The Route 44 Ghost 

contributed by T

What you may not have heard is that Route 44 is haunted. There's a dark stretch of it, near the Seekonk/Rehobeth border where a phantom is known to appear to travellers. 

It's a fairly famous ghost as far as they go, he's been written about in plenty of those "Ghosts of New England" type books, probably because he's been seen by so many. A driver will see a figure in the darkness, with red hair, wearing a light colored or plaid shirt. Sometimes he appears suddenly in the middle of the road, making the driver think they hit him. Sometimes, he appears as a face looking in from the outside of the window of the car... a face remaining steady and still and leering, no matter how fast the car is racing. Sometimes he speaks... saying awful things from the backseat or through the car radio. 

Now, my friend D and I have always nightowls. And, if you live in Lakeville, you MUST know that there is nothing to do in town at night. So here we would be, 1am, everyone but us in our respective houses was in bed, so rather than tippy-toe-ing around whispering and bored, we go out, get some coffee at one of the Dunkin Donuts littering the area, and just drive for hours, talking, singing along to the radio, and just generally enjoying the night. 

 D and I have also always had a fascination with the paranormal. We would pore over these ghost books, fascinated with every story. And if there was a story that took place at a location within driving distance, off we would go, ghost hunting. So of course we knew about the Route 44 ghost. Many nights, driving around, full of coffee and no place to go, we would hit 44 "just in case". After a time, a trip or two or three down 44 became an obligitory part of our journey. 

One night, after a certain amount of driving and singing to the radio, we decided to turn down 44 to see if we could find the ghost. As a side note, I should mention that this time D had come up with the brilliant idea of bringing one of those little battery powered Karoke machines with us, to better facilitate the "singing along to the radio" part of our jaunts. It sat between us on the front seat, and we even each had our own microphone. 

We drove all the way to Rhode Island and back. As always, we saw nothing.  We shrugged, turned up the echo on the Karoke machine, and drove the section of 44 again. Nothing. We decided that we were not going to give up tonight, were just going to keep it up this night until SOMEthing happened. So we drove 44, over and over and over, singing and laughing and enjoying that thrill of fear that just maybe next time we turned around there would be a face....

It was getting on about 4am. We had a lot of fun, but nothing had happened. We were northbound, pretty much given up on the idea of finding anything, but enjoying the singing, halfway through an Annie Lennox tape when... POUND POUND POUND POUND POUND!!! There was a sound, exactly like someone was outside the passenger door, hitting it over and over with their fist. 

So we screamed. We looked at each other, gave each other a white eyed glance, and screamed some more. And I tell you, screaming into two Karoke microphones gives some amazing reverb. (To this day, we wish that the "record" button had been on) In my brilliance, I was screaming "It's on my side! It's on MY side!" 

We looked to the window., terrified. There was nothing there. D stopped the car, and we got out.  We both looked at each other with the "this was the stupidest idea ever, why did we go LOOKING for the ghost!" look.  We walked over to the right rear side of the car to see... a flat tire. 

The tire. The tire had blown and had been slapping violently against the car.  So D changed the tire, while I watched every shadow behing every bush suspiciously.

Well, it wasn't exactly what we had set out looking for. But you can't tell me it was exactly coincidence that that tire went. As D said "we were asking for it". So next time you are taking a dark, lonely drive down Route 44, keep an eye out, and be warned!