Good evening, it’s Spooky Boo from Spooky Boo’s Scary Story Time. Over the years the same urban legend has been told about the Niles Canyon Ghost. I’ve heard several different versions of the story, but recently, when I asked people to send in their scary stories to read on the channel, the urban legend was brought back to life.
Grab a blanket and something warm because these two stories might chill you to the bone!
Now let’s begin
Story Number One
She Had Sunken Eyes and Pale Skin
By Anonymous from the Bay Area
Back a few years ago I was driving my old Chevy Nova down Niles Canyon Road in Fremont around midnight. It was one of the hotter nights of the season and the window was open. I had the radio off because the signal kept cutting out and my 1980s tape deck was busted. It kept eating the tape that I had to put in to use my iPhone which meant I had no music to listen to at all.
The road is this narrow, winding strip of asphalt squeezed between rock walls or hills on either side. My Chevy’s headlights barely reached ten feet ahead. I’d just gotten off a late shift at the warehouse in Union City and figured the shortcut through the canyon would shave twenty minutes off the drive home to Pleasanton. That was a huge mistake.
I came around this sharp left bend and there she was. Standing right on the edge of a rocky outcrop about thirty feet up, like she was waiting for a bus or something. She had long dark hair and a thin white dress that looked like something from the 50s. She wasn’t moving, just staring straight down at the road. I slowed down, thinking maybe she was lost or drunk or both. I looked in the rear view mirror after passing her and all I could see were the layers of her white dress flowing in the wind as she fell straight down.
She didn’t slip. She jumped. Arms out, dress flapping, straight off the edge like she was diving into the canyon. I slammed the brakes so hard the tires squealed. Heart hammering, I yanked the wheel, did a U-turn right there in the middle of the empty road as best as I could. Gravel sprayed everywhere. I drove back slowly, scanning the shoulder, the rocks, the bushes. But I didn’t see anything. There was no body, no blood, no broken bones or a any white dress. Just black pavement and the darkness of hell. I shuddered. It was hot, but a chill colder than ice flowed through me. Turning on the heater, I sat there idling for a moment, telling myself I was seeing shit because I was tired. But I knew what I saw.
I kept going forward again, maybe a mile up the road, and there she was. The same girl with the same white dress. Walking along the shoulder like she’d never jumped. She was heading my direction now, arms loose at her sides, hair blowing across her face. I pulled up next to her and rolled down the passenger window. My God she was beautiful.
“You okay?” I asked.
She looked at me with pale dark eyes hiding in the shadows of her hair. Her skin was pale white and darkness under her eyes made me think she was anemic. She could have been nineteen or twenty. Her lips were chapped and a little cracked. She didn’t offer a smile.
“I need a ride,” she said. Voice flat, like she was reading from a card.
“Where to?”
“Sonoma Drive in Pleasanton.”
That was my way anyway. On the passenger side of my car I had piles of college books and some lab equipment I was bringing home to study. As a second year med student and working my way through, I lived in my apartment, at work, at school, and in my car. I reached back and unlocked the back door.
“Sorry about the mess,” I mumbled. “I wasn’t expecting to give any rides tonight.”
She climbed in without another word, shut it quiet, and sat right in the middle of the seat. I pulled back onto the road. In the rearview I could see her staring out the window. She didn’t have a phone or purse. Just the dress and bare feet. Bare feet on Niles Canyon Road at night. That should’ve been my first real red flag.
We drove out of the canyon and hit the straight shot toward Pleasanton up 680 to Sunol. The highway was a busy treat. I tried to make small talk as it would be another ten or fifteen minutes before we got there.
“You live out here?”
I looked in the rear view mirror waiting for an answer.
“You got family in Pleasanton?”
She just sat there. The car started feeling colder, like the heat wasn’t reaching the back. I turned it up anyway.
We crossed into Pleasanton and took Sunol toward Sonoma Drive. It was a long stretch of road between the highway and houses, but it still seemed darker than usual and I felt like I had been driving for hours but the clock was still just 15 minutes after the hour. I glanced in the rearview mirror to ask her which way on Sonoma when we got there but he backseat was empty.
I swerved a little. “What the hell?”
I pulled over hard onto the shoulder, got out, checked the whole car–backseat, floor, even popped the trunk like an idiot. She was gone. Completely gone. No door had opened. No footsteps. The inside of the car still felt cold. I stood there on Sunol Boulevard with my hazard lights blinking and the wind whipping through the trees. My skin crawled so bad along with my stomach churning that I almost puked.
I got back in and drove anyway. Figured maybe she’d bailed at a stop sign or something although I couldn’t remember passing one, Maybe she hitched another ride. I’d check Sonoma Drive myself, make sure she didn’t get dumped out there. Better than wondering.
