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The Vanishing Hitchhiker |
THE MYTH: A Pentecostal man picks up a hitchhiker. The hitchhiker climbs into the back seat of the car. As the car starts moving, the hitchhiker says, "Jesus is coming soon!" The Pentecostal turns to answer, but the hitchhiker has disappeared.
The "hitchhiker" was an angel.
COMMENTS: This story is the "Christianized" version of an old ghost story. In the original story, the "hitchhiker" is the ghost of a person who died in a car accident. Rather than delivering divine messages, the ghost merely asks to be taken home but then vanishes just before the driver arrives at the address.
Since Pentecostals are fascinated with the paranormal but do not accept traditional ghosts, the Pentecostal version replaces the ghost with an angel.
In comparing the two stories, it seems that the ghost version actually makes more sense. While it is certainly a fictional story, it provides an emotional picture of the tragedy of car accidents. The confused spirit wandering the road and trying to find a way home is a vivid reminder of the suddenness with which death strikes, often on the most ordinary of days and in the prime of life. Those who have lost loved ones in such accidents often feel drawn to the spot where he or she died, as though the spirit still lingers there. They often fantasize that somehow their loved one will find a way to finally come home and will just show up at the door as though nothing happened. But, of course, the loved one never arrives . . . just as, in the story, the spirit, for all its trying, never quite makes it home.
As an angel story, however, the logic completely breaks down. Why would God send an angel to hitchhike along a road? It can't be to deliver a message--the angelic message given in the Pentecostal version of the story is always something ridiculously mundane: "Jesus is coming soon!" or "Jesus is Lord!" These are things that Pentecostals everywhere already believe, so there is no particular point to the angel saying this to the Pentecostal driver.
So, according the Pentecostal version of the story, God has no better use for His angels than to send them to thumb rides (although they can fly) and tell us stuff that we already know.
For more information on the vanishing hitchhiker myth, click on the link below:
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