Just Creepy: Scary Stories - 5 Terrifying Night Drive Horror Stories That’ll Ruin Your Fall Road Trips

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

These are 5 True Terrifying Night Drive Horror Stories That’ll Ruin Your Fall Road TripsLinktree: https://linktr.ee/its_just_creepyStory Credits:►Sent in to https://www.justcreepy.net/Timestamps:00:00 Intro00:00:18 Story 100:10:48 Story 200:25:15 Story 300:35:41 Story 400:51:16 Story 5Music by:►'Decoherence' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.auhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM_AjpJL5I4&t=0s► Myuu's channelhttp://bit.ly/1k1g4ey ►CO.AG Musichttp://bit.ly/2f9WQpeBusiness inquiries: ►[e-mail]#scarystories #horrorstories #drivingatnight 💀As always, thanks for watching! 💀

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NARS, better together. Visit Sephora to shop now. I'm posting this because I still feel sick when I think about it and writing it is the only thing that made my hands stop shaking long enough to sleep last night. My name isn't important. I live in Nevada. I've driven highway 50 more times than I can count because my family is split between the Reno area and eastern Nevada. If you don't know the road from Carson City to Ely, it's two lanes through empty basins and passes, fuel every long while, and not much else. Late October is tricky out there, clear one minute, freezing the next, and so quiet you start listening to your own breathing just to have a sound inside the car.

My friend Mark came with me this time because I had to be in Ely early the next morning. We figured we'd save a hotel and knock it out overnight. I topped off in Fallon around 10, grabbed a coffee, checked the tires, and told myself it was just another night drive on the loneliest road in America. I've done it half asleep before without anything worse than a jackrabbit in the headlights. That's what I told myself. I was wrong. By the time we passed Austin, the dash said 1130, and the temperature read 32.

We kept the windows up to save the heat. There wasn't a lot to talk about. Highway 50 at night is basically a long tunnel made out of darkness. You watch the paint stripes in your own headlight beam, and you try to stay awake. Somewhere east of town, just before the climb, my high beam swept over a shape on the right shoulder. I slowed on instinct because out there, if someone's walking, they're in trouble. The figure stepped into the cone of light, and I felt my stomach go tight. It was a man, jeans torn up, long-sleeved shirt hanging in strips, both hands out as if he had

been waving but got too tired to finish. His face looked wrong, like he hadn't been in the sun in years. His lips moved quick, like he was talking fast. But with the windows up and the engine humming, I couldn't hear a thing. I eased up as we crept past to make sure we weren't seeing a post or a fence, and when he turned, his eyes caught the high beams in a way that made my skin crawl. It wasn't the normal red eye you sometimes get in photos. It was like an animal caught on a forest road, sharp return, a shine that didn't match a human. I kept going.

I didn't even realize my foot had pressed down until the speedometer climbed and the figure slid backward in the mirror. We argued for the next mile. Mark said we had to go back. I said I wasn't stopping for a stranger who stepped toward a moving car on a highway at midnight. He said if the rolls were reversed, I'd want someone to stop. I told him we'd call in at the next town and send help. We both knew the signal is patchy out there, and the next town could be an hour. While we argued, the road climbed into the pass near Hickison Summit.

The radio was nothing but static, so we shut it off and listened to the tires. I felt like the temperature dropped another 10 degrees. I had just gotten my heart rate close to normal when the beams cut over the crest, and there he was. Not on the shoulder this time, directly in the lane. He stood with his head down, arms loose at his sides, like he had been placed there.

No hurry, no sign of limping, no breath, just standing in the exact center of my path with empty desert in every direction. I don't consider myself a jumpy driver, but I jerked the wheel so hard the right tires clipped the rumble strip. Mark grabbed the dash and swore. We missed him by feet. The car straightened and I checked the mirror. He hadn't moved.

No flinch, no step. He was still there, centered, facing forward, like I hadn't just almost hit him at 65. I felt something cold run up my back that had nothing to do with the air. I told Mark we were not turning around because that would put us back on his side again. and I wasn't doing a slow roll past that face. I can't explain it well. It wasn't just fear.

It was like my body knew we shouldn't stop, the same way you know not to step into water with a live wire in it. I accelerated. The car felt too light. A mile later I had to pull my hands off the wheel one at a time because they were locked. Eureka came and went. We looked for a cop or a diner with a light on, anything. But the town felt like it was sleeping hard.

I kept the speed at a steady 70 because I couldn't make myself go slower. The gauge nudged higher than normal once like the thermostat stuck, then dropped again. Mark started rubbing his arm and said it felt like something cold had been pressed against his sleeve back when we swerved. He asked me to check behind us. I said no, I didn't want to look. I kept my eyes forward and told him to keep an eye on the right shoulder in case anyone else was out there. He didn't answer, which was worse. We both sat in a kind of focused silence that felt like pressure.

