- Ronald Adams is driving cross-country for a job interview, but a strange hitchhiker begins to appear again and again. Is it just his mind playing tricks with the long hours on the road and no company, or is it much more macabre than that?
- Ronald Adams is a young man driving from New York to California. On the Brooklyn Bridge, he sees a hitchhiker and swerves to miss him. A standard incident that only starts to grow stranger when he sees the same hitchhiker on the Pulanski Skyway in Pennsylvania. Although the hitchhiker looks perfectly normal, Ronald begins to grow more concerned that the hitchhiker seemingly keeps passing him to get ahead.
His first real encounter with the hitchhiker is at a detour when the hitchhiker is close enough to ask for a ride, but Ronald in such sheer terror of the man, he speeds off. More and more, he keeps seeing the hitchhiker, so much that he barely pulled over and didn't rest. After another stop where a disgruntled store owner yells at him, he has one recourse: he has to kill the hitchhiker.
In Oklahoman, at a railroad crossing, the hitchhiker stands on the other side. Without thinking, Ronald tries to run his car into the mysterious stranger. Yet, his car stalls on the tracks. Barely able to escape an oncoming train, Ronald comes to his senses and continues on. He continues to try to rationalize it all, and sees a new hitchhiker on the road. A young woman on her way to Amarillo, Texas. Ronald - while sounding a bit unhinged - still is able to talk with her and relax slightly until the hitchhiker appears again. Ronald swerves to try and hit the man, but he misses. The woman didn't see anyone and flees the car in terror. Finally at his wits end, he knows he needs to sleep but when he lays back to try, the hitchhiker appears again, and Ronald snaps.
He speeds through the Midwest but eventually stops in New Mexico to use a payphone, in hopes that hearing his mother's voice would calm his nerves. When he calls, though, he learns that his mother has hospitalized after a nervous breakdown brought on by the death of her son, Ronald Adams.
And so, as he let the phone dangle, he sits on the hood of his car, waiting for the hitchhiker to show up one last time.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content