Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - Long Haul Horror: Ghost Sightings and Creepy Encounters on The Open Road

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

From ghostly hitchhikers and terrifying truck stops to suspicious looking roadkill and strange noises in the dead of night, these stories will keep you on the edge of your seat. Whether it’s an eerie sense of being watched or bizarre encounters with the supernatural, truckers share the scariest moments they've had while driving through the darkness. Buckle up and join us for a ride into the unknown – it’s going to be a long, dark road. Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to bonus content as well as other perks. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after-show called Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to bonus episodes and more when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last year, a trucker named William Church was driving down the Arizona State Highway 87, a route he had done a bunch of times. He was in between Phoenix and Payson, a part of the highway that runs mostly through desert with really nothing on either side for miles. It can be really mind-numbing driving through the empty landscape, especially at 2.30 in the morning, like William was doing. So I imagine he was doing his best to stay awake when all of a sudden he caught something

out of the corner of his eye. It was like a flash of light on the right side of the road, almost like there was a piece of metal or something that his lights reflected off of, a car on the shoulder perhaps. But as fast as he saw it, he drove past it. He checked his rearview mirror only to see nothing. Whatever was there was completely gone. Eventually he pulled over to a truck stop but was still thinking of that weird light. So he decided to look at his dashcam footage. It had been recording the whole time and maybe it had caught a clearer image. But he could have never guessed what he

was about to see. There was something on the side of the road near the 200-mile marker and it wasn't a solid object. William looked on in confusion and honestly terror as the video showed him passing by a transparent human shape in the road. It looked like a small woman or a child walking. The footage ended up being picked up by news organizations and the public could not believe what they were seeing either. No matter which way you look at the footage,

it's hard to deny that it does look like something supernatural. Now, anyone familiar with the area knows that Highway 87 is considered one of Arizona's most dangerous roads. It was constructed in 1927 and has intense looping turns and steep hills and it can be really difficult to drive at night. As a result of that there have

been a lot of fatal accidents. William wondered if what he saw was a ghost from one of these accidents and it didn't take him long to find that just one month before the sighting, there was a fatal car crash at almost the exact spot where he saw the figure. And now, many people are wondering if the two are related. But that got me thinking. I've heard a lot of scary stories about what truck drivers see while out driving. I mean, I have a lot of listeners that are truck drivers and you guys reach out to me all the time.

So after I read this story last year, I started down a really deep rabbit hole and what I read chilled me down to my bones. Not even just ghost sightings that people have seen. I'm talking close calls with scary people and even closer calls with scarier creatures. And so, of course, that's exactly what I'm going to share with you guys today. I know a lot of you also listen in the car, so buckle up for this one. It's going to get bumpy.

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Driving alone on an open road at night with no other cars around is something I've always been afraid of. Imagine pulling off at a rest stop and it's pitch black, nearby yourself, and you don't know what you're about to walk into. I remember one time I was driving in Idaho at like three in the morning

and I saw these police lights in my rear view mirror. I wasn't speeding or anything, so I had this very real and terrifying thought of, what if this is not a real cop and it's just someone pretending to be one pulling me over at three in the morning? What would happen if I pulled over? Obviously it was a real cop, I did pull over,

my tail light was out and he was very nice about it, but still, it could have gone south very fast. And on this show, when we're afraid of something, we don't ignore it. We go all in and read all of the scary stories we can about it. And so believe me when I tell you, it is so much scarier out there than I ever thought it was.

But before we get into it, I just wanted to remind everyone that we have some really fun bonus episodes on Patreon and Apple Podcast subscriptions, and I would hate for anyone to miss them. For October, I did another episode on horror stories from Appalachia, specifically caves

and abandoned coal mines in the area. So you're definitely gonna wanna check that one out. And this month, I'm doing one on haunted and cursed paintings. If you'd like to have a say in the bonus episodes, you can sign up for the High Council tier on Patreon, where you'll be able to cast your vote for the bonus episodes every month.