Like if either one of us said the wrong thing, it would make whatever was out there more real. The last long stretch before Ely is straight enough that you can see the faint glow of town from miles out when the clouds lift. We didn't get that comfort. Heavy clouds kept slipping in front of the moon, and the darkness felt complete enough that the headlights looked smaller than they should have. We were halfway across the basin when the man stepped into the lane again, so close and so sudden that I didn't process how there was any ground for him to come from. One second, empty asphalt. The next, he was there at the edge of the beam, then full into it,

like he had timed his step for the exact moment we would have no choice but to hit him or swerve. I didn't break. I don't know if that was smart or stupid, but the thought of giving him time to reach us turned my brain off. I went right, tires biting the shoulder. His face passed through the center of the beam. and for the first time I saw it clearly. His skin was pale enough to make the veins stand out. His lips were split and moving like he was repeating the same phrase over and over.

And his eyes. There was that same sharp reflection, a predator's light at the wrong end of a desert. As we went by, his right hand was up, as if to touch the fender. I heard a metallic tap, almost nothing, more like a coin bumped into a hubcap than skin, and then we were passed, and there was nothing in the mirror but our own headlights bouncing in the darkness. We didn't stop. I don't care how that sounds. We didn't stop until the first lit intersection in Ely, where I pulled into the lot by the White Pine County Sheriff's Office.

I parked crooked. My legs felt like they didn't belong to me when I climbed out. Mark couldn't get his seatbelt undone with his fingers the first try. Inside, a duty officer with a gray mustache and a heavy. ring of keys on his belt looked up from a desk. I think he read the situation before I spoke because he asked if there had been a collision. I told him everything I could say in order without shaking, where we saw the man, what he wore, how he stood in the lane. I told him about the eyes catching the high beams like an animal. I told him about the tap on the car. The room felt

too warm and my mouth went dry. Mark kept looking over his shoulder at the glass door like we had brought something in behind us. The officer called it into the sheriff, who walked out from the back with a coffee that looked like it had been poured an hour before. I expected either doubt or a lecture about leaving a man on the road. I didn't get either. The sheriff listened without interrupting, then asked me to repeat the locations as well as I could. Austin's shoulder, Hickison Summit Lane, long run out before Ely.

He chewed on that. Then he said level. We haven't had a report of anyone on foot out there for days. No stranded motorists, no broken-down vans, nothing. That stretch doesn't see people walking at night, hasn't in years. He said he'd send a unit to drive it anyway, because if there was a drunk or a runaway hitchhiking that late in the season, they needed to get him inside before he froze.

Then he looked at both of us and said, You did the right thing not stopping in the dark. He didn't say why. He didn't need to. He asked if we wanted to make a formal statement. I said yes because something about official paper made me feel like I wasn't losing it. Mark stepped outside for air and I followed him after the signatures. That's when I finally forced myself to walk around the front of the car. I expected a smear or a dent.

There was a scuff on the right front fender that hadn't been there in Fallon. Four faint streaks in the road dust, not deep enough to scrape paint, spaced like the width of fingers. I could have made those with my own hand just to scare myself. I didn't. I felt the metal with my knuckles. It was cold enough to leave a faint fog mark under my breath. We bought gas at dawn with a sun that finally broke the cloud line. I told Mark to drive the rest because the lack of sleep hit me in one heavy wave. We didn't say much on the way to his place, and when he got out, he stood there with the door open and looked at me for a long second like he wanted to ask if I thought it was a person or something else. I didn't want to answer.

I still don't. I know what my eyes saw in the beams, and I know how the hair on my arms stood when he appeared again in the lane, after 20 miles of empty road. I know how my chest felt when the sheriff said other drivers had called in similar things over the years, and that units never found anyone walking. I know the streaks on my fender were not there before Austin,

and they were there in Ely. If you ever take Highway 50 East out of Carson City at night, and you pass through Austin and up by Hickison one late October, Keep your windows up and your foot steady, and don't convince yourself that stopping for a stranger on a blind stretch is the moral thing when every part of you is telling you not to do it. Call it in from town. If you see a man with torn clothes step into your lane and he turns his face toward your lights, and his eyes throw that wrong kind of shine back at you,

keep going. You'll make it to Ely. That's the part I can promise. We did. And that's the only reason I'm around to type this. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon.

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or caps your sun-kissed bliss with limonada gelada where zesty Brazilian lemonade accord meets coconut milk and golden brown sugar. Don't miss Sol de Janeiro's limited edition perfume mist collection only at Sephora. If you ever drive the Blue Ridge Parkway after midnight and a deer steps into your lane but doesn't run, don't inch forward, don't honk, don't wait to see what it will do, go around it, keep your eyes forward and your doors locked. If it turns its head slowly like it has to think about the motion, you're already in the part of the night where bad stories start. I learned that the hard way.

I was 21, a junior at Appalachian State in Boone, and I was driving home to Hickory for the weekend. It was early November, first good cold snap, the kind where your breath hangs outside your mouth like a small cloud when you load your car. I left later than I planned because I had a paper due, and by the time I got on the Blue Ridge Parkway, it was close to one in the morning. I'd done that stretch in daylight plenty of times, overlooks, trailheads, people with cameras, the whole brochure, but at that hour the road turns into something else. No streetlights, no houses.

