
Her killer had been driving along the road, thought that she was a ghost and shot her with his revolver...
There seems to be a number of locations where a woman can be seen walking the back roads out in the rural areas, dressed in a nightshirt, to disappear when help is offered to her. These legends exist everywhere, just about every country, so finding an origin to a particular one was hard. Instead I found the following - no road is given - it is just an interesting story set in Alabama, the death itself made the newspapers in 1928 - here is an excerpt:
"The wife of a dairy farmer in Alabama, U.S.A., has been found shot dead clad only in a nightdress by the roadside, a suit of small boy's clothes in her arms.
The police think that the woman, who was a sleep-walker, was driven by her sub- conscious mind to go to her little boy, who was spending the night at the home of a relative.
She was walking along the road when a passing motorist, in a superstitious terror, drew a revolver and fired at her in the belief that she was a ghost."
I certainly hope this is not a typical reaction by someone driving along to see something fairly unexpected...
As for the story... could the shot woman be one of the many reported roadside ghosts?
That I can not tell you, but it does read like the beginning of a classic ghost story - a mother killed on a lonely road in the snow while trying to get to her child...
By Ashley Hall - The Paranormal Guide