September 22, 2022 | Eul Basa

The Creepiest, Scariest Experience People Had While Driving At Night


There’s nothing really terrifying about driving; millions of people do it every single day. However, dim the lights in the sky, throw in a back road that looks like no one has driven on it in years with twists and turns and hills...and suddenly driving becomes the scariest thing in the world. Things that are obvious during the day become inexplicable at night.

Our brains play tricks on us and our survival instincts kick in for anything that comes our way, even balloons! (more on that later). People on Reddit were brave enough to relive the scariest and creepiest moments they experienced while driving at night, and the best ones were collected for this list!


1. Hoo Hoo’s That?

An owl standing on the carcass of a large buck in the mountains between 3 and 5 AM. All you see as you approach are two glowing red orbs and then slowly it becomes a huge dark form standing on the edge of the road with eyes of fire. Then you get close enough and this massive owl just gives you the death stare as you go past.

You realize it was just a large owl standing on the remains of fresh roadkill. Freaked me out for the rest of the dark part of the drive.

Scary Driving FactsPixnio

2. Just Keep Driving

I was driving a truck at night through the mountains of Transylvania, coming from Odessa and heading to Budapest. The roads had been completely empty for hours and the route I had taken was rather unfortunate—narrow and twisty through mountains covered with massive trees. I was getting pretty sleepy but there was absolutely nowhere to park.

Then, just after another bend, it seemed like a wall of old, derelict, gothic crosses appeared, almost giving me a heart attack. At this point, I was already creeped out enough not to look into the sleeper to check if I'm still alone in the cab. No worries with dozing off for the next couple of hours until I reach civilization and clock off in the first bus stop or some such.

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3. They Must Be European

Driving down a two-lane divided highway, I came up to a couple semis and went into the left lane to pass. I did a shoulder check to get back into the right lane when I saw headlights in front of me—in my lane. The car was going the wrong way. I managed to swerve into the ditch. It felt like I was mere centimeters from death.

I thought my wife's scream would be the last thing I ever heard—and I never want to hear it again. The semis I passed all pulled to the shoulder to come check on us. I didn't see the car anywhere. I think they just kept going. I had to pull into a gas station after and collect myself.

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4. Deer Court

This one time, I was driving home from a night class and hit a deer on a road about a mile away from home. The thing went flying and fell in a ditch on the side of the road. I immediately pulled over and grabbed a flashlight to see if the deer was okay. I’m not sure how it managed to get away without me noticing but it was gone as soon as I was out of the car.

I looked around for a bit too see if I could find it and determine if I needed to get someone to put it down or if it would be fit to let go—this wasn’t the first deer I’ve hit. What was kind of creepy though, was after looking around, I was completely surrounded by deer on both sides of the road. All of whom were just staring at me, completely frozen and silent, like they were judging me.
Cuboos

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5. Not Today

We were driving from Morelia to Ciudad Hidalgo, in Mexico. Back in the 80s, there were two ways to get to Ciudad Hidalgo: the national road or the old national road, which was called Mil Cumbres, which basically means 1,000 curves. That stretch of road literally had 1,000 curves, so a lot of people would get motion sickness when on that road.

My grandfather loved taking Mil Cumbres because it had really nice views but since we had the new national road, not a lot of people used that Mill Cumbres anymore. It was dusk when we took that road back from my grandma's, which meant that we'd be in complete darkness without many other cars for a long time. 45 minutes into the drive it had already gotten really dark. That's when my grandfather started slowing down.

I was sitting in the back seat so I kind of stood over the front seat to see why he was slowing down. There was a huge downed tree blocking the road. After we turned around, my grandfather stepped on the gas pedal and I was sort of thrown back into the back seat. As we were speeding away, I could see men, very dimly—the light from the taillights was getting dimmer and dimmer—coming from out of the adjacent trees next to the tree on the road, with flashlights and guns.

We were about to get robbed. Thanks to my grandfather's quick thinking and taking action immediately, we avoided it. That was the last time I was ever on that road.

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6. Too Many Coincidences

I was on the i70 in Colorado going towards Utah, pulled over at a gas station at 8 PM. Fuelling up, I noticed a couple of attractive women pumping gas. On the other side of the pump was a man in his late 40s just staring at these young women. I walked inside to grab some food for the next few hours of driving and when I came out I saw that both the younger women's car and the older man's truck were gone.

