These 18 Creepy Stories From Truckers Require A Strong Stomach
If there's one universal truth we can all get on board with, it's that some crazy sh*t happens on the road.
Reddit user u/ReptilianZen addressed long-haul truckers and asked the question, "What's the creepiest/most paranormal thing you've seen on the road at night?" The answers will make you quake:
1."I was coming back home from a trip from Michigan, and I saw these people wearing cult-like robes."
@kinggizzard / Via giphy.com
"One in town, one on a highway, and one in a park, all staring at me." —u/Nevok_The_Hollowed
2."Driving South on I-75 in the winter in Ohio, I witnessed a compact car like a Cobalt or similar get on the on-ramp to merge in to I-75 North and lose control."
Giiphy.com / Via giphy.com
"He went sideways, fell at least 6 feet off the ramp and onto the shoulder of the interstate, landing on all 4 wheels, spun 360 degrees, and then proceeded to merge into traffic like it was fucking nothing. Blew. My. Mind. The CB radio was going fucking nuts for about five minutes." —u/Aceofspades161
3."Near the north end of mainland Michigan, I saw a car stopped on the side of the highway. We hadn’t seen a car for a while; it was 2 a.m. I commented to my buddy, 'poor bastard.' But as we passed the car, the lights came on, and it got back on the road. Odd timing. And then, it was gaining on us."
"I told my friend to speed; he did. He sped more, and the car kept closing in. We were doing 120 miles per hour, and this guy was catching up to us. We saw an exit with a hotel, so we took it and drove right in front of the building, where it was well lit and we could see the front desk clerk. The car got off that exit too. It drove into the hotel parking lot. Then turned around, and got back on the highway. I’ll never know what that guy wanted from us. I’m fine with that remaining a mystery." —u/thehofstetter
4."I was 23, my newly married husband and I decided driving team would be a fun adventure after college — rather than jumping into the 9–5. I was down in Arizona, on a long stretch of nothing at about 4 a.m., when a guy pulled up next to me waving his CB."
"I never left mine on; listening to those guys' B.S. was irritating. 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 — but so glad I trusted my gut and didn’t stop." —u/GozyNYR
5."I’m not a trucker, but my cousin was for a short stint. A lion ran out in front of him when he had gotten out to pee. He called his mom, and she asked if he was high."
imgur.com / Via gfycat.com
"He denied it and said, 'A fucking lion ran out in front of me, I’m telling you!'
A few days later, the news revealed that animals had escaped from a local zoo he was near, including...a lion! We love to tell that story to everyone!" —u/UnknownNaiad
6."My great-uncle was a long haul trucker, and he swears that one time he was driving down the road to see two guys pull a rolled-up carpet out of the trunk of their car and throw it in the river."
"Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but it’s still creepy nonetheless." —u/JasonVoorheesthe13th
7."I saw a baboon in San Saba, Texas crouched down next to the road. He lifted something to his mouth, and I saw nothing but fangs."
"So out of place that it gave me goosebumps. One of the locals explained that a lot of fake ranchers will keep exotic animals, and when they grow aggressive or go in heat, they will cut them loose." —u/1hui213
8."I'm not a long haul trucker, but I drove a moving truck across Nebraska. There's a point where you're going freeway speed, but the scenery doesn't change. It's a very strange sensation and it seemed to last far too long. I started to freak out at one point because I had the thought that I've ALWAYS been driving through Nebraska, and I always will be."
@theshadowsfx / Via giphy.com
"Everything else that has happened in my life must have been a hallucination, as there's nothing but Nebraska in the horizon. Nebraska is the truth. Nebraska is life." —u/Armadildo3
9."I saw a clown staggering down an alley in the city, back facing us, while we were coming to a stoplight at like 1 a.m."
"Looked like he was still blowing balloons (or masturbating). Not seeing his face made it more ominous. I'm not sure if it's either really creepy or sad. Maybe he was on his way to abduct children, or maybe he was blind drunk after a long day." —u/toxicwaste331
10."I was driving in upstate New York in early spring during deer season, and not only were there deer everywhere you had to look out for, there were deer pieces strewn everywhere from cars hitting them, then more cars hitting the roadkill, and so on."
"Literal deer chunks all over the roads. Gross." —u/1AreWeCowabunga
11."My dad told me and my brothers this story when we were growing up, and it’s always stuck with me, particularly on long drives when I’m feeling a bit sleepy. The first time I remember hearing it was after I asked him if angels were real. I was probably 7 or 8 years old."
"He drove trucks decades ago, before I was born and before labor laws around limits and breaks were more standard (I’m assuming it’s different now?). He’d fairly regularly accept calls that would extend his shift to where he was driving 24–36 hours or more without a break longer than a quick bathroom or fast-food stop.
