Taiwan's Famous Urban Legend - Beiyi Highway

The Beiyi Highway, a treacherous mountain road spanning Taipei and Yilan, has become Taiwan's most famous and feared haunted highway due to its rugged terrain and the perilous "nine bends and eighteen turns" in its early days. Late at night, when dense fog blankets the mountains, the entire road falls into silence and darkness. Many solo truck drivers have encountered the classic "woman waving on the nine bends and eighteen turns." On a desolate, deserted curve, one might spot a woman in white waiting by the roadside, slowly waving to approaching vehicles. Experienced drivers know never to stop, nor even to meet her gaze in the rearview mirror. They can only grip the steering wheel, recite Buddhist chants, and speed away from this seemingly endless, magical dimension. Besides the legend of the waving woman, the "road toll" scattered along the way is another unique and chilling phenomenon of the Beiyi Highway. In the past, frequent accidents led many families to scatter spirit money by the roadside to appease the souls of the deceased. This evolved into a custom where drivers encountering spirit money or unknown dark figures on the road late at night must, according to tradition, roll down their windows and toss out a stack of spirit money to ensure safe passage. Otherwise, cold sighs might be faintly heard from the back seat, or the windshield could suddenly be obscured by thick fog and ghostly handprints, causing drivers to get lost on the perilous cliff edges. This forbidden mountain path has gradually faded from its past notoriety after the opening of the Hsuehshan Tunnel. However, the eerie whispers echoing in the fog on the winding curves late at night still linger as an indelible shadow in the hearts of all night travelers.