Do you remember the beginning of Twilight Zone: The Movie?
I saw that movie when I was VERY young and it scared the hell out of me and left me with a permanent fear of driving in the middle of nowhere at night.
Here’s the scene so you can see what I’m talking about.
Hey, the road is a creepy place at night.
Let’s take a look at scary incidents that AskReddit users had while driving at night.
1. That’s a creepy movie, too.
“I dropped my GF off the night we saw The Mothman Prophecies. It wasn’t a super scary movie, but it had some scares. I take the interstate home. On the way, there is a curve where there aren’t any lights. Just a dark stretch of interstate.
As I came around the bend, there was a guy in a black trench coat walking along the side of the road. As it was about 3am, I guess I started him. So, when my headlights hit him, he whipped around and I swear he stared me right in the eyes.
My heart jumped into my throat. The whole event lasted maybe 2 seconds tops, but it had my heart racing. Not paranormal, but definitely scary for me.”
2. A terrible experience.
“I was driving home late one night and was driving on a dark stretch of the highway. Suddenly a body was in front of me, I tried to swerve out of the way but it was too late. My bumper was hanging on the ground.
The guy died. And I went to a nearby gas station not knowing what to do (was 18). When the tow truck pulled my car up on to it, there were a bunch of blood and guts on the bottom. I couldnt get that image out of my head
Apparently a drunk driver with 5 DWI’s had hit a guy on the motorcycle prior.
For years after I had serious depression and thought about it every night before sleep.”
3. Taxi driver.
“I drove taxi during the night shift and among many crazy and terrifying things, I saw a toddler (2-3yrs). it was about 1 am and I was driving in a very wooded part of our town, just after dropping a customer off, and in the middle of the road was this baby just sitting in the dark.
I stopped my cab and turned on my flashers. I preceded to walk up to the kid and he just started bawling. I tried to comfort him but me being in disbelief that a baby with no one around was just sitting there all I could say was “it’s cool it’s cool bro”.
I picked him up and he started crying frantically (I would to if a stranger came and grabbed me) I put him in the passenger seat and looked for the nearest drive way. It ended up being about 100 yards down the street. I pulled up into what I hoped was his house and there was maybe 6 or 7 teenagers drinking in the garage.
I couldn’t see from the road because all the houses had long dirt driveways. When I pulled up they acted as if I wasn’t even there until I said “hey, this your kid?” After a few “whats?” They came over to the cab and said “Aiden? Where did you go?”
Like the baby just goes for midnight strolls. Not a thank you or good bye or anything, they just took the baby in the house and continued drinking and laughing. As I pulled out I felt as if I should call the cops or something but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I’m still scared to this day that I’ll be driving down a dark road and hit a baby.”
4. Keep your eyes open.
“Back in my twenties I was putting myself through uni by working night shifts at a factory. Money was great but between full time work and full time study i was constantly exhausted.
Sleep got worse when I picked up a second job to make ends meet, parents split up and dad went into depression so he wasn’t working you see. Anyway, after months I kept falling asleep at the wheel on the way home from work just before dawn around 4am. One time as I was driving home all alone after work, I saw half a dozen crocodiles on the road!
I swerved to avoid hitting them and almost crashed the car. I was terrified in the moment because they came out of nowhere and were huge and I’d never seen crocodiles in real life before, let alone on a free way. I pulled over the car and looked in my rear view mirror but nothing was there.
To this day I don’t know if I dreamed those crocodiles or if they were a hallucination from sleep deprivation.
Scariest thing I’ve ever ‘seen’ and I’m so thankful no one was on the road at the time too.”
5. That’s weird.
“I was in college at the time and it was late at night, the day before thanksgiving I believe or at least around that time.
I had had class earlier in the day and packed then headed off on the 10 hour drive to the western edge of Nebraska. It was around 1 or 2 in the morning and I was in the final stretch of the trip. Driving down a totally deserted highway, only 2 lanes with no shoulder so the speed limit was 55. I was tired and having not seen anyone for at least an hour I kept kicking up my speed up to 80. I was flying down the road.
As I crested a hill I spotted head light atop a couple hills down. I didn’t think much of it. Reduced my speed a bit and got read to turn off the brights over the next hill. But I didn’t see any more headlights.
I figured they must have turned off down a gravel road. Could have been for any number of reasons. They lived that way, maybe coming home after a night at the bar and didn’t want to risk getting pulled over on the highway, but at first I didn’t think it was weird.
Until boom, a black car hauled ass past me in the direction that car had been heading, with their lights off. I still wasn’t too freaked out until I saw break lights and then headlights behind me.
I fucking hauled ass. I called my grandparents as soon as I noticed the person was gaining on me. I gave them a heads up and my grandpa said he’d be at the end of their 1/2 mile driveway with his shot gun and rifle waiting for me.
I still had another 10 miles to go until the nearest town, then about 20 miles on gravel to get to their house. I knew the roads reasonably well, but not well enough to get off the main drag and zig zag across country roads.