Okay, I really want to share with you guys what I found because people are not talking about this enough and there's something going on out there on the roads. Also, a lot of these stories come from the book Trucker Ghost Stories and Other True Tales of Haunted Highways, Weird Encounters, and Legends of the Road, which has a lot more stories, so definitely go check that out if you're interested. Okay, let's get into it. One night in 2021, a trucker in Australia was doing an express run on the Newwell Highway from Melbourne to Toowoomba. Newwell Highway is a long stretch of road in the southeast of Australia.

And while the landscape at parts is diverse, ranging from rolling hills to little farms to small towns, there are long stretches that feel totally desolate, with only the occasional road stop or sign of wildlife. So doing long hauls at night in a truck can start to feel pretty mind numbing with not much to look at. Outside of the truck can be so dark it's like an abyss is surrounding the driver. At least that's how this trucker, who we'll call Jeff, felt. The sound of the truck engine and the empty landscape was starting to lull him to sleep after a long day on the two-lane road. Earlier, he had spoken to his manager who assured him that he could pull over at any time if he got too tired.

The manager warned him that this stretch of the highway that Jeff was currently on was so monotonous that few truckers could do the whole stretch in one night. It wasn't worth the safety risk for Jeff to keep going. So he decided that at the next truck stop, he was just going to pull over and get some rest. His headlights shined out into the darkness as he looked for a sign when all of a sudden out in the distance he saw that his lights were reflecting back off of something. It was the whites of two beady little eyes. And at first he thought it must be some sort of animal but as he got closer he could see that it was a woman standing on the side of the road.

Jeff looked around the landscape. There weren't any other cars pulled over. He hadn't seen a house for miles. Where had this woman come from? He immediately thought about an old wives tale he had heard about trucking that sometimes people will set traps for drivers. A woman would stand on the side of the road with her thumb out, waiting for a kind driver

to come and help her. And just as one would pull over, a man would jump out from the woods behind her and they would rob the driver, or worse. But as Jeff's truck rolled up to the woman, she looked frail and helpless. It didn't look like there was anyone hiding behind her in the shadows. This woman legitimately looked like she needed help. He rolled down the window and he gave her

a nod. And he said, hop in. So the woman slowly climbed up to the door and popped it open. Once she crawled into the cab, Jeff got a much better look at her. He felt the energy inside completely change. See, she had this thin, wiry hair and her skin was so sunken in, she almost looked like a corpse. Dark circles underscored her bloodshot eyes and dirt was caked around her mouth. Her clothes were tattered and filthy. It almost looked like she had climbed out of a ditch. She didn't say anything to Jeff. She just stared forward at the open road,

almost like she was looking for something. Ten minutes went by in complete silence. Jeff was practically praying for a gas station or a hotel or anywhere he could just drop this woman off. But there was nothing on this road. When all of a sudden, the woman slowly raised her arm and pointed up the road to an unlit area. Here, she said.

You want me to drop you off up there? Jeff asked. And the woman nodded her head. Okay, so he pulled over to the side of the road, the woman got out, and just walked off towards some trees in complete darkness. Eventually, Jeff got to the next town, Nerebri, where he pulled over and got some rest. The stench of the woman was still thick in the cap of his truck. And the next morning, when he was grabbing a cup of coffee at the stop with a group of truckers, he brought up the strange woman that he had

seen the night before. She must have been on drugs or having a psychotic break, Jeff suggested. He thought that would maybe get a laugh from the group, but he saw that one of the guys looked pale and his eyes were wide. Without missing a beat, the guy rattled off the markers on the highway near where Jeff had picked up and dropped off the woman. How did the guy know that? Then, he said something that made Jeff's blood run cold. She's not real. He went on to tell Jeff that other truckers had seen that woman in the area always at

the same markers, always asked to get dropped off at the same spot near some trees. One driver had done some digging after hearing her story and found out that a woman had died in a particularly bad car wreck in 2014 on the highway near where the woman is always seen. So they all just assumed it was her. Jeff laughed at the guy. He was clearly just trying to scare him. Every truck driver had some scary story of something that they had seen on the road,

