Truck Drivers Describe The Creepiest Things They've Ever Seen On The Road
CW: Graphic stories about accidents.
When you spend a lot of time on the road, you're bound to see some crazy or spooky things.
Truck drivers spend a lot of time on the road, and it seems like they've seen plenty of creepy things. The truck drivers of Reddit are ready to share those creepy sights and stories.
It all started when a Redditor asked:
"Truckers of reddit! What spooky things did you witness on the road?"
Yikes!
"my grandfather-in-law, who recently passed away, said back in the 70s, he saw a man get decapitated by some kind of heavy duty cable at a truck stop."
– _bakedgouda
Shouting Fire On A Street
"I was driving between Melbourne and Albury very late one night on the Hume Fwy. For the non-Aussies, that stretch of the Hume is very wide, flat, and straight, so it's boring and hypnotic, especially driving alone at night."
"It was the middle of summer, so I was surprised to see little wisps of fog whipping through my headlight beams, but then the smell of burning plastic hit my nose and I realised it was smoke. Up ahead, there was one other car on the road, and I could just see a tiny yellow light on the back, like a candle flame."
"Worried, I sped up to catch this guy, and by the time I reached him his entire muffler was on fire. I flashed my lights and honked my horn, trying to get his attention. Just as I drew up alongside him, I saw him turn to look at me, and then a HUGE gout of orange flame burst out from under the car and licked across his driver's side window."
"Needless to say, he pulled over in a big hurry and I pulled over about 50 metres ahead of him. I jumped out from behind the wheel and sprinted back to him to make sure he was out of the car and safe, then back to get my phone, and called emergency services while running back to him. It was less than a minute since he'd pulled over and the entire car was a fireball."
"I asked if he was okay, and he said yeah, but his phone and wallet were both still inside the car. I let him use my phone to make some calls and gave him all the cash in my wallet, which wasn't much at the time, and finally continued on my way once the firefighters and ambulance arrived."
"Let's just say I was WIDE awake for the rest of my drive."
– MCDexX
A Truck Driving Hero
"TL:DR Stopped to help a motorist with a possible flat, may have prevented a murder."
"I service fire equipment, so I drive a box truck, and cover parts of PA, NY, OH, MD, and WV. I was in rural NW PA, returning from a service call and heading towards the interstate to go home."
"On the way to this customer, I saw a small pickup truck on the interstate whose right rear tire was steadily deflating. A mile or so before my exit, they pulled off to the side. I didn't stop to see if they needed help, and felt a little bad about it."
"As I drove down this dark, twisty road, I passed a Dodge Durango pulled over into a barn driveway. There was a person lying on the ground behind it, struggling with something. It looked like the guy was trying to change a tire or get the spare out from under the Durango."
"Remembering the pickup from earlier, I decided to turn around and see if he needed help. I pulled into the first driveway I saw, about 1/4 mile down the road, turned around, and headed back. Halfway back, the Durango passed me, going the direction I had originally been headed."
"I got back to where I had seen the Durango, planning to turn around again, but as I swung into the driveway, my headlights caught a figure lying motionless in the snow."
"I stopped and jumped out just as the figure sat up. It was a woman, maybe in her 40s, in a thin, torn black skirt and top. Her hair was mussed, her eye was starting to swell, she had red marks on her throat, and her lip was bleeding."
"I helped her up, got her into my truck, and cranked up the heat. I had taken my jacket off, so I gave it to her, and she covered her torso and arms."
"She didn't want to say anything. Her throat was sore, and she was badly frightened. I called 911, and they dispatched a police car."
"I gave her a bottle of water, and she whispered, "Thank you", then sat with her head bowed and eyes closed. It took about 15 minutes for the police car to get there, and she stayed silent."
"As the car pulled in, she said, mostly to herself, "He's gonna arrest me." The trooper walked up and motioned me to exit, asked her if she needed an ambulance (she declined) then asked me what had happened."
"I explained what I had seen. He wrote everything down, then talked to her for a few minutes. He helped her out of the truck and into his car. She quietly thanked me for coming back, because she thought that guy meant to kill her."
"A far as I know, she wasn't arrested. She was pretty beat up, and the trooper spoke and handled her as if she were the victim of an assault. It was almost certainly a transaction that had gone badly."
"I never found out what had happened. I watched the news outlets for that area for a while, but never found anything."
– Jef_Wheaton
Put On Your Seatbelt
"A fresh solo traffic accident. the car was flipped upside down on its roof. the drivers head was halfway out to the neck, through the shattered front window. he did not have a seatbelt on."
– Divutski
"With a seatbelt you not only protect your life but also the mental well-being of others. No one should have to see something like this!"
– Deleted User
Never Found Out The Truth
"I used to travel for work doing construction. My boss was driving and I was passenger. were on our way back home from Tennessee to Illinois. Just leaving the mountains but still pretty much the middle of nowhere and we notice a couple dead deer on the road. These things are like... Exploded. My boss and I say something about "that sucks, a semi must have been hauling and clipped a herd". We get to the top of a hill and there are so many more dead exploded deer. Possibly hundreds. Definitely dozens. They didn't look like they got hit by a semi. They looked like they had sticks of dynamite put into them and lit off."
"Semi trucks had definitely been driving through because we didn't have to dodge any of them. And we were driving our big work truck and trailer so if we had to crush a couple it was no big deal. It went on for more than half a mile. Maybe up to a mile and a half."
