetery on the hillside near the road. He climbed up the embankment to explore it. There were a dozen of old poorly marked graves scattered across a half-acre of overgrown and unkempt land. Nothing unusual caught Michael’s attention until he saw the name on one of the tombstones. One grave was marked Elizabeth Mary Hollister who died in 1897 at twenty-two years of age. A cold chill ran across Michael as he read the name and age on the tombstone. He now believes that the woman who got in his car that night was the ghost of the woman who is buried in this small graveyard. She had screamed and disappeared from the car as they passed the graveyard that night in his car. To this day, Michael cannot get his experience out of his mind and he has repeated the late-night drive dozens of times hoping to see the ghost again. So far, Elizabeth has not returned for another ride home.