There’s nothing creepier than a long road on a dark night, and no one understands this better than long-haul truckers. Day after day, they drive through big cities, small towns, and the eerie no man’s land in between. And when night falls, well, strange things can happen. These are truckers’ most chilling experiences on the road.
1. The Disappearing Woman
My uncle said one night he was sleeping above his trailer bed when suddenly in the distance, he could see a small light approaching. As it got closer, he had a chilling realization. He described seeing a really, really old, wrinkly woman who held a candle, draped in dark gowns. He said her nails were so long they curled.
She walked into a cave opening, and then disappeared. My uncle said he nope’d out of there real fast.
2. Gone Girl
My cousin works at a truck stop in Kansas. She told me about some guy who parked his truck and got out, and then a woman got out of the passenger seat. It was kind of cold, so the trucker was wearing a coat and hat. But the woman was wearing summer clothes. My cousin thought nothing of it and did her whole "Hi, welcome in."
The trucker bought a coffee, but the woman just stood there in the doorway. Now my cousin was freaked out. She didn't want to be rude, but she was a teenage girl alone in a gas station in the middle of nowhere. "Excuse me miss, do you need anything?" She asked. "Who are you talking to?" The truck driver asked when he got to the checkout.
"The woman who got out of your truck?" My cousin pointed, but the woman had disappeared. She told me she had never seen a look of such pure terror on a man's face before. He just whispered a quiet "Oh no." Got his coffee and left. The woman did not get back into his truck, and my cousin couldn't find her in the store afterward.
She says it was one of the most terrifying experiences she had ever had while on that job.
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3. A Voice From Beyond
Driving through an abandoned section of Baltimore at 3:00 in the morning, my CB radio turned itself on and crackled for a bit. Out of nowhere, some voice over the radio said in a deep Southern drawl, “I ain’t got no panties on.” I could see up and down the interstate for miles, and saw not one set of headlights around me for hours...
4. In Search Of Lost Time
It was summer and my dad’s birthday, so we drove to a casino two hours away to watch a boxing match with my uncle. It finishes, and we drive back the same night. We're nearing a canyon with no phone reception, so we call my mom and tell her we'll be home soon. The canyon usually takes about 30 minutes with no traffic, and it's around midnight.
So we enter the canyon and we're all pretty tired. To keep us talking, we start telling stories, most of them creepy stories. This goes on for a while and it feels like time is passing in a haze. We pass this part of the canyon and suddenly I get deja vu. I'm convinced we already passed that before. All of us have driven this canyon a hundred times and know the layout.
We keep talking, and then we pass the same part again. This time, I point it out and my dad and uncle notice the time—it's 1:00 AM, and we're still not home. So we all start to freak out. We stop talking and just watch the road slowly pass by. Now that we're paying attention, though, time seems to catch up. We exit the canyon around 1:15 AM and call my mom, who is freaked out she hadn't heard from us.
We still to this day have no idea where that extra 45 minutes went.
5. Over The Airwaves
I had a friend tell a story that he swears on to this day. He and his girlfriend were making the drive to Naples, Florida, late night, on a two-lane road through the Everglades, and had been in a line of cars behind an 18-wheeler for multiple miles. She fell asleep, and he was surfing for something to listen to on the radio. Only one station came in clearly enough to be tolerable, so he gave it a listen.
The DJ came on and said something along the lines of, “the stars are extra bright in the Everglades tonight. If you’re driving through there, pull off and take a look.” He said he normally wouldn’t even think of it, but for some reason, he felt compelled to that night. He woke up his girlfriend. She was annoyed and didn’t want to, but he convinced her it would be worth it.
They stopped and just took in the stars for 5-10 minutes. He said it was the most amazing sky he’s ever seen. They get back on the road and drive another few minutes. Then they witness a horrific sight. They come across a massive accident. The truck they were following had jack-knifed and took out a handful of vehicles that were following it.
He said there multiple fatalities. They most likely would have been involved in the crash if not for that random DJ on the only radio station to come in that night.
6. Auto Pilot
I drive five hours one way to work. My shift gets out at 11:30 pm, so if I’ve got a second wind, I can usually make it the whole way home. Sometimes, though, I have to stop to nap. So, I recall getting tired shortly before Binghamton, which from work to Binghamton proper is about 1.5 hours. This exit with a gas station I stop at frequently is about 15 minutes before this.
Anyway, I stop, gas up, buy my snacks, and put up a sign in my window saying “I’m ok, I just have four more hours of driving to do, please don’t knock.” I push the seat back to nap, and I have an alarm set for 20 minutes. This is now about 1:00 am.
Next thing I know, it’s 6:30 am, and I’m on some back road with houses, but also fields, and I’m driving super slowly. I have no idea where I am, and how I came to be here. I don’t have a lot of service bars, but I plug in my mom’s address and hope directions pop up. It does, and it takes me to a highway entrance in Harpursville NY.
Ok...in about 20 minutes, I’m back on track. Assuming I woke up to my alarm, it would’ve been like 1:30 am, and I came to about 6:30 am. WHAT THE HECK WAS I DOING FOR 5 HOURS?!?! How did I not hit anything (checked out the car, it was fine), how was I driving the speed limit…just...HOW?!?! Or was I asleep the whole time? The terror allowed me to complete the drive.
