About This Location
Since the 1920s, a ghostly hitchhiker has appeared near this railroad bridge over East Main Street. The phenomenon is so well documented that a historic marker now commemorates the legend of North Carolina's most famous vanishing hitchhiker.
The Ghost Story
On rainy, foggy nights, a pretty young woman in a white dress flags down drivers and asks for a ride to High Point. She gives an address, sits quietly in the back seat, then vanishes before arriving. In 1924, Burke Hardison picked up such a girl who gave him her mother's address - when he arrived, the mother revealed her daughter had been killed in a car accident at that very overpass the year before. Research traced the legend to Annie L. Jackson, who died in a 1920 car crash when the vehicle flipped, cracking her head on concrete.