Let’s start at the end of the story: picture Ghost Rider meets The Headless Horseman. Riveting, right? Anyway, it was sometime around the middle of the 20th century that a courtship developed between a young man — the ragtag James Dean type — and a farmer’s daughter in the Oxford, Ohio area. Dissatisfied by the idea of his daughter spending time with a boy who he saw as nothing more than a hooligan on two wheels, he forbade her from seeing him at night or during the week. Nonetheless, they managed to keep a secret correspondence on their own terms. Under the cover of night, they would set off on the boy’s motorcycle together far beyond the watchful eye of the ornery farmer (per Miami Student). 

The story came to a tragic end after the young man, while on his way to propose to his girlfriend, collided with a strip of barbed wire connecting two fence posts, and was beheaded (via Miami University). The tale is almost Shakespearean in tone, especially when you consider that his ghost may have stuck around after the fact.