When you spend your whole career on the road, you see a lot of things. Inspiring things; beautiful things; inexplicable things; and a whole whack of weird things.
These long haul truckers from around the world recently took to the internet to share the strangest things they've seen out on the road. Some are funny, some are bizarre, and some are a little bit creepy. But hey: life is a highway.
45. Cult Following
I was coming back home from a trip from Michigan and I saw these people wearing cult-like robes. One in town, one on a highway, and one in a park, all staring at me.
44. Flashing Lights
I’m a truck driver in the UK. Was driving through rural Scotland one night, going down a country lane. All of a sudden, I started to see flashing lights coming through the trees. Lights of all colours flashing through the branches and causing some really freaky looking shadows on the road.
I’m not a believer in aliens or anything, but my first thought was a UFO. Safe to say, I put my foot down and got out of there.
Found out the next day it was rave happening in a field. But at the time it half scared me out of my wits.
43. You See A Lot On The Open Road
Creepiest
Driving the I-30 through Texas and Arkansas, I would see what looked like animals/faces popping out of the bushes -- but longer than a glance proved nothing was there. They had just paved the highway, and there was hardly any traffic. I was dead tired, it was super dark. Highway hypnosis, I suppose.
"Paranormal"
When I went to local driving, my route ran near an Air Reserve Base in Indiana, so you'd see planes and helicopters pretty often. One night, about 2 AM, I was headed to pick up another load when I saw a bright green light in the corner of my windshield. It was too low to be an aircraft. It moved pretty slowly, then darted and I lost sight of it behind some trees.
Typical "I saw a UFO" stuff, but I still think it was just a helicopter or a jet that I saw at the prefect angle that turned after a takeoff. The jet pilots have broken the sound barrier over town a couple times in the past (sonic boom) so a jet flying abnormally isn't necessarily out of the realm of possibility.
Just crazy
Driving South on I-75 in the winter in Ohio, I witnessed a compact car lose control on the on-ramp. They went sideways, fell at least 6 feet off the ramp and onto the shoulder of the interstate, landing on all 4 wheels. Then they spun 360 degrees and proceeded to merge into traffic like it was absolutely nothing. Blew. My. Mind. The CB radio was going nuts for about 5 minutes. "HOLY [BLEEP], WHO ELSE JUST SAW THAT?!"
42. The Jay-Walker
I had to drive from Laredo, TX to Baton Rouge, LA one night. It was about 2am.
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 18-wheeler, my peripheral vision caught a sudden movement. This big truck jolted towards the right shoulder.
I saw the truck was swerving to avoid hitting a person dressed all in white, with a white face, whose arms were folded across the chest and whose eyes were closed as they walked across the highway. Immediately, I swerved to the left and barely missed hitting this ghostly looking person myself.
I can still remember seeing those creepy closed eyes. I have no idea what this person was doing, but it nearly cost them their life.
41. A Close Call
I was 23. My newly married husband and I decided driving team would be a fun adventure after college rather than jumping into the 9-5.
I was down in Arizona, on a long stretch of nothing at about 4am when a guy pulled up next to me waving his CB. (I never left mine on, listening to those guys blab was irritating.)
So I turned on my CB and he told me I had a blown tire. I thanked him, figuring I would stop at the next truck stop.
He kept harassing me to pull over and check my tire for a good 40 miles.
I finally got to a next town and pilot truck stop, got out and checked my truck. No blown tires anywhere.
No clue what that guy would’ve done to me if I had pulled over alone in the middle of nowhere - but I'm so glad I trusted my gut and didn’t stop.
40. Probably Should Have Reported That...
39. Sad Clown
38. Venison
I was driving in upstate New York in early spring during deer season. Not only where there deer everywhere that you had to look out for, there was deer pieces strewn everywhere from cars hitting them, then more cars hitting the roadkill and so on. Literal deer chunks all over the roads. Gross.
37. "A Common Occurrence"
My dad has several stories from hauling logs in Idaho and driving trucks through Utah and Nevada. My favorite is from actually just in his pickup going through Utah. He 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 stopped and turned it on and pulled off at the next diner. The folks in the diner called it a common occurrence.
