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INTRODUCTION
The legend of the Vanishing Hitchhiker hardly needs an introduction. The core story concerns a traveller who offers a ride to a vulnerable-looking pedestrian, only to find his passenger has disappeared without trace. Later investigations reveal that the passenger was a supernatural entity, not a living human being at all.
The very first issue of this journal (then California Folklore Quarterly) carried an article on this story written by two young anthropologists (Beardsley and Hankey 1942). It was followed in the next volume by a second study which continued the discussion and updated some of the ideas (Beardsley and Hankey 1943). The papers attracted the immediate notice of one of the leading folklorists of the day (Jones 1944a), and, of late, the legend has received considerable attention which has resulted in many useful insights (see, for example: Luomala 1972; Wilson 1975; Fish 1976; Mitchell 1976; Langlois 1978; Bennett 1984; Goss 1984; Shenhar 1985; Glazer 1987; Dumerchat 1990; Nicolaisen 1990). Indeed, the Vanishing Hitchhiker has become perhaps the most frequently collected and widely discussed modern story. Nevertheless, Beardsley and Hankey's original work, as well as being one of the first full-length studies of any contemporary legend, remains perhaps the most complete folkloric examination of the Vanishing Hitchhiker.l The present essay reviews the original articles in the light of current information about the legend, and suggests modern readings of a common variant.
VANISHING HITCHHIKER STUDIES
The California Folklore Quarterly Articles
Beardsley and Hankey's studies were based on a corpus of 79 Vanishing Hitchhiker stories collected from 60 different locations in the United States. The authors' initial aim was to link the legend with a real-life incident. When that failed, they tried to discover the "original" story. As they could find no obvious analogue in older traditions, they concluded that it was completely new, a product of the previous twenty years or so: "a story that is in no sense a survival from an outdated culture, but stands as a fully-fledged representative of the contemporary tale" (Beardsley and Hankey 1943:16) . Though they were not able to collect versions from outside the US, they confessed that they "would not be surprised to find the story in any part of the so-called civilized world" (ibid., 17). However, as...