I decided to hang out at the gas station for the next hour to catch a little sleep before hitting the road again. After driving for a few hours—I was speeding heavy—I pulled over at yet another gas station to see the young women getting gas and eating some food on a picnic table. It looked like they had been there for a while. As I watch them leave, I see headlights turn on in the next parking lot over. It's the same man as before.

He leaves when the women leave once again. I leave a few minutes later and catch up to them. Now, this guy is riding their rear with his high beams on. I slow down and stay a distance behind the truck. 10 minutes later, the women pull over to get this guy off their back. Thankfully, the truck keeps going--but one mile down the road, the guy pulls off to the side of the highway.

Sure enough, the women drive by and the guy is still following them. At this point, we are out in the middle of nowhere and too many coincidences have happened. I called the cops; about 15 minutes later they pulled the guy over. Maybe I just overreacted because I've seen too many horror movies that started like this, but you never know. Better safe than sorry.

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7. There’s a Lesson to Be Learned Here

My dad was driving at night and I was looking out the window when I saw two red pinpricks in the cornfield, and they followed us. I told my dad about it and he said, in the most calm, casual tone for this situation, “Those are cornfield demons. Stay in the car and you'll be okay.” Cue me freaking the heck out when he got out of the car not too long after to check a tire before getting back in.

I'm still not sure if that was an actual thing or if he was using a situation to his advantage to teach me to not do anything stupid like that at night. Either way, it worked, and I STILL have no idea what those two pinpricks were.

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8. From Cautious to Creepy

I slammed the brakes once because I saw a deer in my peripheral vision. Upon closer inspection, it was a mounted deer head on a stick in the middle of the woods. Slammed the gas again after I realized that.

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9. Get a Moo-ve on

This was the scariest only because it nearly killed me. Driving back home from a late high school football game that I was covering, I was going through a very remote section of a highway in farmland. I was a little zoned out, but the road was straight and wide for a while. I was going along at a good clip when I became vaguely aware that there was suddenly something in my way.

I swerved into the opposing lane and passed something large. I got turned around and went back slowly to see what the heck I had barely missed. When I got close enough to see better in my headlights, there they were, two very large, completely black cows. They were big enough that my hatchback would have been totally crushed if I'd hit them, and it could've easily been a fatal accident—for me and the cows. I called the local police and they sent a car out while I waited to make sure no one else hit them.

When they got there, they knew who the cows belonged to and called the guy up all pissed off because this apparently happened more frequently than they liked.

Scary Driving FactsPixnio

10. Unidentified Object?

I used to deliver pizza and often had deliveries right at midnight when we closed. One time, late at night, I'm driving back to the store through a small neighborhood. Up ahead, I see something. It's a perfectly spherical bright and shiny thing, just hovering about six feet off the ground, not moving at all. I pull up very slowly. Still doesn't move.

I still can't comprehend what I'm looking at. It’s just a shiny, hovering orb in the road at midnight. At this point, my curiosity has overridden my fear. I'm the guy in the horror movie who dies first because I just got to know. Either I die or I get a cool story, right? So, I hop out of the car and slowly walk up to it.

I'm right in front of it and still can't understand what I'm seeing. So I reach out and touch it. It's a balloon. One of those foil birthday balloons with the streetlights shining on it making it look weird, out of context, in the middle of the night on an empty road.

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11. Of Biblical Proportions

Frogs. EVERYWHERE. Like, hundreds of frogs all over the road.

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12. Should Probably Stay in for the Night

After dropping me off at my house around 2 AM, my friend calls me and tells me to lock my doors. He said he saw a man standing in the middle of the road and that as he passed him the man kept staring through him. Not at him, but as if there were something behind him in his back seat. He also said he could barely make out anything about the man other than his large eyes and trench coat.

What really terrified me is that this happened on a street that only my family lives on and no one would have been out that night. Also, we're a solid mile and a half away from the nearest neighbor. Freaked me the heck out.

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13. Tails From the Road

I was fetching someone from his workplace. I had to go through some fields, and some parts of the road were dark. I saw a thin, long object, wiggling at an upright position on the side of the road in front of me. Totally freaked me out. I thought I was finally experiencing something extraordinary. As I got closer, I realized it was the tail of a cow.

It must've escaped from some field and was hanging around on the side of the road. The cow itself was black with the tail slightly lighter in color. That's why I only saw the tail moving at first without seeing the whole cow.

