In the year 1845, a group of settlers traveling through the Rocky Mountains became snowbound and trapped. In only two months time, they had used up all their supplies and killed off all of their livestock. Due to the lack of food, the settlers turned to cannibalism and started to eat their dead. After three months of being snowed in, the settlers started killing one another off with the strong feasting on the weak. Finally, a rescue party came along two months after, and out of seventy eight settlers, only one was found still alive – Clayton Wojciehowicz. Clayton supposedly used his family fortune to bribe a judge and be acquitted of all murder and cannibalism charges and returned to the site of the disaster to build the town of New Beulah. The same ground where the settlers flesh was eaten and their bones discarded was covered by a stretch of road that, for many years, has been the site of a high number of unexplained traffic fatalities. That road is Highway 18.
As Ghost Rider began his search for the angel Zadkiel, his journey led to the town of New Beulah to find a boy named Lucas. After Ghost Rider kidnapped Lucas from a hospital filled with gun-toting nurses loyal to the renegade angel, he soon found himself in a death race to escape the clutches of the Cycle Nurses but ended up traveling on Highway 18. The flesh-eating ghosts that inhabit the highway sought to make a meal of Ghost Rider and his passenger, but Blaze was determined to stay off the menu. Using everything in his arsenal, Ghost Rider fought the swarm of specters to a standstill knowing that even a massive hellfire blast wouldn’t keep them down for long. Blaze saved Lucas from the undead settlers, but it wasn’t until he met a man – the last living descendant of Clayton Wojciehowitz, the man who led them to their deaths – that he ended their torment. He rode his motorcycle down the stretch of road with Clayton’s successor in tow and allowed the ghosts to rip his body to pieces until the curse of the Ghosts of Highway 18 was ended, and their souls were set free.