Just two narrow lanes glued to the side of the mountains, with black forest stacked on both sides. Right after I passed the sign for Julian Price Lake, I noticed how still it was. Even at night, I usually catch a flash of movement, tail in the bushes, raccoon waddling off the shoulder. That night, the trees were motionless. The only movement was the leaf litter that my headlights pushed across the road in little flurries. It made the asphalt look like a conveyor belt of red and gray. gold. The speed limit signs were just white rectangles that came and went in my high beams, and the reflectors on the guardrail winked one by one as I curved along the ridge.

I passed Grandview Overlook, empty lot, no other cars. Past Holloway Mountain Road, I caught myself tightening my hands on the wheel. My gas needle sat just under a quarter tank, and I told myself I had more than enough to reach blowing rock and then drop down to US-21. I cracked the window to keep from getting sleepy, and cold air rushed in, no smell of wood smoke, no wet earth, just cold. The radio was off. I didn't want any noise. I just wanted to get home.

Somewhere past Green Mountain overlook, the deer showed up. It didn't leap, it didn't bolt. It was just there between the stripes of my headlights, like it had been lowered in on a cable. Mid-lane, mid-step, body angled away from me. I hit the brakes hard enough that the seatbelt dug into my shoulder, and the tires chirped before they gripped. My headlights washed over the buck's sides, the pale shine of its coat, the ridge of its spine. I waited for the usual reaction, two or three panicked bounds, a flash of white tail, maybe a second deer I hadn't seen, but nothing moved.

I had time to notice details I don't usually notice in animals because they're gone so fast. its legs were too narrow for the body. The angle of the neck didn't match where the head was pointed. The chest heaved once and then stopped, like it was holding its breath. The eyes shined back, not with that quick glitter I've seen a hundred times, but with a steady, unblinking stare that didn't match the way the head was angled. It was like the glare was coming from deeper in the skull than the eyes. I tapped the horn.

One short tap. The deer's ears didn't flick. It didn't startle. It lowered its head a fraction, then lifted it again like the motion took effort. I realized I was rolled almost to a full stop. The car idling, the dashboard light ticking out each second. Everything in me said, just wait, it'll go. But the longer I sat, the more it felt like waiting was exactly the wrong move.

I shifted down to first. The deer twitched. It wasn't a flinch. Or that full-body tremor animals get when they're about to bolt. It was a series of small adjustments. like someone working the controls of a crane. The front leg straightened, then bent, then straightened again. The head rotated faster than a normal head rotates.

The shoulders rose. And then, in a motion I still can't explain without feeling sick, it pushed itself upright. Not all the way, not like a person. It stood in a half-rise that put its chest forward and its rear legs braced, like it was trying to find the balance point and couldn't. The line of the spine didn't match the rest of the body. The front hooves hovered for a second, then tapped, then hovered again.

My high beams threw the shadow of that shape against the rock wall on my left, a long stick figure version of the animal that didn't match the way the joints should bend. I didn't think. I punched the gas, cut the wheel, and threaded the car around it, close enough that something hard nicked my mirror with a tick. As soon as my headlights slid off its body, the inside of the car felt too dark. I snapped my eyes to the rear view out of reflex. In the mirror, the deer tipped forward and came off that half-rise in a way that looked like a decision.

Its hooves hit the asphalt. Then it ran. It didn't run like a deer. That scooter smooth bound I'm used to seeing wasn't there. This was hard, fast contact, rapid steps that didn't match the length of its body. It matched my acceleration for a few seconds. then fell back into the dark, then surged again, like it was learning the rhythm in real time. I hit 50, then 60.

On that road, in the dark, those numbers feel like you're trying to outrun your own headlights. If you're thinking I misread what I saw in the mirror, I want you to understand something. I was too afraid to look back for more than a glance. Every time I checked, I caught a slice of motion and the shape of antlers tilting forward, the angle of a neck that didn't match the strain of the body, the staccato flash of hooves on pavement. It was there. It was close enough to make me think I could feel the vibration of each footfall through the steering wheel.

I kept the car tight to the center line and tried not to overcorrect on the curves. The guardrail on my right flicked by in regular flashes. I told myself over and over, just get to blowing rock, just get to 221. There's a ranger station, there's a phone, there's light. My gas needle dipped past the eighth of a tank mark. I thought about the way the road looks just before Moses H. Cone Memorial Park, the open meadow that breaks the trees, and pictured that as my first safe place. I kept pushing.

Twice I lost sight of it and thought I was free. Twice, it came back into the mirror like a burst of footage. Antlers down, legs moving too fast for a body that big. The silhouette stretched out by my taillights. The second time it cut off into the trees. I didn't trust that. I didn't trust anything except the next bend and the next sign and the thought of a door I could bolt from the inside.

I hit the turnoff for US 221 and took it too fast, tires squealing, car rocking once on the suspension. The small lot for the ranger station sat in a pocket of gravel and dark. The building is nothing dramatic, low roof, roof, a porch, a single lamp near the door. It might have been closed. I didn't care. I killed the engine and the car's fan spun down in that high wine that sounds like a sigh, and I was suddenly aware of how loud my breathing was inside the cabin. I got out and ran. The gravel slid under my shoes. My hands shook so hard I slapped the door instead of the wood frame on the first try. On the second,

I pounded until my wrists hurt. Footsteps, deadbolt sliding. The door opened six inches, and a sleep puffy face looked out at me over a chest with a badge. I must have looked wild. I pushed a rush of words at him. I almost hit a deer. It stood up. It ran. It chased.

