13/10/2026
It was 2:13 a.m. on a rainy Thursday night in Ibadan, Nigeria.
Chinedu, a 35-year-old commercial driver, was returning home after a long day of driving. He was tired, hungry, and desperate to reach his wife and two children.
The roads were almost empty.
Suddenly, he saw a young woman standing beside the road.
She wore a white dress. Her hair covered part of her face, and she held a small black handbag.
Chinedu slowed down.
"Madam, where are you going at this time?" he asked through the window.
The woman lifted her head slowly.
"Please, sir. I want to go to Challenge. I will pay you double."
Chinedu hesitated.
Every Nigerian driver knows that picking up strangers in the middle of the night can be dangerous. But he had barely made enough money that day.
"Enter," he said.
The woman opened the back door and sat down.
As Chinedu drove away, he noticed something strange in the rear-view mirror.
The woman wasn't looking at him.
She was staring at the empty seat beside her, as if someone were sitting there.
He ignored it.
After a few minutes, she spoke.
"Driver, please, can you increase the speed? I don't want them to catch me."
"Who is chasing you?" Chinedu asked.
She didn't answer.
Instead, she began to cry quietly.
Chinedu felt uncomfortable, but he continued driving.
Suddenly, the car's temperature dropped.
He could see his breath in the cold air.
Then the woman whispered, "Driver, please, don't look behind you."
His hands tightened around the steering wheel.
"Why?"
"Because the person sitting beside me is not supposed to be here."
Chinedu's heart began to pound.
He looked at the rear-view mirror.
For one brief second, he saw a man sitting beside the woman.
The man had a swollen face, blood running from his forehead, and eyes that looked completely white.
Chinedu screamed and slammed his foot on the accelerator.
The car swerved across the road.
When he looked in the mirror again, the man was gone.
"Madam, who are you?" he shouted.
The woman said nothing.
Then, from the back seat, he heard a man's voice.
"Chinedu."
He froze.
He had never told the woman his name.
The voice continued.
"Do you remember me?"
Chinedu's mouth went dry.
Years earlier, before becoming a commercial driver, he had worked as a mechanic's apprentice. One rainy night, he had been driving a customer's car when he struck a man on a dark road.
He panicked.
Instead of taking the injured man to the hospital, he abandoned him and ran away.
The man died before anyone found him.
Chinedu had never told anyone what happened.
Not even his wife.
Now, that same voice was speaking from the back seat.
"You left me on the road," it whispered.
Chinedu began to pray.
"Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!"
Suddenly, the woman screamed.
"STOP THE CAR!"
He slammed on the brakes.
The woman opened the door and stepped out.
Before Chinedu could ask her anything, she leaned toward the window.
Her face was pale, her eyes filled with tears.
"Driver," she whispered, "you should never have picked me up."
Then she walked into the darkness.
Chinedu watched her disappear.
Shaking, he drove straight to the nearest police station.
Two officers came outside when they saw his condition.
He explained everything.
One of the officers listened carefully.
Then he asked, "What did the woman look like?"
Chinedu described her white dress, her black handbag, and her long hair.
The officer went silent.
His colleague looked at him nervously.
Finally, the first officer spoke.
"That description matches a woman who died on this road three years ago. She was returning home from work when a hit-and-run driver killed her."
Chinedu felt his knees weaken.
"How can that be possible?"
The officer stared at him.
"There's something else you need to know. The man who killed her was never found."
Chinedu couldn't breathe.
He returned to his car with trembling hands.
When he opened the back door, the seat was empty.
But something was lying on the floor.
A small black handbag.
He picked it up slowly.
Inside was a photograph of a young woman standing beside a man.
Chinedu recognised the man immediately.
It was the person he had abandoned on the road years earlier.
Beneath the photograph was a folded piece of paper.
His fingers trembled as he opened it.
Five words were written on the paper:
"WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU."
That night, Chinedu never returned home.
His car was found the next morning beside the road.
The doors were open.
The engine was still running.
And on the back seat, someone had written a message in red:
"ONE OF US. ONE MORE SOON."
To this day, some drivers in Ibadan claim that on rainy nights, shortly after 2 a.m., a woman in a white dress can still be seen standing beside that road.
She asks every passing driver the same question:
"Please, sir. Can you take me home?"
But the drivers who stop for her often discover something terrifying.
She is never alone.