"My boss had been on the road a lot more years than I had. I asked him "what the hell was that?" And he seemed just as lost as me. Said "I have no f*cking idea and I'm not stopping to find out. That sh*t didn't make any sense.""
– kickaguard
Migrating Tarantulas
"My mom is a trucker, this is her story."
"She was driving through Arizona when she saw what she thought was leaves blowing across the road in the distance. This puzzled her since there's mostly pine trees in northern Arizona. When she finally got to the "leaves" she realized that they were migrating tarantulas, 1000s of them. There were so many of them that her truck was sliding on their guts so she had to slow down. She stopped at the first truck stop and told her co-driver to fuel up (he was sleeping at the time) because she wasn't going to step foot outside after what she just saw. Her co-driver was pissed since it was technically his time off, and he thought she was crazy, until he saw the tarantula guts and legs caked in the inside wheel well of the truck."
– digitalmarketeramil
Last Words
"She also outran a tornado in the midwest. She was about to pull over and take cover until she saw another big rig that was parked on the side of the road get tossed a couple hundred yards like a toy. She called me and told me that she thought she was going to die and wanted her last words to be "I love you" to me. She pulled off the freeway and got to a Wal-Mart, where she ran into the basement where all the staff and customers were taking shelter. After the tornado passed, they stepped out of the basement and into daylight, since the Wal Mart was destroyed."
"She has many many stories like this. Trucking is 90% boredom, 10% insane sh*t like this."
– digitalmarketeramil
The Dog-Man
"A trucker I know claims he was driving a logging truck down a remote dirt road in the middle of a forest at around midnight when a "dog-man creature" walked out in the middle of the road. It stared at him for a few seconds plainly visible and well illuminated by all the auxiliary lights on the truck, then it just took off and disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road."
"He's not a superstitious man and he rejects everything supernatural as fiction, but he 100% believes that what he saw that night was real. I've only heard him talk about this twice, he was very drunk both times he opened up about it. Just talking about it rattled him, he was clearly uncomfortable thinking back about that night."
– Kitten-Eater
Truly Tragic
"This happened in Chennai, India. Was driving back into the city on the two-lane coastal highway with a few of my friends. Most of the highway has no streetlights, just reflectors. Around on of the bends, my friend who was driving slammed on his brakes. This was just after sunset."
"At first, all we could see were two motorbikes on their sides, little debris from them scattered around. It was only when we got closer that we saw three guys laying down awkwardly."
"Turns out, the bikes were heading in opposite directions at high speeds, lost control and slammed head-on. The riders of one of the vehicles wasn’t wearing his helmet, and his face was smashed. We could hear his shallow gasps for air, but he was definitely a goner."
– dontdieinthesky
Definitely Ghosts
"When I was a kid my mother was driving at night with my step-dad in the passenger seat and us three kids in the back."
"Apparently (I learned about it later as I was asleep) what happened was my mother and father both saw, flitting across the road from one side to the other, two glowing silhouettes of what looked like two little girls holding hands. My mother said, picture a silhouette, only instead of featureless black this was featureless bright yellow/white, in the perfect shape of two little girls holding hands and moving across the road in their headlights."
"They saw them for so long that my step-dad was able to process the scene and sternly tell my mother not to steer suddenly, just to brake and not to attempt any huge steering movement."
"The forms reached the side of the road and faded away; our car slowed but didn't stop, and my parents continued their journey."
"When they related their encounter to my grandparents, whom we were visiting, they said that two young girls had been killed in a traffic accident on that same road."
– MagicSPA
That last one is the scariest in my mind!
You know what's truly terrifying? The world.
It can feel like it's out to get you and based on some of these harrowing tales of death avoidance and last-minute escapes, you might be justified in thinking that way,
The world is scarier than anything you can see in theaters or watch at home. Clearly, real life is where the fear should be.
Reddit user, Shaneshev, wanted to know when things became too terrifying to handle when they asked:
"People of Reddit; what is your downright scariest real-life story?"
Keep A Phone Nearby
"I was home alone when I was 11. I had just fallen asleep and someone tried to break in the front door. I called 911 and hid in the pantry in the bottom shelf. They came to the door next to the pantry and tried to break into that door too. The police got there and one of them picked me up and held me until my mom got there. I wouldn’t let go and he made sure I felt safe. I’m 27 and haven’t stayed home alone much since. The day I signed a lease for my first apartment I got a dog so I wouldn’t be alone. It’s pretty traumatizing when you’re that young."
HistoricalHeart
Get In. Don't Ask Questions.
"Years ago in one of my first jobs, a colleague told me a story. The night before, she had gone out for some drinks and on the way home she had got off the bus and was walking down her road to her house. A taxi pulled up alongside her and the driver told her to get in the car, she obviously said no. He then said to her "call whoever you want whilst you're in the car, but please just get in and I'll explain". So she got in."
"Turns out, walking towards her was a topless guy with no shoes on and a machete in his hand. Cab driver had already called the police but then saw my colleague so had stopped to look after her."
– Good-Helicopter-9303
Bullet: Dodged
"I had a pulmonary embolism last year in late August. I was going to get a pain evaluation the following Monday, but the pain was so bad on Friday that I just went in. The doctor told me that I’d have died if I had waited."
