You know, in those horror movies, people just come voluntarily to danger? Strange noise from the basement of an abandoned mansion? Let’s check it out! What could go wrong? Gunshots from a distance? Let’s go there! We won’t absolutely get shot or anything, right?
Fortunately for us, the world isn’t very populated by that kind of people. We have gut feelings. We just feel something is wrong. We know that the right thing to do is to go away, and so do these 20 people who dodged large bullets on their road trips that turned into real-life horror movies.
More info: Reddit
#1
Image source: Tsquare43, Matt Weissinger
I’ve been to 43 states. I’ve seen odd things.
The creepiest thing was getting in gas off of I-95 in NC, and seeing a camo painted Bronco driving around a parking lot of a shopping center that was focused on a Wal-mart. It had two *gigantic* flags. One Confederate, the other full on Nazi flag – I was never more concerned in my life.
#2
Image source: malfreakingreynolds, HONG SON
My family was driving through a really rural part of the Philippines when my sister announced she had to go asap. It was very late.
My dad stopped at the first place he could ~ a little shop that sold weird antique stuff, with an old lady at the counter. My dad talked to the old lady while us kids headed for the bathroom (an outhouse separate from the shop/main house).
We didn’t think much about it and stayed a few days in our province. On our way back to the city, my dad said he wanted to stop by that shop again to thank the old woman and when we got to the place where my dad swore the store was, there was nothing. Just the highway and thick forest on both sides. We still bring it up sometimes because thinking about it gives everyone in the family chills.
#3
Image source: MyDogHasBarkingsons, Delaina Haslam
I am a skeptical person but this one experience I had in Berlin still confuses me to this day.
Me and my girlfriend were on holiday walking through central Berlin, a weekday morning. The streets were fairly busy, a typical day, when we turned down a long wide street with large buildings on either side. As we walked down we noticed it was very quiet and that there was no one else on the street at all, which was strange in itself considering it was 10-11am. As we carried on walking, I can’t really describe what happened but I noticed that the buildings we were walking past weren’t actually real, but like movie set buildings? The windows and doors looked normal from a distance but up close they were waaaay too big to be normal, I just felt really uneasy the whole time but we didn’t say anything until we turned off the street and back into the hustle and bustle of Berlin.
I have absolutely no idea what happened at all but my girlfriend said she felt/seen exactly the same thing. It was like we stepped into a different world for a few minutes. Totally bizarre
#4
Image source: the_short_viking, Dough4872
Coatesville, Pennsylvania. I was with a friend who had come up from Mexico and we were staying a few nights at his grandmother’s ranch nearby. Coatesville was the only town around where we could find Mexican ingredients. This is an old steel town that feels post-apocalyptic, everyone there didn’t really seem to be doing anything or going anywhere, it was so creepy. The store we ended up going to had nearly empty shelves and I think the guys were a bit surprised to see us there. All in all just very strange and eerie.
#5
Image source: sillybananna, Kirk Thornton
So that red covered bridge, West Montrose AKA the Kissing Bridge, from the movie IT is about 2 hours away from me. A couple of years ago, me and some girlfriends went there to take some pictures because it was cool that it was so close and it was a perfect day for a road trip (I think the kids nowadays call it a VSCO Hangout). I drove and when we got there, there was no parking anywhere. I finally pulled over to the side of the road and asked a lady if I could park in her store lot (said no tourist parking) she said since I asked so nicely, *fine*.
We went for a walk and the locals would peek out their windows at us, some of them in plain view. There were signs on the grass that said that so and so were to be contacted for use of property and that use of which was prohibited without permission, no lingering, park closed, etc. They even had ropes and stakes on their property lines to really take it home. It was also strange because there is a lane way between the properties and the creek that runs under the bridge and other signs had prices for photo sessions. At one point a couple walked past us and the lady craned her neck to look back at me even as she had already walked past.
That was about all the Get Out vibes I could handle till we packed in and headed home. There was just something strange in the air there, it felt like I had eyes on me at all times. All I wanted was to see the last covered bridge in Ontario!
#6
Image source: badcgi, Charl Folscher
I used to live in Southern Africa and we did charity work in a lot of very remote, rural areas, and when I say remote, I mean several hours rough driving on roads that can barely be called roads. Many times we would come across settlements that were not on any map, just a collection of cinderblock and mud houses sometimes well off the road. Usually these were what we called “working villages” as in there is some worksite, maybe a small brickwork, or farm, or something like that nearby (though when I say “near” the workers could be walking an hour or so to where they need to be.) When we would stumble upon places like this, we would stop, find coordinates and landmarks, make some records and pass it along back to our office.
