Ghost on the Fender

Detroit's high-school swains discovered a ghost last spring. As they explained darkly to their giggling dates, the ghost was a little girl. She had been hurrying home from the playground when she was hit by an automobile coming down Strasburg Avenue. For a few moments, the little girl clung desperately to the car, rapping on the fender. The driver heartlessly drove on. Then the little girl lost her grip and was crushed beneath a rear wheel.

Once this story spread through the high schools, carloads of teen-agers cruised slowly along Strasburg Avenue every night. Sure enough, there was an eerie knocking from the direction of the rear fender. The girls squealed, and clutched their dates in pleasurable alarm.

But the homeowners along Strasburg Avenue were getting no sleep. Last week a Detroit Times reporter investigated. When he heard a ghostly rapping in his car, he stopped and asked a resident for an explanation. Snapped John Novak: "There is no ghost, and no child was killed on this street. We have been hearing this knock for three years--ever since they put in the new pavement of cement slabs. In the daytime, the slabs expand in the sun's heat. In the evening, the concrete contracts, and the slabs wobble when a car goes over it." The edges grate on each other, and the noise echoes in the car. Grumbled Novak: "I swear that nearly every high-school kid in Detroit has driven this street. They even have parties on my front lawn. Maybe if you tell them what it is, we can get some sleep again." City engineers checked the explanation, and the Detroit Times printed it. But Mr. Novak was overoptimistic. At week's end the squealy high-schoolers were thick as ever. Hundreds of other cars had joined theirs. These were driven by adults.

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