It didn't move right. It's back there. Can I please come in? And he didn't tell me to calm down. He opened the door, let me in, and turned the deadbolt. The light inside was fluorescent and too white. The office smelled like coffee that had burned on a hot plate and a oil. old paperwork. There was a map of the parkway on the wall with pushpins running up and down the

ridge. Behind the desk, leaned into the corner, was a pump-action shotgun. I stared at it without meaning to. He noticed and didn't comment. He asked me to sit. I told him everything. The points where I was sure of what I saw and the points where my memory choose the images to pieces. I told him about the stillness before it, the way it moved, the way it moved, the way it almost kept up the second it slid into the trees. I told him about the way it stood. He didn't laugh. He didn't accuse me of drinking. He didn't act like I was playing a prank. He just listened. His face didn't change much, but there was a small tightness in how he held his jaw. When I finished, he stared at the desk for a long moment, then said, you're not the first person to tell me that

this season. He said it flat. He didn't make it creepy. He said it. He said, it like he was reciting a fact he wished he didn't have to recite. He asked what section I was in when I saw the deer. I gave him the last overlook I'd passed. He nodded once like that matched something he had, then asked if I wanted coffee. I said yes, even though the smell of it made my stomach jump. He didn't turn on any outside lights, and he didn't open the door again. Instead, he picked up a radio and spoke into it quietly, giving mile posts that put a unit in the general, general area I'd described. He told whoever was on the other end that there had been another night sighting and then some numbers I don't remember. He asked my name and my phone number,

and I gave both. Here's the part people argue with me about. He didn't try to explain it away. He didn't offer a story about a lame buck or a head injury or rutting season making animals act strange. He didn't say the word disease. He didn't give me a safe box to put the image in. He poured coffee into a white foam cup, put it on the desk, and said, You can stay until sun up. I asked him if he'd seen it. He took a second to answer, not the way you did, he said. The radio muttered again, something about fog near Price Lake and no movement on the shoulder.

The ranger clicked the transmit and gave a couple of short answers and then left the mic on the desk. He sat back in the chair and looked at the map of the parkway on the wall. like he was thinking about more points than the pushpins showed. I stayed until dawn. The window went from black to gray, to that pale blue that makes everything look flatter and safer. The coffee went cold. The ranger told me I could follow him down to town if I wanted,

and he would turn off onto his route after we got to the traffic lights. I took the offer. We drove the short stretch to 221 in a line. His truck in front, me behind. My hand still tight on the wheel. like a clamp. When the first gas station sign lit up in the morning light, I started to feel like my heart could beat at a regular pace again. Before he turned off, he looked at me from his open window and said, Don't run the parkway at night by yourself. Not this month. There

are things I'll leave out of this because I don't want to feed the tourist blogs that try to turn every story into a loop trail for thrill seekers. I'm telling it because you might be a student like me, or a graveyard shift cook headed home, or a nurse trying to save 50 minutes by avoiding town. You might think you know every curve and pull off. You might think nothing can surprise you because you've seen deer a hundred times and driven that road a hundred more. If you see one at one in the morning and it doesn't move, if it holds the lane and lowers and raises its head like the motion costs something, if the eyes shine in a way that doesn't line up with where the face is pointed, don't wait. Don't try to stare it down or nudge it aside

with your bumper. Don't get out. Don't flash your brights to teach it a lesson. Keep your hands steady, go around it clean, and aim for light and other people. People ask whether it followed me because of the headlights or the engine noise or the way I slowed. I don't know. People ask why I didn't take a picture. If you're asking that, you've never had your mind fail you in a moment where you needed it to be a camera. I had a steering wheel, a gas pedal, and a thin idea of just a job. geography. That was enough. The Rangers' words were the worst part, not because they were dramatic, but because they were ordinary. You're not the first person to tell me that this season. That means there were others. That means my story sits in a row with other stories, lined up at slightly

different mileposts with slightly different details. Maybe in those, it stood up farther, maybe it moved better. Maybe someone didn't hit the gas soon enough. I still drive the parkway sometimes, in daylight. The overlooks are full of normal things again, people with dogs, couples taking their engagement photos. You could convince yourself nothing unusual ever happened there, and honestly, I hope that's what you get to keep. But if you pass Green Mountain Overlook late and a shape steps into your headlight beam and doesn't react, remember me. Remember the cold air in the car and the sound of footfalls keeping time with my engine and the way the office light turned my hands the color of paper. Remember to keep going. And if you make it to the ranger station

and bang on the door until someone opens it, don't be surprised if he looks like he's been waiting up for you. Don't be surprised if the first thing he says is that line. And if he offers coffee and a chair until the sky goes pale, take both. You don't need to believe my story to stay alive. You just need to treat certain things on that road like a stop sign you don't argue with. A deer that doesn't move is one of them. If you ever see its stand like it's trying to learn how, you don't want to learn what comes next. I'm Jason.