The creepiest is when he was hauling logs in Idaho and was coming down from near Coeur d'alene area during a snowy winter night. He was putting on chains before heading down steep grade and said all of the hair 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 the 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.
36. Completely Counterproductive
A few years ago some animal rights activists managed to release thousands of mink from a farm next to a large road, at night. The road was more blood than tarmac for miles. Remains everywhere and don't even get me started on the smell.
35. Yikes
My uncle was a long haul trucker and he swears that one time he was driving down the road 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 none the less.
34. Where Are You Going?
The creepiest is seeing people walking along the shoulder of the highway when it’s pitch black out and there hasn’t been a town for miles and miles and there isn’t one coming up for miles either.
33. It's A Trap
I was driving cross country once. Coming into Louisiana, it started getting spooky. There were lots of cars on the side of the road near a swamp. I kinda felt the swamp calling to me; I just wanted to pull over for some reason. Going about 60, I crossed over a short bridge and there was a golden retriever puppy in a dog bed, looking clean and not scared, right on the side of the bridge.
It really freaked me out. I’m a dog lover but I’m not stopping there for anything. I feel like it was some kind of trap.
32. Creepy Coincidence
31. Pavement Meditation
Driving home from a trip one night, something told me to merge over, so I did. About a quarter mile later there was a guy sitting in the middle of the lane I was just in. It really freaked me out like nothing else I've ever experienced out there.
30. A Bad Omen
I was crossing the Navajo Nation on my way to Colorado in the 90’s. It was around 1 am and I was really tired, so I pulled over between Gallup and Ship Rock for a nap. Had a nightmare of evil-looking faces coming at me out of the pitch black, screaming. I woke up started the engine, and when I turned on my headlights there was a coyote and a jack rabbit sitting about 10 feet apart just on the edge of the light. I've never had a nightmare like that before or since. I have traveled that route a few times but never stopped after dark again.
29. You Would Not Believe Your Eyes
Smashed fireflies on your windshield will leave a glowing splatter if you hit them after they light up. Pretty eerie.
28. A Free Show
15-year driver here. Here's the coolest thing I've ever seen.
27. Scarred For Life
I was a touring musician for about ten years, so I spent a lot of time on the road. Typically, we were driving through the middle of the night, but occasionally had travel days where we made our way throughout the day (typically show to show being more then 10 hours apart).
I have seen many accidents of varying degrees of injury, but one still sticks out to me more than others. We had just finished playing SXSW in Austin, Texas, and we were making our way to LA to start a tour the next day. Since we were in the same city for a week, we were all pretty well rested, which meant everyone was awake and full of energy.
We were having a fun conversation when we crested the top of a hill, from which we could see traffic was completely clear on the other side of the highway, but about half a mile down, it looked like 4 lanes completely backed up and no one was moving. We were joking about what might be holding up traffic when we approached the accident. There was a GMC Envoy, the very same car I owned at the time, that appeared to have rolled maybe 5 or 6 times, that had landed perfectly balanced on the cement median between the highways. All of the windows were gone, including the wind shield. About 20 feet from the car, I saw the body of a woman and the body of a child, both of them very obviously dead.
Everyone was completely silent for the next hour or so, until we pulled over and decided to take a break. Not because we physically needed one, but I think everyone needed to quit thinking about it.
26. Road Dog
I was once driving along I15 in Idaho. There was a stray dog walking down the road. He stopped and sat and stared right at me as I approached. I got this feeling to pull over, so I did. He jumped right up into the cab and we rode out. I pulled in the nearest truck stop and he got out and wandered off.
Sometimes I wonder if it was a ghost pup or if some trucker forgot his dog and the dog knew the best way to find him, or perhaps the dog was simply hitchhiking.
Feeling like I should pull over for a dog was definitely the weirdest I've ever felt. He did have a cute little bandana. The whole thing made me feel like I should get a trucker dog to keep me company on the road. But it's a rough lifestyle I wouldn't wish on anyone.
