Speaker 1: This happened when I was eighteen, making the road trip
from my hometown to my new college. I had all
my stuff shoved into the trunk and back seat of
my cheap SUV. This was not only my first long
road trip alone, but was also going to be my
first time being away from my family for an extended
amount of time, so my nerves were reasonably high. Anyway,
the directions I was taking said it was six hundred
miles total, which I split into two days of driving.
I was taking whatever route the maps had me take,
and it estimated i'd make it to the hotel at
eleven p m. But with possible traffic, gas stops, and
getting food, I knew i'd likely get there much later.
By seven, the sun was fully gone and most of
the cars were gone too. Every once in a while
a car would pass by and I'd see their headlights
slowly fade out in front of me, but for most
of the drive it was just me. This actually made
me really tired and bored. Around ten, I decided i'd
stop at the next gas station before making the final
stretch of the drive. About ten minutes later, I exited
the road and entered a gas station, Being so far out.
This wasn't a town or anything. It was literally just
a gas station with a few pumps in a tiny
convenience store. I didn't see any other cars on the
road or in the lot, and not even any lights
from any nearby houses or buildings in the distance. I
pulled right up to a pump and got out to
start topping off my tank, and as I looked around,
I almost got jump scared by a guy walking up
to me. In comparison to myself, he was much older,
probably fifties if I had to get and he honestly
looked homeless. But regardless, being approached out here wasn't something
I was expecting, and his short smile didn't make me
feel any more comfortable. I do you need something, I said,
hoping he wouldn't walk any closer. The man stopped a
few feet from my car and looked around almost cautiously,
before responding, take the exit back onto the highway. I
looked at him, confused, not sure if I was understanding
him right. He pointed behind me at the exit I
came from and repeated himself, take the exit back onto
the highway. After a second, I said okay, and the
man walked off, but I was still really confused. The
exit I came from that he wanted me to take
again was a one way road, so by his logic,
he wanted me to drive on the wrong side of
the road and do a U turn back onto the highway.
It just didn't make any sense. I looked out at
the entrance road, the obvious one that I was supposed
to take, and there were no signs of any construction
or anything blocking it. It just looked like an empty
ramp back onto the highway. As I put the pump
back and got in my car, I glanced over at
the man who was now just sitting against the side
of the convenience store. The more I thought about it, though,
the more crazy that man seemed just to be sitting
out here saying nonsense. I thought maybe this was some
kind of trap or something, so I went with my
instinct and drove out of the lot and toward the
entrance to the highway. As I merged onto it, though
I realized pretty much all the street lights were out,
I slowed down, thinking maybe this was a construction zone
or something. I kept my eyes focused on the road
directly ahead, making sure to be cautious of anything, but
while I made my way through the unlit road, I
saw only a brief outline of a figure to my
left before a pickup truck came out of nowhere and
stopped right in front of my car. Every door opened
as four men jumped out of the truck and started
running up to my car, holding weapons of all kinds,
metal bats, machetes, knives, and not even anything covering their faces.
They just had this emotionless gaze, like they felt nothing
of what they were doing. I quickly started backing up
as they got just a few feet away from my windows,
and once I got far enough back, I suddenly saw
the outline of dozens of people coming out of the
shadows off the side of the road. A few even
tried chasing my car as I frant reversed out of there.
As soon as I could, I turned around and sped off.
I called nine one one once I felt I was safe,
but for some reason I never got a call back,
no update on it at all, almost like they didn't
even check on it. Ironically, though, it was the creepy
old guy at the gas station that tried to prevent
me from even getting caught up in that mess, or
at least that was what I assumed he was doing.
Either way, I was incredibly lucky to get out of
that with my life, as I have no idea what
that was or what they were all planning to do.
It was a typical Friday after my college classes were
out and I was spending the night doing door dash.
This was my regular routine, dashing on the weekends to
help me pay for all my living expenses while on campus.
The night started well, getting a lot of orders done
and making a good amount, and then it hit a
stalemate after the big dinner rush, very few orders were
showing up, and the ones that did they were very
low paying, basically waste of time orders. But then, after
an hour of aimlessly driving around, an order came through
that wasn't too bad. It was eight miles away, but
the payment was well worth it. It was nothing absurd,
but enough to make it not a rip off like
a lot of the other ones were. I accepted the
order and ran into the restaurant to grab the bag,
then hopped in my car and started driving. The map
said it would take thirty minutes, which I think was
the longest of any orders I'd done. Up until this point,
most of the houses were right aroun on campus, because
any further than fifteen to twenty minutes out it becomes
pretty much just bare fields of grass. As I got
to that twenty minute mark, it became just that very
few houses, mostly sitting far out in fields of crops
and nothing else. The rest of the ten minute drive
was on this empty road going along these farms. Then
I made it to the house. There was a dirt
driveway connecting to the road, leading through a large field,
and in the far back was a small house. Driving
through the field felt very eerie. Even though I'm not
one to get nervous without reason, this felt different. As
I got further out from the road, the only sound
was the low rumbling of my car on the dirt.
I parked out front and got the back ready, then
left the car on. As I stepped out, the night
was quiet and the house was dark, having only the
porch light on to illuminate the outside. I walked through
the unkempt grass and up to the porch, knocking on
the door. As I waited, I looked back at my car,
sitting in the dark with the field of pitch black
behind it. A moment went by. Then I knocked again,
but there was no response, not even the sound of
anyone inside. It didn't take long for me to realize
the strangeness of the situation, seeing no lights on in
the windows and noticing how decayed the house looked up close.
