History & local legend
Phelps Corners, near Waterford in Erie County, is the setting of a vanishing-hitchhiker legend preserved by the local collection Erie Legends. Its version places the encounter in the fall of 1925, when George and Lillian English were driving home from a party in Edinboro.
At the crossroads, their headlights caught a young woman wearing a wedding gown. They stopped, and she gave them an address in Waterford before taking a place in the back seat. Lillian tried to talk to her during the drive, but the woman remained silent.
When they reached the address, George turned to ask whether it was the right house. The back seat was empty. A man at the house recognized their description and explained that the woman had been his fiancée. According to the story, she had died in a wreck at Phelps Corners on their wedding night.
Sources
- Erie Legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, full local account naming the passengers, Phelps Corners and the destination, archived September 2008
- OpenStreetMap, Phelps Corners locality at the junction of Old State Road and Sharp Road
- Pennsylvania Highways, PA 86 history documents Sharp Road as part of the former alignment north of Cambridge Springs until 1983
- OpenStreetMap junction record for Sharp Road and Old State Road
