This rideshare horror story comes down to one song and five pickup pins on a map. Every time he rode with me, the pin was a little closer to my house, and the last one was my front door.
I retired from fixing school buses in 2024 after thirty-one years, and by the next spring I was going out of my mind. My wife Lupe told me to find a hobby or find a job, but to find it outside the house. So I started driving rideshare in Tucson, six at night to midnight, four or five nights a week.
I liked it more than I expected. You meet people. You hear things. Most riders are students or nurses or folks going to and from the bars on Fourth Avenue, and most of them want to be left alone, which suits me fine.
I usually started my shift right from home. We live on a quiet street east of the university, in the same little house we bought in 1996. I’d back out of the driveway, turn the app on, and the first ping would come in before I hit the stop sign.
On Saturday mornings Lupe waters her tomatoes and plays music in the kitchen with the window open. Same CD most weeks. “Lantern Hill,” by the Calloway Sisters. It’s an old folk song, slow, two women singing in harmony, and I’ve never once heard it on the radio. She found the CD at a yard sale in the nineties. I could hum every note of it in my sleep.
That’s just how our Saturdays go. I only mention it because of what comes next.
The first ride with him was a Tuesday at the end of September, 10:14 p.m. Pickup at a gas station on Grant Road, about four and a half miles from my house. The name on the app was Dorian. No photo. Five-star rating.
He was maybe thirty-five. Clean jacket, short hair, quiet. He got in the back on the passenger side, which is the one seat where it’s hard to see a face in the mirror. The drop-off was downtown, a corner near the transit center.
About a mile in, he said, “Could you play ‘Lantern Hill’? The Calloway Sisters.”
I almost laughed. I said, “You know, I’ve never heard anybody ask for that one except my wife.”
He didn’t say anything to that. I found it on my phone and played it through the speakers. He listened to the whole thing with his eyes closed. When it ended, he said, “Thank you,” and that was all he said the rest of the ride.
I told Lupe about it the next morning. She was tickled. She said somebody else in Tucson had good taste.
Same Seat and the Same Song
The second ride was October 9th. Pickup at a church parking lot on Pima Street, a little under three miles from home. Same rider. Same corner downtown.
He got in the same seat. I already had the song queued up, because I’m a people pleaser. I said, “Same song?”
“Same song.”
He listened with his eyes closed again. I remember noticing that he never once looked at his phone. Most riders are glued to them. He just sat with his hands on his knees and looked out the window at the houses going by.
The third ride was October 18th, 9:47 p.m. Pickup at a laundromat on Craycroft. A mile and a half from my house.
I noticed that one. I want to be honest that I noticed it. But I had a reason ready, and it was a good reason. The app sends you to the closest rider. I was usually starting out from home. So of course my pickups were close to home. That’s the whole point of the app.
He got in. I played the song before he asked.
We were stopped at a light on Speedway when he said, “You live close to here.”
It wasn’t a question. He said it the way you’d say it’s cold out.
I said, “Not really.” Which was a lie, and I don’t know why I told it.
When the light changed he said, “Turn on Fifth. It’s faster.” And he was right. It was faster. I’ve lived there thirty years and I’d never thought of going that way.
I didn’t say anything to Lupe about that ride. I told myself there was nothing to say.
The next Saturday, she was at the kitchen table when I came in from getting the paper. She said, “There was a man standing at the end of the alley this morning while I was watering. Just standing there, listening to the music, I think. When the song ended he waved.”
I asked what he looked like. She shrugged. Younger. Clean jacket. She thought it was sweet.
I didn’t sleep much that night. I lay there and told myself that a lot of men in Tucson own a clean jacket. I told myself the song was on the internet, and anybody could like it. I told myself that if you tell your wife a strange man in the back of your car knows her favorite song, you’d better be sure about it.
I wasn’t sure about it. So I didn’t say it.
Half a Mile From Our Front Door
The fourth ride was October 30th. Pickup at the little park at the end of our neighborhood, half a mile from our front door. I saw the pin and my stomach dropped, and I accepted it anyway. I think I wanted to look at him one more time and prove to myself he was just a guy.
He got in. I didn’t play the song. We drove about a block in quiet.
Then he started humming it. Softly. The harmony part, the high one, which is the part Lupe sings along to.
He hummed it all the way downtown. When he got out at the corner he said, “Tell her she’s a little flat on the bridge.” Then he shut the door and walked off toward the transit center.
That’s when it actually started.
I drove straight home and went to the police substation the next morning. The officer was polite. He wrote it down. He asked whether the man had threatened me, touched me, or come onto my property, and I had to say no, no, and I don’t know. He said I could report the rider to the app, and he said to call if anything changed.
I reported him to the app. I got an automated email that said they took safety seriously.
The Fifth Rideshare Pickup
The fifth ride was November 4th, a Tuesday.
I was dropping off two college girls up by the university, six miles from home. 11:38 p.m. My phone chimed with a new request.
Pickup for Dorian. Five stars.
The pin was on my street. On my house. The address under it was ours, house number and all, spelled exactly right.
I didn’t accept it. I watched it sit there on my screen, and then it timed out and went to some other driver, or to nobody.
I called Lupe. It rang and rang. She sleeps with a box fan on, and she leaves her phone charging in the kitchen. I knew that. I called four more times anyway while I ran every yellow light on Campbell.
I pulled into my driveway at 11:51.
I heard it before I opened my car door. With the engine off, with the hood ticking as it cooled, I heard it coming through the kitchen window.
“Lantern Hill.”
The high harmony. Two women singing about a light left on in a window.
The front door was locked. I went around through the side gate, and the gate was standing open, and the back door into the kitchen was unlocked. Lupe leaves it unlocked when she lets the cat out and forgets. Thirty years I’ve told her about that.
The kitchen was empty. The CD player on the counter was playing the song on repeat, the little number 1 blinking on the display. The room smelled like cold air from outside, like the door had been open a while.
I ran upstairs. Lupe was in bed, asleep, the fan roaring. She woke up when I grabbed her shoulder and I had to say her name three times before she understood me.
She hadn’t played any music. She’d gone to bed at ten.
The police came and walked through the house and the yard with flashlights. Nothing was taken. Nothing was broken. The only footprints in the side yard were mine.
One of the officers opened the CD player.
The disc inside wasn’t hers. Lupe’s copy of the album was in its case in the cabinet over the coffee maker, right where it always is. The disc in the player was a blank CD-R with one track on it. Somebody had written on it in black marker, in neat small letters.
SAME SONG
The app told the detective later that Dorian’s account had been opened in September and paid for with a prepaid gift card, and that it had been closed the night of November 4th. Every pickup spot he used had no working cameras. The detective’s best guess was that the man had heard Lupe’s music through the window walking by one Saturday and fixed on it. Fixed on her, maybe. Or on me. He said that sometimes these things just stop on their own.
As far as I know, it did. We put in motion lights and a lock on the side gate. Lupe doesn’t play that CD anymore. It’s in a box in the garage.
I still drive. Not as late.
But I keep coming back to the request itself. It wasn’t a drop-off at my address. It was a pickup.
He wasn’t asking me to take him to my house. He was letting me know he was already there, waiting for his ride.
Have a rideshare horror story of your own?
If you drive for a rideshare app, you’ve had at least one passenger you still think about. Share your rideshare horror story, or any scary Uber stories from behind the wheel, in the comments below.
