“Okay, so…there is a taxi driver and it was really late at night and he just finished his shift so, you know, he’s in his taxi and he’s driving his way home. But then along the way, as he was driving a street, he sees this woman dressed all in white just standing on the side of the road, waving her arms in a very dead kinda fashion, a very somber wave sorta. And so the taxi driver was like “Oh, why not? I think she needs a ride” so he stops the car and he lets the woman get in the car. All right, so the taxi driver was like “Where to, Miss?” and the woman just says “Take me home, it should be by the cemetery.” And the taxi driver said “Um, all right…I know where the cemetery is so I guess I’ll just take you there.” Now again, this woman is dressed all in white and she’s pale and she has no expression on her face and she’s just sitting in the back seat. All right, so you know the taxi driver’s just driving along and he looks at the rear-view mirror and he sees the lady in the back seat just sitting there and he looks at the road and he looks back again and the lady just disappeared. And he’s like “Oh my gosh….maybe I’m just tired so I’m just hallucinating. I’m just imagining.” So he blinks a little and looks in the mirror and he sees the lady again. He’s like “Okay okay, I’m not freaking out. I’m not freaking out.” Then he makes a turn and he looks in the mirror again and the lady disappeared and he’s like “Okay, don’t freak out. This is just your mind playing tricks on you.” So he looks at the road and he looks at the mirror again and the lady appears. All right? Ok. So he’s really freaked out that this point. He’s really scared. So he’s just, you know, he starts breathing really hard and he’s like “Oh my gosh, what’s going on?” And then once more, ok, once more, he looks in the mirror again and the lady disappears. He looks in the rear-view mirror and he doesn’t see anything. So he freaks out BIG TIME. You know? He’s like “OH MY GOSH! I have to stop now! I have to stop!” So he suddenly just screeches the car, he brakes and it’s like a sudden halt and he just stops all of a sudden and he looks in the rear-view mirror again… and the lady appears. But now there’s blood running down all over her face. And the taxi driver’s just…you know, runs and jumps out and goes “Oh my gosh! Please don’t hurt me, please!! What’s going on? What’s happening?” And then the lady says “What are you talking about? I’ve just been bending down to pick my nose but then you stopped the car and then I rammed my head into the seat and then I got a bloody nose.”

Andy heard this joke from his aunt when he was little. When asked why he thinks this joke is funny, he says that it’s probably because it starts off sounding like a scary story and the end is just not what one expects it to be. I think this joke reflects a general fear of encounters with strangers and nighttime. In this case, the description of the woman sets her up to appear like a ghost figure. She’s dressed in white, looks pale, and is expressionless. That, and the fact that she’s just standing at the edge of a road in the middle of nowhere at night can easily lead one to find her a bit abnormal…almost supernatural even. The surprising twist makes the joke so funny because it breaks the suspense with humor that people didn’t expect because they thought they were going to listen to a scary story. It is also interesting to note the element of the number three in this joke. The taxi driver looked at the rear-view mirror three times before he couldn’t take it anymore and decided to brake suddenly and that was when he saw her face full of blood.