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14. Lingering Effects of a Movie

I dropped my girlfriend off the night we saw The Mothman Prophecies. It wasn't a super scary movie, but it had some scares. I took the interstate home. On the way, there is a curve where there aren't any lights—just a dark stretch of interstate. As I came around the bend, there was a guy in a black trench coat walking along the side of the road.

Since it was about 3 o'clock in the morning, I guess I startled him. So, when my headlights hit him, he whipped around and I swear he looked me right in the eyes. My heart instantly jumped into my throat. The whole event lasted maybe two seconds, tops, but it had my heart racing. Not paranormal, but definitely scary for me.

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15. Who Let the Ostrich Out?

This was the scariest and funniest moment at the same time. After working the late shift at a restaurant, I finally left at 2 AM. It was a 30-minute drive home, and I was exceptionally tired. I hit the little 24/7 truck stop just at the edge of the town for some munchies and smokes, and made the final trek home.

Encountering deer was not uncommon out there, so I was going slow, when what appeared before me, to my tired eyes, was a monster. It had a huge, round body, crazy long neck, a pointy head, and only two legs. It was right in the middle of the road and it scared the ever-loving heck out of me in that state. Thankfully, it stood there for a second.

My brain re-engaged. It was an ostrich. OK, not a monster, just an—wait, what the heck is an ostrich doing wandering around in Central Wisconsin?!? I looked at it. It looked at me. I blinked. Nope, still there. Pretty sure it's real. Finally, it trundled off into the forest. What? I grabbed my cellphone and called the tiny little police station in town—non-emergency number.

The respondent started laughing hysterically and assured me that I wasn't hallucinating. There's an ostrich and emu farm on the other side of town. Some drunk driver felt that "turns are for losers," went through the fence, and most of the barn. There are still four animals, including the one I just spotted, unaccounted for. Wild night, man.

Scary Driving FactsPixabay

16. Bright but Not the Brightest

I was driving through an unfamiliar stretch on my way to a campground in Utah. It was pitch black, but even before it had gotten dark, the last several exits that had been marked on the map didn't appear to have any people at them. There weren't many other cars on the road but eventually, this strange vehicle came up behind me, going much faster than me. He passed me on my left side, and as he went around me, I could now see that it was a huge pickup truck with a lift kit. The pickup got back into my lane in front of me.

He stayed there for a few seconds, then suddenly swerved to the left and slammed on his brakes. He then cut back over into my lane so he was behind me and switched on his brights. He followed me like this for some time, getting right on my rear and flashing his brights repeatedly. I started getting nervous at this bizarre and aggressive behavior.

Eventually, we found a town with lots of lights and I promptly exited. I was terrified the guy would follow us, but he went on past me. I pulled into a gas station and that's when I figured out what I probably should have realized a long time before. I had my brights on.

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17. Took a Left Turn to Hell

I was driving deep in the mountains to get to a retreat spot for my university club. I was the last to leave because I had to finish a few things at the university. I didn't see the tiny exit for the retreat site and kept driving deeper into the mountains. The fog kept becoming thicker as I kept driving on. I finally stopped at a massive stone bridge.

The fog was rolling through and it looked like some enormous ancient bridge to the underworld. There was no one else in sight. I had no signal on my cell phone. I got out of my car and suddenly saw a hand-made grave next to the bridge. I'm talking about a makeshift wooden cross and different colored dirt where the grave was.

I got freaked the heck out and got into my car. When I tried driving, my tires slid for a few seconds on some gravel. In my panicked state, I thought some horrific demon got a hold of my car and was keeping me there. I finally drove off and got to the retreat site safely, but that place was just eerie. I still think about it some times at night.

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18. Trying Out a New Walk

A man crawling like Spider-Man INHUMANLY fast along the ground toward my car. He came off the side of the road and just sprinted at me in that Spider-Man crawl. Urgh.

20forlife

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19. Speeding Away From Danger

I was a very young woman driving home after clubbing at about 2 AM through Hollywood. I was pulling up to a stop sign on Cahuenga, about three blocks from Hollywood Blvd, when a bunch of guys began to casually stroll onto the crosswalk, coming from both sides. I hit the gas and ran the stop sign without even thinking.

They cursed and ran after me, but those boys were ready to jack me. My instincts took over before I even realized what was happening.