I was doing 90 and so was this person, but kept their distance. I got to the town and just hauled ass through it. I didn’t stop for the 2 stop signs or the one stop light.
At that point I was hoping to get pulled over. As I got about a mile from my grandparents house my grandpa turned on his head lights and spot light on his truck and was driving towards me. That’s when the person turned back around.
I always wonder wtf they were doing. Like were they just fucking with me? Did they want something? I’ll never know.”
6. Holy shit.
“A lady tried to use my truck to commit suicide. I was going 40 and she jumped towards my truck. It happened so fast I couldn’t stop in time and her head smashed out my drivers side window. Scared the shit out of me.
At first I didn’t know that I hit a person until I looked back and saw her body in the road. She didn’t die that day but as soon as she got out of the hospital, she went back and did the same thing. This time it was a semi truck and she didn’t make it.
Super sad story.”
7. Don’t drink and drive.
“Driving home after a get together and I saw headlights that seemed “funny”.
It was from a car driving the wrong way and I swerved at the very last second.
Driver was drunk and hit a van carrying a family, 3 people died, the drunk driver lived.”
8. A game of chicken.
“One time I was going to my friend’s a few towns over. Most of the drive is a pretty straight road with a few stops, and has a speed limit of 45( so everyone does 55 usually)
It’s about 8 o’clock and dark out and I get stuck behind a slow car doing about 35mph. It’s frustrating but I’ll pass at the next passing zone. Next thing I know he goes even slower, down to 20 mph. I think maybe he feels me to close to him, so I back off his bumper and he speeds up to 45.
Soon he slows back down agian..
Then speeds back up..
Then slows agian. But this time he comes to a stop. In the middle of the road. No one else around. No stop sign. I decide fuck this and slowly start going around him. And I remember wanting to look over but as I was going by him I start accelerating.
Then he lays on his horn and starts accelerating to. So I put the peddle down even more trying to pass him. He is still laying on his horn. I am freaking out, so I just accelerating harder Finally we are up to 80 mph me in the opposite lane before he slows off. I keep going wanting to put some distance on us.
Coming to the end of the road is an intersection with traffic lights. Light turns red. Guy is still behind me. I grab a ice scraper from the backseat to get ready for him to get out and come to my truck.
Thankfully nothing happens. I turned at the intersection and he keeps going. Crisis adverted, but I was still shaking when I got to my friends house…”
9. Brutal.
“Driving to work early, still dark, got caught on scene as the paramedics and police were closing down the street.
Man on a bike hit by a car, woman standing outside her car holding her face and staring at the man she hit totally inconsolable. Man on the ground, head contorted behind his back, legs splayed like a ragdoll, shoes in the street with his toes facing the wrong way, his face bloodied and cut, and his butt half out of his pants while he convulsed, obviously dying from his injuries.
I was forced to stay there while police figured out who saw what and who was involved, so I got to watch the guy die.
I didn’t work that day.”
10. Don’t stop!
“It was about 3am and we were driving back to Dallas from a field party in OK. Long dirt roads, houses few and far between. As we pass a particularly broke down looking farmhouse there is little girl standing at end of the driveway holding a headless doll just watching our car drive by.
Made my blood go cold.”
11. Years ago…
“I had a weird and somewhat frightening experience one night years ago while on a long dark road one night. I was in the Navy at the time, and I was on a training trip to Groton, CT.
I was quite the partier in younger days, and I would wander damn near anywhere wherever I thought there was some music, dancing and action (wink wink). One night I decided to wander somewhere north of the New London / Groton area to see what else was out there.
Well I didn’t see anything worth mentioning, so I said screw it and finally turned my rental car around to head back to the base.
Now let me set the scene as it really was. I was just driving along this long, dark highway when I spotted a white guy just standing there in the pitch darkness alone and alongside the road.
There was no car or anything there… it was just him. As a southerner, my first impulse was to ask if he was OK… that is until I looked into his eyes. This man looked me right in the eye, and his stare sent a damn chill through me as I drove by.
He actually had the look of something between a spirit and an outright ax murderer. I mean like this dude didn’t even look REAL! He didn’t say a word to me, and he made no physical gesture.
He just stared at me with this evil, weird and ghostly look in his eyes. Bottom line is this: He scared the shit out of me, so I kept my Black ass moving and got the fuck out of there as fast as possible.
I was even afraid that I was going to have bad dreams that night. THAT’S just how evil and weird this cat looked!
This incident happened about 35 years ago, and I never forgot about it, so I hope this puts the story into a better perspective in terms of the “Jason” effect this dude had on me.”
12. Back in the day.
“1978 or ’79.
I was the lead singer/guitarist of a punk band called The Nads. Punk was new to Vermont and roundly hated in an era of overblown bands issuing albums of overly instumented 14 minute pieces. We were three poor kids with secondhand equipment and few gigs.
