A life on the road, hauling cargo from city to city, can be a lonely one. It can also be dangerous and, sometimes, downright terrifying. Take it from these truckers, who took to Reddit and shared some of their eeriest, most bizarre, and unexplainable experiences while traveling highways all over the world. Here is a compilation of the best of those tales, gathered from two separate discussion threads (here and here).
Truckers Describe the Creepiest Thing They've Seen,
The Beast
"There was a story on here a while back by a trucker... It was getting very late (and very dark) so he pulled into a rest area off the highway in the middle of nowhere. The place was totally empty, meaning there weren't any other vehicles or people there. While he was getting some shut eye inside his truck, he heard a faint sound of a barking dog that seemed to get louder and louder as time went by. Eventually the nasty barking sound was coming from right outside his driver side door. As he got up to look in the window, he didn't see a rabid dog but instead it was some crazy-eyed person looking directly at him, growling and trying to get in. He started the engine and got the heck out of there."
Mysterious Fireball
"Trucker here. A few years back, I was traveling through Ute native land in New Mexico on Highway 491. 491 used to be Route 666, but they changed it a few years back. I think people were stealing the signs. Anyways, I'm in the middle of the desert around midnight, no lights or civilization for miles, when up in the sky there's a huge, orange flash. The orange flash quickly 'inflated' into a giant ball, bigger than the sun. It even had a fiery looking texture to it. Suddenly, the orange ball disappeared, and the entire desert sky, horizon to horizon, flashed a bright yellow, lighting up the everything around me like it was daytime. Then everything went back to normal. This all happened within a few seconds, but it was definitely the weirdest thing I've seen on the road."
Found a Dollar
"Kent, TX, is another one. There's an old Chevron station I think it is, seems like FedEx drivers like stopping in there in droves. I'm guessing it's a popular drop and hook point for them or something. But I stop one day, and I need to take a piss. I don't know why I didn't stop in Van Horn. So I pull off, and I roll up to the empty lot across the street. Kent is an abandoned town. I walk up to the bush line and notice a makeshift fire pit. The wood is somewhat burned, but not all the way. The weird thing is that there's an unscathed dollar bill stuck in the wood. For a second I was like "Ooo piece of candy!" but then this sudden feeling of NOPE came over me. So I left it alone and pissed in the bush. As I'm walking back, I look over at it and get a real negative feeling. I look to the ground in front of me and bam, there's a rattlesnake looking right at me. I stop dead in my tracks, and walk carefully around it, and it keeps staring at me. I ran as fast as I could back to my truck feeling like somebody was behind me. I kicked up a lot of dust getting out of there, and have never stopped in Kent since."
"Missouri, I stopped at an off-ramp to stretch out and take a breather. As I'm smoking a cigarette, a little girl from some direction I couldn't figure out giggles and says 'Hi, mister!' My initial reaction was, 'The fuck is a little kid doing out here at this time?' so I talk back and say hi. 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 didn't have a negative vibe to it, I just finished my cigarette and left. Later on down the road, I realize that I forgot to fuel up at my last stop when the warning light came on. So 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 the hell happened at my last stop."
The High Desert
"Driving from Albuquerque to Socorro. I was on a stretch with no lights. Perfectly dark. I notice someone standing on the side of the road. As I pass him, my lights fully illuminate his face. Nothing about this guy seemed natural. His posture was weird, he was wearing a gray suit... and his face. It just looked 'off', like a mask or something. For about half a second, we lock eyes, even with my headlights blinding him, it still felt like he was looking at me, not my truck. It really creeped me the fuck out. Shortly after this, my CB started picking up some odd chirps, but I was pretty close to the VLA.
"The high desert is a weird place."
Disappearing War Hero
"My first couple years I was a night driver, so it was hard to see things sometimes. But the one in PA was me trying to follow a flatbedder who was haulin' serious ass through the mountains. At one point I start to fall back because I can feel the van starting to lean. It wasn't long after that I reach down to take a swig off the handy monster I had, and I look up, and there's a guy standing off to the shoulder just outside the tree line wearing in what appeared to be some type of soldier's uniform. Looked like Revolutionary War era, 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. 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."
Punchlines Don't Take Away from the Creepy
"Ok I've told this to my friends several times but I guess I can share it here too.