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20. Spontaneously Combust

I was on a long stretch of road with not so much as a driveway for 160 km (100 mi) in either direction. Late at night on this middle of nowhere road, there was a car on the side of the road that was on fire. And I don't mean like an engine fire, I mean completely engulfed in flames. There was not a single person or another car anywhere near it.

I hadn't even driven past a car in over an hour.

Scary Driving FactsWikimedia Commons, NathanWert

21. Don’t Do Drugs

I don’t know if this is really scary, but it definitely freaked me out for a moment. Driving home from grad lab for a couple hours of sleep at about four in the morning—longish, time-sensitive experiment—it was not dawn yet but still pitch black. I turn a corner and suddenly, someone runs into the street right in front of my car and stops. I stop.

I wait. They don’t move. Cautiously, I try to drive around. They scream, run up and slam their hands on the hood of my car. With them so close, I realize they are totally naked and filthy. They stare at me for a moment, then proceed to run in wide circles, kind of listing to one side then the other, in front of my car.

After about two minutes of this, he lists hard to one side, far enough I felt safe quickly driving around them, very wide, on the other side that was now open. Meth, man.

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22. Time for Bed

A lot of people who drive for a living can tell you about the running shadows. First time I saw them I was on the tail end of 12 straight hours of driving. I was driving through the middle of nowhere, in the desert, at night. As I'm barreling along, I start to see shadowy figures running alongside my truck out of the corners of my eyes, on two legs and four.

All I can think about is the creepy stories you read online about stuff that lives out in the desert, or the Asian ghost stories where if you don't acknowledge the spirit it can't harm you. So, I've got my eyes glued to the road, refusing to let them flicker off to the side. I rolled my windows up and cranked up the volume on my radio.

I drove like that for probably an hour and a half until they slowly petered out roughly 15 minutes outside of a little one light town. I've had people try to carjack me, people try to rob me after I pull over to render aid, people jump out at me on twisty mountain roads, you name it. But nothing matching that level of fear the first time I saw them.

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23. Signs of a Concussion

My brother and I were driving back from a festival. He was driving and he hit a guardrail and we were pretty shocked by the experience, but alive and in one piece. I took the wheel from him and I don’t know what it was but I kept seeing “foggy people”—foggy grayish people-shaped things—in the fields next to the highway the entire drive home—two hours or so.

I also kept having the feeling that someone was sitting in the backseat, but when I looked in my rearview mirror obviously no one was there. This happened all the way past midnight. The weird thing was, a few days later I told my brother and he told me he saw the “foggy people” too and he also had the feeling someone was sitting in the backseat.

Still creeps me out thinking about it.

cinlizzy

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24. Accident Waiting to Happen

Driving home one night from my fiancé’s house, it was a normal night on the Florida highway. It’s pretty dark, not too many lights, and I’m cruising at around 75 heading over a slight hill, just big enough that you can’t see the other side. I get to the top and start making my way down when in my headlight view, I see a giant construction vehicle with all of its lights TURNED OFF AND PARKED IN THE LEFT LANE OF THE HIGHWAY.

I really, seriously, pray to God that no one hit that parked construction vehicle—it was one of the ones that dig up dirt I think—on the highway that day. I very, VERY narrowly avoided smacking right into the back of that thing. I don’t know how the Cherokee I was driving at the time handled the sharp turn I made into the right lane to avoid the vehicle.

Needless to say, I almost died. I immediately called Florida highway patrol and told them about it. I hope they got to it before someone got hurt, and I REALLY hope someone at that construction company lost their job, because they could have killed multiple people.

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25. Caught Off Guard

A body in the ditch. I thought it was a deer as I approached and then my brain was like “deer don't wear boots.” I was shaking as I did a U-turn to make sure the person was alive. They were, just drunk, and other people stopped as well and emergency was called. I was very shaken up by it.

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26. Just Out for a Hop

A 6’ kangaroo standing in the middle of a pitch-black road at 3 AM in the morning. I missed it by a hair.

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27. Crocodile Crosswalk

Back in my twenties, I was putting myself through university by working night shifts at a factory. Money was great, but between full-time work and full-time study, I was constantly exhausted. After months, I kept falling asleep at the wheel on the way home from work just before dawn at around 4 AM. One time, as I was driving home all alone after work, I saw half a dozen crocodiles on the road! I swerved to avoid hitting them and almost crashed the car. I was terrified in the moment because they came out of nowhere and were huge.

