Ghost Story of a Ghost Saving Her Baby

A Ghosts Saves Her Baby

I had just finished up lunch with a friend at around one o’clock in the afternoon. I was trekking back from the dining hall when I met the storyteller. She was a freshman who had just turned eighteen, and a moderately-devout Catholic. (“I’m into my religion but I don’t go to church as much as I’d like to.”) She was Filipino and born and raised Maryland. She was sitting on the lawn in front of the library, deeply immersed in a novel. When prompted by my question, “Would you mind helping me out with an assignment for class? I just need a ghost story or urban legend and interview you for a few minutes,” she cocked her head to one side and slowly shut her book. She said, “You know that one about a woman who dies in a car crash but her baby is still alive and she doesn’t want to leave it alone in the world?”

I had a tape recorder with me, but she seemed a little put-off by that, so I simply took elaborate notes on how she presented her story. The following is as close to verbatim as I could remember and drawn from my notes:

My cousin told me this. One evening, it was thunder-storming pretty badly outside. This lonely woman was sitting in her house watching television when someone knocked on her door. She got up to open it, and in front of her was this other woman who was just a wreck. She had blood and dirt all over her, not to mention all that rain drenching her. Pretty creepy sight. [She visibly flinched.] The woman outside goes, “Can you please help me? I just crashed my car and my baby is still in his car seat!” [The storyteller’s tone became empathetic here.] Of course, the lonely woman says, “Okay,” and the two go outside together. The rain picked up and things got really hard to see, but the lady led the lonely woman to her car, which had fallen into a ditch. Inside, there was the little baby sitting in his seat, still alive. The lonely woman reached in to get it, but then she gets all shocked, because you know who was in the driver’s seat? [I shook my head while she allowed her pause to linger.] It was the dead woman.