4 Strange But True Urban Legends: Haunted Hitchhikers & Ancient Curses

Not all legends are fiction—some are terrifyingly real.

In this episode, we dive into chilling tales that blend folklore, fear, and the unexplainable. Hear the haunting story of a girl in a party dress who vanishes after a ride to the dance, a cursed painting with a glowing castle window and cryptic Latin message, a disturbing encounter with a hitchhiking old woman, and a house forever tainted by a deal with the devil. These are the stories that stay with you long after the episode ends.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Driving along a highway one evening, two college boys spotted
a very pretty girl in a bright lavender dress standing
by the side of the road. When they stopped to
offer her a lift, she accepted, telling them that she
was going to a dance a couple of miles away.

(00:33):
They too were going to a dance. They said, why
didn't she join them? She agreed, and they talked and
laughed merrily on the way. At the dance hall, she
at once became the center of attention, for in addition
to her beauty, she was an excellent dancer and full

(00:57):
of bright conversation and sparkling wit. When asked her name,
she laughed and replied, just call me Lavender. And this
air of mystery seemed to add to her charms. It
was very late when the boys drove her home. The

(01:18):
night air had grown cool, and one of her escorts
gave her his topcoat to wear. She directed them to
her house, a dilapidated shack way back on a rutted
dirt road, and the boys bade her good night. It
wasn't until they had arrived at their school that they

(01:40):
realized the topcoat had not been returned. They decided that
the next afternoon they would go back for it. At
the shack the next day, a very old woman answered
their knock. She knew no lavender, she said, and the

(02:02):
boys described their companion from the previous evening. Recognition came
to the woman's withered face. They were describing Lily, she
told them, and Lily had been dead for many years.
She was buried in an old, abandoned cemetery down the road.

(02:28):
The two flustered boys drove away in stunned silence. It
was a hoax, they thought, For what other explanation could
there be. A few miles down the dirt road, they
noticed the gravestones of the old cemetery. Impulsively they stopped

(02:49):
to look around. There off to the side was a
small stone with the name Lily. Neatly folded upon the
rounded grave was the missing coat. On a train going

(03:14):
through Canada. One night, some of us were sitting up
pretty late telling yarns. One of the chaps in the
party told this story. A friend of his who lived
in Ontario, became fascinated with an old painting he saw
in a dingy little store. The picture was of a

(03:37):
castle on a hilltop. The scene was dark and gloomy,
and every window in the castle was dark except for
a small one high in a stone tower. The man
wondered why anyone would paint a castle with a light
in just one window. Was there a story behind it?

(04:02):
He bought the painting and hung it up in his home,
but all he could learn was that it depicted a
castle in Scotland. There was neither signature or date. One day,
as he was cleaning the painting, he found a few
Latin words in a corner. He asked a friend to

(04:25):
translate the words for him and learned that they meant
every century it will be dark. But this inscription made
little sense to either of them, and so it was
soon forgotten. The painting hung in the man's home for

(04:46):
many years, and his children took pleasure in speculating about
why the window was lighted and who had lived up
there in the tower. It was quite a source of
conversation for many years, but it was to become even
more so. One evening, the owner of the painting was

(05:10):
telling some guests about how he had acquired it and
all the questions surrounding its background and meaning. The guests
wanted to see this unusual and mysterious piece of art.
So they all trooped into the hall where it hung.
Imagined their astonishment and the consternation of their host to

(05:32):
see that on the painting the window in the tower
was dark. They examined the painting and were further astonished
to see that the black paint on the once light
yellow window was as old and cracked as the paint

(05:54):
on the rest of the picture. There were no signs
that it had ever been different, let alone bright yellow.
After the guests had gone, the embarrassed host unsuccessfully tried
to find a solution to the puzzle. The next morning,

(06:15):
he returned to the painting and felt his skin crawl
for again, the window in the tower was lighted. Then
he thought of the Latin inscription, every century it will
be dark. He made a note of the date and

(06:36):
began a serious search into Scottish history. Eventually these facts
were uncovered. The castle had been home to an evil
character who had two sons. He hated the elder son
and kept him locked in the tower, while his younger

(06:58):
son had all the wealth and pleasures he could give him.
Exactly five hundred years before the night when the painted
window was dark, the imprisoned elder son had died in
the little room high in the tower. Driving toward Montgomery, Alabama,