We were also the owner of an ancient “Thames” van which had previously served a plumber. His name was still faintly visible on the sides despite many scrubbings. Anyway, we travelled up and down Vermont and also made trips to New Hampshire and Maine playing where we could.
We got a gig playing at a basement bar in Portland, Maine but the pay would cover not much more than the gas. We gassed up, packed two days worth of sandwiches and a change of underwear and off we went. Just over the border in Maine we blew a tire (or “tyre” since it was a Thames).
It was still afternoon and there was a garage/gas station nearby so we took the tire off and walked it over to see if they could repair it. The spare was bald as hell and probably wouldn’t have got us home. The road was narrow and in pretty rough shape and we walked along in our all-black attired and our unfortunate haircuts.
The reaction we got from the locals at the station was shock but we had cash and away we drove. About 20 miles further the same tire flattened again and we figured that we had been had. We were in an even more rural area and this was the time before cell phones so we were fucked. Night closed in.
We had food to eat and plenty of forest to pee in so we just waited for a good Samarian or at least daybreak. Sorry, bar that took a chance on us. We lounged around inside the van and played around a bit on a new song we were writing. then ate and tried to sleep.
Deep in the night we heard the screeching of metal being dragged along asphalt and we bolted upright and peered out the windshield. There a snowmobile was racing along the (June) road shooting off sparks behind it like a comet.
One guy was driving and another guy was…well…”surfing” behind it on something which looked like a piece of farm machinery while he clung desperately to a rope tow line. The “comet” lingered in our eyes as the two disappeared around a wooded corner. We didn’t say anything for a long while until Bill our drummer blurted out, “You guys need to write a song about that shit.” And so “Wrenchhead Surfing” was written.”
13. Naked dude.
“Dude burst out of the woods completely naked and made noise beyond screaming. We were driving maybe 35 km/h at the time due to us just coming round a bend in the dark and we see this figures tearing out of the woods on the drivers side of the road.
Head lights hit this man butt naked, covered in what appeared to be blood and they caught his eyes in that reflective freaky state. The noise that came out of his mouth could be called a scream but that would not do it justice.
The most ungodly thing I have ever heard and considering we were in a car with all the windows up it must have been obscenely loud because it was like it could have been coming from inside the car.
This was in ’96 and I still have dreams where he runs out from somewhere dark and makes that sound to this day.”
14. On the run.
“Driving home around midnight Halloween night after hanging with friends. We are traveling down the freeway and fog is beginning to roll in so we are driving relatively slowly.
We take our exit and as we are heading up the ramp we see the shadow of a figure walking across the road. The lights from the road ahead projected his shadow into the fog on the road in front of us before we saw him.
He was stumbling with his arms in front of him across the exit ramp. Much like a zombie in a horror movie. We barely missed him.
We called 911 to report a man stumbling across the exit ramp heading toward the freeway. Turns out it was a drunk driver who crashed his car into the ditch and he was on the run.”
15. Floor it!
“Driving in rural Arkansas on a pitch black night.
Came to a tiny intersection in the middle of nowhere with an abandoned car, driver’s door open, interior lights on, and not a single other vehicle for miles. No one to be seen.
Sped the hell out of there.”
16. In Mexico.
“While driving from Morelia to Ciudad Hidalgo, in Mexico, back in the 80’s we had two ways to get to Ciudad Hidalgo which was the national road or the old national road which was called Mil Cumbres. Mil cumbres basically means 1,000 curves. That stretch of road literally had 1,000 curves so a lot of people would get motion sickness when on that road.
One evening on our way back to my grandparents, who lived in Ciudad Hidalgo, my grandfather was driving and he loved taking Mil Cumbres because it had really nice views and he just really loved driving that road but since we had the new national road, not a lot of people used that road anymore so it was kind of desolate with the exception of passing one or two little towns.
It was dusk so soon that meant that being on such a desolate road in the moutains, we would be in complete darkness on the road with no many other cars on the same stretch of road. It took 2 hours to get to the town on that road so maybe 45 mins into the drive it had already gotten really dark and as we were driving my grandfather started slowing down.
I was sitting in the back seat because my grandmother was in the front with my grandfather so I kind of stood over the front chairs to see why he was slowing down. That’s when I saw a hug tree log blocking the road. My grandfather came to a stop and immediately started going in reverse to turn around and get out of the immediately.
After we turned, my grandfather stepped on the gas pedal and I was sort of thrown back into the back seat. I immediately turned around to see if I could anything and as we were speeding away, I could see men, very dimly since it the light from the tail lights from the car were starting to get dimmer and dimmer, coming from out of the adjacent trees next to tree log on the road, with flashlights and guns.
We were about to get robbed and thanks to my grandfather’s quick thinking and taking action immediately, we avoided it. That was the last time I was ever on that road.”
Okay, now I’m scared.
Let’s hear from you.
In the comments, tell us about the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen while driving at night.
Please and thank you!
