Truck Drivers Describe The Creepiest Thing That's Ever Happened To Them On The Job

It's no secret that truck driving is quite a dangerous job.
That truck is gigantic and very heavy, the driver often drives for hours and hours on insufficient sleep, and the highway is an unpredictable place.
But what happens when it ceases to be simply "dangerous" and goes a whole step further?
Some Redditors who are truck drivers themselves--or at least know someone who is--shared the stories of the creepiest things that have ever occurred while driving the rig.
sinoxx_the_maymayer asked, "Truck drivers of reddit, what is the creepiest thing that has happened to you while on the job?"
A Tragic Mess
"There are several truckers in my family. The worst story would have to be when one of them witnessed a motorcycle accident of a father carrying his 8 year old son on the back."
"They had just left court where the Father had won full custody."
"I'll spare details, but somehow they hit into another semi and went under. It was a gruesome and heartbreaking thing for them to witness."
Opportunist
"Many years ago before GPS and smartphones, picking up meat downtown Chicago. Got lost, and came upon a bridge I couldn't get under."
"Dude on the corner yells at me and says for $25 he'll get me back to the highway. I agree, he hops up on drivers door steps. Dude gets me right back to the highway."
"I pull out the 25 bucks, he pulls a knife telling me to give him everything I got."
"I roll up the window, and start getting on the entrance ramp to I-94. Got up to about 35 mph before he finally jumped off."
A Shakedown
"One other time, pulling out of same meat plant. Get stuck at a stop light to get on the highway."
"There was one truck ahead of me at the light. Bunch of people standing on the corner. I assumed they were waiting on the bus."
"Next thing I know, they are breaking the doors open on the trailer of the truck in front of me. Like an assembly line throwing boxes of meat to each other."
"I holler at the driver on the CB, she pops out with a gun. Thankfully I was far enough away from her that I could get around and get he hell out of there."
A Haunted Road
"My dad's coworker was a dump truck driver. Idk of that counts."
"One night he ran over a horse and buggy. He could hear the people screaming and the horse screaming and the wood and metal grinding under his truck."
"When he got out of the truck there was nothing there. Eventually he went on his way, stopped at the next place he saw that was open which happened to be a little all night diner."
"The waitress pouring his coffee asked him if he'd been in an accident with his truck because he was white as a sheet and shaking."
"There had been a gruesome accident with a horse and buggy years back. And every once in a while someone would come in telling the same story about hitting an Amish buggy that disappeared."
-- Chaithecat
Brush With the Wild
"My dad's been a truck driver for six years now. He told me his scariest experience was when he stopped in Colorado to take a nap because he was getting sleepy after an 11 hour drive."
"He said the truck stop he was at was completely surrounded by a forest that went for miles."
"After about an hour or so he suddenly woke up to a loud thump on his hood. He slowly got up and moved the curtains that separate the beds from the drivers seat and lo and behold were two of 'biggest wolves he'd ever seen' he said."
"They gave him a deadpan stare as soon as they noticed him. My dad immediately honked his horn and they jumped off, yet he said he didn't sleep after that."
"He later grabbed his gun after he thought it was safe and went for a coffee. Then resumed his drive."
"His story didn't sound that scary, until I looked up the size of a wolf. Apparently, those f***ers are huge."
Not an Apparition, a Suspect
"Not a truck driver, but my dad is. One day, two years ago, I hadn't got school, so he decided to make me go to work with him to keep him company. He had to travel to another city about 45 km from where we live."
"To get to this city, you have to pass a road in the countryside with not a single soul around."
"So, while he was driving, I was looking outside the truck windows, when I saw something so creepy... There was a woman staring at us standing in a field."
"I decided to concentrate on the music coming from the radio."
"Later that day, the news reports that a woman who escaped the prison had been arrested again... I realized that I saw that woman..."
More Wildlife
"My uncle was a trucker and he pulled over because he saw a baby bear by the road."
"He was playing with it when the momma bear showed up."
"He made it back to the cab but she took a swipe at the door and her claws dug an inch into the metal and left behind curls in the metal. This was in the 70s."
