Hamlet of Auto World Haunted By “Ghost Car”

Some headlines are just eye-catching, like this one from a 1920 newspaper:

The first paragraph of the story is just as good:

Somewhere in south Minneapolis there is a “ghost car,” which nightly leaves its last resting place in the vicinity of Lake Street and Seventeenth Avenue South to wander about with rattling bolts and shrieking gears to haunt its former owner.

At least, this was the theory advanced in district court when the owner of the car, one Mr. Winter, was explaining why he should not be held in contempt for failing to disclose the location of a car that he had not yet finished paying for. Winter explained that it was “a ghost of a car” when he purchased it, and after spending many days flat on his back with his eyes glued to the oily dripping insides of the automobile, he gave up and abandoned it near the aforementioned location. In response, attorneys for the plaintiff offered witnesses to testify that the car had been seen at night, “wraithlike and wandering as a spirit condemned.” Stranger yet, the witnesses also claimed that it was Mr. Winter the ghostly automobile was carrying from place to place.

The case was dismissed with no prejudice until the car could actually be found.

The First Car Ghost Story?

Before there were fright-inducing cars like the 1958 Plymouth Fury in Christine and the 1971 Lincoln Continental in The Car, there was a haunted automobile in Geneva, New York, terrifying mechanics. The year was 1917, and newspapers printed stories like this one about the cursed car. Happy Halloween!

“A ‘Haunted Car’ Shatters Nerves of Geneva Garages.” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 6 August 1917, p. 9.
This Model A is too “new” to be the one in the 1917 story, but it still has a ghostly look about it!