This happened a few years back. I was 11 years old at the time with my family driving in the middle of nowhere, Montana. It was also the middle of the night in the dead of winter.
We used to own this place in the literal middle of nowhere and every once in a while we drive out and spend a week fishing, camping, and hiking. So, we were driving back towards civilization and everyone was tired. Big walls of snow were on either side of the road.
Beyond the dirty snow banks, you could see thick tree lines. We were cruising along, climbing up over this mountain pass. I remember I had half my forehead pressed up against the cold glass while I tiredly watched what little snow and nature I could make out in the dark.
Then, I saw this person. I will always remember her as a female. Maybe that's just what I settled on in my head, but either way, they were wearing a tattered coat, multiple layers, and carrying a couple of big bags.
I remember seeing a flash of a cold face. I wasn't the only one to see her, though. My dad mumbled, "See that?
Must be freezing out there. " And my mom said something like, "Maybe we should give them a ride. " But we were already a half mile away.
So, we got to the top of this mountain. I could tell because I got that feeling in my ears, and we began the descent down to the other side. The driving conditions were not great, but the old family car was doing just fine.
We leveled out a bit and I started scanning the distance for any signs of a city, town, or anything. Still nothing but snow and trees out there. We were totally alone.
We began the real descent and we started winding down this mountain pass. I was staring out the window at the snow and trees as the drive got scary. We hadn't passed a car for what seemed like hours.
I remember my dad started talking about something and that's when I saw her again standing out in the snow. I got a brief glimpse when they were illuminated by the headlights but then gone. This time I got a better look at her face and I wish I hadn't.
A really strange smile in the middle of a very disfigured face. Maybe she was a horrible burn victim. In that brief second, I couldn't get the image out of my head, but it felt like she was staring right at me, smiling, some messed up kind of understanding in her small black eyes.
So, we drove on for a bit and I remember just staring out the window. It immediately struck me. How did she get there?
How did she travel miles and miles and miles in front of us? We didn't pass a car, truck, or anything. And there wasn't really any other road out there.
We eventually got to the bottom of that mountain and made it to some roadside motel where we stayed for the night. The next morning, we found this little diner right outside the town that we stayed in. It was a classic trucker stop type of diner.
We ate and played ice spy. After the bill was paid and we zipped up our coats, I heard the doors chime. We were all heading out when I looked up and saw her again.
The same coat, the dozens of hooded sweaters, the big bags filled with what looked like damp clothing. I was walking out behind my dad and I remember that she gave this look at me as she passed. She really looked like she hated me, like she knew things I didn't, looking at me with that huge disfigured smile.
She stopped beside me, but I stayed behind my dad until we got in the car. I don't know what really was going on. I couldn't help but feel bad for her if she was truly lost out there walking for miles in the cold.
Or maybe someone had hurt her. Probably a dozen of explanations for the whole experience. But I can't shake the weird feeling like she was following us.
My family and I were driving from Ohio to Wyoming one holiday season to visit family about 10 years ago. Due to storms farther north, we traveled straight west instead of northwest at first and split the trip at Omaha, staying the night before heading up through Nebraska into South Dakota. Once we were far enough north, we turned west on to I90.
At that point, it had been over an hour since we saw anywhere that might have had a public restroom, and we were on state routes, so no rest areas. Those of you who have traveled with a young child know the bladder and boredom limit isn't very long, and our daughter was begging to stop somewhere to pee. South Dakota was similarly deserted, or even worse, as we headed west.
Finally, we reached a desperately needed rest stop as my 5-year-old and I both needed to pee by then. Just as we pulled in, the truck that had been following us for a while pulled in as well. I didn't think too much of it at first until I started to open my door.
My head was turned to the right where the truck was parked just a couple of spots over. My eyes met with the drivers and I just shivered. He was a skinny white guy, scraggly gray brown beard and dark eyes.
I could see that he was wearing a dirty blue plaid shirt. He got out of his '90s brown and cream truck and started rummaging in the bed. I told my husband that I didn't want to go into the rest stop alone because of the guy and the weird feeling that I got from him.
My husband thought that I was being a little silly but agreed to come with us. At that point, the next stop was the town of Wall, South Dakota, about 100 miles away still, according to the huge billboards we'd passed advertising it. My husband figured he'd better empty his bladder, even though he didn't particularly feel the need.
I grabbed our daughter and we headed inside, followed by the guy who had been rummaging in his truck and wasn't carrying anything when I glanced back. My daughter and I did our business in the woman's restroom and headed back out into the lobby. As I expected, my husband was already out there since he didn't have a small human to chaperon.