and most of them were just urban legends. But when Jeff finally made it back home after his assignment, his boss called him into the office. He said he had heard from another driver that Jeff had picked up a woman on the side of the road, a huge no-no. Jeff tried to explain himself. The woman looked like she had been in an accident,

like she needed help, but it didn't matter. His boss wanted him to come into his office. He had pulled the surveillance footage from the cab of Jeff's truck and had it up on his computer. He needed Jeff to show him at what point he stopped for the woman. And yes, actually I do know it sounds strange, but a lot of truck drivers have cameras inside their trucks that surveil them as they drive. Jeff started scrubbing through the footage until he got to the part where he stopped for the woman. And he and his boss watched in horror as the video showed Jeff pull the truck

over, the door opened and then no one got inside. 10 minutes later, he pulled the truck over again with no one in the passenger seat, and the door opened once more. His boss had this look on his face that was almost a smile, like he had seen this before, and he said, it looks like you met the Princess of Pilica. Apparently, so many people have seen this apparition on the side of Newell Highway that she's earned herself a name, the Princess of Pilaga. Some reports, like what the trucker told him after the encounter, say that she's the ghost of a woman who died in a car wreck in 2014.

But others say it's the ghost of a woman who was hit by a truck in 1993 named Claire Whibson. Either way, the amount of people who have reported seeing her is staggering. But maybe she's there to keep drivers on their toes. After all, it is the most boring part of the drive, the one where the most drivers fall asleep at the wheel. So maybe, in a way, she's there to shock them back awake to save another person from her fate.

This next story comes from a driver who encountered something on the road that he thought might be a crypt encrypted, but he's not sure. He writes, this was in the upper peninsula of Michigan. I was delivering and installing machines for the company I was working for. I was in a 26 foot box truck

with 12 machines in the back. I was having trouble with the truck the day before, had it checked out by the rental company, and they said it was all good. Since I was behind schedule due to the truck and problems with installations, I decided to drive late to my next destination. It was about 11 o'clock at night on the state route through the upper peninsula.

There were no streetlights. There were no other cars. The headlights from my truck were the only thing illuminating the road. I was already creeped out. At the peak of feeling like I was in the middle of nowhere, because I was in fact in the middle of nowhere, every single light on the dashboard of the truck lit up. And then it stalled. So now it's pitch black, I'm stopped and the truck is not restarting. Rather than eat up the battery trying to turn it over, I just shut everything down and started

making phone calls. As I was calling everyone and anyone that would listen, I sat in the dark night with the only light being the hazard lights. I looked up and I saw something move in front of the truck, just out of the distance of the flashing lights. At first I thought it was my imagination. I finally got a hold of someone and they told me that it would be two to three hours before they could get a mechanic to me.

So now I'm sitting in silence. The only noise is the clicking of the hazard lights and I'm staring out of the windshield into a void of darkness. When I see that movement again, just as I was getting nervous, my phone rang and it scared the hell out of me. It was a mechanic that wanted me to get out,

open the hood and check some things out. No, I'm not getting out of me. It was a mechanic that wanted me to get out, open the hood and check some things out. No, I'm not getting out of the truck without an explanation as to why he was irritated with me, but I just didn't care. I wasn't getting out. So finally, after seeing the movement just out of range with the lights one more time, I threw on the headlights with the high beams.

The headlights caught three wolves snacking on something that looked like roadkill. I honked the horn and they looked at me like they were irritated more than scared. I was safe. The wolves more than likely weren't going to bother me, but it was just spooky knowing that they were there. So I shut the lights off.

I would turn the lights on occasionally to check and see if they were still there. I was basically just sitting there listening to the hazard flashers click while surfing on my phone. Each time I turned the lights on, the wolves were still there. And just to remind you, I'm in the middle of nowhere.