– jeff_the_nurse
Unsure Of His Next Move
"This is very tame compared to a lot of the stuff on here, but when I was twelve I saw this huge man drop a dollar bill. He seemed not to notice, so I ran across the street to hand it back to him. He thanked me several times, and I could see that he wasn't right in the head. I was a pretty small girl, probably only 100 pounds at the time. This guy easily had a foot on me. All of a sudden, he grabbed me by the top of my head and wouldn't let go. I am so lucky that my dad was nearby, and he pretty much just picked me up and led me away."
– Simple-Muscle822
"dawg just open palmed your head like a melon? yeah, that’s terrifying-"
– ImThatMelanin
Not The Person You Want To See
"I was home alone (thankfully my kids weren't home) when my now ex husband's drug dealer came by. He busted I'm the door screaming at the top of his lungs that he's gonna f-ck us all up. I was hiding in my walk in closet under blankets on the phone to 911. He got so close a few times, I have never been so petrified in my whole life. The cops came very quickly and he ran off, they caught him just a few streets over."
– Mason3637
Close...Closer...
"I used to sleepwalk when I was a child. We lived in a rough neighborhood (Decatur, GA) and I would wake up outside in the middle of the night, not knowing how I got there, and would have to walk home and walk into the darkened doorway I had left wide open for whoever might be lurking around. However, the time that scared me the most was when I was about 9 years old. I woke up and found myself with the bedroom curtains drawn back and staring out the window. As I came awake, I noticed a very large and completely hairless man (no hair, eyebrows etc) staring at me and slowly inching closer to the window and closer to my face. He was looking bewildered like he wasn't sure what he was seeing."
"At that moment, I realized what was going on and I started screaming uncontrollably, frozen in place and peeing down my leg. The man freaked out and screamed, did a tumbling move, and then ran off in a weird zig-zag like he was trying to dodge bullets. My mom woke up and thought I probably had a nightmare. The next morning we found a screw driver on the front porch and damage to the door jam and door handle."
"I still just about pee my pants when I tell that story, but now it is usually from laughing. I will never forget the look on his face when I started coming to life and screaming or his high pitched scream or his duck and roll and dodging and bobbing all the way down the street."
– issamurcle
A Hair's Width Away
"I was riding my motorcycle on the highway, going through a major city. I was still pretty nervous about riding on busier highways since I was still pretty new on the motorcycle. I was in one of the middle lanes when about 250 ft in front of me an 18-wheeler (Semi) kicked up a plywood panel that was in the road in my lane. It flipped around, making it look like I was going to run into it like a wall. Didn’t have enough time to brake or move lanes since I was surrounded by other vehicles."
"Luckily another 18-wheeler passed by it, causing it to rotate perpendicular, making it barely graze my elbow as I passed by it. I don’t think I moved a muscle for a quarter mile in shock that I survived that."
– FuryFlurry40
You'll Wonder "What If?" For The Rest Of Your Life
"I always parked in a certain spot at my last job for 12 years that I was there. It was accessible to the public as it wasn’t company parking but they wanted us to park in the back of the lot so the closer spots could be available for customers."
"One day my spots taken by a dark tinted caddy and I’m immediately pissed because everyone knows it’s mine. It’s morning shift so 4am so it can’t be one of the others cause I know what they drive. So newbie? Or maybe another employee from another shop in the plaza? It’s still there on my lunch break and when I go home and the next day I come in at 1pm till close. Around 9:30. And then also the next."
"Something about it really bothered me. It smelled wrong. Literally, it’s the South and high summer and who knows what’s baking in there. My dad was a marine then a police officer. He always said if you feel something is wrong there probably is. So I dialed the non-emergency contact police number. I felt like an idiot but every time I walked by it bugged me. So. I was stuck waiting for over an hour before anyone shows and honestly, if I hadn’t been off the next day would have been like f-it. But I waited, mostly because I can be really a petty SOB and that’s my spot damn it."
"The police show, all annoyed because who knows how many “they can’t park here” calls they get. They run the license plate though and then things go crazy. They want my info, want me to contact my manager, does this lot have cameras, have I touched the car, etc."
"Apparently the car is on Amber alert as the last sighting of a missing person who was a minor. A 15 yr old girl. When they pop the trunk they find her dead, mutilated body under a blanket and the source of the smell. She had gone out with her much older, controlling and insecure boyfriend but had decided to get out of the relationship. She only made the mistake of getting into the car with him. He drove three counties over after torturing her, stuffing her in there and who knows what else, then parked and walked away, left her to die in the trunk."
"I never learned her time of death so it haunts me sometimes thinking she might have been saved if I’d made a fuss earlier. So yeah, listen to your gut even if it seems petty."
– Fubar-is-my-life
A Very Close Call
"I was held at gunpoint by a kid in my school. I’m still in the same class with him and when I ask him about the gun he says he makes them himself. I’m still wondering what would’ve happened if he pulled the trigger. The gun felt so real and it had loaded barrels wich he showed me"
– Virtual_Display_4842
In The Nick Of Time
"I was working with a friend of mine (we work in Security) and we had a nightshift at an empty festival site. I decided to do my usual round in the woods and I saw someone running. I quickly paged my friend and he came to me. We both didn't see him but we decided to keep our eyes open. A few minutes lster I looked to my left and I saw him running again but he was too fast ao we decided to call the cops. 30 mins later they show up,without sirens,without lights just quietly. I was smoking a cigarette when they approached me and they asked: with how many security officers are you? So I said; just me and my friend...their faces immediatly turned white....turned out when I was smoking and on the phone with my head of security,there was a person standing nearby me with something really big and heavy (don't remember what it was) ready to attack me...cops showed up just in time"
– hetisjanken
Abducted!