7. Last Chance
I was driving through the Canadian Rockies late at night and had just passed through a small town. So I’m driving through the pitch black and I need to stop to go to the bathroom. But because it’s so dark, I miss the last rest stop for the next while. No problem, the highway is completely deserted. So I pull to the side of the road.
I do my business while staring out into the dark and then stand by my car for a bit. As I’m standing there, I see the figure of a man just walking out of the tree line. I’m miles from civilization, patchy cell service, and there isn’t a soul on the road. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me and maybe it was a deer, but nope, this was a man.
So I calmly walk back to the driver’s door and get in, locking the doors behind me. I’m keeping my eye on this guy as I nervously put my car in drive, ready to peel out, but for some reason, I just stayed put. The guy walks right up to my passenger door and knocks on the window. I crack the window and I ask “what’s up?”
He replies to me in a very, very serious tone: “I need you to call the 9-1-1.” I cautiously ask why, and he tells me his heartbreaking story. He had gone out into the woods to kill himself, but he couldn’t go through with it because he had thought of his daughters right before he was about to do it. So I call the authorities while the guy quietly cries outside.
He had a kitchen knife that he was going to use on himself, so I stayed in the car and advised him to maybe leave the knife on the ground before the officers arrived. They came and got him, but before they left with him I gave him a solid heart-to-heart and wished him well. I still think about him. I hope he was able to turn things around.
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8. On The Wrong Track
I work for a railroad, and sometimes it’s just a conductor and engineer cruising along on a very isolated, fairly wooded track. I've heard a few older guys mention something about a family or a man with a suitcase walking down the track with no concerns. Constant blowing of the horn, flashing of the lights, etc., and they just kept walking down the track, then disappearing. .
9. Don’t Look Now
I used to work as a field technician in the oil industry, so I spent a lot of time driving through remote areas of Canada at odd hours. One very strange and eerie experience sticks with me. I was driving late at night when I noticed a very large black shape on the road in front of me. Thinking it was a moose, I stepped on the brakes, coming to a stop only a few feet from it.
Despite being so close and having my headlights shining directly on it, I still couldn't tell what I was looking at. It was vaguely the shape of a four-legged animal, but very big, probably about six feet tall. Aside from that, it was completely featureless. I couldn't make out any details whatsoever, no shine from its eyes, nothing. But then I noticed something even more terrifying.
There were more of them in the ditch on both sides of the road. Five or six, or maybe more, all the same as the black shape on the road in front of me. None of them were moving. They didn't look like physical objects or living things. More like just large patches of absolute darkness. After I got over my shock, dread started to set in, and I drove around the thing on the road and sped off.
10. Cheshire Grin
I've spent the past four years driving every night for work. I was in a fairly rural part of Mississippi somewhere between Clarksdale and Greenwood, where it’s all two-lane highways the 250-mile drive home. The weather had turned pretty sour as I was leaving Clarksdale. I called my wife told her there were high wind advisories and very possible tornado threats, and I'd call her as soon as I made it to a safe area again.
I had already been working for 14 hours when I got in the truck, so I ate dinner and grabbed some coffee to stay awake and alert. Now. If you’ve never driven through flat farmland at night for one hundred miles, it's very fatiguing and spooky even without bad weather. I had driven maybe 30 miles out into the farmland when hail started bouncing off my truck.
In July, hail means tornado, and I knew it. I pull off to the side, with no one around me, and start looking for the storm or tornado I believe is approaching. I rolled the passenger window down and shone a bright flashlight off into the night. Nothing there. I turn to the driver's side—and this guy has his face pushed against my glass. Grinning from ear to ear.
It was a tall male, very, very pale white, eyes were sunk back quite a bit, but that grin is what truly got me. It was corner to corner with crooked teeth like the Cheshire cat. Then I screamed, and he was gone. I slammed the truck in drive and took off at the highest speed I could go. Now, my company has a camera installed in my truck.
So even though I called my wife and didn’t tell her about this guy or the hail, I made darn sure I checked my SD card the moment after I hung up. I promise you, this guy never popped up on my front or rear cameras. I’ve always played it off as my imagination, but I will say I don't drive through the delta in the dark anymore if I don't absolutely have to.
11. The Dark Beast
I was working the overnight shift from Friday night into Saturday morning at a gas station. At about 6:00 am, a semi pulls into the fuel aisle. The driver gets out and almost runs into the store, clearly shaken. His face is completely white and he is obviously upset. My first thought was the poor man had hit someone on the road, since we get a lot of people walking across a four-lane highway in front of the store.
So I ask what's wrong. He looks at me for a second and is like, "I'm not crazy." Now I'm thinking “Great, I'm here all alone and this guy is losing it.” I say of course not. "I just saw something huge on the side of the road." "Like a deer or bear? We had a bear get in the dumpster last week." "No, bigger than a bear on its back legs."
