The Highway Woman
The road was almost empty.
It was after midnight.
A driver saw a woman standing beside the highway.
She was wearing a dark coat.
She raised one hand.
The driver stopped.
The Passenger
The woman opened the passenger door.
She said she needed to get to the next town.
The driver agreed.
She climbed inside.
She was completely silent.
For several miles, neither of them spoke.
Then the driver asked where she lived.
She pointed ahead.
"Just keep going."
The Disappearance
A few minutes later, the driver looked toward the passenger seat.
It was empty.
The door was still locked.
The windows were closed.
The woman was gone.
The driver stopped the car.
There was nowhere she could have escaped.
The House
The driver continued to the address she had given him.
It was an old farmhouse.
An elderly man answered the door.
When the driver described the woman, the man's expression changed.
He told him that the woman had been his daughter.
She had died on that stretch of highway thirty years earlier.
The Same Story
Stories about the Highway Woman have been told for decades.
The details change.
The road changes.
Sometimes she wears a white dress.
Sometimes a red coat.
Sometimes she asks for a ride.
Sometimes she simply appears in the back seat.
But the ending is always similar.
She disappears before reaching her destination.
The Warning
There is another version of the story.
According to that version, drivers who look into the rearview mirror after picking her up see her sitting behind them.
She doesn't speak.
She doesn't move.
She simply watches.
Those who turn around find the seat empty.
Those who keep looking eventually see something else.
A face reflected in the glass.
The Road
Nobody knows where the story began.
There are countless versions of it.
Similar legends exist in different countries and different decades.
Perhaps they're all variations of the same old warning.
Don't pick up strangers at night.
Or perhaps the stories exist because someone really did see a woman beside the road.
And she really did disappear.
Some roads remember the people who never made it home.