25. Follow Your Instincts
Way back in the day, I was on a trip to Marquette, MI in a 1 ton truck hauling a 20 foot enclosed trailer. It was about 2 or 3 pm in the afternoon. My route had a few pickups from the lower half of the state that needed to go north. I was heading towards Grayling when I noticed the light outside was, for any lack of a better word, odd. It gave me one of those gut feelings that tells you something is wrong. I pulled off at the next service station to investigate further.
Found that the sky that had been overcast all day had a almost perfectly round, giant hole/tunnel in it. That giant hole looked like it went up for 15,000 feet to clear blue skies. The odd light was from the green/orange light, and dark storm clouds that made the outer ring of the hole. Looked like other weather was coming in but the forecast had called for only regular rain earlier.
I don't ignore gut feelings so I quickly checked into a dive motel and parked my truck against the building to shield it from the current wind direction. About a 15 minutes later a tornado blew through just a bit north. Later found out from CB traffic that several trucks were blown off the road. I did some figuring and would have likely been in its path when the weather went through. As I made my way north the next day and it was weird seeing the downed trees from where it blew through.
24. "It Was Probably A Deer"
I do recall one night in particular. Basically, I was driving through Montana headed east. My company had miscalculated my mileage, so I requested an emergency fuel-up. I got a response with the nearest gas station that I could get approved at. It wasn't exactly close.
So I turn off the main highway and head toward my stop. It's pitch black, theres no moon, no city light, and I haven't seen any headlights for about an hour. I'm cruising down the highway and I see something in the middle of the road at the furthest extent of my headlights. I slow down, naturally, as I approach it. When I come to pass it, I get one good glance and slam on my breaks as I pass right in the middle of the highway.
All I could think was... What in the world did I just see?! I back up looking in my mirror until I see its red silhouette in my brake lights. Pull my breaks, put on my jacket and grab my flashlight and hop out. I walk to the back of my trailer and put my light on it, and there it was. A headless, skinless, mangled body. I froze and my jaw dropped. I didn't know what I was looking at. All I could do was stand there, in the middle of the highway, in the cold, stagnant air.
There was no fur, there was no clothing. I debated calling the police, as the ribcage looked big enough for someone my size, but I looked at my phone and had zero cell service. The nearest town was about 50 miles out. When I put my phone away, I flashed my light around and standing at the end of the road were a handful of coyotes staring at me. Then they started coming through the fence and trotting my direction.
I figured this is the part where I get back in the truck, so I did, and continued on my way. To this day, I still do not know if it was human or not. I've convinced myself that it was more than likely a deer. But I've never seen a deer that looked like that before or since.
23. Big Kitty
I am a log truck driver in the Pacific Northwest. We go up into the woods on logging roads and haul logs back from the loggers to sawmills. We start work very early in the morning (2-5 a.m.), so it's night time obviously.
One of my co-workers pulled away from the job and started down the logging road. After a couple miles -- after the load had settled a bit -- he decided to pull over and throw his remaining wrappers around the load. As he was tying his load down, he looked back and saw a mountain lion watching him from ten feet off of the end of his trailer. He slowly backed up to his driver door and got in. By the time he looked in his mirror the lion had disappeared.
We see lions and bears fairly often out there, but to be that close and out of the truck... We face different obstacles up in the woods than just highway drivers.
22. Ghost Police
On the highway at about 3 AM, in the middle of nowhere between Roanoke and DC, absolutely nobody around. I'm cruising along in the left lane simply because nobody else is around. No headlights for the past hour, no tail lights either. No road lamps either. It's dark, its mildly damp, its foggy. I have the music up, I'm feeling good, all is fine.
And then I just happen to look to the left and there is a fucking dog barking at me. A German Shepard, in a car passenger seat, somewhat blue-glow from the instruments inside the car, and its got its face to its window and its barking its head off at me. I get a good hard look at it, too, because at first my brain is not registering 'cop car, dummy!'