"Maybe a big person?" "It picked up a dead buck on the side of the road and carried it over its shoulder into the woods." I can only stare at him. My brain cannot deal with this information this late in a shift. A local comes up to the counter to get his usual and the guy tells him the story, too. The local says, "Oh, that's the Big Foot that lives near the county line."
The truck driver and I are both looking at this guy like he has two heads. He has to be joking. This trucker pays for his fuel at record speed and leaves, never to be seen again. The local still insists it's Big Foot. I just don't go in the woods now, because I don't know.
12. Near Miss
My great uncle drove big trucks. Living in the middle of nowhere, sometimes people would leave trash on the road. And since he had a big truck, he’d just smash into said boxes or paper and continue on. Well, one day he was coming up on a cardboard box and just had the urge to swerve and miss this one for some reason.
He misses it and passes by with no incident. Then he looks in his rearview, and out of the box pops a kindergarten-age little kid.
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13. A Rude Awakening
I think the worst creepy thing that ever happened to me was when I was heading from Arizona to Utah. This was a few years ago, and the main highway had been taken out in a flash flood. It was under construction, so I had to take a weird detour through the mountains in lower Utah. It was getting late and I was getting tired, so I pulled off onto the shoulder and went to sleep in my bunk.
Now, this was in the middle of nowhere. The closest town was like 40 miles away, so it is completely pitch black outside once I turn the lights off. Around 4 am, I wake up because I'm hearing something messing with my truck, like playing with the air and power cables between my cab and the trailer, which is literally 6 inches from where my head is at on the outside of the cab.
Then I feel something climb onto the landing that's on the back of my truck. It shakes my whole truck, so I'm guessing something around 200 hundred pounds was climbing around back there, I'm thinking like a mountain lion or a bear. At this point, I'm wide awake and I want to get this thing away from me, so I slam my hand into my cab wall trying to scare whatever is out there. The response made me jump out of my skin.
I hear someone, a male, scream, and I hear them fall off the back of my truck. I then hear about 15 other people all around my truck yelling. I climb up front, turn on my lights...and illuminate a squad of Army Reserves doing their midnight march and capture drills. Turns out, these guys were supposed to go find an "abandoned" truck and "secure" it for their midnight drills.
That truck was three miles back down the road. They were not expecting me to be sleeping there, and thought I was part of the drill. I'm ex-military, so after explaining I was not part of their test and was just there out of coincidence, we laughed it off. They had to radio to their commanding officer and tell him not to have the other squads bother me.
14. One Big Creepy Family
I've seen some rather screwed-up stuff over the years. I was driving across Kansas on I-70 headed west. There is a pretty long stretch out there that's just a couple of little towns and not much else. As the night wore on, I realized I had been passed several times by this beat-up old motor home. In it, several people sat with their noses almost pressed to the window, watching me with creepy interest as they passed. Every time.
Also, I never noticed where I re-passed them at. A couple of times, I swear they passed me twice where there were no rest areas or exits to pull off at. I would have seen them stopped somewhere, but yet, here they were passing me again. They all looked like some variant of Charles Manson or some other freaky type. Had me pretty uptight by the time I got to the truck stop and stopped for the night.
Almost every driver I know has seen stuff late at night that just can't be explained. Maybe it's fatigue...or maybe not.
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15. Bright Lights, Big Mystery
I got to test drive some rigs and trucks for my job. I was driving down south along the Sea of Cortez with a buddy at night. It was this 4-hour dirt road to Gonzaga, which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere in the desert, and we see the lights of a car behind us coming down fast and now effectively tailing us. The jerk had bar-mount headlights on top, which are super bright.
It’s normal for locals to party in the nearest spring-breaker town and then go down this particular road super fast to “test” their rigs, since there are no authorities there. So I try waving him off to get the guy to keep the lights low since he’s blinding us, but he isn't slowing down a bit or turning his roof lights off. Again, this was a dangerous, super dark road.
Finally, I found a spot to bail off the road without crashing, and we see lights passing by us super fast and going straight toward a curve. We were like, “that’s it, he is going to crash down to the sea,” But that’s not what happened at all. Sure enough, the vehicle goes off the road.
But the lights didn’t fall. They kept going straight into the beach, and the sea, and then pitched up abruptly to the night sky and disappeared. We didn’t say a word for a minute or so, and then my buddy goes, “Did you see it?” I say, “The freaking flying truck?” We didn’t’ talk about it anymore, as it simply didn't make sense to talk about. I still don’t understand.
16. The Whisper Men
I’m a FedEx contractor, and I was in one of those big box trucks. I finished a long delivery day, and I swear to whatever gods you believe in that I was hearing voices in my cab. It wasn’t the radio, it wasn’t my tinnitus, it wasn’t my subconscious. I was hearing whispering voices in my right ear that were coming from the passenger seat.
The voices continued even after I had gotten back to my hub, clocked out, and hopped in my own car to go home. They only stopped when I left the parking lot. It only happened that night. I still have no idea what the heck it was because I had ruled everything else out.
17. The Unwelcome Guest
I was driving a flatbed and picked up a load of construction material. I strapped everything down, put a tarp over the load, and left. About five miles down the road, in the middle of nowhere, I notice my tarp flapping in the wind. I found a wide shoulder and pulled over to fix it. I realize that I did a bad job tarping this load the first time and decide to re-do it on the side of the road.
