“The Ghost Cab of Chicago: Six Years of Driverless Fares”
Summer 1997, Chicago, Illinois.
Robert Hayes was a night shift taxi driver, thirty-two years old, living a life defined by long hours behind the wheel.
He knew the streets of Chicago better than anyone, the hum of traffic a lullaby that kept him awake, the neon lights reflecting off rain-slicked asphalt like tiny constellations.
On March 15th, he left his small apartment in the South Side, kissed his cat goodbye, and began his usual route.
He never returned.
At first, the disappearance was assumed to be a simple runaway or a tragic accident.
But Robert left nothing behind—no personal belongings, no notes, not even his wallet.
His cab, number 2197, disappeared with him.
Police canvassed the city, checking cameras, interviewing dispatchers, and searching the alleys and warehouses of the South Side, but found nothing.
Weeks stretched into months.
Months into years.
His apartment remained frozen in time: a cup of half-drunk coffee on the counter, his neatly folded laundry on the bed, and a calendar marking March 15th with a small, faded circle.
Life outside Robert’s absence carried on with ordinary rhythms.
Bars hummed with conversation, streetlights flickered above quiet avenues, and the city moved, oblivious to the void left behind.
Yet for those who remembered him, there was a quiet unease—an invisible presence lingering in the cab stands and quiet streets he once roamed.
In 2003, a private storage facility on the West Side reported a peculiar finding: a yellow taxi, rusting slightly at the edges, had been deposited and abandoned.
There was no record of who had left it there or why.
The cab was transferred to a municipal impound lot, but as paperwork went missing and employees changed, it was quietly forgotten.
For fourteen years, it sat under a worn tarp, unnoticed.
September 2017, a routine inventory finally unearthed the vehicle.
VIN checks confirmed it was Hayes’s taxi.
Forensic technicians carefully powered up the meter computer, expecting only a digital graveyard—old logs from a vanished cab.
What they found instead made even the most experienced investigators pause.
Eighty-three trips were logged between March 16, 1997—the day after Hayes vanished—and June 7, 2003.
Each entry contained complete data: pickup location, drop-off, fare, and exact payment received in coins.
Under the driver’s seat, $2,847 in neatly stacked quarters, dimes, and nickels rested, dating from 1997 to 2003.
The amounts matched the meter’s logs perfectly.
The cab had driven itself.
Investigators pored over city surveillance archives.
Cameras captured taxi 2197 in motion, stopping for fares, circling streets, and disappearing into intersections—but never a person entering or exiting.
Dispatch records showed calls routed to a live meter, but no driver was ever assigned.
Phone records for Robert Hayes showed no activity after March 15th.
Forensic review of the meter’s GPS revealed something stranger: the cab traveled with precision, as if following an invisible passenger.
It never strayed from typical night routes, but occasionally, it would detour into abandoned districts, long stretches of the riverfront, or industrial zones at odd hours.
Every trip began as a regular fare, ended as a normal drop-off, yet nobody saw who—or what—was behind the wheel.
Among Robert’s belongings in his apartment, investigators discovered a small GoPro he had been testing, left atop the dash of the taxi.
Memory cards revealed footage from the weeks leading up to his disappearance.
The camera captured passengers—late-night commuters, a street musician with a guitar case, a woman carrying groceries—but in the final clip, dated March 15th, something strange occurred.
Robert muttered softly, recording the backseat of the cab as a figure approached outside the window.
Shadows stretched unnaturally long, though the streetlights were normal.
He leaned forward, whispering into the camera: “Voices… outside.
” Then the feed cut abruptly.
No static, no warning—just darkness.
For months, experts debated what the camera might have captured.
Some argued it was a glitch, a corrupted file.
Others believed Robert had seen something he shouldn’t—something that forced him from his cab, and perhaps from this world entirely.
The coins themselves became a puzzle.
Each piece of change had been minted between 1997 and 2003, perfectly matching the total fares of the eighty-three logged trips.
How could an abandoned cab collect exact fares, with correct change, for six years? Were the passengers real? Were they aware of the cab’s driverless state? Investigators attempted to trace receipts, but none of the trips had been officially reported.
