'So I Turned The Lights Off'

From Redditor u/DoctorWhoToYou:

I was delivering and installing machines. Since I was behind schedule, I decided to drive late to my next destination. There were no street lights [and] no other cars.

At the peak of feeling like I was in the middle of nowhere, every single light on the dashboard of the truck lit up, and then it stalled. Now it's pitch black. I am stopped, and the truck isn't restarting. I shut everything down and started making phone calls. I looked up and saw something move in front of the truck, just out of the distance of [my hazard] lights.

I finally got a hold of someone and they told me it would be 2-3 hours before they could get a mechanic for me.

So now I am sitting in silence. The only noise is the clicking the hazard lights are making, and I am staring out the windshield into a void of darkness when I see movement again. I threw on [my] high beams. The headlights caught three wolves snacking on something that looked like roadkill. I honked the horn and they looked at me like they were irritated more than scared. The wolves more than likely weren't going to bother me, but it was spooky just knowing they were there. So I shut the lights off.

I suddenly heard what I can only equate to a woman's scream of terror that sounded like it came from right behind the truck. Then something slammed into the side of the truck, hard enough to rock it.

I turned every light on… and laid on the horn. I was checking both mirrors, and the only thing I saw was a shadow bolt across the road. I also noticed the wolves were gone. From every nature documentary I've watched, the only time predators leave food is when there are bigger predators around.

I could hear it thrashing around in the brush [nearby], breaking sticks and what sounded to be logs. I basically had the steering wheel gripped, all the lights on, and was feverishly looking out the windows, and through the mirrors to make sure nothing was around the immediate area of the truck.

Finally, I saw some headlights through one of my mirrors. The noise stopped as the headlights approached. It was obviously the mechanic. [He] pulled out in front of me. My headlights were shining on his truck. As his door opened to step out, we both heard the scream again and the brush-thrashing intensified. His door immediately closed, and my phone rang.

He called my phone asking me what it was. He sounded more panicked than me. I had no clue what it was, and he had no clue what it was. So the mechanic called the police.

Two state police officers showed up. They lit that area up like it was a stadium. I finally stepped out of the truck for the first time since it all started.

We heard that scream three more times while the mechanic was working on my truck. Thankfully they were getting further away. The cops had no clue what it was, either. They were kind of spooked, too.

The mechanic finally got my truck running, and I made it to my hotel for the night. [On] the side [of the truck] that was hit, there was an indentation about the size of a basketball, about 7 feet off the ground.

I have no idea what it was. I probably never will. I do confidently know that I will never, ever drive through the Upper Peninsula at night again.

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• 'That Sh*t Didn't Make Any Sense'

  From Redditor u/kickaguard:

  I used to travel for work doing construction. My boss was driving, and I was passenger. We were on our way back home from Tennessee to Illinois, just leaving the mountains but still pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

  We notice a couple of dead deer on the road. These things are like... exploded. My boss and I say something like, “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 the deer.

  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.”

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• 'He Pulled Off Onto The Shoulder To Park And Cry His Eyes Out...'

  From Redditor u/libra00:

  My dad was a trucker for years. He was driving down a mountain in icy conditions, but they'd done a good job of salting the road, so he was doing all right; however, as he was coming down the last bit of slope, there was a bridge, and bridges are notorious for being icy, even when the rest of the road is dry.

  The moment he hit that bridge, his trailer started coming around. He could see it coming at him in the mirror. He said the rule is if your trailer passes 45 feet, you're f*cked, no hope of recovery, hold on to your a** and hope for the best. Well, his trailer passed 45 feet, and as he looked up ahead, the road on the far side of the bridge was bone-dry. He knew in that moment that he was dead, that as soon as he hit that dry pavement, all hell was going to break loose.

  He kept looking in his mirror and watching his trailer stuck out to the left and trying to find some way to save it, even though he knew he couldn't. But that dry spot was coming up quick. Only somehow, when he hit the dry road, everything just instantly straightened up like there had been no problem at all.