I undo all the bungee straps, drag the tarps off, roll them back up, climb up on the load, and start unrolling the tarps again. That’s when I see a guy walking down the same side of the road I'm on, coming towards my truck. I don't think anything about it other than to keep an eye on him, because I'm in the middle of nowhere, and continue what I'm doing.
About the time I have the tarps set in place and am climbing down to start hooking the bungee straps back on, this dude is getting close enough that I'm now paying more attention to him than I am to tarping my load. I grab my winch bar and set it on the trailer where I'm working just in case. The guy gets to me, and the first thing I notice is his hair.
It's like a mullet, but it's patchy. Like he tried to cut his own hair and had a seizure in the process. The next thing I noticed were his eyes, which I can only describe as "off." Like they were clear and he seemed sober, but they also gave me the distinct impression that the elevator didn't go all the way up. His clothes were dirty and not well maintained, with dirty white tennis shoes.
I remember he didn't have laces on one shoe and the tongue was noticeably out of place. He stops by me, waits until I acknowledge him. His words made me shiver. He just says, "I've got a long walk." I'm like “Yeah man, you do, we're in the middle of nowhere.” Making it clear there's no ride to be had here. He nods, starts walking by me continuing on his way.
Then he stops at about the driver door on my truck and turns around, comes back to me, and repeats himself. "I've got a long walk." At this point, I explained explicitly that I can't give him a ride, insurance and all that. I apologize for not being able to help him out, and he seems to accept this, turns around, and leaves.
I wait for him to get a little ways away from my truck and start working on finishing the tarp job. I still keep an eye on him and he's moving away from me. As I'm putting on the last of the bungee straps, I look over to check where he's at…and he's turned around heading back towards me. He’s now about 100 yards in front of my truck and coming back my way.
It looks like he's talking on a cell phone. He has his hand up to his face and I can barely make out his mouth moving. Meanwhile, his other hand is waving like he's having a conversation with someone. I finish with the straps, grab my winch bar, and am climbing into my truck as he's about 10 yards away now. Soon as I'm in the cab, I lock the doors and set the winch bar on the passenger seat just in case.
I look at the guy and realize he's not talking on a phone, he's just talking to his hand. Now I'm really nervous, because he doesn't look like he's having a nice pleasant chat, it looks more like an angry conversation. I crank the truck up, put it in gear, and just pull out, didn't look for traffic or anything. As I pass him, he's just looking at me, still holding his hand to his face and just staring at me. It gave me the creeps.
About the time I hit fifth or sixth gear, I look in the mirror…and there's no one there.
18. Things That Go Bump In The Night
I was parked at a dirt turnout in the Arizona desert for the night. This is out in Navajo country. At about 2:00 am, I woke up to scratching at the window of my sleeper, and it went on for about 15 minutes. I'm sitting there in the dark, scared to bones, and wondering what the heck is happening with my a knife in my hand.
After it ended, I waited another 15 minutes or so before I opened my curtain and looked out the windows. I couldn't see anything outside, and I was still the only one parked there. Got out the next morning and all I found were some footprints coming to the truck and eventually walking back into the desert. Haven't parked there since; I always stop at a small truck stop nearby now.
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19. The Phantom Touch
I was driving through eastern Washington on some state roads. There were no rest stops or cities, but I had done the route enough to know there were these massive dirt areas every 40 miles where you could park safely away from the road. I decided to call it a night and closed my blinds and laid down to watch something on my phone.
After roughly an hour, I hear someone try to open the driver’s-side door. I haven't heard any vehicles on the road the whole time I'm parked, but I get up to peek out the curtains. As I'm looking out into the blackness of the window, I hear them try the passenger side door. I peek down from the top of the curtain but can't see anything, so I start the truck and kick on the lights.
I'm fairly freaked out at this point so I'm still not opening the curtains but peeking through gaps. Nothing. Nobody is standing near either of my doors or parked within sightline. I take a deep breath and close the sleeper curtains too, because for some reason that's going to make things better, right? But the worst was yet to come.
After laying back down and convincing myself that something blew against the truck and it only sounded like the doors, I hear what sounds like someone trying to pry open the vents on the sleeper. The door handles start clicking again and the truck starts shifting like someone is climbing on it. I hit the little alarm button in the sleeper hoping to spook them off.
It does nothing but add to the noise of door handles, fingers tapping on windows and chassis, and the hiss of air coming out of the suspension. Then suddenly it stops. A few moments where I can only hear myself breathing and my heart pounding before I hear another truck approach and then drive by. I spent the next few hours waiting for whatever it was to come back, but it never did.
In the morning, I couldn't find any footprints or damage to my truck…but on every window were tiny human-looking handprints, like a toddler had licked their hand and stuck it to my window over and over.
20. The Hills Have Eyes
My friend was driving on a Mexican road at night. He felt the call of nature, so he parked on the sideway and jumped off the truck. He walked to relieve himself and while doing that, he felt a presence beside him. He pointed his flashlight at his side and saw, standing beside him, a small deformed person. It was naked and had both its head and face bloated.