One day, we are working in the area near the borders of South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana, and we see some smoke well off the road. Thinking it may be a village, we decide to go off road to take a look. It was fairly well hidden, behind a small hill, and from the road you would have never known it was there if it were not for the column of smoke on the horizon. We get to it, and sure enough it looks like one of these unmarked working villages, maybe 10 or so huts, but something seemed very off. It took a second and we realized that there was no one around, and yet it seemed as if whoever lived there was there only moments before. We head to where the smoke came from, and it was a large bonfire, when we looked closer, we noticed bones in it, goat and cattle bones. Other than the sound of the fire, there was not a peep from anything else. Once I stepped out of our truck to get a closer look, I had this overwhelming sense that I was being watched from afar, and that I was not welcomed here. The other guys in the truck said they felt the same, and that we needed to go. So we did.
A couple of weeks later when we were driving back, curiosity got the better of me and I decided I wanted to check the site again. This time however, the village was stripped bare. Anything that could be taken was gone. All that was left was the shells of the huts and a black patch of ash where the fire was. There was one thing that was still there though, the sense of being watched. We didn’t stay any longer and never went back.
#7
Image source: urneighbourhoodwitch, Cindy Shebley
I was on a road trip on the south island of New Zealand and one night at around 9pm decided to stop in a small town to get some rest. Already while driving into the town I noticed that there were Christmas decorations everywhere, like decorated trees and plastic santa’s, reindeer etc. Excessive amounts of decorations on the streets and in every window. This wouldn’t have been too weird if it hadn’t been in the middle of August. But I thought the town was just really dedicated to a specific aesthetic or whatever.
I got to the motel and checked in and the old lady at the front desk was short and rude with me which I thought was weird bc I had experienced people in NZ as really nice and quite chatty (compared to where I come from lol). She also wouldn’t give me the wifi password even though they advertised free wifi. She quite literally told me to p**s off and let her get back to her newspaper.
After that I went out and the whole time I was there I never saw any people on the street. I went to a diner near the motel (both also stuffed with Christmas decorations) and had the same experience with the waitress while ordering. She told me they are out of almost everything and the only I was able to get was a cheese sandwich. There were other people in the restaurant who were all eating what I suppose were meals from the menu. They didn’t have to order a plain cheese sandwich. While waiting for my food I noticed that no one in the whole diner was talking even though there were families and other groups of people. Even the kids ate in silence. Or not really silence, as there was Christmas music blaring.
After I was done eating I just paid and left. I was also the only one leaving. No one in that diner, the whole time I was there, got up to leave or go to the bathroom or do anything really. They all just sat there. When I left I felt like they were all starting holes in my back. The whole time I was in that town I got a feeling that everyone wanted me to leave and like they were somehow angry with me.
This was 4 years ago and tbh I don’t remember anything after leaving the diner. I don’t remember going back to the motel or going to sleep and just barely remember being on the road early the next morning. I told some of my NZ friends this story, bc I thought it was some kind of weird theme town, but none of them ever heard of it and I can’t for the life of me remember the name of that town or how I found it.
#8
Image source: anon, Markus Winkler
This is my girlfriends story but is kinda up the alley of what you are asking for.
My partner went to Florida with her family when she was younger and they were driving around trying to find some food until they found a Chinese restaurant and they went in and had some food.
There were no other customers, lots of staff, everyone seemed very tense but the food was great.
They left and had a lovely rest of their day.
During breakfast the next morning they turned on their tele and the news showed the place they had eaten and they were like ‘wow look we went there’. Then the story started and it turns out no more than 10 minutes after they left there was a massive shoot up and they all killed one another.
Turns out that the ignorant british tourists just sat in-between some kind of asian turf war.
#9
Image source: I_love_asparagus, Luiza Leite
Yep, stopped in a no name town in Texas for gas. Bunch of guys wearing nothing but denim hanging out in front of the gas station. Denim, cow boy hats, cow boy boots. It wasn’t just a lot of people, EVERYONE was wearing that. Their drawls were so thick I could barely understand what they were saying to one another, a lot of hooting and hollering.
About 50 yards away, there was a guy sitting under a tree. He was wearing a black and white striped jump suit…and was chained to the tree by a shackle on his leg. Didn’t see any law enforcement around, maybe they dropped him off? A girl with huge tits, one and a half arms, and an eye-patch complimented my car and smiled at me when I was pumping gas. I saw a cow trotting down the side of the road, no one seemed to be chasing it. The fact it was twilight seemed to make everything surreal.
