The Uniondale Phantom Hitchhiker: Anton le Grange and the Police Follow-Up on the N9 (1976)

Good Friday 1968. 12 April. Maria Charlotte "Ria" Roux, 22, was in a Volkswagen Beetle driven by her fiancé. Near the Barandas turnoff, about 20 km from Uniondale, the car overturned. Sgt Pat McDonald found her lying "on her back with her head against the embankment, she had died of head injuries".

From 1973, motorists on that road began to speak of a girl. Leonard Fraser and Catharina, from Cradock, saw one around midnight in a white gown, on a storm-water drain. "She didn't look human," Catharina said. "I could see through her." When they stopped, she disappeared.

Accounts place the 1976 drive on either 1 May or Good Friday, and one version sets it at 7:15 PM, about 13 km from town. Anton le Grange, from Oudtshoorn, was driving his Mercedes from Willowmore toward Uniondale when he saw a girl with dark hair, a pale face, a dark coat and slacks, who gave the address "Porter street 2, de Lange." "I saw a girl standing at the side of the road. I stopped. She opened the door and got in."

"After a few miles, I turned my head and she was gone!" Then the sound. "To this day I can't tell you if it was a laugh or a scream. It was right in the car, really loud… although I was absolutely alone!"

Le Grange reported it at Uniondale police station. Cornelius "Snowy" Potgieter followed his car. "La Grange drove through a patch of mist and about 200 yards beyond the mist, I saw the right rear door slowly open and close as if somebody got out." Le Grange described it too. "It was a controlled gentle opening and closing, exactly as if someone got out and then shut the door behind them."

Potgieter remembered the 1968 crash and talked it over with McDonald. Journalist Janie Meyer obtained a photograph of Maria from her mother. Le Grange was certain. "It was the same girl. There's no doubt about it."

Easter 1978. Cpl Dawie van Jaarsveld was riding his motorcycle from Oudtshoorn to the Langkloof. He gave a lift to a shortish girl with short dark hair. She put on his spare helmet. After a kilometre or two, the bike twitched. He turned around. Nobody. The spare helmet was back on his luggage rack.

Good Friday 1980. André Coetzee, 20, felt hands around his waist. "I could actually feel the pressure and as I looked down I saw the hands." He accelerated. Three blows struck his helmet. Then the presence just disappeared. In 1983, honeymooner Danny de Kock saw a woman in a gown waving them to slow down. She disappeared before they reached her.

No written police record of the 1976 drive has surfaced. In 2018 the Sunday Times found only a verbal account at Uniondale, and blamed the monotonous straight highway for disorienting tired travellers. The story also closely matches the international "vanishing hitchhiker" legend, down to the ghost asking for an address. In 2006 Maria's brother Frans Roux told Rapport: "Ria would never have gotten on a motorcycle in her life, she was too conservative for it. Definitely not a hitchhiker." He asked people to "release Ria."

Every Easter, people still camp at the crash site. Michael Aspel took the story to ITV's Strange but True? in 1995. In 2014 it became a romantic comedy, Die Spook van Uniondale, shot in Willowmore. The girl on the road is the town's main claim to fame.