He was standing just there. My friend ran away to his truck, jumped in, and drove away from there.
21. The Woman In White
My Costa Rican tour guide told us a really scary story that happened to a former employee of his who would drive a truck filled with construction materials. They were building miles away from the nearest city, since a lot of Costa Rica is preserved jungle. Anyway, this dude was the first (not the only) person to have this happen to him.
He was driving behind a line of construction trucks on their way to the site late at night. He saw a white pale woman throw herself in the way of the trucks in front of him. He yelled into their radio to stop and check for her, but when they stopped they didn’t find a body or blood and no one had even seen her except for him.
This happened again, and yet again when they stopped, they couldn’t find the girl and no one except the guy who called it saw anything. The other workers thought he was losing it or something. One other time, he had to go out to the site by himself, at night. It had been some time after the incident with the pale woman, so he didn’t think it was a big deal.
He exited the car at one point to take a leak near a clearing, and that’s when he felt it start to get really cold. He turned around and peering out from a tree in the distance he saw the same pale woman staring at him. Dude booked it back to his car and got in the driver’s seat, turned it on, and was about to speed the heck out when he took one last look at his left-side rearview mirror.
He saw her mmmmuch closer and still looking at him. He kept that story to himself, thinking no one would believe him…until a new worker claimed to see the same thing and told my tour guide, who was their boss at the time. When the boss told the truck driver what the new guy saw, the truck driver told him about the second encounter with the woman in the forest. Creepy, creepy stuff all around.
22. Jesus Take The Wheel
My father was a truck driver and he was driving through a smaller town in northern California hauling tomatoes. Suddenly, he got incredibly tired. He wasn’t low on sleep or deprived at all, but he ended up passing out at the wheel. Last thing he saw was the light of the town in front of him. He woke up about two hours later on the other side of town, perfectly parked on the side of the road.
He swears something was looking out for him that night.
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23. An Unseen Presence
Reno, NV. A place on the north side of town, way off the freeway towards an old "military" road. I got there early at like 1:00 am, and the place I was going didn't open until 6:00 am. The facility was closed, so no one was around, and I just pulled into the lot and parked off to the side. I went to sleep and was woken shortly after to someone knocking on the door.
It was so forceful, the truck shook. I jump out of bed, thinking they are there already and want to offload me early. I get to the door and no one is there, so I step down thinking they are behind the trailer. No one around. I look under the truck and around…absolutely no one. No wind or bad weather, not another person around.
I jump in the truck and pull out of there as fast as I could and went and parked in a nearby truck stop. Still can't explain it, I mean I guess I can justify I could have imagined the sound, but the truck shaking was definitely real.
24. The Sixth Sense
My uncle said he hired a guy from town to help him drive late shifts at night with him on the road. The story was, the guy had somehow managed to burn a house down as a kid, and has since claimed to see the dead. He would occasionally swerve on the roads at nothing, or worse, my uncle said he would be sitting around, and the guy would say, “I see a little girl on the swing.”
My aunt confirmed it, said he would say things like that often. Apparently, he learned to live with it.
25. The Truth Is Out There
A few years back, I was driving home after a shift. It was 3 or 4 am, and I was tired but not exhausted. It's a deserted state route in the middle of nowhere, and it's pretty common not to see a single car during the 30-mile trip. I drive this road multiple times a week. It's mostly open fields and some farmland through this 30-mile stretch.
This particular night it was cold, but the sky was clear. Like no clouds or anything, and I actually love nights like this because you can see the stars so well without light pollution. Anyway, about halfway back home, I come over this hill to a 2- or 3-mile straight stretch. A huge, dark object about the length of a pickup truck, but far rounder and thicker, catches my attention.
It's just hovering about 50 feet in the air, over a farm field. There's a very bright red light coming out of the side or bottom. I couldn't tell exactly where it originated from because it was so bright. As I was going about 50mph past it, I only had a few seconds to look at it, but the image is burned into my mind. I have no idea what it was.
I wanted to turn around, but I was freaked out. I'm sure alien life exists somewhere, but as for visiting our planet, I don’t know. But if I ever had to paint a picture of what I think a UFO could look like, I'd paint whatever the heck I saw that night. I haven't seen anything odd over that area since that night, but that was odd enough for a lifetime.
26. Field Of Nightmares
I parked off an exit ramp at about 3 am. The moon was full and high, and I spotted an unmistakably human figure in a nearby cut cornfield. A little spooky, but I just wrote it off as an old-timer putting up a scarecrow for the grandkids. I started watching a few YouTube videos before turning in, and out of the corner of my vision, I thought I saw movement.
I shut my lights off to get a good look, and saw the figure but nothing else. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like maybe it was in a different spot. Maybe a little closer even. I was definitely feeling a bit spooked. The highway was devoid of anyone besides a car passing every ten minutes or so. I didn’t want to, but I had to jump out to go to the bathroom.
I considered a bottle, but I told myself I was being childish. I took a look at the figure and it was right where I figured it should be. I hop out, walk between my truck and trailer, and start going. Every fiber of my being wanted to look. I told myself again I was being foolish, but I couldn’t help it. I looked out... the field was empty, and the figure wasn’t there.