I unassed myself from that place as quickly as I could.
#10
Image source: holc00mb, Sam Xu
It was a little past midnight, and I offered to drive a friend who was visiting with me to her parents house where she was staying. They live in a smaller town outside of mine about a half hour drive away. I had been there enough times that I didn’t need any type of directions, just a reminder of where to turn off into her neighborhood because it was hard to tell with it being dark outside.
Now allow me to clear up a little information. I was not under the influence of anything: alcohol, drugs, nothing. I wasn’t even that tired. Her neighborhood was just off of a long road in the woods that came straight off a major highway, so it wasn’t in the boonies or anything, but out of the city. To get out of the city I live in to where she lives, you pass under a newly constructed tollroad that is a loop around the city. It’s large and can’t be missed. You have to either go under it or over it to get back into the city, and it has those huge highway lights all around it, so it wouldn’t be easy to pass without noticing.
So anyways, I’ve dropped her off and head back the way I came. It’s only a couple turns from the long road I mentioned before, so I go back without even thinking about it. I’ve driven this way several times. I head back on the long road a little ways and I’m suddenly at a stop sign. Except the long road doesn’t have stop signs if you’re traveling on it. And at the stop sign I’m facing a boulevard with cookie-cutter, middle class homes I had never seen before. There are lots of homes like that in the area, but these had an eeriness to them. They were not lit by any kind of street lights or anything, but were perfectly visible in the night. And they all seemed empty. There might have been cars in driveways, but not a single light was on in the two rows of dozens of houses. It was as if all the life that may have lived in this neighborhood had vanished.
Obviously I did not go down this boulevard. I got a little teary eyed from the sheer feeling this place gave me. I turned to my left. Somehow I made it to a neighborhood that I did recognize. I could also see the lights from a highway nearby, so I headed towards them. Eventually I made it onto the same highway that I took from town, but something strange occurred to me. I never passed over the tollroad. The series of neighborhoods in that area typically had bridges over the tollroad that connected the residential area and kept the sounds of vehicles down and away from the quiet homes, but I never passed over it. The entire drive home felt off. Until I got to a certain part of the city, each sign looked a little different. I only saw another car on the road when I did get further into the city.
To this day I’ve yet to see the boulevard at the stop sign. I don’t know how I got there, but I don’t ever want to be there alone again.
#11
Image source: galacticdude7, Ben Maguire
I was driving between Midland and Alma Michigan late one night, and this area has some of the darkest, loneliest country roads I’ve ever driven on. There are also a bunch of windmills in this area and at the top of every windmill was a blinking red light so that planes could see them, but the lights blinked in sync, so it would be dark, and then all of a sudden, the red lights of the seemingly 100s of windmills would all blink on. Absolutely creepy.
#12
Image source: crochetquilt, Clark Young
I had the reverse sort of experience at my local supermarket. I live in Australia and we have right hand drive cars. I’m just finishing my shop when a huge American looking SUV pulls awkwardly into the carpark and it’s clearly left hand drive and maybe 10 years old. I like cars so I’m curious about it, and that’s when I notice it’s got US plates on it.
Now these aren’t some novelty/limited edition Aussie plates that look American, these seem to be genuine US plates. They had a state on them, can’t remember which one but it was like Michigan or something. Obviously American. Middle aged woman gets out, looking like it’s a normal day at the shops.
So far the story is a bit weird, but nothing too unusual. But as I take my trolley back to the trolley bay she’s there and having obvious problems working out how to unlock one. You have to put a coin in them, and she’s clearly having troubles so I ask if I can help. She’s trying to put what I later find out is a quarter in the trolley, saying she’s never seen this sort of thing before. I show her the dollar coin I’ve just gotten back from my trolley (it’s gold coloured) and she genuinely is weirded out by the colour and is incredulous when I tell her it’s a dollar. I feel like I’m an alien showing her a new type of cat or something.
I put my dollar in the trolley lock and open it for her because she’s clearly lost and I wanted to be helpful. She then sort of gets into a “oh I know this interaction” and says let me give you some money and opens her purse. It’s all American notes, trust me there’s no good old Aussie plastic multicoured monopoly money in this thing. I sort of blurt out “do you not have Australian money yet?” thinking that’s gonna slow you down in the Aldi there love. Her reply “No, why would I?” and she gives me the quarter she was trying to put in the trolley. I tell her it’s not necessary but she thanks me in her wonderful American accent and wanders off into the shop.
