Public knowledge of the term expanded greatly with the 1981 publication of Jan Harold Brunvand's book The Vanishing Hitchhiker, which helped launch public awareness of urban legends.

The archetypal modern vanishing hitchhiker is a figure seen in the headlights of a car travelling by night with a single occupant.

The figure adopts the stance of a hitchhiker. The motorist stops and offers the figure a lift. The journey proceeds, sometimes in total silence, and at some subsequent point the passenger appears to vanish while the vehicle is in motion. In many cases, the hitchhiker vanishes when the vehicle reaches the hitchhiker's destination.

Common variant on the above involves the vanishing hitchhiker departing as would a normal passenger, having left some item in the car, or having borrowed a garment for protection against alleged cold (whether or not the weather conditions reflect this claim). The vanishing hitchhiker can also leave some form of information that allegedly encourages the motorist to make subsequent contact.

In such tellings, the garment borrowed is often subsequently found draped over a gravestone in a local cemetery. In this and in the instance of 'imparted information', the unsuspecting motorist subsequently makes contact with the family of a deceased person and finds that their passenger fits the description of a family member killed in some unexpected way (usually a car accident) and that the driver's encounter with the vanishing hitchhiker occurred on the anniversary of their death.

One variant of the story is that a single mom asking people (commonly young single men) that she needs to pick up her children but doesn't know the way. Once at the place where she said her children were supposedly at the women disappears . The myth commonly takes place in the mountains or a local watering hole or river. The driver is commonly seen or reported to drive a truck or van or any other large automobile.This variant of the story is unique in the way that it commonly happens shortly after the accident where she died.

In the Mexican version the hitchhiker is a beautiful woman, who chats with a stranger in a taxi and she leaves as a normal person not before leaving her address; when the person tries to reach the woman at her home, he'll be informed the woman is dead and that it is also the anniversary of her death.

Not all vanishing hitchhiker reports involved allegedly recurring ghosts. One popular variant in Hawaii involves the goddess Pele, travelling the roads incognito and rewarding kind travellers.

Another variant found on the East African Coast where the local Bantu culture is heavily influenced by Arab Muslim culture, involves paranormal beings called "djinn" (English genies). The story typically takes the form of a beautiful girl who is picked up by cross country truckers who are looking for some way to stay awake on their long journeys. At some point the truck driver will look over at his beautiful passenger and discover to his horror that she has goat's legs - like the god of mischief Pan. At this point the girl or djinni laughs and disappears, although in the worst case scenario, the driver is so shocked that he causes the truck to crash, which was the original intention of the djinn.

Other variants include hitchhikers who utter prophecies (typically of pending catastrophe or other evils) before vanishing.