27 Long Distance Drivers Talk About Their Creepy Experiences On The Road

The man who came out of the woods

“Not a truck driver but once 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 pee and have a smoke. 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, have my pee while staring out into the dark and then light up a cigarette and stand by my car.

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 drivers door and get in, locking the doors behind me. I’m keeping my eye on this guy as I nervously smoke and have 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 cops”. I cautiously ask why and he tells me 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. I call the cops while the guy quietly cries outside. He had a kitchen knife that he was gonna use on himself so I stayed in the car and advised him to maybe leave the knife on the ground before the cops arrived. The cops 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.” — Juicy_Thotato

“Animals”

“I think the best “creepy” thing that ever happened to me was I was heading from Tucson, AZ up into Saltlake City, UT. Well this was a few years ago and the main highway had been taken out in a flash flood, was under construction so I had to take a weird detour through the mountains in lower Utah.

Well 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, closest town was like 40 miles away, so it is complelty pitch black outside once I turn the lights off. Any way 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 but on the outside of the cab. Then I feel something climb onto the landing that’s on the back of my truck and it shakes my whole truck, so I’m guessing something around 2 to 3 hundred pounds was climbing around back there, I’m thinking like a mountain lion or a bear. At this point I’m wide the F awake and I want to get this thing away from me, so I slam my hand into my cab wall trying to scare what ever is out there, SLAM Hard enough to really make it loud.

I then hear someone, a male, scream bloody murder 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 ruck 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 3 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 legit was just there out of coincidence we laughed it off. They had to radio to their C.O. and tell him I was there and not have the other squads bother me.” — DWL52

The people laying in the road

“I used to deliver hotshot freight across the great plains/Minnesota area. One night around 2am I was hauling across North Dakota trying to reach Montana by morning. I was delivering a particularly valuable tractor part that a farm desperately needed for the following day. I began to notice some highway hypnosis sneaking up on me, but it didn’t really bother me because I’d been through it hundreds of times before. Anyone who has driven across North Dakota knows that it is incredibly flat. Like, really flat. There also tends to be very straight and long roads. It’s somewhat easy to see things on the road that are far away, even at night.

I noticed something long on the road, spanning my entire lane, approximately half a mile in front of me. I slowed down a little and prepared to move into the opposite lane, thinking it was some re-tread off a blown tire. As I got closer I noticed it was two people, laying head to toe across the entire lane. I swerved into the other lane, successfully avoiding them and came to an almost complete stop. But they didn’t move. Not an inch.

I was just about to back up and check on them when I remembered a story that an old greybeard colleague of mine told me. He told me that in certain remote areas, people will lie down in the middle of the road and wait for a car or truck to stop and see what’s going on. At that point, the road-layers along with whoever else is hiding in the nearby bushes will beat the shit out of the driver and steal his vehicle, leaving him in the middle of nowhere.

I decided not to back up, and when the two people in the road saw me put my truck back in gear and drive away, they both got up and walked toward the shoulder. I called the police and explained what happened, but we were so far away from civilization that I doubt anything came of it.

Thanks to that old greybeard, I got to keep my truck, my job, and my teeth.” — ArronRodgersButthole

Tapping

“I pull into a perdue plant, drop my empty trailer a go park where they allow bobtails to sit, right next to a nice little pond. My pick up was in 12 hours so I do my pti and lay down in the bunk.

At about 3am I hear something tapping on my passenger side door. I get up, look out the window expecting to see someone, maybe a driver asking for a lumper check but no ones there.

Ight maybe I’m hearing things. So I go back to lay down. As soon as my head hits the pillow I hear the tapping again except this time it’s on my driver side.

Same thing as before, I jump up and look out my window but nothing’s there. Double lock my doors just in case and open my side hatches so I can hear what’s going on outside.

After about 15 minutes, I hear a very light splat splat splat going along the driver side of the truck.

I slowly get, up planning to look out my window at the exact moment whoever it is knocks on my door. And then I hear a thud coming from the roof of the cab.

I stop grab my tire thumper off its hook and ready myself for whatever the hell is going on.

Then a mother fucking goose falls off the top of the truck and lands on my hood. It stands up, waddles back and forth and looks at me.

