An unidentified woman was found dead on the side of the road on Halloween 1979 in Georgetown, TX. Police determined she had been strangled and called her "Orange Socks," as the only thing she was wearing was a pair of orange socks.
Police believed her to be a hitchhiker because they discovered a matchbook from an Oklahoma hotel at the scene. Three years later, Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the murder. Lucas was a serial killer, who was convicted of 11 murders, including that of his own abusive mother. However, it seemed unlikely that Lucas was the killer, as his travel patterns didn't line up and he had many conflicting details. He had also confessed to several other murders he did not commit.
An anonymous tipster told police that she had seen the woman hitchhiking that day after the case appeared on America's Most Wanted, but the woman's identity is still a mystery and the case remains unsolved.
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The Vanishing HitchhikerPhoto: Unsplash/Pixabay/CC0 1.0
The most common urban legend in regards to hitchhiking is the tale of the Vanishing Hitchhiker. You've probably heard about this happening to your brother's friend's niece's hairdresser's son. The basic story goes like this: an individual or group is driving along when they spot a hitchhiker on the side of the road. Taking mercy on the hitchhiker, the driver lets him or her in the car. The hitchhiker gives the driver their end point, and off they go.
When the driver reaches the hitchhiker’s stop, he or she pulls over to wish their traveling companion goodbye only to find they’ve vanished, as if they were never there at all. Later, the driver finds out that the person they picked up had actually died on that part of the road some time ago.
In one variation, a man picks up a young woman and drives her to her home address as she sits quietly in the backseat. When he arrives, she’s gone. So, he goes up to the home and knocks on the door. The man who answers it is extremely unsurprised by the man’s tale, explaining that his daughter died in a car crash a few years back and that her ghost frequently tries to get passersby to drive her home. Folklore expert Jan Brunvand told Snopes that this tale has been around forever, originating in Europe so long ago that the story used to take place on horseback.
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'Why I Will Never Hitchhike Again'Photo: simonwijers/Pixabay/CC0 1.0
On Reddit, urban_teller explains that about eight years ago, he was a regular hitchhiker. He’d been traveling around that way for about two years when he had an experience so horrifying he quit completely. He said he had been on the road for six days, headed to his uncle’s place, and each night, he encountered a passerby who not only gave him a lift, but offered him a bed or couch and in one instance invited him to a house party.
On the seventh day, an older woman picked him up and took him as far as a country road in a remote area. He decided to camp in the nearby woods and so he set up his tent and tried to build a fire. The recent rain rendered his attempts at making a toasty campfire useless, so he went to sleep with only the light of his flashlight.
In the middle of the night, he encountered what seemed like scavenging animals, but it turned out to be much, much worse. And things only got worse then the police revealed to him what they’d found after investigating the scene. See for yourself why this is easily one of the scariest hitchhiking stories ever.
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