9. Hitchhiking fail
One of my best friends and my roommate in sophomore and junior year of college’s mother told us this story when I was visiting with her over spring break. It gives me chills every time I think about it.
When she was a teenager, she lived in a more rural/small town part of Minnesota and she and her friends did a lot of bus taking, walking, and hitchhiking to different locations. Hitchhiking was generally really safe because everyone in the town knew everyone else and not many people passed through.
One early evening during the summer she and her friend were on their way back home and they were walking along the highway, looking for someone to hitchhike with because it was hot and they didn’t want to walk the rest of the way.
So this older man (prob around 50) stops to pick them up and it’s one of those older cars where the first row of seats is a bench, and can sit three people. Both my friend’s mom and her friend slide into the seat—her mom first, so that she’s sitting next to the dude, and then her mom’s friend sat on her other side.The guy is really nice, asks where they want to go and says he’s going their way and he’ll take them home. So they are chatting with this guy and he’s joking around with them and telling stories etc. While they are driving, the dude pulls off the highway onto an access road and my friend’s mom realizes they are taking a different route than what she is used to to get to her house. She starts getting a little uneasy but doesn’t say anything to her friend who is still chatting away.
However, instead of continuing along this access road, he pulls off onto a gravel road and my friends mom starts getting really freaked out when she realizes they’re approaching an abandoned rock quarry, still driving relatively fast. In one movement, my friends mom opens the door and pushes her friend out of the car and tells her to run. The dude grabs her but she hits him in the face and is able to roll out. By this time it was dark so the girls ran and hid in the quarry.
She said the scariest part about hiding and waiting was that the guy turned his lights off and she could hear his car slowly crunching over the gravel as he circled and waited for them to try and escape.
After a couple hours the girls weren’t hearing the gravel anymore and decided that he was gone and that they could try and climb over the quarry fence to get back to the highway access road. They crawl over to the fence and my friends mom gives her friend a boost to help her over. However, as she starts to climb she hears a car—the guy found was still waiting and he turns his headlights back on and GUNS it at the fence. She manages to get over without being hit by him and the girls just run for it. They cross the highway access road and get into the woods on the side of the highway. They crawl in a ditch until their exit because they are afraid the guy is on the highway looking for them. They make it home safe and tell police, etc., but the police don’t find the guy.