As we make eye contact the tapping at my door starts again. I say fuck it and throw open the driver side door and there’s another damn goose waddling away with all the speed it can manage honking like a 5 year old who just found the horn on his new bike.

The pond I parked next too had a ton of them just dicking around. Needless to say It was hard to sleep that night because every couple minutes the damn geese would peck at my door or land on the cab and waddle around.” — Amnial556

Scarecrow

“Parked off an exit ramp at about 3am for my 10hour. The moon was full and high, and I Spotted an unmistakably human figure in a nearby cut corn field. A little spooky but I just wrote it off as an old timer putting up a scarecrow for the grandkids.

Started watching a few YouTube videos before turning in and out the corner of my vision I though I saw movement. I shut my lights off to get a good look, 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. 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 pee. 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 leakin. 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 the figure wasn’t there. My stomach dropped, I pinched off and jumped back in. I took off down the highway, didn’t give one shit about a violation. Stopped 40 minutes up the road at a well lit and very full Loves. Haven’t stopped on a ramp since.” — acanno10

Literal ‘Game of Thrones’ shit

“My father was a truck driver in East Africa in the 80’s and early 90’s. During the years leading up to the Rwandan genocide, my father was passing through Rwanda. He reached a check point and was forcibly removed from his truck at gunpoint. Apparently he looked like he belonged to the Tutsi tribe and they put him in a cage with other Tutsi prisoners. He tried communicating that he isn’t Rwandan but no one spoke the same language as him. Every night they would take about 5 people from the cage and slaughter them in front of him. After the third night, he saw a man that spoke a little bit of Swahili, which my dad spoke, and told him that he’s not Rwandan and showed him his ID. Somehow that guy got him out and he was handed the keys to his truck and was on his way.” — girlbouttown

Black dog phenomena

“I used to work as a roadtrain driver in the Gascoyne region of Outback Western Australia.

A lot of Black dog phenomena on night shift, I would see all kinds of things appear in the shadows because of fatigue, or three goats would change into some sort of beast.

One time I swear I nearly ran over a Corgi which would be astronomical odds there is one in the wild in this part of the outback.

One night I pulled up to sleep let the engine run cold for ten minutes then tried to sleep. I woke up to noises, not voices but some sort of order to the noises and the whole cab of the truck was shaking. I looked in the mirror and saw shadows around the vehicle, I turned the truck on and every single light attached to the thing and hastily continued my run to the port. This is a big cab would have taken a lot to move it.

I rationalise it as it being windy, some goats around the truck and fatigue. Either way scared the fuck out of me and I never slept on night shift again.” — Skatemacka02

CB radio

“Driving through an abandoned section of Baltimore at 3 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…” — THREEkoalas

Miss Trunchbull

“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, saw a woman with a ‘miss trunchbull bun’ (as he describes it) 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, with the same woman in the passenger seat, with the same expression on her face. My dad thinks ‘fuck this’ and plans to pull into the next services to report as even if it’s nothing / misunderstanding, better to be safe than sorry, right? Anyway the car disappears before he can get any details (plates etc) and he thinks there is no point calling the police with no details so he carries on driving. Literally about 4 hours later, almost in London, yet another car pulls alongside him with the same woman, same miss trunchbull hair, same terrified expression, except this time she appears to be SCREAMING at my dad through the window, so my dad pulls over into a layby and calls the police. Apparently they have received 3 other calls about the same woman / car in the same area in the last few minutes. It is unfortunately anticlimactic as he never heard anything more about it but he didn’t see her again and although he kept an eye on the news, didn’t see anything about it. Hopefully it’s just a giant coincidence. Who knows.” — ScrewLucy

Stopped time

“We were driving through a canyon as well that’s pretty deserted. We noted it was getting late and should speed up to get home as it was 9:15 (I remember it exactly) so we’re driving, talking, laughing about stuff. What seemed like half an hour later we’re still a good 10 miles away from getting out of the canyon so I asked for the time and she just got quiet and said “wait… it’s still 9:15” we got the strangest chills I’ve personally ever had and we were just downright speechless. I could tell she was freaking out so I said let’s talk about it later and changed the subject. Time resumed after that. We could never make sense of what the hell happened up there. It was multiple clocks telling us 9:15, you could wager the phones could have lost signal and stuck to that time but my car’s clock is analog and manually set.” — Vintage_Lobster

Creepy old lady

“Used to do deliveries, not actually a truck driver, though. I used to have this regular that was out in the boondocks, 25m+ out of the way of civilisation 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 1 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 and I had never seen anyone around them in 6+ months of driving the route. Always assumed they were vacant because they didn’t look livable.