No homes, no businesses, nothing but trees, wilderness, and now wolves. I suddenly heard what I can only equate to a woman's scream of terror that sounded like it came from right behind my truck. Then something slammed into the side of the truck hard enough to rock it. I wasn't afraid of the truck tipping over, but whatever hit it, hit it hard enough to rock the suspension enough to move around the cab. It was a pretty heavy truck, too. I turned every light that the truck had on, slipped it into reverse

so the reverse lights came on and laid on the horn. I was checking both mirrors, and the only thing I saw was a shadow bolt across the road. I couldn't make out what it technically was, but in my head it was like a werewolf, yeti, bigfoot lizard monster that was going to end my life and it was gonna be agonizingly painful the entire time. I also noticed that the wolves were now gone.

And from every nature documentary I've watched, the only time predators leave food is when there are bigger, badder predators around. Whatever crossed the road didn't cross very far off the road. I could hear it thrashing around in the brush, breaking sticks and what sounded like logs. There was no noise pollution, I only had my window cracked a little bit, but I could hear

it really well. Finally, I saw some headlights through one of my mirrors. It seemed like it took hours for them to close the distance to me. The noise stopped as the headlights approached, which were obviously the mechanic because no one else was stupid enough besides me to be out there. The mechanic pulled out in front of me, my headlights were shining on him and his truck.

And as his door opened to step out, we both hear the woman screaming in terror type of yell again and the brush thrashing intensified. Whatever it was, it was still close to us and pretty pissed off. His door immediately closed and my phone rang. The mechanic called my phone asking me what it was and he sounded even more panicked than I was. But I had no clue and neither did he so the mechanic ended up calling the cops. He wouldn't work on my truck until we could secure the area, which I don't

blame him. He didn't like the idea of until we could secure the area, which I don't blame him. He didn't like the idea of getting out of his truck just to check on things. And eventually two Michigan State Police officers showed up. They lit the area up like it was a stadium. I finally stepped out of the truck for the first time since it all started. We heard that scream three more times while the mechanic was working on my truck. And thankfully they were getting further and further away, but the cops had no idea what it was either,

and even they were spooked. The mechanic finally got my truck running, and I made it to my hotel for the night. The next morning, I walked the truck for inspection, and the side that was hit, there was an indentation about the size of a basketball. Whatever hit it didn't hit it hard enough to push all the way through but it definitely mushed the fiberglass. The indentation

was about seven feet off the ground. I have no idea what it was and I probably never will. I do confidently know that I will never ever drive through the Upper Peninsula at night again. More after short break. This episode is brought to you by Manscaped. If you are starting to think about what gift you're going to get the men in your life, forget the cliche gifts like socks or ugly sweaters. Get him something he'll actually love and use. The Chairman Pro package from Manscaped. It's like the Rudolph of grooming they say, guiding him to the smoothest, irritation-free shave of his life. Let's get into it. The Chairman

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or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Though a lot of truckers have reported seeing supernatural things while out on the road late at night, sometimes the scariest thing

you can come across is something from our world. Take for instance, a driver named Digio, who was doing what's known as a meet and turn. Basically, Digio was going to drive halfway to his destination, and then hand over his trailer to another driver who would finish the delivery.

This was a route that he had driven dozens of times. He knew it like the back of his hand, so much so that he could just be on autopilot while he was driving. But he made sure to stay sharp just in case he came across something that he wasn't expecting. The night that he was set to meet the other driver, he pulled into a truck stop at around three in the morning. He had been at a truck stop at around three in the morning. He had been at this truck stop before. It was a run down, small stop on the side of an empty highway.

It had a big iridescent sign that shone through the night like a lighthouse, except some of the letters had been burnt out. This night, though, something felt different. It was eerily quiet outside. And when he got out of his cab to grab some water, he saw that there was only one other truck, all the way across on the other side of the stop. The guy he was supposed to be meeting hadn't arrived yet. Usually, the area was full of sounds of people chatting and truck engines,

but that night all he could hear was the fluorescent lights buzzing. He decided to just get in his truck and take a nap for a bit. He turned the ringer on loud in case the guy called, and then he just leaned in his seat all the way back. About 10 minutes into his nap though, he heard something outside of his truck.

