Usually, when you see a hitchhiker on a particularly desolate stretch of highway -- which Highway 87 certainly can be -- it gives you the willies. On this particular stretch near Great Falls, it's compounded by the fact that the namesake lake is seasonal, and dry most seasons. Regardless, the end result of the body of a native-American man -- clad in jeans with jet-black hair -- slamming into your windshield as you're driving is sheer terror. Legend has it those who encounter the hitcher suddenly find his body bouncing off the front of their car. When they stop to help, there's nothing there and no damage to the windshield. The hitcher, meanwhile, repeats the cycle endlessly, trapped in his own personal hell as he repeats his moment of death with whichever driver happens to be cruising down the road at the wrong time. Folklorists have traced the whole "vanishing hitchhiker" phenomenon back to the 19th century, though given the presence of denim reported by most who encounter the hitcher, we're going to guess he met his demise in the '60s if he was real. Legends of wandering spirits of Native Americans are pretty prevalent in this part of the country, too, so chances are the hitcher lore and the native stuff just mated logically.