(07:27):
late one night, two businessmen planned to spend the night
in a small town on the way. They were making
good time through some low country where the road was
a few feet above the surrounding land when they spotted
a figure far ahead. As they drew nearer, they discovered

(07:49):
it was a little old lady walking briskly along the
side of the road. In the beam of the headlight,
they saw that she wore a pale, lavish dress, freshly
pressed and sparkling clean. Her hair was neatly done, and
as they slowed down to speak to her, she turned

(08:12):
a smiling face to them. She seemed completely untroubled about
walking down a lonely highway in the middle of the night,
in an area where snakes and other creatures would make
an average woman hesitate to step from a car. When
the men stopped and asked her what she was doing

(08:35):
on the road at that time of night, she laughingly
explained that she had started out to visit her daughter
and grandchildren in Montgomery. She had hoped, she said, to
get a ride for at least part of the way,
but no one had offered her a lift, so she

(08:55):
just kept on walking. The two men said that they
would give her a lift as far as the next town,
a two hour drive, and she was delighted to accept.
She sat in the back seat, and as they drove
through the night, they talked about her daughter and three grandchildren,

(09:17):
their names, where they lived, the children's school, usual small
talk among strangers. When the subject was exhausted. The men
eventually became engrossed in business conversation and forgot about the
passenger behind them. When they reached their destination, they stopped

(09:40):
to let the elderly lady out. She was gone. Panic
stricken to think that she might have fallen out along
the way, they headed back in search of her, but
they found no signs of their passenger, even though they
retraced their route to where they had picked her up

(10:00):
and saw her tiny footprints in the shoulder of the
road where she had first spoken to them. Dismayed and mystified,
they drove on to Montgomery to tell her daughter about
the accident. After listening to their story in bewilderment, the
younger woman pointed to three photos on the mantel. Could

(10:24):
they identify their passenger. They did, and she agreed that
it was her mother, without a doubt they had talked
to her. Then they went on to describe her dress,
and the woman burst into tears, saying that was the
very dress her mother wore the last time she had

(10:46):
seen her. When was that, they asked her, and she
replied between sobs when she was buried three years ago.
Today there is a house in Hampton, New Hampshire that

(11:11):
cannot cast off the spell that clings to it. Many
persons over the years have insisted that they have seen
and heard things in this house that cannot be explained.
It all began when General Jonathan Moulton tried to outsmart

(11:32):
the devil. General Moulton fought bravely in the French and
Indian War, and after his military career, he returned to
the house in Hampton where he was born. There he
became wealthy and important, but that was not enough for him.

(11:52):
One evening, as he was going over his accounts, he
sighed and declared that he would sell his soul to
the devil himself if he could become the wealthiest man
in the state. At once, a great fountain of sparks
burst down the chimney, and there before him stood the

(12:14):
devil himself. Then and there a bargain was made in
return for the general's soul after death. The devil agreed
to fill his tall boots with golden guineas every month.
The general was very pleased with the arrangement and eagerly

(12:36):
looked forward to the payments. Sure Enough, on the first
of the month, the boots were filled with gold, and
every month from then on the guineas arrived. Yet even
these riches did not satisfy the greedy man. One night,
before the money was due, he hung his boots in

(12:59):
the usual place in the chimney, but cut the bottoms
out of them. When the devil went to fill them,
the coins poured down and into the room, covering the
floor knee high. The general was delighted, but soon the
devil realized what was going on. He stopped filling the

(13:24):
bottomless boots, and, enraged, took back all the gold he
had given. He did not release the general from his bargain,
and he turned up to claim his soul the day
he died. Ever since then, the house was said to
be haunted. Noises were heard in empty rooms, and in

(13:49):
one room no lamp could be kept going. No matter
how well it was tended, the lights always went out,
as though snuffed by unseen hand. Many families have lived
there since General Moulton's time, but none have stayed long.

(14:11):
For years, the house stood idle, and then a cobbler
rented it, scoffing at the tales he had heard, but
he too left a short time afterward for the boots
he hung from the rafters in the old house refused
to stay there, jumping from the pegs as if they

(14:31):
had been pushed by some unseen hand.