It was a dog barking. He tried to shut it out and keep sleeping, but it kept getting closer and closer. It sounded like a big dog too, and it was heading straight towards him. Eventually, it got so loud that he opened his eyes to see what was going on. But when he looked out, he didn't see anything. Just the empty lot. He checked his phone to see that the guy had not called yet, so he leaned back in the seat. But there the dog was again, and this time it was even closer. That's it. Digio grabbed some chips from the passenger seat. He was going to go try to get the dog to calm down. Maybe it was just

looking for some food. He got out of his truck, turned in the direction of the barking. And what he saw made him stop dead in his tracks. Instead of a hungry dog, he saw that the sound was coming from a man bent over near the back of his truck. The guy was about 35 years old, skeletal and dirty, his clothes were all roughed up, and his hair was a mess. It was his eyes that Digio really remembered though. They were deranged, staring straight at him as he continued to bark like a dog. He was getting so worked up that he was foaming at the mouth. Not knowing what else to do, Digio backed away slowly and crawled back up into his truck. He started

peeling away and in the rearview mirror he saw that the man was now chasing him, still foaming at the mouth. Eventually he watched as the man disappeared in his rearview mirror, but the memory haunted Digio. Now, whenever he's at a stop at three in the morning and he hears a dog barking in the distance, a chill runs down his spine. So that story makes me absolutely freak out because I am so afraid of being alone with someone and not knowing what they're capable of. Who knows what was going through that guy's mind?

But if someone is barking at you so badly they're foaming at the mouth, I think for your own safety it's best to get out of there. But that kind of brings me to my next creepy story about another man who saw something very much from our world but was really thrown off by it. A driver who I'll call Paul was making an emergency fuel stop on a dead quiet pitch black night. He realized his company had miscalculated his mileage and he was nearing an empty fuel tank.

Normally he would try to push through these long nights without needing fuel, but he was not gonna make it tonight. To get to the nearest gas station though, he had to pull off of the highway and get on a back road. He was up in the Pacific Northwest, so the two-lane back road was lined with tall pine trees that were suffocating compared to the open road of the highway, but it was just going to be a short detour, so he wasn't really that worried about it. That is, until his headlights caught the glimpse of something coming up on the road.

It was pink and fleshy over on his passenger side. As he got closer, he could see the white tips of bone sticking out from the mass. It looked like someone had hit an animal bad, which made sense for how thick the woods were around him. But the question was, what kind of animal looked like that? Paul started getting a bad feeling, like something inside of him was telling him to pull over. So with no other cars around him, he slowed his truck down to a stop right in front of the roadkill.

And he hopped out. The scene was so much more grisly than he could have imagined. The creature had no head, no limbs. It just looked like a chest cavity and abdomen that had maybe been hit so hard by a car it exploded, that was the only explanation Paul could think of at the time. Everything that was on the inside of the dead creature had spilled out onto the blacktop. But one thing that was very obviously missing from the area was any fur. And that's when his stomach dropped.

What was left of the corpse on the road was about the size of a full grown man. On the chance that this was a person though, there was no way that it was just hit by a car. There were no identifying factors like the head or the hands. Those had been removed from the scene. So if this was a person, it was intentional.

He wondered if he should call the police. When off in the distance, he heard the howling of wolves. They must have smelled it and now they were coming to eat. Paul needed to get out of there quickly, so he jumped back up in his truck and he took off. He never did call it in. He said it was maybe because he really, really, really wanted to believe it was just an animal,

but there has always been a part of him that to this day worries it was something else. Now, when I hear stories like that, all I can think about is how some highways are known to be dumping grounds for serial killers. I talked about it in the Help Wanted episode I did over the summer when the Jack family disappeared after Ronnie Jack met a kind stranger one night

to offered him a job. The Jack family was last seen in a truck heading towards the Highway of Tears, which is a stretch of Highway 16 in British Columbia. Since the 1970s, over 80 people have been found murdered or have been reported missing along that stretch of highway. For instance, plenty of long haul truckers drove past a watery ditch on the side of the highway on October 10th, 1981. There was an anomaly in the lake,

but no one noticed until a man collecting firewood stumbled upon it later that day. There, he found the body of Jean-Marie Kovacs, a 36-year-old woman who had been picked up and murdered by serial killer Edward Dennis Isaac. Edward would go on to kill two more girls near that same highway, both young teenagers, before his girlfriend turned him into police.

