Who agrees that driving at night is 1000 times more alarming than driving in the day? These drivers share the most unforgettable thing they've seen while driving late at night. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
He Realized The Figures In The Road Weren’t Deers
“My young wife and I were moving between cities. We’d spent all day loading a large 16-foot trailer with all our belongings and began the drive across the state just before dark. I’d borrowed a large pickup truck to pull the heavy trailer to our destination, so the combination of this truck and trailer (fully loaded) was very heavy and pretty slow.
We were traveling along a very desolate stretch of highway at around midnight, driving roughly 60 to 65 miles per hour, when I saw what looked like a couple of deers walking out into the road ahead of us. Maybe 200 yards ahead? My wife was asleep on the seat next to me. I began to slow down a bit and lay on the horn to scare the animals off the road before we reached them. Where we live this is a pretty common occurrence, so I was not going to slam on the brakes because I expected these deers to move well before we got there. They usually do.
Suddenly I realized, as these ‘deers’ came clearly into the light of our headlights, they weren’t deers. They were two men, and they were trying to stop us. It was only a two-lane highway, and one man was standing in the middle of our lane, and the other one was standing in the middle of the opposite lane. By now there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to stop this rig, and they weren’t leaving me anywhere to go. But they didn’t realize I couldn’t stop.
I stomped on the brake pedal and continued to blare the horn over and over again as fast as possible, hopefully getting them to move. I was fighting to keep the truck and trailer from jackknifing, the brakes locking up and the tires screaming, but these guys were not moving, and I was still going 35 to 40 miles per hour when I reached them.
The only thing I could do at this point was to thread the needle between them, so I centered the truck in the middle of the roadway and hoped neither of them tried to close that small window. At the very last second, the guy who was standing in the middle of our lane jumped out of the way. He was so close, I was seriously worried our big rearview mirror might’ve hit him in the head. I missed hitting him by mere inches.
This all happened in a span of about five to eight seconds. There were no cars anywhere on the road. We were way out in the middle of nowhere, and it was pretty obvious, based on their behavior, that these two guys were up to something potentially nefarious. I didn’t stop. I’d come way too close to killing these guys that my heart was literally in my throat. It was pounding so hard I was having trouble breathing.
I didn’t even realize until afterward that when I’d slammed on the brakes my wife had slid off the seat and onto the floor.
She groggily got up off the floor and asked me, ‘What the heck happened?’
She’d missed the entire ordeal.”
The Black Deer
“When I was about 10, I would go with my father for a few hours during the week and he would drive my brother and me back after dark. It was a one-way bendy path through the woods with cliffs on either side. The road was really narrow and then in the middle, it got to the size of a normal two-lane road and then narrow again. At the end of that large part of the road where it was narrow again, I had always seen a dark figure standing there. I always had issues with seeing things, so I assumed it was nothing but it was still freaky. It was a big blocky black thing with white slits as eyes and had no hands or feet. My father told me that it was probably a tree but we wouldn’t know because we were never there during the day. One night after about a year, it moved and it ran out in front of the car so quick, we couldn’t see it. My dad called it a ‘black deer’ and left it alone.
The next time he drove back through there was without my brother and me. He went off the side of the road, down the cliff, and snapped a street light. He said he hit that ‘black deer,’ but he said there was no way it was a deer. It stood on its back legs and looked almost human. Years later, I never saw it. I was talking to my stepsister about the accident and she said, ‘I always hated that road, there was always this big black thing standing there.'”
Mystery Car
“I’m a truck driver, specifically doing shuttle runs for a factory in my city. I run loaded trailers from the factory downtown to a warehouse 20 miles away, where I drop my loaded trailer, exchange it for an empty one, and take it straight back to the factory. I run this route seven to eight times a night; I’m told it’s a diamond in the rough as far as trucking jobs go.
Anyway, my route has me cross this rather precarious highway bridge on the return trip. The bridge is only two lanes wide with no shoulder. The speed limit on the highway is 70 miles per hour, but this bridge has a steep drop and a sharp curve down to surface level, so the recommended speed to take this curve is 45.
A few months ago, around two am on a Wednesday, I was in the process of rounding this curve when a car was blocking the bridge, and I nearly plowed right into it.
