Other times, you may have gotten the heebie-jeebies driving down a dark, winding road, convinced there was a sign that said “Gas Station” but it’s nowhere to be found.
r/AskReddit user u/salemwinona posted “Have you ever been to a town, village, truck stop, gas station, diner, etc. during a road trip that just didn’t “feel right”, like time seemed to pass differently there, or the people there gave you the creeps? What was your experience there?”
The response will both creep you out and relieve you that you’re not the only one.
10. Beware of empty store shelves
u/the_short_viking ~ “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.”
9. A near-death experience
u/Many_Pancakes~ “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.”
8. Research your AirBnB!
u/Sil_7~ “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-escalated 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.”
7. Strangely quiet Christmas town
u/urneighbourhoodwitch ~ “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 piss 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.”
6. If you’re thinking about sleeping in a “shack” then it’s probably not safe
u/trucknjoe ~ “When hitch hiking in the south island I got stuck in a town in the middle of nowhere because no one would pick me up. It got dark and I didn’t have enough money for a motel so I was planning to chill at this little shack where people would pull over to rest while driving. Over the course of several hours, I got offered meth by a couple, some local random dude tried to convince me to go to his house to smoke weed and another couple smoked a cigarette with me while they told me about how they heard voices.”
“After they left I ended up jumping over a fence and slept in a bush somewhere until my sister could pick me up the next day because she was driving through the town.
5. Stay away from Gary, Indiana
u/Kutbakfiets ~ “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 to get to a safer rest stop to refuel.”
4. Tiger, Georgia and the invisible town
u/mxmnull ~ My girlfriend and I went to an AirBnB in a town called Tiger, Georgia to see a bunch of her old college friends. There was one other couple who got there about the same time we did. By day the cabin looks pleasant enough- 3 stories of rustic comfort with a hot tub overlooking the forest and sunrise. We didn’t get there by day. We got there as the sun was sinking low. Rooms seemed to shrink and tighten. The stairwells were only as wide as a single body. And at the bottom of the basement stairs, a rug hid a padlocked trapdoor. It felt like the start of a horror movie.”
“We’re trying to ignore the weird vibes and decide to go to dinner. We spent nearly an hour driving around searching for a place to eat. Steakhouses closed by 7pm, an Italian joint which was now someone’s house. A Mexican eatery now abandoned and overgrown with vines… Finally we find something.”
“It’s suitably called “The Last Dive Bar On Earth”, and it’s sitting on the edge of a retention pond. The parking lot is full of pick up trucks all festooned with old political bumper stickers from the late 90s and early 2000s. We head in. It’s like we’ve entered another decade. But the beer is good, they have pizza, and the prices aren’t bad. We eat in a hurry and get out of there.”
“We’re trying to ignore the weird vibes and decide to go to dinner. We spent nearly an hour driving around searching for a place to eat. Steakhouses closed by 7pm, an Italian joint which was now someone’s house. A Mexican eatery now abandoned and overgrown with vines… Finally we find something.”
“It’s suitably called “The Last Dive Bar On Earth”, and it’s sitting on the edge of a retention pond. The parking lot is full of pick up trucks all festooned with old political bumper stickers from the late 90s and early 2000s. We head in. It’s like we’ve entered another decade. But the beer is good, they have pizza, and the prices aren’t bad. We eat in a hurry and get out of there.”
3. No shoes equal service in Arkansas
u/ spiderlanewales ~ “Rural northern Arkansas was pretty bizarre when we passed through there around 2012. We stopped at this gas station, and an old, beat-up pickup flew into a parking spot. There were two hillbillies in the cab, and maybe six more in the bed, all wearing the same thing: blue jean overalls and nothing else. No socks or shoes.”
“They were being super loud, and they just went into the gas station like that was normal. Where i’m from, if an attendant even sees you approaching the place without shoes, they will stop you and tell you to come back when you have some. Oh, you’d also get mega-pulled-over for driving around with people hollering in your truck bed.”
2. The Twilight Zone
u/ I_love_asparagus ~ “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.”
1. No proof needed when you have a gut feeling
u/SuspectNumber6 ~ “A camping site! My friend and i took a road trip from NL to France, camping. 1st we stayed at a lovely place, near a harbour. After 2 days we continued and ended up at a small camping site. When registering we met the custodian. After registration we already looked at each other, but shrugged it off. We set up our tent and went into town to find some food.”
“The town was completely deserted: no people on the street, all blinds closed, hardly any restaurant open and the eerie feeling came back. We walked back to the camping site, still feeling creeped out and decided there and then not to sleep there that night. We broke up camp, drove away as fast as we could. The feeling stayed for about 30 minutes. Weird part is: nothing creepy really happened. It was just a gut feeling: something is NOT right here…”
Overall these are some over the top creepy experiences, and places I’ll be avoiding in the future!
Any one of these make you super creeped out? Share in the comments!
