A lonesome road at night is a prime place for some spooky stuff to happen. Throw in fatigue or a case of the jitters and you’ve got a recipe for some creepy road trip stories.
These folks from around the world recently went online to share the creepiest and weirdest stuff they’ve ever seen while they were out on the road, exploring the old fashioned way. Keep those high beams on!
Photo by Jake weirick on Unsplash
49. A storm to remember
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.
48. That really sends a message
47. Making friends in the street
46. Eyes in the corn
45. Off the cliff
44. Cult shock
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.
43. Civil War re-enactor?
I’ve seen my fair share of supernatural stuff out on the interstate. Once, I was trying to follow a flat-bedder who was hauling through the mountains. Suddenly, I feel the air get real cold. That’s when I see there’s a guy standing off to the shoulder just outside the tree line wearing what appeared to be some type of soldier’s uniform. Looked like it was revolutionary war era and he had a musket as well.
As I approach, I can see him staring right at me, and then he starts walking back into the tree line still looking at me. Then he does something that still haunts me to this day. Before he manages to make it through the trees, he disappears. Like literally vanishes in thin air. I had my windows down, and the air in the area got real cold. After about a mile, the air warmed up again. I had a really sad feeling come over me for a while afterward. Needless to say, I didn’t stop for the rest of my shift.
42. Needs help, but won't take it
41. The invisible car
40. Stumbling on a major crime
39. Ranting and raving
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.
38. That's certainly eerie
There’s a route that cuts across the southwest corner of South Dakota, sort of a shortest route from I-90 to I-80. I was driving through one winter right into a blizzard. It was pretty hairy I guess because the roads were closed. Highway patrol made us park in the lot of some local convenience store.
Next day the sun is shining bright and roads are clear. I’m on my way. As I drive, I start to notice these large dark rock-like shapes sticking out of the snow just off the shoulder of the road. Tons of them, like one every 10-15 feet. “Strange,” I thought absently. I’d never been on that road so who knows what they could be.
After a few minutes, I spotted one that was not-so-buried in the snow and the realization sank slowly into me. They were cows. I drove past probably 40 frozen just off the side of the road, literally just past the shoulder. Made me very sad to think they all froze standing up like that, wandering blindly in the snowstorm.
37. The ghost in the road
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.
36. The old tire trick
I was 23. My newly married husband and I decided driving a truck together 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.
35. Are you sure this wasn't a video game?
34. [Insert Arnold quote here]
33. Yeah, that's a pretty spooky prank
32. Leave Bambi alone!
31. Missing your cue
30. Alabama after midnight
29. The rare snow demon
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.
28. Nature: you're scary
27. The dark figure and the phone booth
26. 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.
25. Red fog
24. Working at a castle is the most British thing ever
23. You probably saved her life
Pixabay
22. Nana's diner
21. An ill 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.
20. The friendly biker gang
15-year driver here. Here’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
19. Road dogs
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.
18. Voices from nowhere
I stop at an offramp to stretch out and take a breather. A little girl from some direction I couldn’t figure out giggles and says, “Hi, mister!” My initial reaction was, “What on earth is a little kid doing out here at this time?” So I talk back and say hello. She then responds with, “My mommy says you’ll be ok, don’t worry!”
Now utterly confused, I ask her what she means. No response. Then suddenly, I feel like somebody is standing next to me, but it doesn’t feel negative or bad. Just feels like somebody is right there next to me. Since it doesn’t have a negative vibe to it, I just finish my break and leave.
Later on down the road, I realize that I forgot to fuel up at my last stop when the warning light came on. I scramble to look at my GPS and find the nearest truck stop. I find one and set the course. As I roll up to the truck stop, my truck starts sputtering and I barely make it to the fuel line before the truck starts dying.
I ran out of fuel right as I got on the fuel line. It wasn’t until I was fueling up that it occurred to me what actually happened at my last stop.
17. 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.
Image by skeeze from Pixabay
16. "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.
15. A woman in white
14. 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.
13. The ghost cop
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 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.