-- Chaithecat
Not What You Expect to See Out There
"Not me, but an ex-girlfriend's cousin's uncle (Yeah, I know its a friend of a friend situation, but it was a well known tale among the family)."
"He was driving on a Mexican road at night. He felt a call of nature, so he parked on the sideway and jumped off the truck. He walked to relief himself and while doing that he felt a presence beside him."
"He pointed his flashlight at his side and saw, standing besides him, a small deformed person. It was naked and had both its head and face bloated. And he was standing just there."
"The driver (ex-gf's cousin's uncle) ran away to his truck, jumped in, and drove away from there."
Glimpsing a Well-Known Legend
"Got to see The Black Dog."
"Had been running a long week and long hours in an industry very similar to truck driving but less regulated."
"I can't say how many hours I had been driving that day but the people talking on the radio had stopped making sense; they had faded into a white noise din along with the ever present whistle of wind and turbo."
"I had stopped babbling to stay occupied. I was driving as a robot and not fully aware of where on the familiar mountain route I was."
"The beast was beside the truck and the size of a car in the shoulder lane. It was keeping pace at 70 mph but the legs moved slower."
"It was like a shadow and had form but when you looked, it disappeared. It existed only in my peripheral."
"The Black Dog is said to be an omen of death and they aren't wrong. I wasn't falling asleep (the energy shooters were making sure of that) but my brain was entirely shutting down."
"It's something buried in in your subconscious that can only be accessed in your deepest primordial lizard brain. At first it was confusing but not scary; though I should have been scared."
"I should have slept but chose to continue on and end my week in my bed. I could have died or killed a van full of nuns and orphans coming back from free puppy day at the shelter."
"I chose to keep trucking and that choice made me the monstrous demon in the night."
-- dirty_hooker
"Not even close"
The only thing that happened to me was an hour-long traffic delay but the experience was creepy as hell. Eastern Tennessee, I-26 northbound. I finally round the corner to see the accident.
It was a Fed Ex semi that had run into the trees on the right. This was instantly apparent because there were literally FedEx packages in the trees, like 40 feet in the air, dozens of them. That was a little bit creepy.
So one's eyes always look to see the damage to the tractor. Did the driver survive, one wonders? I was going slow enough to get a good look. The trailer was mangled but identifiable. The tractor was missing. There was no way they had removed it, it was just not there.
It was the only time I actually got rattled by something like that. My hands started shaking, I had a fight or flight response in my body. Despite the delay, I had to stop at the first rest area and walk it off.
I get out, and see another driver pull in. He gets out and looks like I feel, unsteady on his feet. We talk. I ask him about the missing tractor. He says he was stopped there long enough to figure it out.
The engine was at the base of the big ass tree. The two sides of the cab went way past the tree on either side. The chassis was in several chunks.
Survival? Not even close.
Concrete jungle
Not a truck driver but my dad is one. He was in New York City and asked a guy on the street for directions. The man jumped up on the side of the cab and told him directions but then also demanded money for the directions. My dad was dumbstruck but obliged and gave him a few dollars but then the guy started to get belligerent but my dad just started to drive and the guy jumped off the side of the truck but it always creeped me out thinking of what might have happened.
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The Mandela effect is when multiple people share the same, incorrect memory.
Its name stems from when paranormal researcher Fiona Broome falsely believed that the future president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, died in prison in the 1980s.
A false memory she shared with a number of others.
Our memories have been known to deceive us, as we might frequently forget someone's name or one of our numerous online passwords.
But when we share a memory that turns out to be false with many others, convincing ourselves it wasn't the truth can be a very difficult ordeal indeed.
Redditor Mysterious_Boat_1701 was curious to hear people's most unsettling experiences with the Mandela Effect, leading them to ask:
"Which Mandela effect freaks you out the most and why?"
A mysterious gym
"Just had one personally."
"Went to a mall where there was supposedly a gym, asked around and nobody that worked at the mall knew what I was talking about."
"Looked around and couldn't find it."
"Come back a few months later and it’s right there in front of my face, you'd have to be strung out to not notice it."
"idk how or when it just appeared but it freaked me out."- prex320278
A "fruit"ful logo.