  He pulled off onto the shoulder and parked to cry his eyes out and thank all the powers in heaven and earth that he was still alive.

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• 'Hey Buddy, My Brakes Are Out.'

  From Redditor u/reynosomarkus:

  My best buddy freshman year was a trucker.

  His worst story was when he was going down to Georgia, just a normal trip of diapers and baby wipes. He spent a good, long day traveling with a man who was carrying a full load of gasoline.

  The trip was a week long, and my buddy and this gas tanker guy spent the last six hours on the road together, shooting the s*** through the radio and whatnot. After nearly a full day of talking, my buddy gets a call from the tanker guy, and my friend says the words ran his blood cold:

  “Hey buddy, my brakes are out.”

  My buddy gets on the radio and lets the other truckers know. They try to cordon off the passengers behind him while police can make their way ahead of him, clearing the road. My buddy loses line of sight as they shut down the road, as there is now a very large bomb with no stopping power barreling down a popular freeway.

  They get the all clear to go ahead. The situation was resolved, and by the time my buddy got to the emergency stop section of the freeway, he saw that the entire section was a 50-foot-wide crater. Metal and dirt everywhere. But there was not a single injury or casualty, save for the brave tanker guy who dove headfirst towards his death to prevent any others.

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• 'He's Gonna Arrest Me'

  From Redditor u/Jef_Wheaton:

  I service fire equipment, so I drive a box truck. I was in rural [northwest Pennsylvania], 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 that was 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.

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• 'My Dad Had To Make A Quick Decision: Cliff Or Rockface.'

  From Redditor u/ParanoiaHime:

  My dad drove trucks while I was about 5 and my brother was 3. He did so entirely to make money to take care of us, which also means that he needed to be able to actually make it home to his kids at the end of the day.

  He was driving up the side of a mountain that resembled one ripped right from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It spirals up, has these rickety, flimsy metal guardrails that, had smart cars been invented, they still [wouldn't] have prevented even them from vaulting over the thing, let alone a semi.

  My dad was super tired, but he wanted to push it so he could get home faster. He was making his way up the mountain when, on his radio, he hears what he swore was:

  "Flying Frenchman!" Followed by a whole bunch of hootin' and hollerin'. My dad apparently wasn't confused by the exclamation for long, as mere seconds later, two full-sized, seemingly fully loaded semis came barreling down the mountain on EACH SIDE of the road.

  My dad had to make a quick decision: cliff or [rock face]. There was hardly a shoulder, but it beat almost certainly crashing into the side of the mountain, so he did what he could to avoid them the best that he could and went for the bank.

  My dad said that he turned the wheel as quickly but carefully as he could toward the extremely narrow embankment on his [side], did everything he could to avoid skidding, and narrowly avoided the closest f***er. He apparently also narrowly avoided jackknifing the truck AND the scariest part of all: his own semi had tipped during the procedure. All of the wheels on the one side of his truck got air and he was sure he had just tipped the truck down a bloody mountain, all so these two a**holes could have a f***ed-up game of chicken.

  So, the scariest thing my dad said he had ever seen while driving: a pair of “Flying Frenchmen.”

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• 'He Awoke Surrounded By Police...'

  From Redditor u/Whoseed12:

  Long-haul trucking for my firm is done by a dear friend of mine. He awoke surrounded by police in a parking lot a few months ago.

  Fifteen feet from his pickup, this dude had been shot and dumped.

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• 'Trucking Is 90% Boredom, 10% Insane Sh*t Like This'

  From Redditor u/digitalmarketeramil:

  [My mom] was driving through Arizona when she saw what she thought were leaves blowing across the road in the distance. This puzzled her since there are mostly pine trees in northern Arizona.

