The story of Lydia, Greensboro’s Vanishing Hitchhiker is one of the most popular ghost stories in North Carolina lore ranking right up there with theBrown Mountain Lightsand The Devils Tramping Ground. Unlike those hauntings though, Lydia seems to have a basis firmly in fact.
Our story begins with a man named John who is driving from Raleigh back to Greensboro late one night in 1925. As night drivers often are, John is very tired and wanting nothing more than to get to his nice, warm bed. The fog on this night is especially bad. Nearing the Highway 70 underpass, John notices a figure come out of the fog. It’s a young lady in an evening gown who is trying to flag John down.
John stops and asks her what’s wrong. “I had a argument with my boyfriend and need a ride back to High Point” she says. John tells her to get in and they begin to drive. She is dripping wet and eerily quiet, giving short answers to his questions if she answers at all. Finally they make it to High Point and she gives him an address. They reach the dark house and John gets out to open the door for her.
He opens the door and finds his passenger seat empty. Confused, John rings the bell on the home thinking she may have slipped inside without him seeing. A few seconds later the lights in the house come on and an older woman comes to the door. Perplexed, John tells her of the young girl that flagged him down near the underpass asking for a ride.
Now in tears, the woman tells him that was her daughter who died in a car crash a few years ago. “She’s trying to get home, but never quite makes it.” The lady says goodbye and closes the door as John gets in his car and heads home, forever touched by the ghost of the girl just trying to get home.
There are multiple versions of this story. One says the mother accuses the man of playing a cruel joke. Another states the mother is weary of the story and that it happens on the same night every year. Yet another says it’s any foggy night in the fall. There’s a story of a pair of guys who stop one night in 1976, but before they spoke a word to her, They became spooked and left Lydia in the street screaming for them to come back.
Lydia’s bridge is no longer in use. The overpass is grown over with weeds and is hardly recognizable now. However, her ghost has found it’s way to a new bridge, waiting for someone to pick her up. Hoping to finally get home.
