Just read a very strange and unsettling story about the guy who wrote the original version of The Hitcher.  By the way, I am officially starting to feel really old...they're now making remakes of movies I watched the first time around.

 

Anyway, saw this linked and kept going deeper and deeper to find more and more detail.  Here's the article that yielded the most detail.  Chilling and creepy and Hollywood at the same time.  Worth a read.