France

Sometime after 11 p.m. on the evening of 20 May 1981 two couples the men in the front and the women in the back of a Renault 5 car - were driving back to Montpelier from a beach excursion.

The hitchhiker in this instance was a woman dressed in white and the driver of the car stopped for the hitchhiker on the basis that it was not safe for a woman to be alone on the road at that time of night. This apparently explains why the driver stopped when it was not normally in his character to do so and also why he did so even though it was hardly convenient since the car was already full; on the other hand the fullness of the car adds to the quality of the case. On stopping, the driver told the hitchhiker they were heading for Montpelier and she nodded her head but said nothing. As in the Bagneres case (see p. 220) it was a two-door car and therefore the front passenger had to get out along with one of the girls from the back seat to allow the hitchhiker to get into the middle of the back seat, leaving her sandwiched between the two girls and effectively trapped.

Suddenly the hitchhiker shouted, 'Look out for the turns, look out for the turns! You're risking death.' The driver slowed down to negotiate the bend, his concentration no doubt disturbed by screams from the back seats where the two girls had just experienced the sudden vanishing of their recent companion. The two couples checked the area to see whether she could have somehow got out of the car, although this was blatantly impossible in any normal circumstances, and they reported the event at Montpelier police station, to an Inspector Lopez. Although Inspector Lopez warned the witnesses that he had little time for hoaxes and if that was what they were trying on they should stop before they dug themselves in too deeply, the reports were still made, apparently with sincerity, and Lopez stated, 'Their panic wasn't put on and we soon realised they were genuine. It worried us.

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