Ghost Taxis of Japan (2016)

Old joke: A hitchhiker, looking for a ride late at night, gets into a car that is traveling very slowly. Once in, he realizes the car has no driver! Soon, the car going very slowly up a hill, reaches a graveyard.

At this point, the hitchhiker jumps out of the car and flees in terror. He looks back and sees someone getting into the car. He yells back "Don't get in!! That car is haunted!". The person getting in replies, "It can't be, I've been pushing it uphill for the last hour".

In a not too distant future, when taxis have been replaced by driverless cars these ghosts will cause a real problem. I can imagine being tasked with figuring out why we sometimes lose fares.

"Yep. Another passenger faded into nothing without paying. Resolve as 'ghost passenger.'"

It's 7th (ghost) month here in Singapore. Same thing happens here. Solution? Organize concerts (getai) for them.

https://www.todayonline.com/8days/seeanddo/thingstodo/hungry...

Probably a bit off topic, but here is voice actress Tomoko Kaneda in a "ghost taxi" skit on the Japanese TV show Monitoring[0].

[0]https://youtu.be/IdFuMsRrzj8

(and yes just in case anyone's wondering, that reaction is completely staged...)

Anyone familiar with urban legends will recognize these themes as almost identical to stories passed down through the generations in the USA for roughly 80 years. Pretty cool to learn they aren’t unique to this area.