My stomach dropped. I finished up and jumped back in. I took off down the highway. Stopped 40 minutes up the road at a well-lit and very full store. Haven’t stopped on a ramp since.
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27. Lord Of The Flies
My uncle was driving between Great Falls and Helena at around 3:00 am. He had his high beams on, as it was a lonely drive and a quiet highway. In the distance, he saw something cross the median and started to slow his approach, thinking it was a deer. As he got closer, he realized it was standing up and slowed down to about 30 mph. Then he realized what it was and started to panic.
It was a man in blue coveralls with a pig’s head. Not a mask, but literally the head of a pig on his shoulder. My uncle moved to the left lane and as he passed, Pig Head lunged at the truck. My uncle didn’t stop to check if he’d grabbed on until he was in the safety of Helena. Nothing was out of the ordinary there, but on that stretch of road now, he doesn’t slow down for anything.
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28. The Bad Samaritan
Driving home through the outskirts of town, a young woman ran through the street waving at me and yelling something. She was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and panties. There are a lot of homeless people in that area, so I just kept going. It's fairly common for women to flag a car down and distract them while a bunch of guys scramble out of the bushes to take your car.
About a mile down the road, though, I realized she didn't really look homeless. I felt guilty for not stopping, and the ethical thing to do was risk the carjacking for the possibility the woman was in danger. Bad people shouldn't turn everyone else into bad people with fear. But when I went back, the woman was totally gone.
I had only passed one car when I flipped around. A blue, 99s Toyota. There are no stores or houses. Just sand, dirt, rocks, brush. Later that night, it occurred to me that she may have been running from the man in the blue Toyota. I hope she was a carjacker.
29. The Silent Watcher
I used to have this regular delivery place that was out in the boondocks, miles away from civilization and smack dab in the middle of two large towns. I would drive this route maybe once a month, and would always pass at least one car driving towards me due to the sheer length of the drive. There was a small group of old houses on this route that were really broken down.
I had never seen anyone around them in six months of driving the route. Always assumed they were vacant because they didn't look liveable. Well, I was driving out to this customer one autumn afternoon. I’d been driving for a very long time without seeing a single car drive towards me. Finally, I drive past the abandoned houses, and there's one old lady in her front yard pushing an old manual grass cutter.
She stops in her tracks as I drive towards her. I took it as a sign I was speeding or something and slowed down. I take a quick glance in my rearview mirror after passing by, and she was just staring straight at me. She dropped the grass cutter and turned 180 degrees to do this... It was just very odd and definitely set off my spidey sense.
Never saw her again, or anyone else on that route by those houses in the 10 months I drove it.
30. Oh Deer
This was a trash route in a pretty rural area. We were at a stop loading trash when a pickup stopped behind us. A petite woman in scrubs that were covered in blood got out and asked directions to Lake Jack Nolan. She said there was a deer that had been hit by a truck and she had been sent to remove the remains. She never said who sent her, but she wasn't moving a deer anywhere at her size.
Still, we gave her directions and sent her on her way. We all said we wondered if she was going to dump a body or something like that. She was already covered in blood in a nice truck and was supposed to be on her way to move roadkill that was far to heavy for her to handle. It really disturbed me at the time, and I still think about it.
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31. Beasts Among Us
I used to drive a truck in northern Manitoba, Canada. You can drive for several hours and see very few vehicles. This road is quite flat and straight in stretches. Of course, this is deep in the bush. One day, I saw something cross the road in the distance. Very large, easily past the hood on my truck. But not long, like a moose or elk. Just tall.
It disappeared into the bush and as I drove by the spot, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I heard days later a tow truck driver describing on the radio his encounter with a similar creature, only he was much more clear he had spotted Bigfoot. This guy went to some length to explain he didn't want people thinking he was crazy. But he was sure what he saw.
I asked an aboriginal client of mine in a nearby community, and he said the Elders spoke of them as commonly as they spoke of the other animals. I don't know what I saw that day, but I'm certain it wasn't a bear, moose, deer, or elk. I just don't know what the heck it was.
32. Femme Fatale
My father has told me this story maybe a thousand times. My family went on a trip from Mexico City to Acapulco when I was barely a year old. On the way back home in the middle of the night, the car broke down and a patrol car quickly came to our help. There were three officers in the car, and the chief offered to take my dad to the nearest gas station.
The officer told him he could find a mechanic there, and he told the other two officers to stay with our car. My dad says they seemed absolutely not pleased with the order, until the chief told them, "Don't worry, there's a woman and two children." That seemed to calm the two men, but it definitely gave my dad and mom a bit of a pause.
Driving to the gas station in the car, my dad asked the chief what that was all about. The chief told him that there had been many accidents in that part of the road, and all of the accidents involved young men traveling without any women or children. Those who had survived told a completely eerie tale. They said that they crashed because they could see a very beautiful woman next to the road.
However, once they came close to her, she turned out to be just a rotting corpse staring at them, and they crashed because they were paralyzed with fear.