"That the fruit of the loom logo never had a cornucopia."
"What’s crazy about that one is that someone emailed the creator of the logo about it and he said even he remembers it having one."- mrcock2·
Less well intentioned than they thought.
"I Mandela effected my whole family once."
"Years ago there was a football player on a rival team that always did a dumb celebration after he got a sack and my family and I always hated it."
"One night after he did it my family started trashing the celebration and I said as a joke 'we are all going to feel terrible when we find out he is doing that celebration as a request from a make-a-wish kid'."
"Fast forward to years later and our team is playing that team again."
"The player got a sack and did the celebration."
"I rolled my eyes and said 'I hate that celebration so much' my mom instantly turned and said 'don't say that, he is doing it for a sick kid'."
"'I actually like it."
"So I was like 'what?'"
"'No there is no sick kid', my whole family then proceeded to argue with me'."
"They all vividly remembered reading articles about it, seeing special report segments before games about it, and other information."
"Some of them even thought they knew the disease the kid had and even extra details about why the kid chose that specific celebration."
"They all had these shared memories that they were sure were true."
"I was floored by all this and insisted none of that was true."
"So we looked it up.'
"Not true."
'No kid like that ever existed.'
"They still have trouble wrapping their heads around this one."
"Turned out human memory is not near as reliable as we think"
"It was American Football and the player was Jared Allen of the Minnesota Vikings and his cattle roping sack celebration."
"This was maybe 10 years ago."- AUSpartan37
His eyesight was better than we thought.
"Mr. Monopoly's monocle."- Additional_Day9903
It's not easy being green.
"I have a personal one that to this day a decade later still destroys my mind."
"I had an old(ish) 2001 dodge neon."
"With BLACK SEATS.'
"I drove this car for years and years, like 80,000 miles.'
'All through college."
"I took work breaks in my car, commuted hours every day total, to college and then the opposite direction to work and back."
"I even lived out of this thing on several occasions.'
'The day I go and trade it in, I'm pulling misc things out of the car at the dealer."
'And the seats are GREEN."
"Not even a little."
'Like very unmistakably GREEN."
"In my black Neon, with black interior, that ALWAYS HAD BLACK SEATS."
"My girlfriend then, wife now, goes oh they've always been green."
"EXCEPT THEY F*CKING WEREN'T DON'T LIE TO ME."
"This is still upsetting to this day..... life is a lie and nothing is real."- ZakuLegion
An urban legend was born.
"Not a global one, just a family thing."
"Back in 2002 my grandma had her 60th birthday, my father took us home at 10.00pm, ready for bed."
"We, me and brother, were 12 and 14 at this time."
'All went well."
"Over the years, a story was made up that we went missing after visiting the local playground after dinner at said grandma's birthday party."
"Some neighbors help to search us, the whole train of 'missing children in a smal village'-thing."
"Fun fact: we never went missing."
"Dad brought us home, put on 'Toy Story' on tv and left."
"My brother and I heard first about this in 2015.'
"From different people on different occasions."
"'Ah your one of the missing boys'."
"I first thought they were mocking me for a different event.'
"I got lost, but it was 2013, alcohol inflicted, different story."
"But then they ALL tell us the same story about us going missing."
'And the stories are damn close to 'true' in every story my mum is driving around the same neighbors to different locations to search, old wine yard, old mill etc."
"Sometimes I think I got lost on the most brutal way."
"I was lost and changed this plane of existence with another one."
"It sometimes made me think about my whole life."- tjorben123
Memories are a fascinating thing.
They can be changed or altered with even the tiniest suggestion.
And making the truth seem less believable than lies.
One last time. One last meal.
How do you chose a last meal?
Let's hope we never have to find out.
People on death row get that option.
Do they deserve it?
Whose to say?
But they have it.
A steak. A pizza... Burger King.
The food world is their oyster.
Oyster. Also an option.
The menu is endless...
Redditor No-Caterpillar4212 wanted to know what our menu choices would be if we faced the end. They asked:
"You're on a death row, you have one hour left, they ask for your final meal - what is it?"
I'd want 2 hours in a Golden Coral with a bar. Covers it all.
