Presented by Leanna Renee Hieber

Actress, award-winning, bestselling author and ghost tour guide Leanna Renee Hieber discusses how ghosts along roadsides have changed through the centuries, from tales of highwaymen to haunted histories of the modern motorcycle, by-the-wayside, roadside and “hitchhiker” ghosts continue to evolve but keep their startling hold on our collective psyche. Whether omen or warning, fellow traveler or cautionary tale, Leanna will share her own startling, deeply personal experiences with roadside ghosts and how those experiences shaped how she travels to this day.


Leanna Renee Hieber is a professional actress, playwright, ghost tour guide and an award-winning, bestselling author of fiction and non-fiction for Tor, Kensington Books and Union Square and Company. A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts, co-authored with Andrea Janes, was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction and their follow-up, America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger than Fiction, was an Instant USA Today Bestseller and is also a Stoker nominee. Her Gothic Young Adult novel Ravenfield Hall, inspired by the works of Daphne du Maurier, will release in 2027 from Union Square and Company. A 4-time Prism award winner, three of which were awarded to her Gothic Strangely Beautiful saga and a Daphne du Maurier finalist for Darker Still, Leanna’s novels have received translations into multiple languages, national book club editions and her short stories have been featured in notable anthologies while her non-fiction essays have appeared in Apex Magazine, The Deadlands, Haunted Magazine and more. Featured in film and television on shows like Mysteries at the Museum and Beyond the Unknown discussing Victorian Spiritualism, she lives in New York and lectures around the country on Gothic and paranormal themes as they intersect with women’s history.


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