You guys are so missing the point it's almost funny.
Yes, the ending was telegraphed.
Yes, Josh was cynical and that's why the witch got him.
The point is (and this is my interpretation. Remind me to tell you about the time how in a literature exam I explained Richard Corey completely opposite from what we were taught in class but was able to convince the teacher that that was my interpretation of the poem and therefore completely valid, and I had the quotes to back myself up), the point is that this is either a cautionary tale or a derogatory piece, depending on your inclinations.
See, Josh is an academic, a university student, studying of all things, folklore. And he is all of the cliches that you can think of. Self confident and knowledgeable, but completely clueless at the same time. Convinced of his own superiority but easily taken down.
He's driving fast on a winding mountain road at night, but he's OK, he's a good driver. After all, he's used to driving in all sorts of conditions (read: he's studied a lot). And yet, he crashed his car without even knowing about it OR he was so clueless that his car ran out of gas without his knowing (read: academia does not prepare you for real life).
He studies folklore, and was probably in that area collecting and/or corroborating stories. And yet he's never heard this one, the one that will be his downfall. He has excellent encyclopedic knowledge of folklore, but doesn't know a thing about them. It's like learning to swim from a podcast. The knowledge is there, but not the right kind of knowledge. He knows all the what about folklore, but not the why. He thinks the story of the October Witch, like many other folklore stories, is a cautionary tale or to scare children. He doesn't know that folklore is there for a reason. Every story has a grain of truth in it. But to the academic in his ivory tower that is, of course, preposterous.
You can add another layer. We don't know a thing about Josh, what he was wearing, where he lives or what kind of car he drives. But from the story we know all about Audra. And the descriptions, from Josh's point of view, are all steeped in derision. Poor pathetic Audra has only ever driven this one old truck her entire life (Josh probably drives a car that's less than 3 years old). Poor pathetic Audra has never been 30 miles from her place of birth (Josh probably studies in a university far from his home town and travels the country for his research). Poor pathetic Audra lives in a two room cabin in the middle of the woods (Josh probably has a nice, modern apartment on campus). Poor pathetic Audra has this old decrepit dog (Josh might have a young Yorkie). Poor pathetic Audra loses power so often that she has hurricane lamps and candles around the house (Josh apparently needs a flashlight to get out of the car). Poor pathetic Audra needs to use Wall Mart utility candles (you get the picture). And yet, despite all of that all it took was a warm fire and a bowl of soup to render him completely incapacitated.
It's the academic's self-important and supercilious outlook contrasted with how easily that bubble is burst.
You can even take this a step further into the "<insert field> majors are completely useless" or "what's the point of a degree in something that is only good in academia", but I'll stop here.
The author was trying to tell us something, to get her point across. We have to look beyond the surface of the story into its deeper meaning. We need to read the intent between the lines.
Or this story just popped into her head and she had to get it out. Whichever you prefer.