Haunted Highways: Spooky Stories, Strange Happenings, Supernatural Sightings

Retold by Tom Ogden, these short stories are based on myths and urban legends. What these have in common is that they all take place on a highway, road, trail, or path of some sort. Due to the fact that there are thousands of such myths and urban legends, Mr. Ogden chose 4 categories to loosely stick to, while still sharing a good representation.

The first category is about vanishing hitchhikers (a story you have heard immediately came to mind, didn’t it?) He included The Phantom Hitchhiker, Resurrection Mary, the Weeping Woman, and The Prophecy.

The second category is titled Street Walkers. No. Not those street walkers. The firsts two stories in this section will take you to Hawaii. Next you will travel to Tokyo and learn about Oiwa’s Ghost. Back in the States, you experience The Funeral Cortege of Baynard Plantation in South Carolina. John Brown’s Body takes you through the Civil War Era, into West Virginia. The Nun’s Walk and The Occurrence at the Creek Road Bridge wraps up the 2^nd section of the book.

If you haven’t been completely freaked out yet, you will continue on to the 3^rd part of the book, Phantom Travelers. This immediately brings to mind many movies that scared me so much as a child, I will not watch them even now. Included are The Long Ride Home of Peter Rugg (275 years and counting!), The Return of Mad Anthony Wayne, The Man Who Disappeared, The Ghost Train (numerous people claim that while traveling the highways along the same route that President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train took, they see his train), Telly’s Phantom (yes, Telly Savalas), and The Curse of Little Bastard, in case if you ever wondered what really caused James Dean’s car accident.

Part Four is Lost Souls. A mixed bag of ghosts that include cowboys, Indians, and fair maidens of the Old West. Phantoms on horseback, an Irishman who opted to dance with the devil, and read about strangers stuck on a certain set of railroad tracks being pushed to safety by a busload of children. How better to end the book than with a tale on Route 66, or “The Highway to Hell”, as the author puts it.

These stories are all fairly short, none over a few pages long. Most of these are tame enough, without blood and gore and just scary, in that I will be sharing them with my girls with no worries.