It was hilarious and weird, if you’d shown me a portal from my shops to Michigan that she’d blundered through it would have made complete sense. I got the impression she had almost no idea she was in another country. She was acting like I was the weird one, but she also spoke perfectly and was really nice so it’s not like she was in any obvious mental health episode. The fact I have the quarter is the only reason I don’t think I’ve hallucinated the whole thing after eating a dodgy pizza.
Friends think her husband had gotten a job in Australia and just got the car and everything etc shipped, and maybe she’s never been overseas before? It was super weird and I love that woman so much I wish I could find her again to see what she’s doing now.
I’ve also been into a country town where literally everyone we saw for the half hour we were there looked like they were from the same family, and everyone stared at us like they knew we were from out of town. But that has a very logical but no less creepy explanation 😉
#13
Image source: Sil_7, Anatoliy Shostak
My boyfriend and I had a stay in Melbourne for a few nights. First Airbnb was practically a small hotel room so, all good. The second on the other hand… It was advertised as “Flexible check-in ” but the owner wouldn’t stop pestering us for a time we were going to be there. We told them 8pm and they still kept asking before saying they had to go out and ‘Frank’ would let us in.
We had no mention of this guy before then but fine, whatever. We ended up missing a few small shows we were eager to go to so we’d get there earlier and despite being promised off the street parking we could only park on the street. It sucked but no big deal. We’d had a long day and were pretty tired.
Then we get to the house. Frank is this tall, thin, muscley older guy, really intense and absolutely no chill. Bulging eyes kind of intense. We were both really uncomfortable from the start but my bf makes small talk, jokes about Sydney vs Melbourne. This guy doesn’t like it. To the point where he stopped walking, swung around and got in my bfs face. Bf de-esculated the situation real quick and we got to our room and immediately locked the door.
We both got some bad vibes off the place and the guy but we couldn’t work out why. We thought we were just tired but kept debating the pros and cons of staying, and the room wasn’t helping! It was freshly painted and the fumes were so strong I was getting a migraine, there was a door to the backyard that was blocked off with a dresser, so much dust under the bed it was ridiculous.
And then we noticed two things.
One was the wooden plank holding up the curtains. It was big, thick, heavy looking thing – and it was holding onto the wall by a nail on each side. Half of it had already leant right off the wall, leaving a huge gap. This was right above the head of the bed. That was it for my bf, he wanted out.
This second point was my big thing. The door to the rest of the house had a lock but there was also a gap between it and the floor.
I’m not talking a small space for air. I’m not talking fit a finger underneath. I’m talking big enough for tall, muscley, big guy Frank to fit his entire arm under.
We grabbed our things and snuck out. Went to the nearest grocery store for supplies, shopped around for a place to stay, let the Airbnb know we l left, and ended up driving through the night back to NSW and slept in the car for a few hours.
Nothing exciting happened but we just really didn’t feel safe there. My bf hikes a lot overseas, stays in random and/or desolated places. He’s not put off easily. We were both pretty glad for a solid reason to leave.
#14
Image source: Foxbat_Flyer, Ashwini Chaudhary(Monty)
On my first trip to Europe, we started in Rome, and drove down to Sicily, and on the way back north, we decided to stay the night in a small town instead of a major city. We ended up at a town called Lauria right on dark, and hadn’t booked any accomodation yet (we didn’t know where we were going to end up, wanted to get as far as we could). As we drive around the town looking for a hotel, every local is stopping in their tracks and watching us like we are very out of place. We find and pull up at the only hotel we could find, a multi level building with an empty car park, no guests or staff around. Went in and booked a room, and the guy who served us took our bags, put us in the elevator and sent us on the way to our room. we get up 3 floors and here he is waiting for us with our bags, not puffed out having out ran an elevator while carrying 3 bags. It’s the classic horror movie hall ways, seemingly too long for the building and only half the lights are working. It’s dead quiet inside so we put our stuff in the room and get out to see if the town is really that bad. We head out for dinner, again every stopping and staring at us as we walked down the streets. The next morning, we wake up early to GTFO and find all the doors are locked and cannot be opened from the inside without a key, no staff anywhere so we left the key on the desk and had to break out of the hotel window to get out. 10/10 was spooked. Rest of the trip was amazing, through Switzerland and France, quick trip around England and Scotland then home.
#15
Image source: anon, Karl Hörnfeldt
Gary Indiana. I got off the highway to get gas.