I'm doing 90+ in a 75, I promptly have the 'oh crap!' moment when the dog, the instruments, the white crown vic/light bar all click in my brain after a second hard look. I put my foot on the brakes and start slowing down hard but safe, to pull over. I even put my blinker on to start shifting lanes over to the right to pull over because-
WAIT. There is no shoulder on the left side of this road!
I look back to my left (where there is still no shoulder/room for another car!), and it's just gone. No trace. I slammed my brakes and stopped in the middle of the highway, flipped on all my light bars and even looked around with my handheld spot. There was NOTHING. No tail lights, no headlights, no engine sounds, nothing. There are no other tire marks in the damp but mine, and I can see for a nice long distance both ways, too. Nothing.
21. Come To The Light
One night, around 1 or 2am, I saw a huge flash out towards the right rear side of the vehicle. It was almost like stadium lights had turned on then off real quick. So bright and white -- it was crazy.
Thing is, I was on a major interstate, in the middle of a forest, with no cars around me. My first thought was an angel or something. To this day I’m still stumped.
20. Nothing To See Here
I was driving near Las Vegas at around 3am. I had been following a few black SUVs along the highway for a good hour or so. They had Nevada plates that were single digit numbers in order: 1,2,3. Suddenly they all pulled off the highway down a dirt path. There was no mile marker or cactus that would indicate a path there. It was just dirt. After pulling off the road they all turned their lights off. I didn't stick around. It was creepy.
19. Near Miss
Was driving on this back road at maybe 2-3 AM.
Nobody on the roads. Certainly nobody walking. It was incredibly foggy, the area here is a small protected wetland and visibility was maybe 30-40 feet at best.
There is a 90 degree turn, as I’m turning there is a man standing there, arms at his sides, wearing ragged clothes. Just standing perfectly still, about two feet into the road. I nearly hit him, but was certainly closer to shitting my pants than anything else.
18. Call Of The Wild
I was in rural Maine looking for a lumber mill just before sunset. It took hours to get out there because Maine is riddled with these narrow windy roads that try and get as close as possible to every building in every village from US 1 to Canada.
So I pull in just as the last guy is leaving, I ask him were to park and say I'll see him in the morning. I park my truck in this fairly large gravel parking lot with thick forest on all sides. There are no visible artificial lights except for my truck and my flashlight. After I get parked I go and sit out in a lawn chair and just enjoy the warm night air and look at the absolutely beautiful night sky. It was a rare treat to enjoy basically no light pollution.
As I'm looking at the stars, I suddenly heard what sounded like fifty coyotes, sixty feet away, start howling like mad. It is at this point I run right back into the truck and don't open the doors until sunrise.
17. Notice Me
Once in the middle of nowhere (no buildings/cars for miles) in rural Canada at 3am, a person jumped out on the road in front of my truck and started waving a flashlight at me and flailing his arms. I swerved hard and kept driving. I ended up calling the police about 5 minutes later. Truly, I hope he was alright but that’s not how you get yourself picked up.
16. Just Say No
I was not long haul but a regional driver for a beer company and I saw a young, smart (was going to college) cashier at a gas station go from that to begging me for money behind the sketchiest pit stops in the area in a matter of about 3 months. It's amazing how one bad decision can ruin your whole life. Just say "no" kids.
15. That's What Freedom Looks Like
I saw a guy with a red turban, wearing nothing else but an American flag thong dancing menacingly on the side of the road, thrusting into the air with his junk flailing back and forth. I love this country.
14. This Is A Secure Area
13. That's A Lot Of Cops
I was at a truck stop in Arizona, pulling through the fuel island. Just as I was about to leave, roughly 15 cop cars came flying into the parking lot with a SWAT van. They surrounded a truck that was already parked for the night. I heard later that the driver had lost a tire off his trailer and it had killed a guy on the side of the road. Don't know how true that story was, but it sounded plausible.
12. That's Pretty Sad
I saw a baboon in san Saba Texas crouched down next to the road. He lifted something to his mouth and I saw nothing but fangs. It was so out of place that it gave me goosebumps. One of the locals explained that a lot of fake ranchers will keep exotic animals and when they grow aggressive or go in heat they will cut them loose.
