Mark Moravec | Dear Mister Thom # 30, 1993

Mark has found the clipping below which recounts an English “Vanishing Hitchhiker” story. He asks whether any reader has heard the specific legend mentioned. The item comes from New Idea, a popular Australian women’s magazine. It is also, he observes, “an example of the exploitation of contemporary legend storylines by popular culture, this time as the basis for a song”.

If any DMT reader with access to local newspapers in the South East would like to check whether the story rally did form the basis for a court case in Southend, we would dearly love to hear from you.

“Haunted by a Song

Several times over the past few years rock star and actor Jon English has made the big decision to drop the ghost song She Was Real! From his concert performance.

But for some inexplicable reason, at the last minute before he steps on stage, he always changes his mind.

It’s now 10 years since Jon wrote and first performed She Was Real! Which tells the eerie story of a ghostly sighting of Susie, a teenage girl who had been killed in a traffic accident. And he still can’t bring himself to put the song to rest permanently.

‘Susie’s ghost is just hanging around and haunting me’, Jon lightheartedly confesses wit a hint of nervousness. ‘I could have killed her off from my concerts long ago, but here we are 10 years since I wrote the song and she still won’t go home. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get rid of her.’

She was real! Is based on an 1982 court case in Southend, England, where Jon’s family lived. A young motorcyclist had faced the court charged with causing malicious mischief, and in his defence he said he’d been riding his motorcycle around midnight in Southend when he was hailed by a girl hitchhiker of about 18.

They stopped to have coffee at a café, and she told him her name was Susie. She told the motorcyclist where she lived so he could drop her off.

When they came to the Cheltenham Road roundabout the bike went over a bump and the young man thought he heard a thud from behind. He looked around and the girl was not there.

He rode to the nearest police station to report the accident. The police returned to the roundabout with him and after a lengthy search there was no sign of the missing girl. So the police went to the address the motorcyclist gave them. A middle-aged woman gave them the astonishing information that her daughter Susan had died in 1970 in a motorcycle crash at the Cheltenham Road roundabout.

Police tracked down the motorcyclist and, although he stuck to his story, he was arrested for the trouble he had caused.

‘The guy was so convincing in court, they let him off’, says Jon.

‘It’s a story that fascinated me so much I just had to write a song about it’, he says.

‘She just won’t disappear, Creepy, isn’t it?’

Story: Alan Veitch”