Driving through the city was like a post apocalyptic movie complete with burned out cars, crazy guy in underwear walking down the middle of the street with a baseball bat and all the windows were broken or boarded up.
I stopped at a gas station and then guy came out and said ‘Get back on the highway son. It’s not safe here.’ I had enough gas tp get to a safer rest stop to refuel.
This was around 1994-95.
#16
Image source: kemosabi4, Nikola Jovanovic
My friends had a story about visiting Dublin and wandering out of the touristy area looking for a drink. They walked into a little pub, but when they tried to order a round, they noticed the bartender was acting nervous. They looked across the room to see four of the meanest, toughest Irishmen they’d ever seen giving them the evil eye. After the bartender served them, he quietly suggested they leave once their drinks were finished, and as they sat and chatted, a couple of the men passed back and forth across their booth like sharks. When they left, they learned from a local that they had just wandered into a very serious IRA pub.
#17
Image source: goodsam2, Patrick
There was one time I stopped in a gas station in Appalachia, it was like 11pm on a Friday. So this truck pulled in and the woman ran inside to pick up some stuff. The dude hope out and puts the tailgate down and starts playing the harmonica. Out come like 5 cats who all dance around him like he was a pied piper or something. After a couple of minutes the woman came back and he told the cats to get back in the bed of the truck and then they drove off.
#18
I was traveling through Arkansas with my friend in the army. He was a big ol black dude and I was a medium height white dude. Everyone in McDonalds literally stopped and just stared at us until we ordered food and left. It was super weird and we made sure to bypass the place on the way back to post.
#19
Image source: kinkyp3ach, Matt Walter
I have two stories like this. The first one was an absolutely creepy experience, and the second one was weird but I didn’t feel threatened.
1st story: A friend and I were driving in a thunderstorm of epic proportions. We couldn’t see the road ahead of us so we pulled over to a diner in a tiny town, and decided we’d wait inside for the storm to pass and order some food. From the outside it looked really lively, people were talking, laughing and eating. As soon as we walked through the door the whole place went silent and every. single. person stopped what they were doing and just stared at us. Dozens of eyeballs fixated on us. We ordered our food and ate it, and left as soon as the weather had cleared up a bit. We were there for maybe an hour, and it stayed completely silent the entire time, and customers kept looking our way (not discretely).
2nd story: Another time I was on a road trip, it was the middle of the night and we were getting tired so we decided to stop in the next town. There had been no sign of civilisation for miles and we finally came across a small town with a B&B. The woman running the place was odd but very kind. The house felt different somehow but so did the whole town. It kind of felt like I had entered a different dimension, if that makes any sense. Anyway, I go to bed and the next morning I wake up and decide to walk around the town a bit before we hit the road. Again, the whole place felt like a different world, like it was not part of the earth we normally know. The people living there were tending to their gardens, walking their dogs, etc. And it felt like slow mo. There were 2 shops in town, and no other businesses. By going into the shops and looking around, and taking with one of the shop owners, I found out the whole town was a pagan town where every single citizen worshiped a goddess of fertility (as in human fertility, but also fertility of their crops). The stores were packed with items that can be used for rituals, and other various items like statuettes representing the goddess. They seemed to be hardcore worshipers. Their town wasn’t on the map and I never found it again. It was a really surreal experience.
#20
Image source: crochetquilt, Andrew Teoh
Wife and I were driving up the blue mountains (big mountain range in Australia) to visit friends who were staying in a holiday place up there. It’s crazy foggy in the late afternoon/early evening, so we can’t see much as we’re going up. But it’s pretty much a straight run up so we take it slow and pull over sometimes when the fog gets too thick to give it a minute to lighten a bit. Super creepy but nothing weird, that’s just how it is.
We stayed the night at friends and drove back down the next afternoon – lovely and sunny. We drove through a cute little town that hugged the sides of the main road, so you could drive straight through it without turning or hitting any major intersections. My wife said “oh are we going home a different way”. No, no we were not.
There was basically an entire small town we’d driven through the night before right near the house and we never saw a single indication of it. We hadn’t seen any lights/street lights, other cars, “Welcome to Spookyville, popn 1” signs, anything. We had pulled over to check the map (pre-smartphones) to make sure we hadn’t missed the turn off and we would have been practically in the middle of the town. It’s amazing how something so big can disappear in the fog so easily. Early evening and not one house light? Mole people I reckon.
I know there’s a logical explanation but it’s 20 years later and I still think “nah not going back up there”
