Pennsylvania Ghost Car

Regional ghost stories are compelling. With each re-telling these stories become more and more real. This might be because the people who hear them can visit the place or places where they occur, which adds fuel to one’s imagination. The following is a good example of a local ghost story.

In the 1950s Newton Square, Pennsylvania was a sleepy farming community. The local newspaper reported mostly items about dogs killing sheep or escaped cows. 

One December in the mid 1950s this local paper reported a particularly bad traffic accident. A local family driving home from Christmas services on West Chester Pike shortly after midnight were struck by another car. Unfortunately, this family—a mother, father, and their teenage son were killed instantly.

It was determined that a young male driver who was drunk and driving recklessly caused the accident. He and his one male passenger survived the accident unscathed. The two were out late joy riding in hopes of finding more booze and a party. 

This young man’s family was well connected politically so he avoided persecution. It was stated this drunk driver felt no remorse for what he had done. In fact, he joked about the accident and the deaths he had caused on several occasions.

An early Christmas morning, a year later, this man with the same friend in the car were out driving drunk and reckless—again on West Chester Pike.The 1938 Plymouth hot rod the young man drove overturned near the spot were they had hit and killed the family twelve months before. Both men were killed. 

This coincidence is spooky but what happened next is even spookier.

Shortly after these two young men died officers from the local municipal and State Police started to report an unusual sight. They all recounted seeing a ’38 Plymouth careening down West Chester Pike recklessly. When they attempted to pursue the vehicle they were not able to keep up with it.

As the years passed these reports became even more interesting because to see a ’38 Plymouth hot rod on the road was no longer a common occurrence. 

Officers continued to report spotting an early model Plymouth speeding recklessly down West Chester Pike. The reports were all the same—they either couldn’t catch the hot rod or the car appeared to just disappear. 

The police even set up roadblocks in an attempt to catch this vehicle but it never appeared at the roadblock after being spotted heading in their direction.

Many of the witnesses stated they often spotted the car in the early morning hours. It has been seen around Christmas but there have been reports of sightings at other times of the year. 

More recently, two officers did manage to pull alongside the speeding hot rod. They saw two occupants in the car.

“… two young men in strangely out-of-style slicked back duck-tail haircuts, with expressions of absolute and abject terror and pain, as though they were seeing Hell and knew they could never escape.”

Local ghost stories are often the scariest…