An analysis of GPS logs revealed an eerie pattern: the cab frequently stopped near locations connected to unsolved missing persons cases during those six years.
No direct connection could be established, but it hinted at something far more deliberate than random motion.
In 2018, a retired dispatcher came forward.
He remembered receiving calls from an “unknown driver” reporting fares late at night in 1999 and 2000.
The voice was distorted, mechanical, almost whisper-like.
At the time, he had assumed it was a prank or a misdial, but in retrospect, he realized these calls coincided with the trips recorded by the meter.
Moreover, one surviving passenger—a delivery worker who had been picked up by taxi 2197 in 2001—recalled something impossible.
He swore he had seen no driver in the cab, yet the fare was automatically calculated, the meter running smoothly as if guided by an invisible hand.
Forensic technicians discovered a hidden feature in the cab’s meter: a dormant autopilot program, likely installed during a routine software update in 1996.
No one had tested the feature, and it seemed abandoned.
Yet the cab’s movements didn’t match the autopilot’s expected paths; it took routes no algorithm could predict.
It seemed to learn, navigating complex city streets, reacting to traffic, and even stopping for fares.
The thought was chilling: the cab was operational, but under what guidance? A mechanical glitch? Artificial intelligence decades ahead of its time? Or something else entirely?
Investigators revisited Robert’s apartment, examining the calendar and personal notes.
Among the pages was a small, crumpled piece of paper with a phrase repeated over and over:
“Follow the voices. Don’t look back.”
It was unsigned.
There was no indication of who wrote it, yet it matched the last words captured on his GoPro: “voices… outside.”
It was as if Robert had been compelled to leave, forced by a presence, and the cab continued on without him, almost in his place.
In early 2019, a lead investigator monitoring the cab’s GPS noticed movement.
Despite the impound lot being secured, the cab had shifted slightly overnight.
Security footage was inconclusive, showing only the vehicle rocking gently, as if idling.
Yet the GPS confirmed the movement: the cab had traveled two miles, circling an industrial complex near the river.
A sudden call came in from the city’s traffic control center: the cab had just been seen on a live camera, moving through downtown Chicago.
No driver.
No owner.
Just headlights cutting through the foggy streets.
The lead investigator drove to intercept it, arriving minutes later to find the lot empty.
Taxi 2197 had vanished again.
Only the coins remained, neatly stacked inside the driver’s seat box, untouched by human hands.
Chicago’s records now list Robert Hayes as missing, unresolved.
Taxi 2197 is a cold case of its own, a driverless ghost roaming the streets of memory and speculation.
The GoPro, the coins, the autopilot—none of it offers a definitive answer.
People whisper of the “ghost cab,” a vehicle that continues Robert’s work, guided by something unseen.
Was Robert taken by something supernatural? Did the cab develop a mind of its own? Or is it merely a product of coincidence, technology, and misremembered memories, twisted into myth by time?
And as the city sleeps, some swear they’ve seen a yellow cab cruising at night, perfectly timed with the last recorded trips, with no one behind the wheel.
Following the streets, the fares, the voices… and perhaps waiting for Robert to return—or something else to emerge.
Winter 2019, Chicago, Illinois.
The city was quieter than usual.
Snow fell in thick sheets, muffling the hum of traffic.
Streets glistened under streetlights, yet a subtle unease lingered in the South Side neighborhoods where Robert Hayes had once worked.
Taxi 2197 had vanished from the impound lot months ago, leaving only a trail of speculation, coins, and cold logs in its meter.
Detective Claire Simmons, a young investigator assigned to cold cases, had spent weeks tracing the cab’s sporadic GPS signals.
Every recorded movement was precise, almost intelligent.
Some nights, the vehicle appeared near locations tied to unsolved disappearances—an old warehouse, a shuttered diner, an abandoned riverside lot.
Simmons could not explain it, but each place felt deliberate.
Someone—or something—was orchestrating this.
Then came the emails.
Anonymous, sent to city authorities and the press.
Each subject line contained a cryptic time and address, all in Chicago.
Inside the body was always the same: “Follow the coins. Don’t let it see you.”