One night after having already driven a particularly long day, he noticed his eyes getting droopier and the whole roll-down-the-window-and-blast-the-music-up thing didn’t seem to be helping much. It was a rainy night on a pretty windy mountain road without a shoulder to pull over safely, so he started doing those logic games out loud to keep alert and awake. He was saying something to the effect of, 'I just passed mile marker 146, so what time will it be when I reach 200 if I’m going 55 mph...' Then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and felt his head do the nod-jerk thing, which woke him up with a gasp.
He opened his eyes to see if he was driving straight toward mile marker 158, which would have sent his whole truck tumbling down a random-ass mountain ravine. He was able to correct the course safely back, but it was a matter of seconds between that reality and certain death. He insists to this day that he slept through 12 miles of windy mountain road going 60-plus mph, only to wake up right at the last moment between life and death. The story usually ends with him tearing up, saying, 'I don’t know if there are angels, but I know there’s something bigger going on in this universe than our human brains have been able to understand yet. If I wouldn’t have woken up right when I did, you kids wouldn’t be here today, and that’s something that feels pretty close to spiritual.'” —u/pepitawu
12."I walk to the side, pitch black, whip it out, and start to pee. My buddy is just stretching his back or whatever. I heard something in the woods shake a tree. No other way to describe it — a tree about 30 feet away shook. Then I hear something BIG crashing through the woods, coming straight for us and the car."
@vidiots_official / Via giphy.com
"My buddy and I don't even say anything. He dives in the driver side, and I jump through the passenger window, pants still down. He floors it out of there, legs and pants dangling outside. Never did see anything in the rearview mirror, but something out there was coming at us. My buddy likes to say he heard me stop peeing when that tree shook." —u/Thomas_XX
13."My mom and stepdad have a Bigfoot story. We live in Illinois. The I&M canal has a towpath that runs for many miles across several towns. They were heading home at around 2 a.m. in the middle of the woods on the towpath on a snowmobile."
"They saw something walk up from the canal and start to chase them. It started to catch up, and my mom says the most memorable thing was the smell. She says it smelled like death. It apparently chased them for quite a while and almost caught up before slowing down and them pulling away.
Neither of them has gone out there at night since, and that was 20 years ago. A few months later, they were at a local bar, and some lady was talking about being an author and working on a piece about Bigfoot. Apparently, there's been a lot of people who claim to have seen it in the area but don't want to sound crazy, so they don't talk about it." —u/kellypg
14."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 long truck, my peripheral vision caught a sudden movement of this big truck toward the right shoulder. I saw the truck was swerving to avoid hitting a person dressed in all white, white face...whose arms were folded across the chest and eyes were closed as they walked across the highway."
"I swerved to the left and barely missed this ghostly looking person with my passenger mirror...can still remember seeing that the eyes were closed...that's how close we came to hitting this person..." —u/flashdman
15."A friend of my cousin was a long-haul trucker. He was making a delivery across the country and was in a hardly used dirt stretch of a rural route. Since the road wasn't exactly peachy he had to drive slowly. He sees another truck slowly approaching from the opposite direction, and he sees the truck is the same as his."
Gifbay.com / Via giphy.com
"Since this isn't fairly uncommon, he didn't think much of it, but as the other one grew closer, he decided to honk in recognition of having the same kind of truck. The other one replies, and all is good.
That is, until they narrowly and very slowly had to pass one another. He turned to look at the driver and he saw himself. Not a reflection, not a similar person but his exact same copy, same clothes, same hat, same red beard, staring at him. They passed each other and that was that.
He told me he'd seen very weird things, but that was the moment he decided to stop being a trucker." —u/aquatermain
16."It was really foggy, and when we finally reached the end of the fog, we looked to the left to see where we were. About 50 yards from the road was a man and woman in what appeared to be wedding clothing from at least 100 years ago (man wearing a big top hat and the woman wearing a very old looking white dress) holding hands with their backs to us walking toward the wood-line."
"We drove past, and I just remember the silence in the car until my mom said, 'What the fuck was that?' Till this day, whenever we are together and one of us tells the story, we all get goosebumps." —u/LuckyLuciano19
17."One night we had some thunderstorms roll through. I was driving down a backroad at like 2 a.m. All of a sudden, a patio chair crosses the road at just about the max range of my headlights. Followed by another, and then a large patio table went cartwheeling by. I immediately stopped hard."
"Shit got real. Truck started to move quite a bit, and I'll be honest... I screamed like a little kid. I'm certain I would have rolled had I not been loaded down with 20-plus tons of peas.
There was a confirmed tornado the next morning. My how I wish I'd had a dashcam back then. So, not exactly creepy or paranormal but scared the shit out of me for sure." —u/GumbyRocks89
18."My dad is a truck driver, and about 13–15 years ago while resting at the side of the road, he woke up in the morning seeing that his entire trailer was robbed empty."
"My dad is a heavy sleeper, but his cargo could not have been stolen without at least a forklift, and everyone would have woken up by a forklift unloading a trailer. My dad suspects the robbers used a pump to get some kind of chloroform into his cabin to make sure he couldn’t wake up." —u/BULLET_BALL_BJOERN
Note: Some answers have been lightly edited for length and/or clarity.