"More-so scary for my family but maybe would be scary for little me if it happened…my whole family had a big party at one of those trail parks that had camp sites and hiking trails. I was 5 at the time and a lady lured me away from my group with her cute dogs. My whole family caught her in time before she “took me to the police “ stating “I didn’t know where her family was so I was going to help her.” Idk what happened after that. I will update if I remember to ask."
– violet-ack
Was He Really There?
"When i was around 10 I started seeing like 7 foot tall black shadow people with glowing red eyes in the corner of my room and when I slept in the lounge room, down the hall. To this day I still dont know if it was hallucinations, my imagination, sleep paralysis or a demon or something like that."
– WhoG1vesASh1t
That's Why You Don't Sneak Out
"When I was 12 me and my friend sneaked out during a sleepover. We found a shopping cart in the woods, we drove the cart trough the city and our plan was to drive it under a bridge and leave it then head to my house but when we were under the bridge we heard a loud cough, we started running up towards a university I looked back and I saw two guys running after us. We lost them with running inside of the university's yard and hiding inside of a garage."
– The_Orange_Burger600
A Strange Man
"A years ago, my younger brother was playing with his toys in his room, while I and our mom were sitting in another room. Few minutes later, we both heard crying from brother's room. We fastly came to him and after he chilled down, he said he saw a scary man, but there were no one except of us. A few days later we pictured brother's room and showed picture to great grandpa (he was working with spirits and that stuff at the time) and he saw something unusual on this picture. Later, father also saw something weird, but in mirror. Even now our cat just sometimes stays in the middle of different rooms and stares at nothing."
– oyomoyk
A Real Man After All
"When i was in 6th grade i was chilling in the class with some of my classmates. Our class was on the 4th floor, which is about 30 meters up. We had a beautiful view. All of a sudden my best friend comes into the class crying and shouts that he saw a hanging man out of the window in the train. He could see the man's face and body. At first, no one really believed him except me and we looked right out the window. A man with an orange top and a bloody face was hanging on a small bridge next to the rails (the bridge was 50-80 meters away from the window). I calmed him down and told him that the person didn't look real. 10 minutes later he calmed down a bit and we asked a teacher if we could go to the office to ask if they could call the police. The secretary called the police and we went back up to our class. We could see the police officers go up to the man and pull him up. It turned out that it was actually a real man. So many years have passed and I still have the image in my mind's eye."
– GucciBananaKing99
Heroic Mom
"i was a about seven at the time, and was playing in my front yard. i was alone out there, but we lived in a nice neighborhood, so my mother wasn't worried. i heard a car screech to a stop behind me, and a guy jumped out, grabbed my arms, and started to throw me into the back of his van, all the while, im screaming. my mom came out and punched the guy in the face, and saved my ass. my mom had heard the car pull up and went to see what was happening, and when i started screaming, that's when her mother bear instincts kicked in. the guy was charged, and i don't know where he is now."
– the_hentai_merchant
I Swear It Happened!
"I was walking home from my friends house at around 10pm. it had just snowed a few days ago so the sidewalk was icy. as i was walking, a car pulls in and is driving by me. i don’t think much of it since i live in a relatively safe neighborhood, but i speed up anyway. the car starts driving faster and i begin to run. as i turn the corner i hear a car door slam and footsteps. i’m now at a full on sprint and slip on the ice and face plant on the side walk. i get up and run the rest of the way home. nobody believed me except my aunt when i told them."
– Ok-Calligrapher9997
Nearly Drowned
"I was in the ocean. the water went to my neck. it was fun. jumping over waves. low tide. the tide was getting higher. i was in my regular clothes. I was being swept away by sea. but some guy saved me. mind you i was 9/10. i owe my life to whoever saved me."
– mantheman433
Look Into Your Future
"Alright so this is the scariest for me that continues to scare the shit out of me."
"I was a bartender at restaurant and this was around 2007. I was going through a terrible time in life and during closing I was talking to a friend/customer about it and he suggests I go and see this psychic. I immediately dismiss it and go about life for another painful month or two. I ended up seeing this person again and ask for the contact information."
"I call this lady we’ll call her Janice. Says she doesn’t do phone readings and if I really wanted a reading that I would have to go to her apt. Now, I was nervous and intrigued at the same time so I say fuck it and plan to go and see what’s up."
"Fast forward two weeks and I make the train trek to where she lived. She lived in the projects so I was already nervous af."
"I go up to the floor she lives on and knocked. An older lady answered the door very nice. I was told to wait in her living room."
"After a few minutes she calls me into her kitchen. Now I’m starting to become really skeptical because it is totally not the set up I imagined. At all. Like it’s just a dining room table. No tarot cards, no paraphernalia, nothing. Just a notebook."
"She tells me the reading is 30 dollars. Now, I am really skeptical at this point because I had brought a few hundred with me and what can I really expect for such a small amount. I resign myself to the fact that this is probably a bunch of bullshit and I wasted the day but continue on to be polite."
"She asks me to write down my full name. She mutters a few words and dead fucking ass her eyes roll into the back of her head and another voice starts to speak. Like a mans voice. Not like she tried to sound like a man. But a mans voice. I am terrified at this point but I cannot move from my chair. All I can do is listen."
"Whatever this was speaking told me shit that is still coming true to this day. Told me my sister would die of an overdose which I dismissed because my sister was just fine. Ended up happening. Told me another family member would take their own life. Ended up happening. Told me no matter how hard life is to never commit suicide because “I didn’t want to end up in there with them.""