I grew up in Troutdale, Oregon, and I've been hunting since I was a kid. Nothing hardcore, weekend stuff, mostly elk scouting with my buddy Mark. We stick to public land, check the maps, clean up after ourselves, go home tired and sore and happy.

Late September is our favorite time near Mount Hood, cool air, less traffic, good chance to see sign. This story happened on a Sunday night. We broke camp near government camp later than we should have. We were dragging. We wanted cheap burgers in Sandy and our own beds. We loaded the Ford, tied down the cooler, killed the fire with water, and hit the road.

We missed a turn. It happens. One minute you're on a wide gravel road, you know, and the next the number on the faded Forest Service sign isn't one you recognize. It was narrow and crowned. in the middle, with wet ruts and slick patches, low clouds hung in the trees. We figured it would loop back to a bigger road. We kept going. I hate backing a long way in the dark. So does Mark. The brush was tight on both sides, branches tapping the doors and roof. It felt like a bad

idea to stop. We were quiet for a while, listening to the tires grind over rock. I saw movement in the ditch on the right, not a deer, not an elk. It looked like a man crouched, low, elbows out, almost like he was bracing to stand. We both saw it at the same time. Is that a guy? Mark said. I let off the gas. My first thought was someone had wiped out on a dirt bike or a mountain bike. We've helped stranded people before. It's not rare. I eased us forward until the headlights filled the ditch with light. The thing bolted. It came out of the ditch on all fours, hands and feet, and crossed the road in front of us like it was sprinting a track. I don't mean it crawled. I mean it covered the lane in two or three strides, palm slapping gravel,

back flat, head low. It was too fast, too smooth. The way a big cat moves, but the angles were wrong. The limbs looked human. I hit the brakes without thinking. The truck slid a foot and settled. I kept my hands on the wheel because my hands didn't know what else to do. What was that? I asked. Person, Mark said, but he didn't sound sure. We sat there with the evening. We sat there with the engine idling, no wind. The only sound was the tick of cooling metal and the belt wine from the power steering. I could see where it had come up from the ditch, wet mud, smeared boot, or handprints I couldn't tell. I'm turning around, I said. There's no room, Mark said. Go up until we can. I feathered the gas. We rolled 20 yards, then 30. The brush leaned over the road in

places. There was nowhere to pull a three-point turn that didn't involve dropping a tire off the edge into a ditch. Every time I thought about stopping, my mind flashed that shape crossing in front of us. Fingers long and spread, the way the palms hit the rock. We hit a shallow puddle, a washboard stretch, and the truck jerked. I shifted wrong, got flustered, and killed the engine. The dashlight stayed on. The sudden quiet made the hairs stand up on my arms. Nice, Marker. said, trying to joke. He didn't sound like he believed it. Hold on. I turned the key. The starter ground. The engine didn't catch. I tried again. The headlights threw pale cones into the brush. I could see our breath inside the cab. Okay, relax, I told myself out loud. That's when something

hit the hood. It wasn't a tap. The metal flexed and dropped an inch. Two hands. I didn't see the face, not at first. I saw the hands. They were spread wide, skin pale and dull, each finger too long. The nails were there, but they weren't claws. They were more like thickened ends. The palms were damp and left dark prints on the paint. Then it leaned forward, and the glass caught a shape that lined up with a face. The eyes didn't reflect like an animal.

They didn't flare white in the lights. They were just there. The nose was small and the mouth was tight and wrong. Like someone who was like. had been smiling for too long and forgot to stop. I turned the key so hard my wrist popped. The engine coughed and died. The hands on the hood slid an inch, leaving streaks. The cab dipped again. I could feel the weight through the steering column. Go, go, go, Mark said low, repeating it like a chant. He sounded like he was talking through clenched teeth. I turned the key again and feathered the gas.

The engine caught. I dumped the clutch and the rear end slid toward the ditch. Gravel sprayed the brush. The thing on the hood pushed off hard, and I saw the hood bounce back up a hair like a pushed in dent popping out partway. We fish-tailed and started rolling. I kept it steady at maybe 15 trying not to slide. I wanted a wide spot. I wanted pavement. I wanted to be anywhere else. Right there, Mark said, pointing past the windshield. The road teaboned another gravel. road. I turned right without stopping. The truck lurched and the right tires bit. In the mirror, for a second, I saw it in the beam of the taillights. On all fours again, running, hands and feet kicking gravel. Its back didn't arch. It stayed flat like a table with hinges. I got us up to 40. That's fast on a narrow road, but I didn't care. The suspension slammed my spine on every dip.

branches reached out over the glass, and I flinched at each one like it was another set of hands. Something hit the driver's side panel behind me. A heavy, solid punch. Metal boomed and the truck kicked sideways. I corrected. Mark had the glove box open now, and had his revolver in his hand. He didn't point it at me. He pointed it out and back low. He fired once. The blast filled the cab with powder smell and my ears rang. I didn't look. I watched the road and kept my foot down. The trees thinned. I saw a faint white glow through the trunks. It was the highway. Pavement. I almost sobbed with relief. I didn't slow down. I just rolled out into the empty lane and felt the tires grab.