Simmons examined the messages carefully.
The sender used a secure, encrypted account; attempts to trace it led nowhere.
She realized the times corresponded with the taxi’s GPS movements.
Every email hinted at a new trip, as if the cab itself—or its operator—was communicating.
Simmons obtained surveillance from a corner store near one of the latest GPS points.
The footage was grainy, but unmistakable.
Taxi 2197 arrived precisely on schedule, doors opening—but no one stepped out.
The cash meter ticked, coins jingling as if collected.
Then, in the reflection of the store window, a figure appeared inside the cab—but it was not human.
Its shape was distorted, limbs elongated, shadows moving unnaturally.
Simmons rewound the footage frame by frame.
The figure whispered, mouth moving silently, then vanished mid-scene, leaving only the taxi humming as if idle.
Breaking into Robert Hayes’s old apartment, Simmons found a hidden journal beneath the floorboards.
The entries grew increasingly erratic in February 1997:
“They speak through the metal… guiding me… I must obey or disappear.” “The passengers aren’t human, not really. They look like people, but I know better now.” “I can hear the coins. They count. They remember.”
The final entry, dated March 14th—one day before Hayes vanished—was smudged with an unknown substance:
“If I leave, the cab will continue. It knows where I cannot go. It waits for the next fare…”
Simmons requested analysis of the coins.
Each piece had microscopic etchings, tiny symbols only visible under a high-powered microscope.
Some resembled street maps.
Others mirrored the GPS coordinates of previous trips.
The more she studied them, the more the cab appeared less like a vehicle and more like a conscious entity, communicating through currency, paths, and patterns.
On a frozen night, Simmons followed the GPS to a warehouse near the riverfront.
The cab was there, headlights glowing faintly.
She approached cautiously.
The meter lit up as if recognizing her presence.
Coins inside rattled, stacking themselves neatly.
Then the driver’s seat shifted.
No one emerged, yet the steering wheel moved slightly toward the door.
She froze, realizing she was not alone.
A voice, low and metallic, came from the dashboard speaker:
“Do not follow. Leave now.”
The voice was neither human nor machine—something in between.
Simmons stumbled back.
The cab’s doors slammed shut on their own.
The headlights flickered and vanished.
She ran, heart pounding, as the snow swallowed any trace of the vehicle.
Later, examining the footage on her laptop, Simmons saw it: the cab appeared in multiple locations simultaneously.
Not clones—overlapping frames of time, different GPS points, each performing a trip, collecting fares, then vanishing.
It defied the laws of physics.
Something impossible was happening.
Somewhere in the city, taxi 2197 was moving—always alone, always on schedule, always collecting fares for passengers who might never exist.
And the coins… the coins were the message, each fare a silent proof of its continued presence.
Simmons consulted a retired folklore professor specializing in urban legends.
The professor’s words chilled her:
“Some objects, abandoned or forgotten, can retain echoes of the people who used them—or of forces stronger than any living mind. A cab is just a shell… but if something powerful guides it, the shell moves, collects, observes. And sometimes, it waits for a new passenger to replace the old.”
Simmons realized the cab wasn’t just driverless—it was haunted or sentient.
Robert Hayes may have been its first conduit, the human element that allowed it to move through the city with purpose.
In February 2020, Simmons received an alert on her phone: the cab’s GPS had activated near her apartment.
She ran outside.
Snow drifted silently around empty streets.
Then headlights appeared in the distance—yellow, unmistakable.
The cab stopped at the corner, engine idling.
Coins rattled inside, echoing through the cold night.
A shadow moved behind the wheel.
For a moment, it looked human.
Then the figure shifted—elongated, faceless, whispering the same words Robert had muttered years ago:
“Voices… outside.”
Simmons froze, unsure whether to flee or confront it.
When she blinked, the cab was gone.
GPS and cameras showed no trace.
Yet on her doorstep, neatly stacked, were coins—$57, quarters and dimes, each etched with tiny, indecipherable symbols.
The city slept, oblivious.
And somewhere in Chicago, taxi 2197 continued its journey.
Waiting.
Watching.
Counting.