The car didn’t lose control or smash into anything. There weren’t any tire tracks on the pavement, and the car didn’t have any damage. The said car was a brand-new Mercedes SUV with dealer tags, so it probably wasn’t broken down. And nobody was in the car; whoever was driving must’ve just decided to come to a complete stop in the middle of this practically blind corner, got out of his car, and walked away.
The car couldn’t have been there for longer than 20 minutes or so. It wasn’t there when I drove past that bridge in the other direction. I didn’t see anyone walking along the highway, either. I have no idea what was going on with the car. When I un-clenched my seat out of my behind a minute later, I called the cops to get that car and I never heard anything about it afterward.”
He Immediately Got His Trauma Kit Out
“I was driving to work, chatting on the phone with my wife to pass the time (it was a six to eight hour drive out to the base from our home), and ahead of me was somebody riding a motorcycle. The road we were on was generally straight but had some unpredictable curves because of the road loosely following a broad wash/lake bed. The person ahead of me was going between 70 to 90 miles per hour and seemed generally familiar with the road. But, then they just sailed straight over the edge of a 45 mile per hour curve going about 80.
I made some reactive sounds and hung up with my wife. I immediately pulled over, called 911, and put them in my pocket. Then I got my trauma kit and put on a pair of gloves. I was talking to the dispatcher and explaining what had happened when I stepped over to the bank and saw, to my surprise, not a crumpled body in the sage. But a young guy, mid-twenties, picking himself up off the ground about 75 feet ahead of me and 15 feet below. He’d been launched from the motorcycle which was in terrible shape about 30 feet from him. I told him to stay still and went through a quick evaluation. He was basically fine but super rattled. He ended up having a broken collar bone and a mild concussion.”
She Vanished
“My family used to go out on little drives together (sometimes for fun) in the spring to watch all the run-off water from the snowmelt. We live in the rural prairies of Canada. We were on a back road slowly winding the edge of a prickly hayfield with a tiny trickling ditch river beside us. It was the golden hour and the returning geese were dotting the water gathered in the fields for miles. A scene Van Gogh might’ve wanted to paint, ya know? Anyways, we were driving along when this enormous moose thundered out of nowhere at top speed right in front of our car. She headed through the field right beside us and straight toward some water that had pooled at the bottom of a little hill in the field. Very wide puddle, but looked maybe a foot deep at most. She made it a few feet into the water then suddenly fell into an unsuspecting abyss below and vanished completely.
I don’t even know how long it was but it felt like ages. She eventually emerged 40 feet away on the opposite side of the ‘puddle’ and kept on running like she didn’t just slip into Marianas trench.
It was about six feet from hoof to shoulder on a female moose. They’re absolutely huge, larger than horses and she completely vanished. I’ll never forget it.”
Deer? Coyote? Maybe A Cougar?
“Almost two years ago, my brother and I were making a cross-country journey and were planning on stopping off in Arizona to see some friends. There were highway notices everywhere that there was an escaped convict as soon as we entered Arizona. It was about one am so we were already in a bit of a strange mood. Something about the drive through the desert felt super eerie, so one of us mentioned it and we started joking about the spooky claims people make while traveling through the area like aliens, skinwalkers, and ghosts.
While we were having this conversation this crazy-looking animal ran across the road right in front of us. At first, I thought it was a deer but it looked too wolf-like to be a deer. However it moved like a deer and was too lanky to be a coyote, but it had a long tail like a cougar. And it was big. I slammed on my breaks and it ran off into the bush. We both just started screaming and then laughing. We have no clue what it was. At first, I thought ‘cougar with mange’ after we had a minute to process it but the more I thought about it the less sure I was of what it was we saw.”
“There Were Lots Of White Crosses On That Highway”
“When I turned 16 and got my license, I convinced my mom to let me drive the family minivan to our annual summer vacation spot about eight hours away. It was the longest drive I had done at that point but I was confident and persistent, so she eventually agreed. The drive was entirely uneventful until we hit the final 15-minute stretch of our journey.