11. Quite An Operation
My dad is a truck driver. About 13-15 years ago, while resting at the side of the road, he woke up in the morning to find that his entire trailer had been robbed empty. My dad's a heavy sleeper but his cargo could not have been stolen without at least a forklift and even he would have woken up if a forklift unloaded his trailer.
My dad suspects the robbers used a pump to get some kind of chloroform into his cabin to make sure he couldn’t wake up.
10. Hard To Know What's Real
Former driver here. You’d see all kinds of crazy stuff at night on the road. I’ve always been a night owl so I can’t chalk it up to exhaustion, but I’m sure that none of it was what it seemed.
A giant, shaggy black dog running along and eventually across the road.
A man with yellow eyes and a long black duster standing in the road smiling.
More than one light in the sky moving and changing directions at speeds that make my head spin to think about.
Phantom deer. Probably real deer but it sure didn’t seem like it at the time.
Injured people walking on the side of the road. Saw a few, only one ever turned out to be real. Glad I kept stopping to check.
Lights in the trees like fairies.
And my personal favorite: an enormous black creature with extremely long appendages and a hunched torso that tried to swipe at vehicles.
I’ve read a lot about most of these phenomena and understand their explanations but darned if they didn’t seem completely real and scary when I witnessed them. Some of them so much so that it seemed like a good idea to stop instead of risking it. I don’t believe in ghosts and monsters but some of those gave me pause.
9. A Sign?
When I was doing the long haul thing, I was driving through Oklahoma, don't remember exactly where, but it was late at night, and I was already tired. Well I was driving along and saw what I thought was a grim reaper, looked in my mirrors and didn't see it. At that point I decided that, regardless of how many hours I have left on my log, I'm stopping the next chance I get to rest.
Later that night after getting parked, I turned on my CB and heard someone talking about a bad accident just a few miles beyond where I had stopped. After asking how long ago it happened, it turned out that if I had kept going, I would have been caught up in it.
8. What A Jerk
Westbound I-90 between Vantage and Ellensburg, WA. Young woman in a summer dress and heels walking alone on the shoulder towards Ellensburg. No vehicles for miles, so I knew she didn’t break down. If you are familiar with this stretch of 90 you know there aren’t any houses either. It’s desolate.
I pull over and ask if she needs a ride. She gets in, says thank you and I immediately see that she’s been crying. I silently take her to the nearest gas station and let her out. She thanks me and tells me her boyfriend had gotten mad at her shortly before I had stopped and kicked her out. Just kicked her out of the car, alone, in the middle of nowhere. Anything might have happened to her.
7. Snow And Lightning
I-80 Nebraska just west of North Platte and it started snowing pretty heavy. About 1:00 am. Very cold outside and dry snow. This is the kind that doesn't stick to the windshield or road immediately, just swirls around. The snow flying straight at me, seemingly going 1000 mph, my headlights reflecting of each individual crystal like I'm going light speed and the snow are stars in the sky.
It's easy to get vertigo, or straight up hypnotized by snow like this. Then something crazy happened. The wind kicked up, howling blowing the snow everywhere, every direction, and then lightning. Massive lightening in a blizzard! Flash, boom! Flash, BOOM! The whole inside of the cab lights up like it's day time. It was like for a few minutes I was in some other dimension, or the matrix or something. Like being inside a tornado.
6. You Have To Wonder What They Wanted
It was late, on US-160 between Kayenta and Tuba City, Arizona. Very lonely, very dark road. Speed limit is 65. I start slowly coming up on a car going a few mph below that. Once I get close, the car suddenly drops down to 35 and sits at that speed with the hazard lights on and me stuck behind him.
I’m wondering what’s going on, if another car is going to appear out of nowhere and try to run me off the road, rob me or worse. No cars coming the other direction, no cell service. Single lane, can’t risk a pass because the road is so dark and windy. Finally found a straightaway, got around that car and got the heck out of there.
Probably wouldn’t have thought much of it on some country road in Ohio, but out in the desert your mind goes to strange places.