"Told me also good things that happened. Certain things predicted haven’t happened yet but a few things keep ending up to be true to it is still terrifying."
– Dizzy-Cryptographer2
When you're done reading this, maybe do a quick scan of your surroundings. Just in case, you know? Never can be sure what's coming around the corner or who might be standing behind you.
Good luck.
We like to think we have more control over the world than we really do.
Not to venture into dime-store super-villain territory, but so much of the world is chance, or luck, or a random simulation of numbers assembling in front of us in a Matrix-like scenario. Life is chaos.
We can't predict everything that will ever happen to us, nor should we, because how could you ever predict anything like the following stories?
Reddit user, Financial_Lime_252, wanted to know what could never be fully understood when they asked:
"What’s the most unexplainable thing that’s happened to you?"
Turns out the world is not as big as you think, if these random chance encounters are anything to go off of.
What Are The Chances Of Finding You Here?
"I was visiting the united states, tens of thousands of miles from home, walking along the beach and heard someone call out from the terrace of this cafe. It was my former boss from back in my own country. My mind can't even begin to calculate the unlikeliness of that."
paconadamas
...Not That High, Apparently
"I was walking down a busy street in Dublin on my way to work and I bumped into a guy who was the bouncer at a club I used to go to before I left to go overseas. We both stopped, looked at each other and said "what the f-ck are you doing here?" at the same time. That was over 20 years ago. I'm back in my home country now and not long after I moved into my new place I bumped into him. He lives a couple of streets away from my place."
reverendgrebo
Maybe the inexplicable thing that happened to you isn't so much bizarre and otherworldly, but a just a crazy random happenstance that would take eons to do the mathematics on.
Baby Trash Panda Stories Are Always Cute
"Was in a Krogers parking lot trying to figure out a car issue. Dude who had something tucked under his arm came up, and asked me if I needed help -- I knew what I was dealing with, but said yes, because I'm a computer guy, not a car guy, and you don't know what you don't know, so to speak."
"He proceeded to take the tool I was using to mess with the battery terminal, and handed off the thing that was under his arm, which happened to be a raccoon pup, saying, "Don't worry, he don't bite." I'm completely stunned, holding and petting a completely calm raccoon while this guy sorts out my car. He takes it back, and goes about his day."
"One of many random and unexplainable encounters in my life, but probably my favorite."
Crimsonial
The Connection Is Made
"When I was really really small, like 4 or 5 years old, a woman my mom worked with at the insulation plant, gave my mom one of those 90's fisher price dollhouses because her daughter outgrew it. I even remember the night my mom brought it home, she was so excited that she woke me up at midnight to give it to me (she worked a late second shift). An insulation factory wasn't really a safe place for a really small child, so I had never met the lady. I only knew her name was Rosella, because I thought it was such a beautiful name."
"I had never seen photos or anything to identify her. Fast forward about a month after mom brought home the doll house, I was walking into the general store with my mom. I have no idea what compelled me, but I ran up to a lady checking out in line and yelled out "Rosella!!" Turned out, it was her. My mom just stood stunned, and Rosella had assumed that mom pointed her out to me. Except I had yelled out her name before my mom had even seen her."
todaysmomsawyer
Your Spider-Sense Tingled
"My husband was driving and I was a passenger in the front seat. I dont know what made me do this but I quickly grabbed his arm and I shouted “slow down!”which he did. Then a few seconds later a car on our left side sped past us really fast, then careened into our lane and crashed into the car in front of us. The person speeding died and the person in the car in front of us died. Had I not had told my husband to slow down we would’ve died because we would’ve been hit."
"It’s inexplicable what made me do that but I’d like to believe I have a good angel watching out for me."
CA_catwhispurr
We like to think there's random luck in the world, where fate and chance meet at the crossroads of life, giving us wondrous experiences to tell later on.
However, not all of these events are actually random, no matter how much we wish they were.
Do Dogs Climb Trees?
"like 15 years ago while still lived with my mom we had a big backyard and had two dogs, one night i heard the dogs running back and forth not barking but they were whimpering, like scared or something, and when I went out to see I saw another white dog, like a BIG white husky dog, and it looked at me with piercing red eyes, then turned around, climbed a fucking tree and jumped to the backyard next door."
"To this day I know for sure I wasn't high, and still don't know what that was."
orbit103
Well, That's A Little Easier To Comprehend...
"I have very bad luck, but I think the most significant was when a cop thought I was someone they were chasing (on an open street) and I got tazered in the back and was hit with a baton several times in the face and ribs. The cop realized I wasn't the person and just ran off without saying anything."
"I called the police and they claimed they have no record of it, and I got a lawyer and tried to pursue action against the police department but it all just fell flat and everyone acted like it didn't happen, even most of my family."
"So I got the pleasure of having partial blindness in my right eye (left eye dominant so thank goodness) and suffer from a broken nose and two broken ribs along with being tazed and humiliated in public for no reason. Things are good, I tell ya what."
ConnieSparks
People Explain Which Conspiracy Theories They Believe Are 100% True | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
It's often the bizarre, almost trivial conspiracy theories that take root in people's minds and a Reddit thread dedicated to plumbing the depths of these bel...Not Even Security Footage Can Explain This
"My wife had the week off work, so she offered to drive me to work. I asked her to check if she had her keys, phone, and wallet before we left. She noticed her wallet wasn't in her pocket and asked me to help look for it. I sort-of recalled her putting it on the mostly cleared kitchen island the previous evening. It wasn't there. We moved the few things off of it, but still couldn't find it. Both of us thought that she might've dropped it while she was out shopping the previous day, and to call around to the stores when they opened."