I'd never seen crocodiles in real life before, let alone on a freeway. I pulled the car over and looked in my rearview mirror, but nothing was there. To this day, I don't know if I dreamt those crocodiles or if they were a hallucination from sleep deprivation. Scariest thing I've ever “seen” and I'm so thankful no one was on the road at the time, too.

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28. Demon Deer

I was driving with my girlfriend to visit my parents. I like to drive at night since there are fewer people on the road and I can take my time. At around 3 AM or so, we are making good time. I started getting a little drowsy and took a sip of coffee. On the road, there were no cars in sight except for a few on the side of the road. In the distance, I could make out what looked to be a hitchhiker, or what I thought was one, but couldn’t really tell due to such low light.

As I got closer, I started to notice other things, like how the person was kind of thin and tall and completely—for the most part—brown. I was right up on this thing now, and at about 20 ft (6 m), it turned around and locked eyes with me as I passed by. This was no person, and it is the most terrifying thing I have ever seen in my life. It was a deer. Or I tell myself it was. I have seen deer stand on their hind legs to fight, but they still have deer posture when they do. Not only that, but I was watching this thing walk for about 30 seconds from first seeing it in the distance to passing it. The posture it had was human. Standard bipedal stance—arms back, chin down.

But the worst part was the eyes, or lack thereof. In their place were two large black pits, almost like black holes. I'll never forget the stare down it gave me. The instant I passed it, I had the only panic attack I've ever had in my life. I had to wake up my girlfriend to keep calm enough to get to an exit with a large gas station a few miles away. After we pulled into the station, I had a complete meltdown.

While I don't think she believed what I think I saw, she knew that I was convinced and legitimately scared to death. But I know what I saw, and I know it will haunt me for the rest of my life.

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29. Sounds Like an Episode of Supernatural

I work nights and one day I forgot my lunch at home. I didn’t have money to spend so I decided to go home on my lunch hour and eat my sandwich on the way back. I was in a hurry so I took the back roads. At about halfway there, as I was speeding and noticed a woman in a white nightdress without shoes standing in the road in the other lane.

I slowed down as I passed her thinking she was probably drunk and didn’t want her to jump out in front of me or anything like that. It wasn’t until later as I was on my way back that I started to think how odd it was. Why would someone be in the middle of the road, barefoot, at 2:30 AM? But I just reassure myself that the woman was probably just drunk.

ZellRyu25

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30. We All Saw That, Right?

Some friends and I were driving around some rural roads, just kind of wasting time. My friend—who was driving—slammed on the brakes and I—in the passenger seat—looked up and there was this thing.

I had never seen anything like it before. We stopped the car and watched as this thing, which didn't have a perceivable head, moved slowly across the road about 15 ft (4 m) in front of us. It was creepy, to say the least. It was approximately 4’ tall and we could see its joints moving as it walked slowly with a gait similar to a giraffe.

It had very skinny, long legs. Its body was about 1.5 feet round. If it had hair it was pretty short, but the thing was brown. We were all screaming, “What the heck is that?!” We could not see any perceivable head and it was walking perpendicular to us. We watched as it slowly walked through these people's yard and behind their house.

Needless to say, we were freaking out about it. When we got to my friend's house we all drew pictures of it separately and showed each other at the same time when we were done to verify that we all saw what we saw. It was the strangest thing I have ever seen and I have not found any satisfactory explanation to this day, 20 years later.

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31. No One Messes With My Grandson

I was driving down a totally deserted highway with only two lanes and no shoulder. I hadn’t seen anyone for at least an hour, so I kept kicking up my speed all the way up to 80. I was flying down the road. As I crested a hill, I spotted headlights a couple hills down but I didn't think much of it.

Until boom, a black car hauled ass past me with their lights off. I still wasn't too freaked out until I saw brake lights and then headlights behind me. I hauled ass. I still had another 32 km (20 mi) on gravel to get to my grandparents' house. I knew the roads reasonably well, but not well enough to get off the main drag and zigzag across country roads. I was doing 90 and so was this person, but keeping their distance. I got to the town and just hauled ass through it.

I didn't stop for the two stop signs or the one stoplight. At that point, I was hoping to get pulled over. As I got about a mile from my grandparents' house, my grandpa turned on his headlights and spotlight on his truck and was driving towards me. That's when the person turned back around. I always wonder what the heck they were doing. Like, were they just messing with me? Did they want something? I'll never know.