33. A Daring Feat
Driving southbound on I-75 in the winter in Ohio, I witnessed a compact car like a Cobalt or similar get on the on-ramp to merge in to I-75 North and then completely lose control. They went sideways, fell at least six feet off the ramp and onto the shoulder of the interstate, landing on all four wheels. They then spun 360 degrees, and proceeded to merge into traffic like it was nothing.
Blew. My. Mind. The CB radio was going nuts for about five minutes. "OH MY GOD WHO ELSE JUST SAW THAT?" etc.
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34. The Night That Never Ends
Myself and two friends had to drive from Laredo, TX to Baton Rouge, LA one night in my Ford van. It was about 2:00 am. There is a particularly long and dark section of highway just outside Laredo...no buildings, towns, or lights for about 50 miles. I was in the right lane coming up on a truck and pulled out into the left passing lane.
As I was slowly overtaking this long truck, my peripheral vision caught a sudden movement of this big truck toward the right shoulder. I saw the truck was swerving to avoid hitting a person dressed in all white, with a white face...whose arms were folded across the chest and eyes were closed as they walked across the highway.
I swerved to the left and barely missed this ghostly-looking person with my passenger mirror...I can still remember seeing that their eyes were closed...that's how close we came to hitting this person.
35. Closed Room Mystery
I drove by a marsh every night when I was going home from work. One night, I saw a car pulled over with hazards on. Dude was head to toe covered in blood. No crash, no injury, just covered in blood.
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36. The Great Unknown
My dad has several stories from hauling logs in Idaho and driving trucks through Utah and Nevada. He once said there was a light keeping pace with him out in the desert on a moonless night. It kept pace for a minute before it disappeared and his truck turned off. He pulled off at the next diner, and the folks in there called it a common occurrence.
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37. Mystery: Solved
One time on a long-distance drive, I started seeing white spots about a foot in diameter on the road. Probably 30-40 over the span of a mile or so, and I couldn’t quite figure out what they were. Eventually, I came to a pickup truck with a large cage built onto the back and pulled over on the side road. That’s when it all became clear.
The door to the cage was wide open and it was completely empty. The man driving it was staring at the empty cage and scratching his head. The white spots were apparently just his lost chickens!
38. Aiding And Abetting
My great uncle was a long-haul trucker, and he swears that one time he was driving down the road, only to see two guys pull a rolled-up carpet out of the trunk of their car and throw it in the river. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but it’s still creepy nonetheless.
39. Losing It
A few years ago, I was driving back from Georgia to Arkansas. The trip usually means I cross into the northern part of Alabama, where I normally take a wee nap at this one rest area. One day, I take my nap, go to the bathroom, and get a Red Bull from the vending machine. I get back in my car at 1:30-2:00 am and start driving again.
The highway was completely deserted except for me. I found it weird but shrugged it off. The next thing I know, it's nearing 6:00 am and the sun's coming up. My gas tank was near empty (at the rest stop I had 3/4 a tank), and my odometer shows I've driven like 250 miles, but my GPS showed I was only about 10 miles from the rest area.
I have no recollection of the time lost. It’s just gone.
40. Light Up The Sky
I was driving through a brush area with these weird rock walls. No plants or anything, just rock and sand. It was monsoon time, so it was raining cats and dogs, just pouring so hard you could barely see going 20mph. Thunder and lightning just rocking the car. Sometimes turning into hail and pounding you. Just a nasty storm.
I came around a corner, and it looked like the whole countryside was legitimately on fire. Like 20' tall flames, hundreds of yards in all directions while pouring rain at dusk. Just rocks and dirt wildly on fire in the pouring rain. I just slowly drove on; it was totally freaky and surreal. Honestly, I thought I may have hallucinated it. But then I found out the truth.
I checked the news and discovered that a propane truck had slid off the road going way too fast and apparently busted open pretty violently and lit on fire. Never saw the truck, it must have been behind something. Felt a bit bad after about not stopping...
41. Ghost Town
I have one weird story from when I was a kid. My parents always took us on long road trips every summer, and my dad liked to take meandering routes through rural towns to see all the tourist traps. One trip, we passed through a little town in Illinois, the kind you miss if you sneeze. This one had one bizarre feature: mannequins.
Every house and business was only populated by mannequins. I don’t remember seeing any people. Everything looked maintained and clean, so someone was at least caring for the place. There weren’t any signs or anything indicating it was for tourists. Just a convenience store and bait shop with a sign reading, “Eat here. Get worms.”
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42. Alarm Bells Ringing
I was cruising down Highway 212 in the middle of the night in Southern Montana. About 2:00 am, I'm pulling through the only town on the lonely stretch of highway. One stoplight town and I get stopped at the only red light. Hadn't seen a vehicle on the road since I had hopped off I-90 about an hour prior, and there wasn't a single person outside in the town.
Sitting at that red light, a loud siren starts sounding. Loud enough that I don't see how any person in the town or within a few miles could've slept through it. It reminded me of the siren from the movie Silent Hill. I gunned it through the red light and away from that town as fast as my little four-cylinder Malibu would go.
It may not seem that crazy, but just imagine the most haunting sound you've ever heard, in a place you've never been, several hours separated from seeing a person last. I'm sure there's an innocent explanation for the siren, but it still sends chills down my spine just thinking of it.