Years
"I want a nice filet mignon, medium rare, a baked potato with everything on it, and a nice Cabernet from a good year - I'm thinking 2135."
cleon42
"'Sorry, we couldn't get the Cabernet from 2135. So instead of what could have been a great wine request from a more plausible period of time, you get this crappy stuff we sourced from Wal-Mart. Enjoy your meal, I hope that maintaining your sense of humor was worth it."'
Until_Morning
Take Me
"Something badly cooked so I will be sick and want to die sooner and have diarrhea so bad it will be a last revenge!"
ratchet0101
"Taco bell it is!"
No-Caterpillar4212
"If Taco Bell makes you poop a lot, it's a sign that you probably need more fiber in your diet."
RDAwesome
The Yuck Factor
"A huge bowl of baked beans, a bowl of shredded wheat, a six egg omelette, and a gallon of apple cider. I'm gonna make it awful for everyone."
"Save yourself the hassle of eating all that, just ask for one pack of sugar free Haribo gummy bears. Should make for an interesting time for the folks watching you die."
MamaSweeney24
"You void your bowels when you die too so that should be lovely."
IDontControlTheFood
Perfect
"Fried chicken with some Fanta."
Aggravating-Year-776
Fried chicken is on the top of everyone's list!
Details
"150mg of MDMA. I’m dying happy."
W0nderfu1W0nder
"This should absolutely be allowed. If our leaders insist on the practice of capital punishment then the condemned should be able to ingest any substance they damn please."
forewontoi
Broken
"McFlurry. Those machine are always broken. I just bought myself some time."
Curiousuk_South9566
"Is this like an American thing? I worked at a McDonald's in Denmark once and our machine was never once broken when i was there."
oliv111
"I saw a video about this once. I'm a little fuzzy on the details but I think it has something to do with the contract that was signed in America. Only one company is allowed to do maintenance on the machines and they basically lock out if it's cleaned incorrectly. It's a crap system."
grilled-pbj
Sorry
"Cabbage!! Add some cabbage. I don’t know if an hour if enough to take effect but there was an old coworker on a cabbage diet. Omg she smelled, like it was coming out of her pores. She knew she smelled and kept apologizing and reminding us of the diet."
ImStillaPrick
The OG Always
"Olive Garden. Unlimited soup and breadsticks."
thegodfaubel
"I saw a sketch once, can't remember who it 2qs from. But a an inmate ordered the all you can eat buffet and had been eating for like 8 years. He's constantly on the toilet and takes micro-naps between bites."
KingOfTheGoobers
"Unlimited for 1 hour. Cool."
anticlockclock
How Golden
"If my grandma is still alive her potato soup and cheesecake. Hopefully I'd be able to cook said meal with her one last time."
ATLAS_IS_LOST
Let's hope none of us has to make this decision.
Most people have friends they've been close to for most of their lives.
But at the same time, friends evolve, and everyone finds themselves losing touch with any number of people they at one point considered their friends over time.
Most of the time, this isn't intentional, but just simply happens.
On rare occasions though, people might realize that their friends were not exactly who they thought they were, and didn't like who they revealed themselves to be.
Redditor One-Refrigerator69 was curious to hear stories of people who realized their friends were not exactly the nicest people to be around, leading them to ask:
"When was the moment you realized that your friends are assholes?"
Compared to others...
"When I started hanging out with better people."- Darklink326
All it took was getting my life together
"When I quit drinking ‘cos it was killing me."
"There were people I literally saw every single day who just disappeared as if by magic."
"12 years ago this week, as it happens."
"I’m not anti-drink, far from it."
"Some people, me included, just can’t enjoy it without it becoming a problem."
"Everyone is different."- bigdaftgeordie
A little perspective goes a long way.
"After I realized that other people don't sh*t on each other on every possible occasion in their circle."
"And that it isn't right when a 'friend' uses every known insecurity as an argument against you when you do not behave the way he/she would want you to."- ViscousPlateman
Lack of respect for other people's things
"I let my friend borrow my ps2 when I went to boot camp."
"When I came back, he said he sold it and gave me $50 I think?"
