The Hitch-Hiker (radio play)

The Hitch-Hiker
Written by	Lucille Fletcher
Date premiered	November 17, 1941
Place premiered	CBS Radio
Original language	English
Series	Orson Welles Show
Genre	Drama Ghost story

The Hitch-Hiker is a radio play written by Lucille Fletcher. It was first presented on the November 17, 1941, broadcast of the Orson Welles Show on CBS Radio, featuring a score written and conducted by Bernard Herrmann, Fletcher's first husband. Welles performed The Hitch-Hiker four times on radio, and the play was adapted for a notable 1960 episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.

The story concerns Ronald Adams, a man driving cross-country from Brooklyn to California. On the morning he leaves New York, in the rain, Adams sees a man on the Brooklyn Bridge. He seems to be waiting for a lift. Adams sees the man again an hour later, hitchhiking at the Pulaski Skyway. At several points along his journey, Adams repeatedly sees the same hitch-hiker, despite the fact that, logically, there is no possible way the mysterious man could always somehow get ahead of him.

Adams is increasingly terrified by the unexplained appearances of the hitch-hiker. His narration conveys his determination to intentionally run the mysterious man down the next time he sees him. This ruins Adams's chance for companionship with another hitch-hiker, a girl who needs a lift to Amarillo. She lightly flirts with him but is soon spooked by his obsession with the mysterious man he sees at the side of the road. After Adams sees the hitch-hiker yet again, he almost crashes into a barbed-wire fence. The girl extricates herself from his car and flees, insisting that she was unable to see the man Adams fears. She is picked up by a passing truck, and Adams is alone on the Texas prairie. He wants desperately to sleep but then he hears the "hall-ooo" of the hitch-hiker and sees him approach. Adams drives on toward New Mexico.

Finally, Adams feels he is going mad and reaches out for help. He finds a payphone at a gas station in the middle of the New Mexico desert. He calls his mother in Brooklyn, feeling that he can pull himself together if he can hear a familiar voice. The long-distance operator puts his call through, but Adams is confused when a woman he doesn't know answers the telephone. She states that Mrs. Adams is in the hospital due to a nervous breakdown, brought on by the death of her oldest son, Ronald, six days before. Adams learns that he has died in a car accident on the Brooklyn Bridge, where he first spotted the hitch-hiker. Adams realizes he was not a malevolent figure, but rather a friendly angel of death sent to guide Adams to the other side.

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