12. On their way to Area 51
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.
11. Everything in Australia wants to kill you
10. The 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.
9. This tailgater doesn't want to party
8. It always seems real when it's happening
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.
7. Escaped mental patient
6. The creepiest birthday
5. The howling trailers of Flagstaff
The creepiest thing I remember from my years as a truck driver, 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.
4. That's why you don't pick a fight with a monkey
I was waiting out front of a truck stop back in the mid 80’s. Sitting on a park bench with a guy that had a big Rottweiler kinda dog on a leash with him. I tried to make small talk but he wasn’t a nice guy. So we sat in silence for a few minutes until the most unexpected thing I have ever seen, happened right before my very eyes.
While we were sitting there a big 18 wheeler pulls in without a trailer, so he parks right up front like a normal car would. Inside the cab of the truck, with the driver is a little monkey. The dance for the organ grinder kind. I think they are called Rhesus monkeys perhaps. Well the dog spots this little monkey and proceeds to go crazy over it. Lunging at the end of his leash and barking at the top of his lungs. Generally making a real spectacle of himself to say the least.
The driver is obviously upset, but not nearly as much as the monkey is. Actually upset may be the wrong adjective to use for the monkey though. In retrospect I think eagerly aggressive may be a more appropriate description for his disposition. He was pacing the dashboard back and forth. Never taking his eyes off of this very aggravating dog.
The driver opens his little triangle window that they don’t make on cars anymore. The ones made for smokers back in the day. He yells out to this guy to call his dog off because it is upsetting his monkey. The guy laughs and says no way (I told you he was mean didn’t I?). Says that his dog ain’t bothering nobody. The dog hasn’t shut up since he laid eyes on the monkey. I promise you he is bothering everybody for several blocks around.
Now here’s where things start to get interesting. The driver says that if he doesn’t call his dog off he’s gonna let his monkey loose on that dog. The guy I’m with laughs and says that his dog would eat that monkey alive. Upon hearing this the driver leans over and reaches into his glove box I guess. Pulls out one of those tiny baseball bats like you used to get at Astroworld or carnivals, and places it in the monkey's hand.
The monkey obviously knows what’s about to go down because he is now trying to squeeze out of that little triangular window I mentioned earlier. This monkey has death in his eyes if I have ever seen it. Driver hollers, “Last chance to save your dog, man.” In response, this guy lets his dog off of the leash.
Now we have a situation that has escalated to the point where we have a dog jumping up at the window and a monkey screaming right back at him. Well, the driver finally rolls down the regular window and out leaps all kinds of miniature primate rage. The dog never knew what hit him. Quick as a flash this monkey is riding on the back of this dog’s neck. His two back feet all wrapped up in his neck fur with one hand hanging onto an ear. The other hand as you may have guessed by now is steadily and mercilessly raining down blows about this dog’s head and face. I mean hard blows. You can hear them whap whap whap.
Well it only took a moment for the dog to realize he was in way over his head. He bolts, yelping as he runs away at full speed. I mean this dog is running so hard he’s throwing up tufts of grass and dirt as soon as he leaves pavement. The monkey still riding him and beating on him the whole time. The dog owner acts like he wants to fight now but several people including myself stepped in to stop that nonsense. In a couple of minutes or so the little monkey comes loping back with his little bat still in hand, and leaps up into the still open window of the truck to await his master who has gone on into the store.
That wanker ran off to find his dog (which thankfully he did). The dog was fine, just ashamed.
Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash
3. I thought they were just in cartoons
For some reason I was driving through middle of nowhere west Texas/New Mexico late at night. I'd just moved to that region of the country. I'm driving along while my husband is asleep in the passenger seat when this giant THING comes crawling out into the road in front of me and scares the crap out of me. I scream "WHAT IS THAT THING??" a split second before I slammed into it. My husband gives me this perplexed look and is like "haven't you ever seen a tumbleweed before?"
No Brian, I have NOT seen a tumbleweed before.
2. Men 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.
Photo by Eugene Triguba on Unsplash
1. To bee or not to be
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.
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