The sound changed from gravel to smooth, and for the first time in a while, my hands loosened on the wheel. We blew past the sign for zigzag. We didn't stop. We didn't talk. We rolled into Sandy and pulled into the first all-night gas station we saw. The lights there felt like a stage. A normal one, with a soda machine humming and a cashier watching a small TV. We got out of the truck together. We walked to the front.

The hood had two deep dents about a foot apart, angled slightly in. You could see where the metal had creased. Between them, four gouges on each side raked toward the grill, not clean lines like a tool would make, but rough torn channels. The paint was shredded. The bumper had a smear of dark stuff across it like used motor oil, but sticky. I touched it with one finger and wiped it on a paper towel. It came off black and gray.

On the driver's side panel, behind the door, there was a fist-sized, caved-in spot and another group of those rough scraped lines. I could fit the pads of my four fingers into them, and they lined up too well for me to feel okay about it. We went inside. The cashier, an older guy with a beard, looked up, nodded at the truck and said, Hit a bear? No, I said.

He waited like he expected a story. Neither of us gave him one. He rang us up for coffee and we stood there drinking it at the window. He didn't ask again. We drove home. I didn't talk much. Neither did Mark. I dropped him at his place in Gresham and then went to my place.

and sat in the driveway for a while with the engine off. In daylight the next morning, it looked worse. You always notice more when you're not shaking. The hood was creased where the hands had been. The bumper had four deep grooves in the steel like someone had dug in to pull themselves up. The side panel had that caved spot and scuffed lines leading into it.

I took photos for my insurance and then didn't submit them. I didn't want to deal with a call where I'd be asked what happened. I brought the truck to a body shop in Sandy later in the week. The guy there ran his thumb over the gouges and said, Looks like you hooked a piece of rebar. I was on gravel, I said. He shrugged.

People drag weird stuff on those roads. He gave me an estimate that made my stomach drop. I paid it because I didn't want to look at the marks anymore. For a few nights after, I had trouble sleeping. I'd lie there thinking about the way it moved, not the speed even, the posture. the hands going down first, the heel of the palm, the arm snapping straight, the foot following like a mirrored step. I kept replaying the way it pressed down on the hood. There's a feeling

you get when another person leans over a car, shift in weight, flex, the metal telling you someone is there. It was that, not a paw, not a thump. Wait the way a person has it. I didn't go back to that maze of roads for a while. When I did, I did, I was a little. I stayed on the big stuff and was out well before dark. Mark and I still hunt, but we don't push our luck on Sunday nights anymore. If it's getting dim under the firs, we pack it up and we go. No more, it'll loop around. I know what this sounds like. I don't care. I didn't drink that night. I wasn't doing anything stupid. We saw what we saw. It crossed in front of us on hands and feet. It climbed on the hood. It left marks a person could make if a person had hands like that and strength like that.

If you were out there that night near Mount Hood, crouched in the ditch off a narrow road, and you ran at our truck and put your hands on the hood, let's not meet again. I'm a 29-year-old parts runner for a construction supply yard in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I run drywall, fasteners, and small equipment to job sites up and down Highway 49. Late October of last year, I took a last-minute delivery up to Wiggins and finished the drop after 10.30 p.m. It was one of those cool nights where you can finally turn off the AC and crack the window. I've driven that stretch between Wiggins and Hattiesburg more times than I can count. Long straightaways, then easy curves, timber on both sides, narrow shoulders with shallow ditches that hold water after rain.

I've got a newborn at home, so I was thinking about bottles and sleep and trying not to hit a deer. Between the little communities of Brooklyn and McLaurin, I rolled the window down a few inches to get some air. That's where this starts. The first sound didn't make me hit the brakes. It was faint and came from the right side, through the cracked window and engine noise. Short, broken cries with that high pitch that hits you right in the chest if you've ever held a baby. I told myself it was a nightbird or a TV from a trailer I'd just passed. I drove another mile. The highway surface changed to chip seal near a work zone, loose aggregate ticking the wheel wells. I slowed to about 50, then 45, because that stuff can kick the tail out if you're dumb.

The cries came again, closer this time. I dropped to 25 without thinking, flipped to high beams, and swept the right ditch. Kudzu, grass wet with dew, beer cans in the gravel, and dark water in a shallow slow. The cries stopped the second the light hit that side. I don't consider myself the kind of person who stops on a highway shoulder at night. I've been told a hundred times that nothing good waits in a ditch after dark. But if you've had a baby at home, you know what that sound does to you. My foot eased off the brake.

I let the truck creep forward on the fog line, trying to look without pulling over all the way or shutting it down. The air smelled like wet leaves and mud. No houses lit up, no porch lights. Just the faint orange wash from Hattiesburg sky to the north. I told myself I would look until the next green sign, and then I'd call it in. Something ticked the passenger door, not loud, pebbles snapping underweight, the way they do when you step off the shoulder.