It was dark by this point but I could see the shimmering lake from the road, letting me know I was close. As I came around a sharp blind curve, a man wearing nothing but a bathing suit and flip-flops appeared directly in front of us. I swerved without thinking, missing him by maybe a foot but probably only inches. I had to pull over a second later and collect myself after almost smoking this guy who was wandering in the road. Mom called the cops and told them we almost took out a presumably wasted pedestrian on the highway. They said they’d send someone, and that it happened a lot there, unfortunately. There’s a popular bar and motel on the lakeshore about a mile away. There were lots of white crosses on that highway. Glad I didn’t contribute to the count that night.”
“Do Not Buy A 2008 Honda Odyssey”
“My mom was taking my siblings and me home after going somewhere when the belt on the car broke. So we were just coasting for a few hundred feet on the highway, looking for a place to pull over. Eventually, we found a spot, and my mom turned the car off. Then all of a sudden, this taxi pulled over on the other side of the highway. He offered to keep his car on while my siblings and I sat inside to get warm. My mom thanked him and stayed by us while she called a family friend to come and get us. We waited for a half-hour, then the family friend arrived. When we got situated in the friend’s car, my mom turned around to find no taxi, no driver, nothing. None of us heard him shut his door or drive off.
My mom said she didn’t know who it was, but she was convinced he was more than just a taxi driver. It’s a comforting thought, honestly. The moral of the story is not to buy a 2008 Honda Odyssey. My family has owned three and they’ve all broken down after a couple of years.”
“So I dialed 9-1-1”
“I was on this run to pick up three cars on a trailer from Virginia Beach back to Iowa some years back. I drove the entire way there without stopping except for bathroom breaks. I had planned on grabbing a hotel room when I got there and sleeping before I came back home.
After drinking a few five-hour energy drinks during the trip, I wasn’t tired when I got there. So when I loaded up the cars and turned around, I figured I’d stop when I got tired. It got to be pretty late at night and I was driving through the mountains of West Virginia when I was starting to get tired but I didn’t see anywhere to stop for a while that didn’t look too sketchy.
Then all of a sudden, I saw a person crawl up out of the ditch and lay down on the side of the road. I was doing 75 miles per hour or so with three cars on a trailer, and going down a mountain, so I couldn’t exactly slam on my brakes or anything. So I just dialed 911.
I said, ‘I don’t know if I’ve just been awake for too long or what, but I’m pretty sure I just saw someone climb up onto the road from the ditch.’
They said they would check it out and that they were getting the same call from a couple of other people. I decided that I would stop at the next exit and find somewhere to stay.
The next morning, I turned on the news in the hotel and it said that the guy had crashed his motorcycle a day earlier, and was barely alive. He climbed up to the road, and died as soon as he got up there.”
Thanks, Mom
“My mom was in the car with my sister who was driving and they were on their way back from some event. The street lights on this particular stretch of road weren’t working very well and it was difficult to see. My sister was chatting away and my mom was watching the road when all of a sudden she saw in front of the car a bike rack, completely filled with bikes. It looked as if it had just dropped off from the back of someone’s car and they didn’t notice.
She screamed, ‘BIKES’ at the top of her lungs.
My sister swerved over, spun, and then came to a stop on the other side of the road, facing the opposite direction, miraculously avoiding all the cars that were going by. A few cars stopped to make sure they were okay. My sister looked at my mom and asked her how she even saw the bikes because she didn’t see them until they were almost about to hit them. My mom said she saw them and it looked like they were illuminated by a gentle blue light, but they looked back and those bikes were just sitting in the darkness.”
Flying Car?
“While driving across Louisiana on Interstate 10, I saw a flying car. There’s a bridge that’s about 40 miles long on that road. There was no other car in sight. And far ahead of me on that bridge, there was this car about eight feet above the road. It was kind of bobbing as it flew.
It was a very dark night. All I could see was its taillights. I tried to convince myself it was just a trick of perspective. It just looked like it was higher than the road. It was freaky and scary however as I was slowly gaining on it, I slowed down.
I eventually speeded up, telling myself I was stupid for being scared of it. It couldn’t really be a flying car. Not a ghost or something. As I slowly crept up, it was definitely about eight feet above the road. As I got closer I finally saw it. It was being hauled on a flatbed truck like a wrecker. The truck had no tail lights, so I guess the truck driver turned on the car’s taillights.