"So we went about our day and she drove me to work. She was quite disappointed to have to spend one of her days off calling the bank to cancel all of her cards, going to ICBC (auto insurance provider) to get a replacement drivers license, and going to her work to get a new key card. She stopped by the two stores she visited the previous day but both had no such wallet in their lost & found. She decided to head back home so she could grab her passport/other ID incase she was asked for it."
"She walked into our condo and saw the wallet, sitting alone on the kitchen island, in the exact spot that I remembered it was. We have security cameras but the footage during that hour corrupted and wasn't viewable."
"Neither of us can explain what the fuck happened. No one has spare keys except my MIL, whom was out of the country. No friends stayed over. The only "logical" explanation is that one of our cats took it off of the kitchen island, hid it, and then brought it back while we were out."
"We definitely had some odd situations happen in that condo."
fishymoo
You Found Your Doppelganger
"When I was 5y/o my mom opened the door to two cops who where telling her that her daughter, (me) was outside alone in spring with only a t-shirt and shorts at 1AM ish."
"At the time I was sleeping with her every nights. So she told the cops it cannot be true I’m in her bed right now. She comes to get me and we go in the entry. The two cops said that the little girl knew where she’s living and that’s her who said she was living at my house. The two cops then look at me creep out and ask my name. I have a very unique name by the way."
"Then the cops took the little girl to show my mother that it wasn’t a joke of some sort. The little girl entered and ran to my mom yelling “mommy mommy it’s me lili”. My name is Livia I don’t know how the f
"We often tell this story with my mother to family reunions. I wish I was kidding, she had similar physical traits too, not identical but similar."
"She knew my name and made a nickname with it to this day. I do believe she heard the cops asking me questions. Then I started to cry and eventually the cops left with the little girl."
According-Car-296
Helping Someone Pass Beyond
"My best friend passed away this past March. On the morning that she passed, right around the time that the coroner said she must have died, I woke up from a dream where she had been dying. In the dream, she thanked me for everything I had done for her. A few hours after I woke up, I sent her a text just wanting to check in. It was right after I sent that text that I got a phone call from her mother who told me she had passed that morning."
"I’ll never understand why I had that dream, but I like to think that on her way out she visited me one last time."
Itsnotaduck
Things. Hurt.
"I still have a print of the photo."
"Around 1996, I borrowed a new digital camera from my work and brought it to band practice at our bassist's house, who was also studying computer programming at the time. I took a bunch of "band pics" and excited about the new technology, we loaded the photos onto his computer to get a good laugh at our drunken foolishness."
"In one particular shot of the bassist, we were stunned to see something bizarre. The TV screen behind him in the photo was black, except for white, cloudy "ghost writing" that said "things hurt." We had NO explanation for this. My friend printed the photo on his black and white printer, and I still have a copy to this day."
Tomegunn1
The world is a big place, and a lot can happen to you in that time. Think critically. You'll find the world makes a lot more sens if you do so.
Keep an eye out for baby raccoons.
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again.
I am very much a night owl. I quite like being up at night.
For one thing, it's quiet.
There's no one to bother me. If I want to watch television and vegetate, I can just do that.
If I want to do some work, I can get my work done without interruptions. It's pretty sweet.
Nothing particularly scary has ever happened either... yet. My fingers are crossed.
But others haven't exactly been so lucky.
They told us their stories after Redditor citric_acid asked the online community:
"What is the scariest thing you’ve witnessed in the middle of the night?"
"Driving through an abandoned section..."
"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
What in the world?
No, thank you.
"It was a bright moonlit night..."
"I stepped in and fell over a cow carcass on a night hike. It was a bright moonlit night but I didn't see it in the shadows. Thankfully it was mostly dry."
Phantomtastic
I would not want to stumble into that late at night!
No thanks.
"Turns out..."
"When I was around 8 I woke up to hear my parents whisper yelling. Turns out someone was beating on the back sliding glass door with a baseball bat. Turns out he was drunk and mistook our place for his ex's."
cigarmanga
Imagine something like this happening to you because you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"I cut down a tree..."
"I cut down a tree in my backyard one afternoon. The tree was in front of my backyard slider so at night there was a lot more light coming in from the neighbors lights and street lights."
"I get up the next morning before sunrise to make my coffee and I saw a shadowy figure down the hall. I yelled what the f**k?!"
"At the moment I didn't realize that now more light was being let in by the lack of tree it cast my shadow on the wall. So basically I was a 37 year old dude that was scared of my own shadow."
lookssharp
It happens to the best of us.
Fear of the unknown still gets us, no matter how old we are!
"Don't know who it was..."
"When I was in high school I was out late (around 2-3am) with a friend chilling in a park. We are just chatting on a bench and after about an hour there I noticed a silhouette in the distance move slightly."
"To my horror I realized there had been a person staring at us from the same spot for almost half an hour or more. As I told my friend and we started to run back to their place, they started chasing us."
"Don’t know who it was or what they were planning but probably the most freaked out I’ve been in my life."
Skytorn7
This is horrifying.
Thankfully you got away!
"Last week..."
"Last week I saw a shooting in the middle of the street while having a pint outside a bar, probably that."