I took kept going up Sunol Boulevard because it cuts straight to Sonoma. It can be creepy out there at night. The cemetery’s right there on the right, an old one with crooked headstones and a low chain-link fence and hedge bushes. I wasn’t even looking for her anymore, just driving slow, scanning the sidewalks. Then I saw her.
She was standing inside the cemetery, right by the road, white dress glowing under the one streetlight. She raised her hand and waved at me. Slow. Like she knew I’d come back. Then she was gone. She didn’t walk away. She was just gone. Like someone hit a light switch.
I slammed on the brakes again, right in the middle of the road. Got out, walked up to the fence. There was nothign but grass and graves. I rubbed my eyes so hard I saw stars. Looked again. Still nothing. A car came up behind me and honked. I flipped them off and got back in my Nova. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I made it home around two in the morning in Livermore. Crashed on the couch with the TV on for noise. I didn’t sleep much. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her jumping. Around four I finally passed out.
The nightmare was worse than the drive.
I’m back on Niles Canyon Road, same bend, same rocky hill. She’s standing up there. This time she looks right at me through the windshield. Smiles. Then she jumps, but she doesn’t fall toward the rocks. She falls straight at my car. Arms out, dress flapping, mouth open like she’s screaming but no sound comes out. She hits the hood headfirst. The glass explodes inward and her face is right there, inches from mine, eyes wide open, still smiling. I wake up swinging, covered in sweat, sheets twisted around my legs. The clock says 5:47. My room smells like cold canyon air even though the window’s closed.
I called in sick to work that day. Sat on the couch scrolling through my phone, trying to find anything about a girl jumping off Niles Canyon. Nothing. No news stories, no missing persons that matched. Only urban legends we told as kids about the lady disappearing across the Bay Bridge going into San Francisco. Was that her? The story was similar, but she vanished in Pleasanton.
I even drove back out there in the daylight and parked where I thought the hill was. I climbed up the rocks. Just dirt and scrub brush. No footprints, no torn dress. Not even a fingernail.
That night I took the long way home, through the Sunol backroad, an extra thirty minutes. It didn’t matter. Around eleven I was brushing my teeth when my phone buzzed. It was an unknown number. I answered it, which I normally don’t do with unknown numbers but maybe it was her.
I heard static and then a girl’s voice, flat and close, like she was in the bathroom with me.
“Sonoma Drive,” she said.
I dropped the phone. It cracked on the tile. The call kept going. I could hear wind and tires on asphalt then the line went dead.
I haven’t driven on Niles Canyon since. I still drive past that cemetery sometimes on the way to my friend’s house. Every time I do, I look. So far she hasn’t been there. But I know she’s waiting. Somewhere between the rocks and the graves, she’s waiting for the next set of headlights.
And next time I won’t turn around.
Vanished Without a Trace
By Mike from Livermore
Look, I know how this sounds. I’ve read the threads, I’ve seen the creepy TikToks about “vanishing hitchhikers,” and I usually think it’s all just bored people making up campfire stories. But this actually happened to me and my buddy Jake. We weren’t looking for a ghost story; we were just trying to get home without hydroplaning into a ravine.
It was February 29th. I remember because it was leap year, and we’d been hanging out at this house party in Fremont. It was one of those nights where the weather is just angry. The rain was coming down in these heavy, grey sheets that made the streetlights look like blurry smudges. It’s been happening in California lately like crazy. Jake was driving his old ’98 Honda Civic—the kind with the faded clear coat and a heater that smelled like burning dust—and he decided to take Niles Canyon Road to get back toward Livermore.
Now, if you know Niles Canyon, you know it’s a trip even on a sunny day. It’s all tight curves, steep walls on either side. But that night? It was a nightmare. The windshield wipers were doing that rhythmic thwack-thwack sound, barely keeping up, and the windows were constantly fogging over. I was sitting in the passenger seat, using the sleeve of my hoodie to scrub circles on the glass just so Jake could see the white lines on the road.
“Man, slow down,” I told him. “If we hit a puddle wrong, we’re going into the side of the hill.”
“I’m doing twenty, dude,” Jake snapped back, leaning over the steering wheel like he was trying to see through a brick wall.
We were creeping around this one particularly nasty bend—I think it’s near where the old secret sidewalk is—and the headlights caught something. Jake slammed on the brakes so hard the CDs in the door pocket went flying.
“What the hell was that?” he whispered.
Standing right there on the muddy shoulder, not even two feet from the pavement, was a girl. She looked maybe eighteen or nineteen, the same age as us. But she was wearing a white prom dress. It was floor-length, lace, totally fancy, and it was absolutely destroyed by the rain. It was clinging to her like a second skin, turning almost translucent. Her hair was long and dark, just plastered across her face in wet clumps. She didn’t wave us down or scream; she just stood there with her thumb out, looking completely hollowed out.