Well, I was driving out to this customer one Fall afternoon. Had been driving for a :very: long time without seeing a single car drive towards me. Finally drive past the abandoned houses and there’s 1 old lady in her front yard pushing an old manual grass cutter, but she stops in her tracks as I drive towards her. I took it as a sign I was speeding or something and slow down. I take a quick glance in my rear view mirror after passing by and she was staring straight at me. She dropped the grass cutter and turned 180* 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.” — TempVirage

Mystery man

“Around 2006ish I was driving flatbed, picked up a load of construction material (drywall, roofing, don’t remember but it was prepackaged in boxes and I remember having to use strap protectors on the load) in rural Tennessee, memory is foggy now but I want to say it was between Memphis and Nashville but closer to the intersection of the MS, AL, TN state lines.

Tarp required so I strapped everything down, tarped the load and left the shipper. About 5 miles down the road, in the middle of nowhere woods on a 2 lane road, I notice my tarp flapping in the wind. Found a wide shoulder and pulled over to fix it. I realize that I just flat did a shitty job tarping this load and decide to re-do it on the side of the road. Undo all the bungee straps, drag the tarps off, roll them back up, climb up on the load and start unrolling the tarps again and 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 cause I’m in the middle of nowhere and continue what I’m doing. About the time I have 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 (8 pound solid metal bar about 4 feet long tapered to a blunt point on one and and hollow on the other, used for tightening straps and chains etc….)

The guy gets to me and the first thing I notice is his hair. It’s like a mullet but it’s patchy as fuck. Like he tried to cut his own hair and had a seizure in the process and said fuck it “good enough to party”. The next thing I notice were his eyes, which I can only describe as “off”. Like they were clear, I didn’t think he was drunk or high or anything, but it also gave me the distinct impression that the elevator didn’t go all the way up. Clothes were dirty and not well maintained, with dirty white tennis shoes, cause 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 and 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, 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 explain that I can’t give him a ride, insurance and all that. 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, now about 100 yards in front of my truck and coming back my way. It looks like he’s talking on a cell phone, has his hand up to his face and I can barely make out his mouth moving, his other hand 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 talking to his fucking hand and now I’m nervous, cause he doesn’t look like he’s having a nice pleasant chat, it looks more like an angry conversation. 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 with this dead ass look on his face just staring at me. Gave me the creeps. About the time I hit 5th or 6th gear I look in the mirror and there’s no one there.” — PenBandit

Mannequins

“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 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/bait shop with a sign reading “Eat here. Get worms”” — OMGSpaghettiisawesom

Night time visitors

“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 drivers 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 drivers side 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 sight line. I take a deep breath and close the sleeper curtains too, because for some reason that’s going to make things better right?

After laying back down and convincing myself that something blew against the truck and it only sounded like the doors (it was fairly windy outside and a lot of flat ground) 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 but 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.” — ICollectTheDead

Junkies

“I was living in my car for a time and had a missing window that I patched with a trash bag. I was asleep in the back, and then woke up to hear someone tapping the windows and trying the doors. I hoped and prayed for them to leave and things got quiet.

Then the fucking junkie ripped off the trash bag, tried to climb in, and got the ever loving fuck stomped out of his head against the door frame. He ran off into the night, I wiped up the blood, repatched the window, drove to a different town to park, and didn’t catch any sleep for days.” — DreamtimeMemetime

Wolves

“Driving through a national park in the middle of the night going through a slow stretch at about 30km/h.