While people hear about these stories, no one expects to come face to face with it. But that wasn't the case for one driver, who will call James, who thought he might have stopped a murder from happening. The epic return of Yellowstone is now streaming exclusively on Paramount+. You destroy me, you destroy yourself. Unlike you, I keep my promises.

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Help us innovate to keep healthcare alive. Donate at healthcarelives.ca. Now, we've heard a lot of stories today, supernatural sightings, the eerie, the unexplained, the downright chilling, but James' story offers us something a little different. Still terrifying though. James' story reminds us how important it is to pay attention and how sometimes stopping to inspect something can make a huge difference. He writes, I service fire equipment, so I drive a box truck and cover parts of Pennsylvania, New

York, Ohio, Maryland, and West Virginia. I was in rural northwestern Pennsylvania, returning from a service call and heading towards the interstate to go home. On the way to this customer, I saw a small pickup truck on the interstate whose right side tire was steadily deflating. A mile or so before the exit, they had pulled off to the side. I didn't stop to see if they needed help and I felt a little bad about it. As I drove down this dark, twisty road, I passed a Dodge Durango, pulled over into a barn driveway. There was a

person lying on the ground behind it, struggling with something. It looked like the guy was trying to change a tire or get the spare out from under the Durango, remembering the pickup truck from earlier, I decided to turn around and see if they needed help. I pulled into the first driveway I saw about a quarter mile down the road, turned around and headed back. Halfway back, the Durango passed me, going the direction I had originally been headed.

I got back to where I had seen the Durango originally, planning to turn around again, but as I swung into the driveway, my headlights caught a figure lying motionless in the snow. I stopped and jumped out just as the figure sat up. It was a woman, maybe in her 40s, in a thin torn black skirt and top. Her hair was must, her eyes were starting to swell. She had red marks on her throat and her lip was bleeding. I helped her up, got her into my truck and cranked up the heat.

I had taken my jacket off, so I gave it to her and she covered her torso and arms. She didn't really wanna say anything. Her throat was sore and she was pretty badly frightened. I called 911 and they dispatched a police car. I gave her a bottle of water and she whispered, thank you. Then sat with her head bowed and eyes closed.

It took about 15 minutes for the police car to get there, and she stayed silent that whole time. As the car pulled in, she said, mostly to herself, He's gonna arrest me. The trooper walked up and motioned for me to exit. Asked her if she needed an ambulance, she declined, and then asked me what happened. I explained everything I had seen, and he wrote all of it down and then talked to her for a few minutes.

He helped her out of the truck and into his car. She quietly thanked me for coming back because she thought that guy was gonna kill her. As far as I know, she wasn't arrested. She was pretty badly beat up, and the trooper spoke and handled her as if she were the victim of an assault. It was almost certainly a transaction,

sex or drugs, that had gone badly. I never found out what happened. I watched the news outlets for that area for a while, but never found anything. I think the thing that really gets me about that last story is it's a common theme with most of these. It's the not knowing.

Not knowing if you're coming upon a stranger who just needs help with a tire change or on a murder taking place. Not knowing if the man barking at you is capable of something horrible and not knowing what the flash of light is on the road. Even not knowing if the thing you found dead on the road was a person or not. And the last place I want to encounter the unknown is in the middle of nowhere at 2 a.m. So be careful out there. I know a lot of you are driving as you listen to

this but just don't stop for any hitchhikers if you're in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. I feel like I don't really have to say that to you guys, but just in case. What's the creepiest thing that you've seen out on the road? You can always submit your stories to heartstartspounding.com and next week we're going to dive into some more mysteries, specifically internet mysteries, ones that were solved this year. Until next time, stay curious. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore.

Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional writing and research by Hannah McIntosh. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.