I found a large site today that lists all the supposed ghost sightings in Oklahoma, including one in particular on 66:
El Reno – Route 66 to Weatherford – Sightings of an old humped over man in a brown trench coat wearing Bogie style hat pulled down over his eyes walking on Route 66 between El Reno and Weatherford when it is raining. One person reported he picked the man up and started witnessing to him about religion and the old man tried to jump out of his moving car. Another person reported he thought he hit this man and stopped to see if he was dead and there was nothing there.
Yet another reason not to pick up hitchhikers, I guess.
There also is a reference to the Spook Light, which is near the Route 66 town of Quapaw. That’s a persistent sighting. One fellow I know isn’t a big believer in ghosts, but he saw something weird there. The phenonemon has never been fully explained.
Most of the listings are pretty vague on the exact location. But it remains a mostly entertaining read, if nothing else.
Ghost sightings on 66 seem to be pretty persistent, but some are mostly benign or even friendly. One guy I know swore that he met his long-dead father in a bar somewhere in the Southwest. A woman I know well swears she met her long-dead grandfather near the “Sidewalk Highway” portion of Route 66 in northeastern Oklahoma. In the latter case, he was just being friendly, checking on her new husband, and smiling.
Didn’t Cheryl Nowka have an encounter with the old guy in the hat near Hydro? Seems like I remember her telling a story about him showing up at or near Lucille’s.
Yes. I surmised that it was this encounter listed above. However, the excerpt referenced to an Internet link that is dead, so I deleted it.
I remember seeing a post somewhere from Emily about a story I told in my book on Route 66 about picking up an elderly woman hitchiker, and taking her to her son’s home on a Navajo reservation.
It was just frickin weird. We dropped her off at a gas station outside Lupton,just across an open field from her son’s cinder block home.
She walked off, secreting a beer she had “borrowed” from my cooler under her coat, and in the maybe 90 seconds it took to re-arrange the crap in the back of the van, she dissappeared.
I couldnt have sprinted the distance between the station and the house in that time vwhen I was a teenager, and she was a bent over old lady.
I begged Luning not to take her picture, but he did anyway. There is photographic evidence.
But either way you slice it. She was just plain gone, with nowhere to hide, and an impossible distance to cover in that scant time.
It is still something that makes me scratch my head once in a while.
She said her name was Betty.
ts
I remember that story well while reading your diary posts at the book-launching party. That was some great writing, bro.