The only thing that made me think it couldn't be
abandoned was that I had an order for this address
and the porch light was on. I looked at the light,
thinking why would that be the only light? But I
some odd chance I happened to recognize the top portion
of the casing having a cheap solar battery. It was
just an automatic light that charges during the day and
turns on in the evening, meaning nobody had to be
here to turn it on. Just as I was piecing
this all together, though, I heard a rumbling sound behind me.
I turned, seeing a car driving down the dirt path
and coming up right behind my car. I stood there
and stared at their headlights until a man stepped out.
I yelled from the porch, asking if this was his order,
but he didn't reply. He just stood right next to
his car and didn't move or speak. I felt my
adrenaline spike as I began realizing how horrible this situation
likely was. The silence of the night only reminded me
that there was nobody here to help. I was stuck
in the middle of a field, between an empty house
and a stranger. In a split second instinctual reaction, I
dropped the bag and sprinted off the porch, running behind
the house and straight into the field of grass. I
looked back, seeing the man coming up behind me. Frantically,
I continued running, and the further route I got, the
thicker and taller the grass became, until it was covering
all views of direction. By then I knew the guy
had no chance in following me. I slowed down, catching
my breath as I carefully moved through the crops and
tried to be quiet in case the man was still
trying to find me. Eventually I made it to someone
else's yard, and from there I got to a road
where I had enough signal to call for help. Police
picked me up and went to check on my car,
but of course the man was gone by then. I
was surprised, though, because my car hadn't been looted and
the bag of food was still on the porch of
the abandoned house, but that could only mean that the
man had other intentions, likely far worse than just robbing me.
I was delivering a truckload to a company on the
far west coast, coming from the East coast. The route
across the country is what I've taken many times before,
being a truck driver for almost twenty years. It's always
the same every time I make one of these drives.
Same roads, same truck stops, and same everything. Over these
twenty years, though, I've never really had anything crazy happen.
I've had a few odd scenarios, but they'd never amounted
to anything. So when I was driving this route again,
I had no worries in my mind. It was just
another day on the job. About twenty hours into the route,
a storm started coming over and slowing down my driving.
It was late too, so by then I was already
looking for the next truck stop to sleep at. As
I drove, though, a very sudden light appeared behind me.
The road I was on was flat and straight, so
I would have seen them coming in my mirror, but
it was all of a sudden that they were right
behind me. Maybe they had just turned on their lights
or something. I didn't know, but they very quickly came
right up to the back. I kept my eyes on
them until they got so close that they were completely
covered by the trailer. All I could see were their
head lights reflecting off the back, but then their lights
shut off. I maintained my speed and kept looking back
at my mirrors, trying to see if they were still
behind me, but I had no way to know. For
someone to turn off their lights in the middle of
a heavy storm was insane, though, and to be tailing
behind me so close was just as insane. Thankfully, the
sign showed a truck stop was only five miles ahead,
so at least I knew I was close to getting
away from whatever this was. I didn't want to jump
to conclusions based on just some weird behavior, but as
a trucker, it's hard not to think about the possibility
of it being an attempted robbery, especially when alone on
the road at night. For the rest of the five miles,
I saw no signs of them behind me. I was
still on edge because I couldn't really see see anything anyway,
but I started feeling less worried as I was coming
in on the truck stop. I pulled in, trying to
check my mirrors to see if they followed, but with
the rain and lack of lighting, it was really too
hard to tell. The truck stop was mostly empty, though
aside from a few trucks at the gas pumps. I
pulled off to the side and parked in the middle
of the lot. After waiting a minute and getting some
of my stuff organized, I opened the truck door and
leaned my head out, looking along the side of the trailer.
I was drenched from the rain in just a matter
of seconds, but from what I could tell, there was
no car behind me. I closed the door and finally
felt a bit of relief. Grabbing my pillow and blanket
from the passenger side, I locked the doors, turned off
the truck, and tried to get some shut eye. The
rain pounding on the metal roof made it easy to
fall asleep, blocking out any possible sounds coming from other
trucks pulling in and out. When I woke up, though
I felt I had only been asleep for a few minutes.
I looked around, seeing it was still dark out and
the storm was the same, if not worse. But before
I could check my mirrors, a loud thump shook the truck.
My eyes opened wider. I reached for the door handle
and opened it. Looking out at the back of the
trailer through the rain, I could barely see the outline
of a car with its headlights off and two men
moving around in front of it. Terrified, I hesitated to
step out and confront them, and as I sat there
in that moment of hesitation, the door suddenly slammed against
my body, shoving me back further into the driver's seat.
Another man stood outside, yelling at me to stay where
I was, then slamming the door again. His right hand
was shoved in his hoodie, and with two other men
behind the truck, I was in no position to try anything.
I could feel the truck's shake as I just sat
in place, with the guy outside my door watching my
every move. He didn't even look away for a second.
This went on for a few minutes. Then they ran
back to their car and drove off. I was still
in shock watching their car disappear onto the road. I
called the police and put in a report, but no
information ever came up on who the men were. All
I know is that if I had been any less
aware and had just tried to drive off at first
sight of the men. I probably wouldn't have been able
to make it out as safely as I did.