5. Storm Of A Lifetime
I was driving though Kansas on the I-70 one night when I hit one of the craziest thunderstorms I’ve ever seen. It was so bad that the road started flooding a bit and I had to pull into a service plaza to wait it out.
As I was sitting in the truck watching the storm, there were a series of lightning strikes followed by a blackout. Suddenly, a massively bright light began moving behind the clouds, too slowly to be an aircraft but too fast to be part of the storm system. It moved up over the hills and trees before crossing directly overhead... then disappearing behind the service plaza.
The transit from tree line to plaza took maybe 5-10 minutes tops, and while it was overhead it cast everything in an eerie blue glow and lit up the parking lot. I seriously thought aliens were invading or something. Anyway, I kid you not, within 10 minutes of the creepy light disappearing the rain had completely stopped and the parking lot lights came back on. It was like someone had flipped a switch. I got outta there as quickly as humanly possible.
4. The Howling Trailers
The creepiest thing I remember, other than the empty rest areas in the middle of nowhere, was the howling trailers of Flagstaff.
I get to my pickup point at midnight. The guard tells me to open my trailer doors and leave them open after I drop my empty trailer. He gives me directions to the drop area, and when I get there I hear the most chilling howl.
It sounds like a giant blowing over a hundred massive bottles. The cold wind blows right through me as the howling gets louder. I find an open spot and back in my trailer. I start cranking down my landing gear and it's louder than ever. I'm feeling the vibration through my body.
I get the landing gear down, I pull my fifth wheel release, and I'm gone to pick up my loaded trailer.
I get to the area where they keep the loaded trailers and I find my load. The wind picks up again and the howl is almost deafening! I feel the vibration even stronger as the goosebumps rise on my body. I hook up the air lines and electrical, do a pre-trip inspection on the trailer, and go to the back to close the door.
When I get to the back doors, the wind picks up again. The howling is coming from the wind blowing across all the open doors of all the trailers. Still creepy as death. I slam the doors shut and seal it at the guard shack.
I tell the guard and he replies that they've had dozens of people quit over the howling trailers. He told me they get too creeped out by it 'cause it's in the middle of the woods.
3. In The Mist
I was driving through the back roads of Arkansas around 3am. Suddenly I hit a dense fog bank. It was so thick that I knew I should have pulled off the road because I could barely see in front of me, but sometimes pulling over can be just as dangerous. So I slow to about 20mph and put my hazards on.
I see no other cars coming from either directions. After about 15 minutes, I start seeing human-shaped shadows illuminated by my headlights, darting around the sides of the road and across it.
It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I saw maybe five or six of them. Never got a good look; all I saw were shadows darting back and forth, but they we definitely humanoid. Needless to say I was freaked out and wanted to get away. I sped up a bit and after about 5 minutes I came out of the fog bank. It ended just as suddenly as it began.
I sped away at my allotted 65mph and didn't stop until the sun came up.
2. Bee Careful
I was headed west on I-76 here in Denver, just cruising along at about 70mph. Out of nowhere, I saw a massive, almost solid cloud of what looked to be dirt coming toward me. I'd say it was at least 20 feet wide and 10 feet high. I scanned ahead of me but couldn't see any vehicle that could have caused it.
With nowhere to go, I slowed down and drove into the cloud, hoping there wasn't anything big enough in there to come through the windshield or damage my truck. The instant it hit, I knew it wasn't dust. I was suddenly going 70 with zero visibility.
I immediately hit the washers because I couldn't see a thing through all of the carnage. My windshield was painted with guts. Turns out it was bees -- freaking huge bees that sounded like rocks when they hit me. I can't even imagine seeing that swarm if I was walking. They would kill anything in their path.
1. Roswell
Rolling through Roswell, NM at around 3 AM about 7 years ago. It's pitch black and in the distance we could see something on fire. No other cars traveling down this highway. Get closer and it's a car fully engulfed in flames, i'm talking 5ft flames. We didn't stop and check if anyone was in it. Too creeped out. We called highway patrol and let them know.