I sat up straight and looked across the bench seat. Nobody there in the mirror, nothing in the headlight cone except grass, and that black slot where the culvert ran under the road. I eased the truck forward another ten yards. That's when the crying started again, from just outside the light on the right, and it wasn't moving away. It was keeping pace. stopping when I stopped, starting when I rolled.

I decided to leave. I straightened the wheel and came off the brake. It stepped into the beams like it had been waiting for my decision. Tall, too thin. Layers of filthy clothes hanging off it. Bare calves streaked with mud to the knee. The head was tilted forward in a way I first read as drunk or sick. But when it turned, I saw the mouth.

The jaw hung off to one side, loose the way a jaw. joint looks when it isn't seated. The sound coming out of that open mouth was the same high, choking cry I'd been hearing, but you could feel the chest behind it, a grown adult pushing that pitch. One arm came up and reached for the driver's door, as if it had done this before, and knew right where to go. The fingers were long and white under the mud, flexing like they were already around the handle. I didn't think about it any more than you think about pulling your hand off a hot pan. I shoved the shifter into drive and stood on the gas. The rear end trembled over the loose rock and then bit. Something slapped the door, wet and heavy, and there was the faint screech

of skin or fabric skimming metal just below the window. I kept the wheel straight and aimed for open road. I did not look at the face again. I do not think I could have done anything useful if I had. The work zone had me boxed in for a few hundred yards. Cone stacked on the left. Cone stacked on the left, left, fresh chip seal on the right, and a shallow S-curve with a warning sign. I couldn't just hammer it to 60 without risking a spin. I held it at 25, then 30, then tried for 40 as the curve opened. In the side mirror, I saw movement right on the edge of the taillight wash. The figure was sprinting along the shoulder, cutting the inside of the curve the way a runner does to shave distance. The sound kept coming in quick bursts, not words, not even close, just that broken childlike pitch,

and then lower gasps when it had to breathe. For two or three hundred yards, it matched me, and I hated how long that distance felt at that speed. The straightaway opened up and I gave it more. Forty-five. Fifty-five. The figure fell back a step at a time until it was just a small shape at the edge of the red light, and then it dropped behind into the dark and I couldn't see it at all. I didn't check the mirror again.

I kept my eyes forward and drove like the road was trying to throw me off. Somewhere in there, near the end of the work signs, something thunked off the rear quarter panel. It wasn't a heavy hit, more like a tossed rock, or maybe a hand catching a corner of the truck as I pulled away. It was enough to make my shoulders jump. It was not enough to make me slow. I didn't stop again until I was under yard lights on Edward Street. It was 11.25 p.m. by the clock in the truck. My hands were shaking so hard I had to sit for a minute and press them flat on my thighs.

I told myself I had imagined the hand on the door. It was the only way I was going to be able to get out and walk around. I forced myself to do it anyway because company policy says you report contact if anything or anyone hits the truck. I walked around the front with the headlights still like. on and looked at the driver's side. Streaks. Four of them. Angled down and back from the top of the door toward the handle. Mud, not oil, not paint. The kind you get when you slide off a ditch bank and try to catch yourself. There was fine grit caught in the rubber around the window. The handle

itself had a darker smear that looked like a thumb drag. Along the bed, right behind the wheel, a dull scuff about the size of a fist. I did not have an explanation I could live with. I did not have an that didn't involve someone trying to get into my truck. I called my supervisor. He told me to clock the time and call non-emergency dispatch for Forest County. The woman on the line asked for my location and asked if I needed medics. I said no. She asked for mile markers and landmarks.

I gave her what I had. A white roadside cross I'd passed before I slowed the first time, the green McLaurin sign a little farther north, a small bridge over a slough, and a brown sign for DeSoto National Forest farther back. She told me a deputy would meet me at the yard and asked me to keep the truck where it was. The deputy who showed up was steady and calm.

He walked the driver's side slowly, used a small flashlight without flagging down half the street, and then took a small swab from the mud in the window rubber and a second from the handle. He scraped a bit of grit into a paper envelope. He asked for my route, my speed, my reason for slowing. He didn't make me feel stupid for his own. slowing when I heard the cries. He said I wasn't the first person in a week to call about that

stretch and that sound. Two other drivers had phoned it in, both saying they'd heard what they thought was a baby and seen a very skinny man on the shoulder. Neither made contact. Neither stopped fully. He asked if I'd be willing to ride back out there at first light and show him exactly where I'd slowed. I didn't want to do that at all. I said yes anyway. I went home. I went home. I went and woke my wife by accident when I set my keys down. I didn't tell her everything that night because she had to be up early with the baby. I lay there and waited for her breathing to level back out and stared at the ceiling, replaying the way that mouth had looked and the way the fingers had flexed. I slept maybe an hour. We went back at dawn. The highway was the same highway it always is,

which somehow made it worse. Same straightaways, same ditches, same dark water in the slough. In day, light you can see how a person could melt into the brush in two steps and you'd never spot them from a moving cab. We pulled off where the shoulder widened near a culvert and walked the ditch line. The deputy spotted them first. Prince on the slope where the clay was still wet. Long stride, narrow heel. Some barefoot impressions, then shoe tread again like someone had lost a shoe in the mud and then put it back on. 20 feet off the shoulder, under a curtain of Kudzu, there was a packed down spot with a cut brush screen in front of it, a little blind, nothing fancy, just branches leaned and woven to make a dark pocket. On the ground was a stained blanket balled up like a nest and a crumpled food wrapper,