  When she finally got to the “leaves,” she realized that they were migrating tarantulas, thousands of them. There were so many of them that her truck was sliding on their guts, and 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 p*ssed since it was technically his time off. He thought she was crazy until he saw the tarantula guts and legs caked in the inside wheel well of the truck.

  She has many many stories like this. Trucking is 90% boredom, 10% insane sh*t like this.

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• 'Why Did You Stop? It's Not Your Turn Yet'

  From Redditor u/Getter_Knight:

  Around 30 years ago, my dad was driving particularly late, returning home after being away for a while. It was around 2 or 3 am when he saw an old lady walking on the side of the road. My father is a kind man, so he naturally pulled over and asked the lady where she needed to go or if she needed help.

  The lady just turned to him, and said: "Why did you stop? It is not your turn yet."

  The lady dismissed my dad. Not wanting to make a scene, he left her alone and continued driving. Not even five minutes later, down the road he saw a crashed car with an ambulance already at the site. The following day, the crash was on the front page on a local newspaper. Apparently the driver died instantly on [impact].

  He still wonders where that lady was going since the closest town was still 30 minutes away by car.

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• 'They Saw A Bunch Of Floating Orbs...'

  From Redditor u/yinzerthrowaway412:

  Had a family member who was a trucker for a fireworks company in the '80s. They regularly had to make deliveries from the East Coast to Los Angeles.

  Shipping these things to California meant many drives through the open desert of the American Southwest. They have claimed to see tons of weird stuff out there, from glowing orbs [to] unexplained lights [to] weird animals in the dark. The desert has a way of messing with the human mind, but one night, a bunch of floating orbs on the horizon turned out to be legit.

  They saw a bunch of orange orbs crossing the highway a mile or so ahead. It turns out that a bunch of tumbleweeds had caught fire in a forest fire several miles away and were flying across the highway ahead. They had to drive down this open desert highway at night while being on the lookout for flaming tumbleweeds. Not really something you want to maneuver around when you are carrying fireworks in your trailer.

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• 'Dog-Man Creature'

  From Redditor u/Kitten-Eater:

  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.

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• 'It Was Just A Really Odd Experience'

  From Redditor u/MrTumnus__:

  In 2017, on one of my routes, I had stopped at Love’s gas station in Emerson, [GA], maybe 20 minutes outside Atlanta. I had stopped for about an hour, just resting and eating some fast food, when a woman came knocking on my door. I opened it, and she looked homeless and pretty old, like in her 50s or 60s. I asked her if I could help her, and she was like, “I think we can help each other." I declined and sent her on her way.

  I continued to rest and eat and play on my phone for another 30 minutes when someone came to my door, opened it, and attempted to rob me in a Scream mask. It was obviously the old lady from before. I pushed her away, locked my door, and cranked it up. I assume she ran off somewhere 'cause I could no longer see her.

  After the truck was ready, I pulled off and started driving. Soon, cars started trying to get my attention, honking and pointing to the back end of my truck. I pulled over and when I came to a stop, I saw someone jump and start running… It was that same lady. This crazy woman was hanging on to the back of my truck while I was driving. It was just a really odd experience.

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• 'Guy Was A Real Character'

  From Redditor u/LanTechmyway:

  My wife's grandfather hauled fruit and potatoes across the Northwest and Central Plains.

  From what he would talk about, I swear he was a serial killer. He had found or been questioned about a half dozen deaths at rest stops. Most, if not all were determined s*icide.

  Guy was a real character.

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• '...The Whole Sky Lit Up...'

  From Redditor u/TheNorthNova01:

  I and another truck driver were traveling on [Highway] 1 … on our way home from Saskatchewan. It’s really dark there since you’re 100 kilometers away from any town lights.

  All of a sudden, the whole sky lit up as green as grass, and a huge fireball streaked over us. We all immediately pulled over and asked each other, “WTF was that?!”

  Heard on the news the next day that it was a meteor the size of [an] office desk that landed somewhere between Lloydminster and Cold Lake. We had never seen anything like it.