43. A Deal With The Devil
My friend told me a story about riding with his father in his truck as a kid. They were in the middle of nowhere, and they were coming up on a person lying in the road with no one else around, no cars, etc. His dad blew the horn. They didn’t move, so he blew it again. As he got closer, they still didn’t move. So he did something horrific.
He told my friend to put his head down and cover his eyes…and he ran the person over. When they looked back, a bunch of people who were previously hiding were running out of the woods. Basically, his dad had suspected it was a setup for a robbery or worse, and wasn’t chancing it with his child in the car. I think about that story ALL the time.
44. A Higher Calling
I was in the middle of absolutely nowhere in Texas and getting tired. There were absolutely no lights anywhere around me but the stars. I guess I kind of messed up a turn at one of those forks in the road, because out of nowhere a calm voice came in quite loud over the CB: “DRIVER, LOOKS LIKE IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO PULL OVER AND GRAB SOME SLEEP.”
So I did. I’m not ignoring Invisible CB Jesus.
45. One Wrong Move
I worked at the Nevada nuclear test site decommissioning old buildings. One of the creepiest days was when I was sent with an end dump load of non-hazardous material to the landfill, which I had never been to before. Somehow, I missed the turn and ended up at an armed gate with machine guns pointed at me. Very uncomfortable.
Once I explained my mistake, I was quite hastily turned around. Still not knowing exactly where my turn was—I was looking for a very non-descript desert road— I headed back. I turned on the next dirt road I came to, and had to take a break. My hands were still shaking from the run-in with the armed guards.
46. The Corner Of Your Eye
I was driving through a national park in the middle of the night, going through a slow stretch. Every so often, I think I see something out the window and beside me. Just a glimpse of movement. When I look, though, I don’t catch it. Finally, on about the third time, I whip my head around really fast—and this time I recognize it.
It’s a huge black wolf following alongside my truck just off the highway. I only saw it for a few seconds before I had to focus back on the road, but it was absolutely lovely yet unsettling.
47. Mountain Man
My friend was hauling logs in Idaho and was coming down during a snowy winter night. He was putting on chains before heading down a steep hill, when he said all of the hairs suddenly stood up on his body. It felt like there was something watching him. Halfway down the switchbacks, he saw a large figure standing on a 20-foot tall embankment.
As he got closer, it jumped down and the shoulders were as tall as his cab. In a single bound, it leaped down and then leaped over to the other side of the embankment. At the time, he thought it was a Sasquatch, now he says it was probably a "demon" trying to make him crash. He didn't stop to remove the chains until he was well away from the mountain.
48. A Shadow Of Doubt
The company I drive for picks up cast iron pipe at a place not far out of town. I've had to pick up there several times after dark when no one else is there because it's a 24-hour place. Every time I've been there after dark, I can hear groaning sounds behind trailers and the sound of something tapping on the trailers. The second time I loaded there at night, I noticed the same thing, but this time there was a dark silhouette of somebody standing between two trailers while I was throwing straps.
After that, I quit throwing straps at night if there are no other drivers hooking up. I also park in the street outside right under a streetlight and wait until daybreak. I don’t know what it is, and I'd rather not find out.
49. Mystery Woman
My dad drove a truck between Edinburgh and London and tells this story often. He was driving down the motorway and looked to his right, only to see a woman with a severe bun staring at him with a terrified expression from a car next to him. Before he really knows how to react, the car pulls off at the next exit and my dad, although shaken, carries on.
About half an hour later, a different car with a different driver pulls alongside my dad. When he looked over, his blood ran cold. It was the same woman in the passenger seat, with the same expression on her face. My dad thinks “screw this” and plans to pull into the next services to report it, even if it’s a misunderstanding. Better to be safe than sorry, right?
However, the car disappears before he can get any details, and he thinks there is no point calling the authorities with no details, so he carries on driving. Literally about four hours later, almost in London, yet another car pulls alongside him with the same woman, same hair, same terrified expression, except this time she appears to be SCREAMING at my dad through the window.
So my dad pulls over and calls the authorities. Apparently, they have received three other calls about the same woman in the same area in the last few minutes. He never heard anything more about it, but he didn’t see her again. Although he kept an eye on the news, he also didn’t see anything about it. I think it really haunts him to this day.
50. A Vengeful Ghost
My dad is a trucker. About 20-some years ago, a woman took her own life by running out in front of him. He said that every night around the time she passed, the cab of his truck would drop a few degrees in temperature and he felt a presence. He said this went on for a few weeks, until finally he spoke out to her and said he forgave her and wished that she had peace.
He said he never experienced the eeriness again.
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51. It’s Coming From Inside The Car
My mom told me a story about one late night out trucking. Her husband was sleeping in the back, and she was starting to get super tired and struggling to stay awake. She heard another trucker on the CB radio, and started chatting with him. He helped her stay awake for the run until she stopped off at a truck stop and her husband took over.
That next morning, she told her husband what happened. His face went white as a sheet. He told her the CB was broken, and that she couldn’t have talked to anyone. It was impossible.
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