Much_Committee_9355
That is terrifying.
Hopefully you've been able to see someone after seeing something so horrific.
"She had her own nightmare..."
"I once woke up from a nightmare about a demonic little girl to my little sister hovering above my bed. I freaked out and punched her in the nose."
"My sister had her own nightmare and was standing over me because she was debating whether or not to wake me up. I have a history of waking violently so she was weighing whether it was worth it or not. We spent the rest of the night watching Disney movies."
lizzyote
You must have been sleeping very deeply!
But Disney cures all ills.
"Remind you of a movie?"
"My daughter, 4 years old, black hair, pale skin, came into our bedroom in the middle of the night. Hair in her face. Middle of the bed by our feet. And started climbing up towards me and my spouse. Remind you of a movie?"
mutalisken
I've definitely seen this movie before.
Has your daughter ever emerged from a television?
"The police banging my door..."
"The police banging my door at 3am looking for a missing teenage girl... even though I knew my daughter was safe in her room. It still freaked me out."
Wshrig
Terrifying!
Thankfully she was okay and hopefully you were able to rest easy.
"Thought he was drunk..."
"My downstairs neighbour walked into my apartment at 1:30 a,m. I was only dressed in underwear and didn’t have my glasses on. Thought he was drunk and managed to convince him he was in the wrong apartment. He backed his way out, closed the door and went down the hall carrying something."
"A week later I run into him downstairs and laugh about how drunk he must’ve been. Turned out he’d been away. That wasn’t my neighbour who’d walked in."
tangcameo
This would creep me the hell out.
The last thing I want is anyone uninvited in my space.
I think I'm just going to lock my doors and never leave the house after reading these.
Or maybe not stay up so late. Not be a night owl.
What I don't know won't hurt me.
Have some stories of your own? Feel free to tell us more in the comments below!
Nighttime is a little scarier no matter where you are, but there is something especially eerie about the silent pitch darkness of unpopulated rural areas.
The unknown sights and sounds that lurk in the deep dark are enough to make one's skin crawl. A sudden shriek or a piercing light can make the blood run cold.
Perhaps curious about what life is like in those rural spots, Redditor catarpillarfu**er asked:
"Rural folk, what is the most creepy thing you've seen or experienced?"
Many people talked about the sounds. There is something so unnerving about unexplained noises coming from unexplained places, all in the dark.
Final Cries
"The blood curdling scream of something being killed by coyotes, then all of a sudden it stops and there's dead silence."
"Just a few weeks ago just had a black snake wrapped on my outside door knob when I opened it! I guess it was trying to get to the nest of fly catchers beneath the porch roof."
-- TNClodHopper
Dads Can Nope Too
"I live in rural Wisconsin. Surrounded by corn, marsh, the works. I remember I was in my teens, outside at dusk with my parents but we were all doin' our own thing."
"Suddenly a woman's voice yells 'HELP ME' from the woods beside our house. Just loud enough to hear, but quiet enough for me to second guess what I heard. My mom and dad both turned to look at me like 'you heard that too right?' "
"Mom starts screaming 'DO YOU NEED HELP WHERE ARE YOU' It's moved from dusk to pitch black now and the hair stood up on my neck because it got TOO QUIET."
"Mom wanted to keep yelling, but dad just got up from his chair and said "inside". I think that's one of the only times I've seen her listen to him."
Misleading Exterior
"Australia has a reputation for scary animals, but people don't ever talk about the sounds you hear."
"The cutest, most fluffy, sweet-faced little animals make demon noises in the dark. Our birds scream, possums sound horror movie noises, koalas sound like giant monsters."
"All of these are completely harmless. Generally the dangerous animals are, coincidentally, the ones you can't hear."
Not as Sly as We Thought
"Grew up in a very rural area of Kentucky on a property that was about 75 combined acres of woods and empty fields out a dead end, one lane road. One night when I was a kid I was sent to take the trash out to the dumpster after dark."
"The dumpster was already at the bottom of the driveway. About the time I reached the dumpster I heard the most blood curdling scream I have ever heard. Like a woman was being brutally murdered right in my ear."
"I flew back to the house and had a full on come-apart, crying and telling my dad to get a gun. Fox screams will make your blood run cold."
-- Rangylil13
Unseen Lips
"Live out in the country, realized one night that we never got the mail that day so I walked out to the road to get it. No moon that night so it was pitch black, just the sound of crickets and tree frogs."
"As I'm walking back up the driveway, I hear my husband whistling, from the direction it's coming from it seems he walked out the back door and was coming around the side of the house towards me."
"I didn't know why and didn't bother to ask, I just went up on the porch and back in the front door. Just then my husband CAME OUT OF THE BATHROOM. I still get freaked out a little when I think about it. It was 100% a human whistling a tune and both humans were in the house."
Hot and Heavy in the Woods
"I live on a road very far away from town. I have neighbors but I can't hear them or see them from my house. My back deck overlooks a field before mikes of woods. One night I'm out back having a smoke and most likely stoned. I'm just chilling in the dark w a little bit of candle light and the light from inside when I hear a sound that scared the hell out of me."
"It was a deep low breathing/snorting sound. It came from the field but it sounded like it was right next to me. It gave me chills and I thought there was a monster in my back yard. It's pitch black and I can't see what it is, not that I really wanted to. I went back inside, locked the door and googled the sh** out of it."
"It was a deer. During their mating season a male dear can make sounds like that."