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 and this time I recognize its 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.” — skilganon

People

“My aunt’s friend was driving through New England and decided to take a lesser taken road. It was close to sunset and he’s going through these woods like you would any road. He comes around this one bend in the road and sees this car just stopped in the road, kind of off to the side with the horn blaring. There was someone passed out on the steering wheel. He wanted to stop and help, but something just kept tingling up his spine. He slowed to get next to the car but something inside him made him book it. In his rear view mirror, he saw a large group of people are staring at his car as he drove away, including the guy the that was at wheel.” — comik300

A woman in need of help

“I work for a funeral home in Southern California. I do their body transport. So wherever someone dies I drive the company van and pick them up and bring them to the funeral home. Sometimes we drive far: Vegas, Arizona, Utah and more commonly—northern California. On One of the trips I took to Stockton last year i drove through a more secluded area on the way home to avoid heavy traffic during the early to mid afternoon. Two lane roads with lots of farmland and a random stop sign here and there. While driving I saw a stopped car on the side of the road with it’s hood up and a woman standing by it. as I got closer she started waving her hands to get my attention. Now, I’m a fairly religious person. I believe in god and that he has a Holy Spirit that guides us and helps us make good decisions. I also believe in helping ppl when you can. However, as I got closer to her car, before I even thought if I should help her or not, I literally heard the words “do not stop!” as if they were muttered by someone in my passenger seat. I immediately sped up and said shook my head and said “sorry lady” to myself as I drove by. As I got further and further I noticed in the rear view that there was no longer a lonely women there but 5 ppl standing by the car all staring at me as I drove away. Don’t know exactly what their intentions were. But not worth the risk. ” — dewill4

Highway hypnosis

“My father was a truck driver and he was driving through a smaller town in northern California hauling tomatoes. Suddenly he got incredibly tired. Wasn’t low on sleep, or deprived at all but 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 2 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.” — Tonninc

A woman covered in blood

“Not the middle of nowhere, but 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. 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. She was already covered in blood in a nice truck and was supposed to be on her way to move roadkill that was far too heavy for her to handle. Then we went back to work.” — Pedizzal

Pig man

“My uncle was driving between Great Falls and Helena at around 3am. He had his high beams on as it was a lonely drive and 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 so he slowed down to about 30 mph. He realized what it was and started to panic: 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 till 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.” — widerthanlonger

Grinning man

“I was in a fairly rural part of Mississippi somewhere between Clarksdale and Greenwood, important note it’s all 2 lane highway the 250 mile drive home. The weather had turned pretty sour as I was leaving Clarksdale.

I called my wife told her there was high wind advisories and very possible tornado threats thoughout the Delta 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 had ate dinner and grabbed some coffee to stay awake and alert. Now. If youve never driven through flat farmland at night for one hundred miles. It’s very fatiguing and spooky without incliment weather

I had driven maybe 30 miles out into the farm land when hail started bouncing off my truck, being a MS native I knew in July hail meant tornado. I pull off to the side (I’m in the middle of no where no lights to be seen no cars behind or infront of me) and start looking for the storm/tornado I believe is approaching. I rolled the passenger window down and shined a bright flashlight off into the night. Nothing there. Turn to the driver side and this guy has his face pushed against the glass. Grinning from ear to ear. I screamed and he was gone. I slammed the truck in drive and took off.

We have all the time running cameras on our trucks. I got to the first safe place to stop and called my wife. I didn’t want to scare her so I didn’t mention the guy or the hail storm. I did however pull the SD card and check the cameras. I promise you this guy never popped up on my front or rear cameras. Ive always played it off as my imagination. I will say I don’t drive through the delta in the dark anymore if I don’t absolutely have to.” — RubyRed13GT

“Trash” in the road

“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. One day he was coming up on a cardboard box and just had the urge to swerve and miss this one, he misses it and passes by with no incident, looks in his rear view to look at the box and out pops a kindergarten age little kid. That just heads back to their house as nothing happened.” — drcowart

Looney tunes

“I was driving across Kansas on I-70 headed west. There is a pretty long stretch out there that’s just a couple 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. Several people sat with their noses almost pressed to the window, watching me with creepy interest as the passed. Every time. And I never noticed where I re-passed them at. A couple times I swear they passed me twice where there was 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 freakie type. Had me pretty uptight by the time I got to the TA truck stop in Limon and stopped for the night.” — MrEd57076

Every driver has a story

“Almost every driver I know has seen stuff late at night that just can’t be explained. Maybe it’s fatigue…or maybe not. I’ve seen very large manlike “shadows” cross the road way too fast for their size several times. I ain’t saying it’s a Bigfoot. Never got a clear view. Was always out at the end of the headlights where I couldn’t be entirely sure I even seen anything. But it sure looked like a large something crossing a whole road in just a couple of steps. Really weird.” — MrEd57076