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32. Be Aware of Your Surroundings

I was coming home late from a midnight shift. It was 6 AM but still dark. I had to make a left turn onto my road but needed to stop because of traffic. In my rearview mirror, I see a truck coming up and he looks like he's going too fast. I blinked my brake lights a bit to alert him, but he wasn't going to stop. This guy zooms around me to my right going way over the speed limit and nearly ran himself into the ditch.

To this day, I still don't know how he avoided missing the road sign that was there, too.

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33. Ring on the Brain

After seeing The Ring Two with friends late one night, I dropped one of them off at their house in the middle of nowhere. I was driving down a dark rural road through trees and I turned a corner going fairly fast and there were like five deer in the middle of the road. I was able to stop before hitting them but I couldn't go anywhere until they moved, so I sat there until they finished crossing the road.

If anyone remembers the terrible movie that was The Ring Two, there is this scene where they get stopped by a deer and then the deer attacks. That was all I could think about as I waited for the deer to cross. Realistically, it probably took less than a minute, but man did it feel like an hour. Eventually, though, they all pranced across and I kept driving.

But, to this day, I still remember it and it still comes up in my nightmares sometimes.

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34. Listen to the Dog

My girlfriend—while we were visiting her hometown—wanted to drive by a cemetery where they buried women accused of being witches and other things. You could tell who the “witches” were by the fortress of iron surrounding their graves. We had her parents' dog in the back seat asleep—we played that dog into the ground prior to going.

She claimed that there was a point where the nicely paved road meets the old broken gravel road, where you feel a faint disturbance/discomfort/anxiety. Sure enough, as soon as we hit that exact point, the pooch immediately wakes up and starts crying unusually loud. I'm not usually into this kind of stuff, but that was pretty creepy.

ctophermh89

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35. The Tale of the Rotting Deer

I was driving home at like 10 PM—still light out—down a road that’s famous for deer running across and dying. I went past a group of deer. A couple of them were watching me and a couple of them were running alongside the road. When I looked out my window at the ones running alongside the road, there was one that looked starved and its ribs were all visible through its skin, but its skin was also rotting and you could see the flesh and muscles underneath.

I’m a very squeamish person and this almost had me throwing up in my car. Look out for the zombie deer in Northern Kentucky. It’s been spotted by some classmates, too.

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36. Lost on His Way to the Pride Lands

One time I was driving with my girlfriend through Wisconsin on our way back home. It was really late, like two in the morning, and I stopped at a gas station. My GPS ended up putting me on a small highway instead of the expressway but I didn't want to complicate things more, so I just followed it. My girlfriend was sleeping, so I had the radio off and was driving in silence on this really dark, creepy highway.

There were deer crossing signs, so I was driving extra cautious because a family friend had recently hit a deer in their truck. I saw there was a pretty sharp curve coming up, so I slowed down and as I'm turning, I see a figure exiting the darkness of woods. It was a large mountain lion, with blood stains all over the front of its face. Scared the heck out of me. I pulled up just after the turn and tried to wake my girlfriend up.

I could see its large shadow make its way across the road in my rearview mirror, but by the time my girlfriend woke up, it was gone. She immediately dismissed my claims that it was a mountain lion because they are not really from that area. I told her I know what I saw, but she insisted that I was seeing things. I acted like she was probably right and continued the trip back, but I know what I saw.

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37. The Naked Mile

I was driving up a canyon at 1 AM on my way to my parents' cabin. I came around an S curve and a naked man jumped in front of me and over the guardrail. I told my parents, but they assured me it was a deer. I’m no wizard, but I can surely tell the anatomical differences between a deer and a human. Scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I still can’t explain it.

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38. A Game of Cat and Mouse

One time, I was going to my friend's house a few towns over. Most of the drive is a pretty straight road with a few stops so everyone usually goes over the limit. It's about eight o'clock and dark out and I get stuck behind a slow car. Next thing I know, he goes even slower, down to 20. I think maybe he feels like I’m too close to him, so I back off his bumper and he speeds up to 45.

Soon, he slows back down again. Then speeds back up. Then slows down again, but this time he comes to a stop—in the middle of the road. There’s no one else around. No stop sign. I decide screw this and slowly start going around him, and I remember wanting to look over but as I was going by I start accelerating. Then he lays on his horn and starts accelerating, too. So I put the pedal down even more, trying to pass him. He is still laying on his horn. I am freaking out, so I just start accelerating faster.

