The Ghostly Cry of Highway 5
A woman is brutally murdered and her body is found near a highway. Her spirit, unable to rest, haunts the road. Truck drivers and motorists report seeing her apparition, sometimes as a hitchhiker, other times as a passenger.
There are some stories so shrouded in mystery, they beggar belief. Stories that make you shiver in your seat and pull the duvet just a bit closer at night. Yet, they also demand to be told, for they are woven into the fabric of a place. And this one, dear reader, is about a very beautiful woman, a tragic love story, and a road. Oh, but not just any road. No, this is state highway number 5, a stretch of asphalt somewhere in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, whose unassuming first curve has become synonymous with death, fear, and the kind of eerie encounters that Hollywood dreams are made of.
Let’s start with the facts—or at least as close as one can get in a tale like this. It was the mid-1980s, a time when big hair ruled, neon spandex was alarmingly acceptable, and the road to the El Tepeyac ejido wasn’t known for its spectral hitchhikers. Somewhere near this very curve, a shepherd boy tending his goats stumbled upon a sight that would haunt him forever. The charred remains of a woman lay in the woods, about 200 meters from the curve. Her body told a grim story: beaten, raped, hanged, and then set alight.