The old guy was also in the tiny lobby area. He was just standing there staring at my husband. My husband rushed us back out to our car.
As we were buckling in, he locked the doors. Then he told me that the guy hadn't even gone to the restroom and was just standing in the lobby the whole time. He agreed with me that we might have just had a close call, and he was glad that it hadn't just been me and our daughter to go in there.
However, that's not the end of the story. That 100mile drive to Wall was pretty easy with empty landscaping, but a decent number of turnoffs from the interstate. We didn't see the truck following us and thought that the whole episode was behind us.
Except when we stopped in Wall to grab lunch and some road snacks, plus look at this fun little tourist trap in the middle of nowhere. We saw the guy in the store not even 20 ft away from us. Same face, beard, and dirty plaid shirt.
Thankfully, we'd already eaten, so since he was staring at us again, we quickly paid for our snacks and trinkets and got out of there. We didn't see him again, but I was seriously creeped out until we reached our relatives in Wyoming safely with no other sight of that man or his truck. It was about 2000 or 2001 and my best friend and I were 13 years old.
We lived in a small town in rural Minnesota of about 2,000 people. Out of our friend group, her and I were the only two who lived out in the country, farther away from the small town out in the middle of nowhere. So, we understood the boredom that could ensue, but the fun things that would come out of it.
Exploring the woods, running around in the cornfields, creating forts, exploring the abandoned house on their property. It was a really fun time for us. One day, we decided to take our bikes and ride down some gravel roads.
Her little brother tagged along, and he was probably about 9 or 10 at the time. We were riding along, laughing, probably picking on her brother when we saw an old shack out in one of the corn fields. The corn wasn't fully grown, so we were able to see most of it.
We decided to explore it because why not? I'm 33 now, so bear with my memory. I don't remember much about the episode, but I do remember what I saw inside, and it still gives me the creeps to this day.
We peered inside, and the first thing we noticed were posters on the walls of the room. They were on every wall. There was a different person on every poster and they looked angry.
Some held guns pointed right at you. Some were pointing their finger and it felt like they were pointing right at us with their eyes trained on us. In the center of the floor was a perfectly painted red circle.
As we were staring at this creepy scene, I felt like we were being watched and not by the posters. I looked to my right across the gravel road and into the cornfield across from us. Standing in the middle of the field was a man.
He was just watching us. He was not waving his arms, not yelling at us, just watching. I alerted my friends and we looked at him together.
I awkwardly waved and he continued to just stand there and not wave back. We were sufficiently creeped out, so we jumped onto our bikes to get away. We were on gravel, which is not easy to bike on, so it took us a while to get going.
We biked away and I repeatedly turned around to see if he was there and still watching us. He barely moved and only turned his body slightly to angle in our direction to keep watching. I can't get over how he just appeared in the middle of the field like that.
Eventually, once we had biked a good distance away, we saw him start walking away out of our view. Recently, I've been thinking about this. So, my friend, her brother, and I started a group chat, we all shared what we remembered, and they both recalled it the same way I did.
What I didn't know was that when we went back the next day, everything was gone, even the red paint on the floor. A week later, whoever owned the shack donated it to the fire department to be burned. I don't know what was going on in that shack.
Some thoughts have been weird rituals, target practice for some militia dude, or just some creepy guy who had a poor taste in decor. Whatever it was, it still weirds me out to this day. This happened at night in the middle of nowhere about 8 years ago.
It was after 11 p. m. and I was taking my dogs out for their last bathroom walk before bed.
At the time, I was living in a rural area, houses far apart, lots of wooded lots around with wild pigs often crossing our path. I would often take long walks because one of the dogs had a problem with having accidents in the morning if he didn't have an adequate walk to do all his business. It was dark, so I had the flashlight, and I was not expecting to meet anyone out in the middle of nowhere so late at night.
But ahead of me appeared on the opposite side of the road, another flashlight. We had a few neighbors, but of the homes around, I knew most all of them from over the years. On rare occasion, someone else may be walking a dog, but I could count the times that that happened on my fingers.
As I passed by the other flashlight at night, I noticed a tall, pale man who I had never seen before crossed the street to my side and began to follow behind me. He yelled out, "Hey, I like your dogs. Can I pet them?
" I stayed calm, walking briskly and ignoring him. My house was close and I was almost home at the end of my walk. He continued to follow me, yelling, "Hey, what's your name?
I just want to pet your dogs. " He had a thick East European accent. I ignored him and ran up to my house through the door, locked it, and then ran into my bedroom.
