Drango wrote:The man was driving down a road, when he saw a girl in a white dress standing by the road side...
There are lots of ghost stories like this in North America, and doubtless more throughout South America and Europe. It's generally known as the "Phantom Hitcher" story. There are lots of variations on the story too; sometimes she's killed in a hit-and-run, sometimes as a passenger in a car crash; sometimes she asks for a ride to her boyfriend's house or a party instead of her family's home, or even for a ride to the graveyard. Sometimes it's a young man instead of a young woman, and in some stories, the hitchhiker is a living person, and it's the driver who's a ghost. I guess you could say that phantom hitchers are a category of ghost, like banshees or those vampires that fly around dragging their entrails.
There's another ghost similar to the phantom hitcher, that will walk onto roads in the dead of night, in the path of an oncoming car. The driver will freak out on seeing this, and either run himself off the road, or hit the brakes, probably 'hitting' the ghost, but when he or she gets out to see if anyone was hurt, the ghost is gone. Again, there are some variations on this story, where the ghost is of someone who committed suicide by running into traffic, trapped in re-experiencing their death with new victims each time.
There are several bridges in the US that are each known as "Crybaby Bridge." Wikipedia has
a short list of locations. The general story is that a baby or young child was killed at or near the bridge, sometimes of drowning, and sometimes the kid's crying can be heard by the bridge.
Native Americans, especially in colder climates, had a story of a monster called the Wendigo. It looks like a human suffering late-stage hypothermia: its skin is blue, especially the lips, the tips of its fingers and toes are black from frostbite, and some of its fingers and toes are even missing. There's sometimes a layer of frost on its skin. Also, because of the hypothermia, even though its body is terribly cold, it
thinks it's being afflicted with a painful heat, and sometimes babbles to complain it's burning up; my favorite version of this story had a Wendigo whose feet were trapped in blocks of ice, and it would scream, "My burning feet! My fiery feet of flame!"
Anyway, the Wendigo stalks people during winter; it's very good at staying out of sight, but it likes to make extra noise so its victims still know they're being followed. Eventually, some of the people it follows will panic, and will run blindly through the snow trying to escape. When this happens, the Wendigo runs them down and savagely beats them, claws them, and bites them. Some people die, some people escape, and some people are affected so badly they become Wendigo themselves, chasing their own victims down while half-naked and raving that they're too hot. The Wendigo's kinda like a very mean yuki-onna.
(hope to God i will never, lol)
Seeing a real Pokpok is no laughing matter however...