Finally, we get up to 80 with me in the opposite lane before he slows down. I keep going, wanting to put some distance between us. Coming to the end of the road is an intersection with traffic lights. The light turns red and the guy is still behind me. I grab an ice scraper from the backseat to get ready for him to get out and come to my truck.

Thankfully, nothing happened. I turned at the intersection and he kept going. Crisis averted, but I was still shaking when I got to my friend's house.

Worst Thing Done on a Date FactsFlickr

39. Kids and Their Toys

It was about 3 AM and we were driving back to Dallas from a field party in Oklahoma. Long dirt roads, houses few and far between. As we pass a particularly broke down looking farmhouse there is little girl standing at end of the driveway holding a headless doll just watching our car drive by. Made my blood go cold.

Creepy Kids FactsFlickr

40. Just Popping in

I forgot where we were going but it was my mother and me driving back home from somewhere far away. We had stopped at a light or something and I was tired and was about to fall asleep. That's when I hear my mom scream and I look up to see a coyote that looked like a wolf sticking his head through the car window and then it just left.

My mom and me laughed it off and were like what the heck and just put the windows up.

Late Night Hikers FactsFlickr

41. Saved a Life

About 20 years ago, I was driving south on a major interstate, which was relatively empty at 2 AM or so. At one point, in the “narrows," the retaining walls on each side get very high as the highway snakes underneath overpasses. Out of nowhere, a young woman jumped down from the retaining wall onto the highway and directly in front of my car.

I hit the brakes hard, came to a complete stop, and nearly slammed into her. She looked up, ran to my passenger door and got in looking terrified. She looked between 16 and 20 years old, long blonde hair, and her clothes looked a little dirty. Not homeless dirty, but like she'd fallen down a few times. “I just need to call my mom,” she said.

I tried to calm her down and began moving back down the highway and behind me about 50 ft (15 m), I see another figure jump down onto the highway out of my rearview window. I didn't mention this to her and she didn't look back or see the other person. I sped up and went about four or five exits south. She kept saying over and over, “I just need to call my mom.”

This was before it was normal for people to have cell phones, so I told her I would take her to one of the 24-hour grocery stores and she could call her mom. I asked her if she needed money for a payphone, what was wrong, etc. She said nothing other than, “I just need to call my mom.” I pulled up to the grocery store and stopped.

She got out quickly, but not running, then ducked into the grocery store. She didn't say a word to me or look back. I pulled into the gas station across the street and called 911 and told them the entire story and let them know the young woman was inside the grocery store and gave a description of her. I have no idea what happened.

I don't know why she did that, what happened to her, who the figure behind us on the highway was—nothing. Really made me super uneasy. I think I did the right thing. I would have tried to do more but she seemed really fragile emotionally and somewhat afraid of me—I’m a guy—so I wanted her to just be able to get to where she needed to be.

Scary Driving FactsGetty Images

42. It’s Just a Prank, Bro

There's a public park near my house, which gets pretty dark at night. I was driving home tired and exhausted after midnight when I realized that someone had dragged all the garbage cans and other large items out into the middle of the road to form a barricade of sorts. I'm not sure if it was just a lame prank or if someone was waiting for a car to stop so that they could rob the person.

I didn't bother to find out. There was just enough room for my small car to slip through. It's happened twice in the past few weeks, so I'm going to assume it's just some teenagers being jerks.

urban legends experienceShutterstock

43. Searching for Sully

Not sure if this counts or not but I was driving home from work late last night and I swore I saw a monster that looked like Mike Wazowski but with really long arms. I figured I was hallucinating because I needed sleep, but it still freaked me out.

Scary Driving FactsFlickr

44. That’s Just Ghost Rider

Hopefully this doesn't get buried, but once when I was around 20—36 now—I was driving to meet up with some friends. It was a Saturday morning, around one, so there weren’t too many cars out. As I make a left at the end of my street, a car had made a left from the main road onto the road I was on, so we are on a straight path to pass each other.

As the car was coming up, I noticed the driver had an unusually white head, as in white, not white person. As we passed each other, we were both driving slower, and as I got up next to the car, it was a skull. At first, I thought it was a mask, but the skull turned and looked at me. When he did, his eyes were wide open and then he opened his mouth at me.

At the time, it scared the living hell out of me, but looking back at it now, it had to be some top of the line mask the driver was wearing. It would probably still scare me though if I wasn’t expecting it.

Scary Driving FactsShutterstock

Sources: , , 3


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