It was first presented on the November 17, 1941, broadcast of The Orson Welles Show on CBS Radio, featuring a score written and conducted by Bernard Herrmann, Fletcher's first husband.

Welles performed The Hitch-Hiker four times on radio, and the play was adapted for a notable 1960 episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.

He is exhausted and desperate for company by the time he reaches Oklahoma, so he picks up a different hitch-hiker, a young woman heading to Amarillo, Texas.

After confirming that he has reached the correct number, the woman explains that Mrs. Adams was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown after the death of her son Ronald, who was killed six days before in an auto accident on the Brooklyn Bridge.

… Orson Welles and his group of Mercury Players made of this script a haunting study of the supernatural, which can still raise hackles along my own spine.

It was also re-recorded as stock music that can be heard (usually uncredited) on the soundtracks of several CBS television series, including the 1960 Twilight Zone adaptation of The Hitch-Hiker.

[7] Welles also performed the radio play on Suspense (September 2, 1942), The Philip Morris Playhouse (October 16, 1942),[8] and The Mercury Summer Theatre of the Air (June 21, 1946).

[9] Rod Serling adapted The Hitch-Hiker for the first season of his television anthology series The Twilight Zone for an episode originally broadcast on January 22, 1960.

Serling's version mostly kept to the radio show plot with a few exceptions, most notably changing the driver to a young woman named Nan Adams (portrayed by Inger Stevens) and moving the fatal accident at the beginning of the story from the Brooklyn Bridge to a dusty road in rural Pennsylvania.

[13] In 2020, a fragment of Welles’ radio broadcast was sampled by Hip-Hop and R&B artist Logic to be part of the first track of his studio album, No Pressure.