I told my husband that there was a strange man who had followed me home and that I was super disturbed that he knew where I lived. My brave husband immediately ran out of the house, I guess, to find this guy. I was on pins and needles waiting for him to come back.
He came back home with his steel baseball bat in hand. He said he had caught up to the guy and asked him who he was and why he was following around a woman at basically midnight being a creep. The guy said he was new to town and was walking around hoping to meet people and make some friends.
Basically, his story was bizarre and totally didn't make sense. You don't do that at midnight in a rural area in the middle of nowhere. You do that in a city setting at a normal hour.
My husband told him that if he ever saw him again near our house, he would break his knees with the baseball bat. And I didn't see him again until 2 years later in a neighboring city. I was out with a girlfriend looking at an art museum when I turned a corner and it was him.
I could never forget his face. He looked straight at me and I can't remember exactly what he said, but I knew who he was from that night 2 years ago, which was still very strange. He said something like, "Oh, you're the girl from that night with the dogs.
" I don't remember what I even said back because I was in disbelief. The exact same guy again with the thick European accent. Tall, skinny, and pale.
This time I had run into him in a public museum, so I can't fault him much since it was a public place. But it was still creepy that he remembered me from the dark night 2 years ago. I grabbed my friend's arm and quickly walked in the opposite direction and we left the museum.
I told her the story as we left the museum and thankfully she understood. Also, thankfully, I never saw him again. Back when I was in college in Texas, my roommates and I decided to drive to Boulder, Colorado for spring break.
It was another girl and I along with our two male roommates. To maximize our time in Boulder, we decided to take shifts driving and go all the way through the night rather than stopping for overnight stays. It was roughly an 18-hour trip.
So, I was driving my shift when we reached the Texas panhandle in the early morning hours. We were out in the middle of nowhere and had not seen a single car in either direction for ages when we noticed headlights behind us. The car came up on us quickly, then followed behind for some time.
Oddly, it would get really close to us, then back off real far, then get close again. This pattern continued for several miles. Suddenly, the headlights were joined by red and blue police lights.
It was so dark out there that we had not seen the light bar on the hood and had not realized we were being followed by a cop. I checked my speedometer and I was not speeding. So, we were all wondering why we were getting pulled over, but I went ahead and pulled over to the shoulder.
Up came a cop wearing a cowboy hat to my window. He shined his light in the car and looked us over, then asked me to get out of the car. I hesitated at first, but there were three other people in the car, so I wasn't feeling particularly unsafe at this point.
I grabbed my wallet, got out, and stood against the driver's door. The cop looked at my license and insurance, then told me that he was going to do a sobriety test. I was thinking, why would I need to do that?
But I haven't had anything to drink, so I did it anyways. The way the cop directed me for the walking in a straight line test had me ending my walk right by his car. When I finished, he reached over to open his back passenger's door and told me to get in.
I said, "What? Why? " He said that I should sit in his car while he looked at my license.
Now, I had heard how doors on the back of cop cars can only open from the outside. So, I knew if I got into his car and he closed the door, I wouldn't be able to get out. It was like 3:00 a.
m. in the morning, pitch black darkness, on a road dozens of miles from any civilization, and I decided I was not getting in that car. My exact words were, "I'm sorry, sir.
With all respect, and for my own safety, I do not want to get into the back of your car. " He angrily responded with, "What did you say to me? " I repeated my statement again, being as nice as possible about it, and I stayed calm.
the whole time. He went back and forth like this for several minutes with him being really angry and threatening to arrest my friends and I and hold us overnight. Finally, he gave up trying to get me into the back of his car and he said to me, "What are you afraid of being kidnapped?
" Personally, I thought that was a really strange and messed up thing to say. I glanced towards my car and saw my friends piled to the back window watching. With the two guys looking ready to jump out, the cop turned to look at them, too.
I don't know what went through his mind, but after being completely aggressive with me for what seemed like forever, he finally gave me a creepy smile. He handed me back my license and insurance, tipped his hat, and then got into his car and drove off. He didn't give me a ticket or even mention what I had done wrong or why he had pulled me over.
At that point, I was shaking so badly that my friends had to help me get back in the car. To this day, I think about that cop deciding to terrorize a young college female at 3:00 a. m.
in the middle of rural Texas. And I often wonder what would have happened if I had not stood my ground and instead gotten inside of his cop car. I wondered if he would have tried to take advantage of me in the backseat of his car.
And I also wonder if he was even a real cop or not.