"I was driving for Costco a few years back. It was around this time of year. We usually took extra toy shipments to various locations due to the holiday season. We got a call that one of our locations in rural Kentucky needed to restock their giant Spiderman dolls. They knew I was a fast driver so I was giving the last minute late-night duty. I loaded my truck and headed out on the 265. It was around 3am when I started to have this eerie feeling. I chalked it up to just being tired and popped a couple of NoDoz. About 15 min later the road started to fog up. I mean more so than any other time before or since. It got to the point where I had to pull off to the side and wait. There weren't any other cars on the road and I was ahead of time so I figured I could wait until it cleared up a bit. About five minutes of sitting still in silence, my truck goes dead. No lights, no engine, nothing. I try to crank it but it was like the battery was dead. I try my CB but cannot get anyone on. I check my cell phone and there is no signal. As I'm sitting there contemplating my next move I hear what sounds like a child crying. It slowly morphed into a woman crying. Or at least that's what it sounded like to me. Now I'm a big man, 6'3", 250 pounds, but I refused to exit my cab. I did roll down my window and asked if anybody needed help. At that point the crying stopped. Then I heard what sounded like a sinister laugh. At that point I felt like the laughter was directed at me. I rolled up my window and it seemed like the more scared I became the louder the laugh went. Then as soon as it started, it stopped. And just like that my truck started back up and the fog dissipated. I drove out of there like a bat out of hell. I get to the next truck stop and pull in. I run to the bathroom and pour water on my face and ask myself 'Did that really just happen? I go out to the diner and see this fella in a John Deer hat, red flannel, and blue jeans. I needed to know if anyone else experienced that, too. I go up to him and say 'Excuse me, are you a fellow trucker 'cause I just had one hell of an experience.' He says 'Not a trucker, but...'"
I Know
"Was driving north through the mountains of Colorado towards Pueblo, and it was my first time dealing with anything like the Rocky Mountains so I was taking it nice and slow with my hazards on and in the right lane. This was in the spring, and there wasn't much snow on the ground aside from a light dusting.
"I remember passing another truck pulled to the shoulder on my way up, nothing out of the ordinary. However, as I was heading down the mountain (which can be scary as shit in an 18-wheeler, trust me) I saw the same truck I passed earlier FLY by me in the left hand lane. Now being passed on the left going DOWNHILL in the ROCKY MOUNTAINS by another TRACTOR TRAILER is crazy enough, but what really makes this story is this guy's trailer brakes were on fire. He was pulling a load (could tell because the trailer was sealed) and if you know anything about trucks you know there's only so much braking you're supposed to do before they overheat and, worst case, catch fire.
"This guy's truck looked like a fucking comet as he sped down the mountain at what I thought was a surely to be deadly pace.
"I grabbed the mic to the radio and called out to him, 'Hey Driver! Your brakes are on fire! I mean literally on fire!'
"After a few seconds of static, a rough and weathered sounding voice comes back over the speaker of my radio and says, cool as a cucumber, 'I know.'
"And he disappeared around a curve.
"I never saw any wrecked truck, emergency crews, or even mention of an accident over the radio.
"I did see a discarded fire extinguisher on the ground at the base of the mountain though.
"Just one of many awesome stories."
Lost Time
"New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah are some states that to this day, I still see shit in the skies that I can't explain. Lights rapidly changing direction and taking off at blinding speeds, but no sound barrier being broken. I've seen lights hovering over the desert several miles off the interstate, then it suddenly takes off and the lights cut out. Various shapes and sizes from what I can make out (again, night driver). I know military aircraft pretty well, and some of them more than likely were, but some of them absolutely can not be any military aircraft currently in mainstream use. Conventional aircraft do not move like that. The most vivid one would be at an off-ramp in New Mexico, I stopped to take a piss. And decided to turn it into a 15-minute break since my ass was sore anyway. As I'm stargazing and admiring how clear the sky is, I saw what looked like a formation of lights in the shape of a triangle lift off from the desert floor, and then take off into the sky. I kept me eyes on it, and it just kept gaining altitude until the lights just disappeared. I look down at my watch and notice it's not ticking, so I pull out my phone and it's off. I turn my phone on, and according to the time on my phone, it had been 5 minutes since my watch stopped. I felt like whatever it was that just took off had something to do with it."
A Smile of Joy
"My brother is a trucker, and a while ago near where we live, a trucker he knew was driving down a two-lane rural road at night/late evening and got a call in on the CB about a guy purposefully driving towards oncoming traffic in an area near him, and to keep an eye out for him. Eventually, he sees a car coming towards him, sure enough, weaving in and out of traffic trying to run into people. The people are dodging him left and right, and right as he gets in front of the semi, the trucker saw the guy smiling in his headlights because he knew he was going to finally die.
"The trucker was hurt bad (I think he lived through it, but I'm not 100% sure, now that I think about it. My brother told me this a few years ago), but the guy who ran into him for sure died. He'd been trying to kill himself that way for a while. Scary stuff."