Jake rolled the window down just a crack. The freezing air rushed in, and suddenly the car felt like a meat locker.
“Hey! You need help?” Jake yelled over the wind.
She didn’t say anything at first. She just walked toward the car in this weird, stiff way. Before I could even ask if she was okay, she opened the back door and slid in. The smell hit me immediately—not like perfume or anything normal, but like wet earth and old, cold stone. It was heavy, like the smell of a basement that’s been flooded for a week.
“Thanks,” she said. Her voice was so thin it barely registered over the heater. “Can you take me to San Francisco?” She rattled off some address on Sutter Street. I don’t want to say it here because I don’t want anyone going to the house. You’ll see why.
I turned around in my seat, trying to get a look at her. “San Francisco? That’s a long way, especially in this. You okay? You’re freezing.”
She didn’t look at me. She just stared straight ahead at the back of Jake’s headrest. “I just need to get home,” she whispered. “I’m so cold.”
Jake and I swapped a look. I mean, what do you do? You don’t leave a girl in a prom dress on the side of a canyon road in a storm. Jake shifted into gear and we kept going. I tried to make small talk to break the tension, asking her name—she said it was Sarah—and asking if she’d been at a dance. But she just gave these short, one-word answers. Eventually, the silence got so heavy I just turned back around and watched the road.
The weirdest part was the temperature. Jake had the heat on the highest setting, blowing right on my feet, but I was shivering. My breath was coming out in little puffs of steam. I looked back once, and Sarah was just sitting there, hands folded in her lap, looking like a porcelain doll that someone had dropped in a puddle.
We finally cleared the canyon and hit 680, heading north. The transition from the dark trees to the bright highway lights usually makes me feel better, but I couldn’t shake this feeling of dread. We drove for a while, hitting 580 then we finally crossed the Bay Bridge, the wind shaking the Civic as we hit the upper deck. Jake was white-knuckling the wheel, focused on the lane lines.
“Almost there, Sarah,” I said, looking back to give her a heads-up.
The back seat was empty.
I froze. I literally couldn’t move. I blinked, thinking maybe she’d just leaned over to pick something up, but the seat was completely bare.
“Jake,” I managed to choke out. “Jake, stop the car.”
“What? I can’t stop on the bridge, man!”
“She’s gone! She’s not back there!”
Jake glanced in the rearview mirror and nearly swerved into a truck. He pulled over as soon as we got off the Fremont Street exit. We both jumped out and checked the back. The doors were still locked. The child locks were on. And here’s the kicker: the seat was bone-dry. She’d been sitting there, drenched, for nearly an hour, and there wasn’t a single drop of water on the upholstery. No wet spots, no muddy footprints, nothing.
Jake was pacing on the sidewalk, losing his mind. “We didn’t imagine that, right? We both saw her. We both talked to her.”
“She gave us an address,” I reminded him. “Sutter Street.”
We got back in and drove through the city like we were on a mission. We found the house—one of those tall, narrow Victorians with the peeling paint and a heavy wooden door. It was well past 2:00 AM. I didn’t want to knock, but Jake was already on the porch.
An older lady opened the door after a few minutes. She was wearing a thick robe and looked like she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a decade. Before we could even finish the story—the canyon, the dress, the girl named Sarah—her eyes filled with tears.
“Wait here,” she said, her voice trembling.
She came back a minute later with a framed photo. It was the same girl. Long dark hair, that same white lace dress, holding a corsage and smiling at the camera.
“That’s my daughter,” the woman said. “She died ten years ago tonight. She was coming home from the a special dance with her boyfriend, and their car went off the road in Niles Canyon. She never made it home.”
She told us that every year, on the anniversary, someone usually knocks on her door with the same story. She thanked us for being kind enough to pick her up, and then she quietly shut the door.
We drove all the way back to the East Bay in total silence. No music, no talking, just the sound of the tires on the wet pavement. Neither of us has been back through the canyon at night since then. You can tell me it’s a legend all you want, but I know how cold that car felt. I know the smell of that wet earth. My friend and I both know what we saw.
If you’re ever out on Niles Canyon Road on the last night of February, do yourself a favor. If you see a girl in white standing in the rain, don’t stop. Just keep driving and don’t look in your rearview mirror. She’s just trying to finish a trip she started a long time ago.
Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed these stories, please head on over to my website at www.scarystorytime.com and make a comment. You can also find me on social media by searching for Spooky Boo’s Scary Story Time. Also, tell your friends about the channel and share the links on social media.
I’d love to tell your scary stories. Please send them to spookyboo@scarystorytime.com or you can call them in at 707SPOOKYB, that is 707-776-6592. I might even play it live during the Splatterday Nightmares livestream on YouTube.
That’s all for tonight. I’ll see you in your nightmares.