It gets spooky at night down in those swamps.”
Garbage Bag Or An Adult Man?
“About 25 years ago, my sister and I were driving on a normally busy road, but it was late at night and was deserted. We could both see something flapping on the road up ahead. I asked her what it was and my sister said she didn’t know either but that it looked like a black garbage bag. I agreed, it really looked like a bag lying on the road being whipped lightly by the wind.
As we approached it, it completely changed shape. It went from being quite flat and small to morphing into a fully grown man on a bike. He was just standing there in the middle of the road with his bike. We pulled alongside and asked if he was ok. He nodded but didn’t speak. We drove off.
We still talk about it because it was the strangest, creepiest thing ever and we both still can’t explain what we saw.”
Where Did They Go?
“I live on a backroad in the country, so when I need to head to town, I almost always end up having to pass by an Amish carriage. It’s a common occurrence, and they’re usually friendly and pull as much to the side as they can to let cars pass them by, but this one was going unbelievably slow. So I came up behind them, checked to make sure it was clear, passed by, and I very vividly remember looking at them as I passed. However, once I looked ahead to the road, and then back in my rearview mirror, I saw nothing was there. No horse, no carriage, no roads to turn on nor hills to cut off my sight. One second they were there, the next they just weren’t.
Not sure if I’m going insane, but I’m still a little creeped out by it every time I drive by that spot.”
One Boring Night
“A friend and I were driving down some gravel roads one night, aimlessly turning and trying to get lost, only to find our way back home out of boredom.
So we were driving down a long stretch and it was pitch black out, no houses or lights nearby. It was just the gravel and fields around us. Suddenly I saw a large, black mass running next to the car, keeping up with us. I screamed and pointed which made my friend scream and slam on the brakes.
We were both in sheer panic mode as this thing stopped and turned around to run back at the car. I thought this was the end. Some paranormal creature was about to kill us and it was just a big, black, wild dog.
The relief and laughter that followed felt so good after being so scared.”
The Smallest And Saddest Little Farm Town”
“Four years ago, I was driving across the border between Colorado and New Mexico at around four am. I was looking for a place to stop for fuel when I happened to come across the smallest and saddest little farm town with only one tiny gas station. I hadn’t seen another car for hours and it felt like this town was abandoned because of how quiet it was. Honestly, it was kind of cool except for how freezing it was.
I was pumping away feeling like I was completely alone until I noticed another car in the shadows near the back of the building. A flashy, black low rider with completely tinted windows. Then I saw ‘right out of a gangster movie’ looking guys leaning against it. I remember laughing because one, they startled the heck out of me, and two, they were wearing the black shorts, wife-beater tank tops, and knee-high socks. Remember, it was freezing cold. Also, it was the middle of nowhere, and they looked so casual.
Without a word, all four got off the car and walked straight towards me until I could see the full sleeves and face tattoos under the pump lights. I dropped the gas pump, fired up the motor, and did the greatest zero to 100 that old girl had ever seen. Not even 20 seconds after burning out onto the highway, I saw headlights swerve out and follow me. Little did they know, my beat-up-looking dodge truck had the Hemi motor and a couple of upgrades. They never had a chance and after a few miles, their headlights disappeared in my rearview mirror.
I didn’t think much of it and even laughed at how bad I outran them until a cop buddy told me about the gangs running business through there to avoid the Interstate. I wasn’t laughing anymore.”
“It Didn’t Seem Quite Natural”
“My brother and I were driving down a super remote road late at night many years ago. Wildlife was common so we drove slower than what was posted. An accident could be fatal on this road. Anyway, it was a particularly dark night so we had the high beams on and we were really concentrating on the journey.
We saw it at the same time. It was impossible to miss. My brother hit the brakes and we skidded to a stop in front of the biggest cow on earth. We could have driven under it with room to spare. It was massive. And it stared at us without seeming to see us. The vibe was so creepy. Other cows were around but they were regular-sized. This guy was the king of all bovine.
It didn’t seem quite natural.”