There All Along
"A friend of mine lived in a semi-rural area growing up. One night the cops knocked on her door and warned her that they were looking for a possibly violent fugitive. Told her they'd check her property and that she should lock up and be wary."
"It wasn't until some time later that she found out the full story. The fugitive had been caught sexually assaulting a horse in a local stable. In the ensuing panic, the horse's leg was broken and the man got away."
"He was found two days later hiding in a stormwater drain."
"I live in Ireland there are a shit ton of stray cats that farmers just let roam around to cull the local rat population, recently they've started coming further and further into the village and now every night it sounds like someone's climbing around outside my window..."
"my god the first time I heard it was at 2:00 am, they were tapping on the window and everything trying to get in, keep in mind they weren't meowing our making cat noises, it was just one cat walking around on my roof and tapping the window that leads to my room. It was terrifying I legitimately thought it was a person"
People Who Made A Lot Of Money From Something Totally Random | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
For others, it was all about the things they saw. There are some images they just won't get out of their heads anytime soon.
Two Runners
"I used to live in the desert for a year, and on nights when the moon isn't out or there are clouds blocking out the stars and moon it's almost pitch black, you can't see more than ten yards ahead of you..."
"...one night I was driving down the highway going home and then suddenly in my headlights I see a guy running on the side of the highway full on sprinting, I'm going 70mph so it's only for a second or two but I'm like what the hell was he running from?"
"I hope he's okay because I'm not pulling over lmao but then maybe a minute later I see another guy in my headlights only he's walking on the side of the highway, and I swear to God it looked like the same guy, two separate guys in the dark walking/running on the side of the highway?"
"What possible reason could explain that, I didn't see any cars on the side of the road that might've broken down, I was so weirded out I just had an uncomfortable feeling the entire ride home"
-- santichrist
Unexpected Closure
"Used to live in rural Philippines in a tiny fishing village in Tinambacan. Right next to our house was a fenced-off lot that had been overgrown and a really broken down house. It always looked REALLY creepy at night and kids in the neighborhood told me it was haunted. From our rooftop you could look into the lot."
"One night I was looking at it, and I saw a strange blue glow coming from inside and shadows moving across the windows. I couldn't place it at all and didn't hear any noise, no people speaking or any indication of what was causing it. Really scared me."
"I brought it up to my family and they told me drag queens were squatting there overnight so that they could attend a nearby disco. So… that was relieving."
-- drekia
A Fixer Upper
"Grew up spending a ton of time in the Colorado Rockies. In college a friend and I were on a weekend backpacking trip up in national forest land, about three hundred yards off-trail, when we stumbled across a mostly-buried bunker someone had made."
"Think a 20-foot-long Tuff Shed, buried up to it's roof. We only noticed it because sun glinted off one of two small windows in the roof, which had been deliberately covered with brush/tree litter. Looking through the windows, we could make out a cot, buckets and tubs of food and supplies, etc."
"Found the door (concealed/partially buried), which had a heavy padlock securing it."
"Noped out of there with a quickness, didn't want to run into whoever had built the place."
No Need for Supernatural
"Something else that happened in rural CO: this is my friend's story. Dress rehearsal for our school play would run a little late sometimes. My friend ended up being one of the last people there. She walked to her car and got in, something in her rear view mirror caught her eye."
"She looked through her back window to see that a mountain lion was a few yards away. It wasn't the first instance of a mountain lion being on the school grounds. The middle school was just down the hill from there, and I remember when it locked down because there was a mountain lion outside. Good 'ol nature lol"
Horrifying Realities
"I used to live 30 minutes away from where I am now in the Philippines, and back then there weren't any convenience stores or supermarkets nearby in my village. It was just all grass, trees, and vines---perfect if you wanna hide mutilated or sacked bodies. One day, my parents and I drove home from my pre-school. Suddenly my dad went silent and told me not to look"
"i was stupid enough to disobey, and saw someone hanging from the trees with their neck. We learned later on that people were killing themselves because of destitution and personal conflict."
In Unison
"One night I grabbed my son's toy night vision goggles to see if they even worked. If they did, maybe we could see what was making all the weird howling noises in the woods for the last 2 nights. So I looked across the yard into the woods and there were so many eyes."
"So. Many. Eyes. They were everywhere. In one case there was a grouping of 3 eyes. I had myself convinced it was just a opossum with it's baby and I couldn't see the other eye, but then they all blinked at the same time."
"I have never ever used night vision to look in the woods again. Whatever deformity was there can have it's space."
-- 1D0ntKn0wY0u
A Warning
"When I had just gotten my first car I was driving home one night around 10pm, I came around a corner on a very dark backroad and my headlights shined onto a large stake that someone set up on the curve with a deers head shoved on top."
"I was nervous the rest of the way home after that."
The Great Orb
"My friend and I were driving across a rural stretch of highway with very little traffic at night. We were having an involved conversation while he drove. Suddenly I saw something extremely large looming in the distance, right in the middle of the road. It too dark to make out but looked like a huge boulder or round object, at least 10 ft high and just as wide."
"I screamed and pointed at it, my friend hit the brakes and swerved hard around, thankfully missing it. No other cars were around and as it was a one way, we could not turn around to investigate. My first thought was a giant Boulder but we were in flat desert, nowhere near a mountain or hills. We called the cops to let them know but about sh** our pants."
So if you're thinking about upscaling to a big house out in the country, beware the mysterious that may lurk there.
Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.