"This was in 2006."- madmike-86
Lack of mutual respect
"When he does sh*t to me and acts like it’s no big deal, then I do the same back and he gets offended."- Primary-Maybe-2749·
Constantly being taken advantage of.
"They only bothered with me when it suited them."
"I'd rather have nobody than have to deal with that."- zombi33mj
When they literally revealed themselves to be criminals
"When they robbed me at gunpoint."- Ok_Student8032
When they stopped liking them after a change of situation
"Fourth grade, when my parents economical situation went downhill and suddenly no one invited me to their birthday party."
"Until Seven years later no one had never invited me to their birthday, or to anything at all actually."- Justalittletoserious
Not being able to get a word in...
"When they tell me to shut up when I say anything."- the_golden_cheese
Violently playing with emotions
"She got a boyfriend and would let him listen to our phone calls and not tell me, even if I was crying about personal stuff that I would only ever tell her."
"Then they both started lying to me about my crush liking me back, forcing both him and me into awkward positions, telling everyone we liked each other so they'd play along, swapping places constantly to make us sit next to each other, pressuring him into giving me a lap dance, making him kiss the prettiest girl in the room, etc, and encouraged me to shoot my shot more and more."
"All the while they knew he didn't like me, he had told them both directly."
"One night I was crying on the phone cause I was so confused why my advances weren't working, and they just kept explaining it away, blaming some other bullsh*t reason and telling me to try again."
"The next day they told me they were laughing throughout the whole call, because I didn't get it and I was so upset."
"I should add I had no dating experience at all and nobody had ever liked me at this point."- Juliemj
It's always sad when our friends disappoint us.
But when our friends proved to be completely different people than we thought they were, it can be devastating.
As the saying goes, one never truly knows who their friends are.
When visiting any foreign country, one should always be familiar with the laws and customs of the land.
After all, what might be generally accepted on your home turf, might be frowned upon, if not illegal, elsewhere.
For that matter, even locals might need a refresher course on what they can and can't do while at home.
A recent Redditor was curious to hear what tourists and locals alike should avoid doing in the USA, leading them to ask:
"In the United States, what should you never do?"
Stay out of the skies!
"Don't fly a drone in Washington, DC."
"The whole D.C. Area is a no fly zone."
"It's a federal offense."
"Just don't do it."- PeytonCarrK
Cops can't be bribed.
"Don't try to bribe cops when you get pulled over."
"I had some Argentinian friends immediately pull out their wallets and start pooling their cash when they got pulled over once.'
"Fortunately someone in the car noticed and told them to put it away immediately."- PeytonCarrK
"Don't pay off the police."
"My dad has friends from several third-world nations where it is common practice to give the police some cash when you are pulled over."
"However, if you try to bribe a police officer here, you'll get into a lot of trouble."- JohnASmiley
Know your rights.
"Everyone, including foreigners, has the right to be silent and have a lawyer when being questioned."
"Don’t say anything."
"Also, even if you speak English fairly well, ask for an interpreter."- WickedLilThing
Enjoy all that nature has to offer... carefully!
"Don't wander off in the national parks."
"It's very real wilderness and you can get lost and die out there."
"This includes going over railings you aren't supposed to, or off trails."
"People have died accidentally falling into a steam geyser that looked like normal water, mauled by animals or left to the elements."- AlphaOhmega
Allow plenty of time!
"Expect consistency at TSA in airports."- WickedLilThing
Some terminology doesn't translate...
"If you’re from England, they’re called cigarettes here."- Yung_Onions
Make sure your license is up to date.
"If you come from a walkable country don’t come here expecting the same."
"There are some areas with good public transportation and bicycle/pedestrian friendly streets but for the most part, especially outside of cities, the areas are designed to accommodate cars more than anything else."
"The reason a lot of Americans drive everywhere is because, depending on where you live, we have no choice."- The_Cars93
Wait for instructions.
"Get out of your car and approach the cop when being stopped by a cop unless told to."- hildrash
Whether your'e waling down a street in a foreign country, or the street you've lived on for your entire life, it's always wise to be on guard and aware of your surroundings.
Not to mention, obey the law.