no electronics, no speaker. Farther down, flush with the fog line where a driver easing over would run it right over, lay a shortboard with roofing nails driven through at an angle. You would not have seen it at night until your tire was hissing. Another scrap of board showed scrape marks where someone had dragged it, probably planning to set it in the lane when a car slowed. A strip of torn blue cloth was caught on a low sapling right at shoulder height, where a driver's open window would line up if they leaned out. The deputy radioed, bagged the board in the blanket,

and flagged a second car to set up a watch farther down the line. He told me plainly that I had done the right thing. He didn't dress it up as anything mysterious. He said they'd had problems before with people figuring out what sound will make a driver hesitate, and that the jaw could be an old injury that gave the impression of something worse. He asked me to come by later and give a statement under oath, so the timing and locations were clear if they found someone. I said I would. I asked him what I should tell my wife. He said to tell her I was fine and that they were working it. I went back to the yard, scrubbed the door hard enough that my knuckles hurt, and tried to go about the day like it was any other day. It wasn't. Every time the baby cried that week,

I felt my body react in a way I had never felt before, not fear, something colder. I kept seeing that hand on the door in the yard lights. I started taking the Evelyn Gandy Parkway when I could, and avoided the corridor between Brooklyn and McLaurin after dark. They called me a week later just after sunset. Another driver had phoned in the sound near the same culvert. Forest County and Stone County had planned a joint patrol after the nail board. The plan, as they explained it, was simple. Stage a plane pickup on the shoulder, with a deputy pretending to be a tired guy checking a map

or looking at a tire, and park a unit dark about a quarter mile back. wait, listen. They didn't make me go to the scene for that. I got the rest later, piece by piece. The crying started from the ditch behind a brush screen just off the culvert. The plane truck eased forward like he'd changed his mind. A gaunt man came out hard from the brush, fast like a runner clearing a hurdle. He went straight for the driver's door and reached for the handle with his right hand. The jaw looked the same as what I had seen, tilted, loose, maybe an old dislocation that had never healed. His forearms were scored with old scratches. They lit him up with takedown beams and pinned him before he could vanish back into the ditch. On the ground with him were a short pry bar,

a small nail board like the one they'd found the week before, a folded baby blanket that smelled like sour formula, a cheap plastic pacifier with tape wrapped around the shield to use as a bite piece and a handful of zip ties. In his pocket was a utility knife. I'm not a forensics person, but they told me enough that I understood. The partial palm smear lifted from my door had a gap across one of the lines where a scar cut through the ridges. He had a healed diagonal scar in that exact spot on his right palm. The grit from the window rubber matched that ditches clay when they compared it to the board they'd bagged earlier. The shoe tread they'd cast from the wet slope lined up with the worn pattern on one of his mismatched sneakers. None of that is magic. It's just

hard work over a week by people who take it seriously. They interviewed him. I wasn't in the room, but the deputy told me the basics when I came in to sign my statement. The man said he'd been living rough in the timber stands along 49, and occasionally riding north and south with a day laborer crew when he could. He said he figured, he figured, he'd been living rough in the timber stands along 49, and occasionally riding north and south with a day laborer crew when he could. He said he figured out that the high-pitched cry made people slow, especially if they had kids. He'd been practicing making the sound by biting down on the pacifier and forcing the pitch up. He admitted he had set the nail board out, planning to pull it into the lane if he got a chance, and he carried the pry bar to wedge a door if it didn't open. He said he wanted trucks because

they're easy to sell parts off, and because people in trucks leave cash and the console more than car drivers do. He did not say he wanted to hurt anyone. He did not say he didn't. He kept it to taking what he could take. They charged him with attempted carjacking, possession of a burglary tool, placing a hazardous object in the roadway and reckless endangerment. The ADA pushed it fast because of the pattern. I got a call two weeks later saying he'd taken a plea.

I didn't ask for the number of years. I didn't ask for his name. I don't need it in my head any more than it already is. I know this sounds like something a bored teenager would post to get a rise. I also know what it felt like to watch a grown man keep pace with my truck at 25 on loose rock, while making the sound my infant makes when she is hungry and scared. I know what it felt like to see four muddy streaks on my door at midnight under yard lights, and realize that they lined up exactly with someone reaching for the handle.

I know what a nail board looks like in daylight and how invisible it would be at night. Since then, I've changed a few small habits. I don't pull over on that corridor unless my engine is on fire. If I hear a sound that doesn't make sense for where I am, I call it in and I keep the wheels rolling. I drive with the window cracked less than an inch after dark. I keep a clean glove in the door pocket, so if I ever have to check something outside the cab at night,

I don't have to put my bare hand where someone else's hand was. I use the Evelyn Gandy Parkway more. The last line here is simple. If you hear a baby where a baby shouldn't be on a highway shoulder, call it in and keep moving. There are people who will go check with backup and lights and training. I got lucky because I didn't stop and because the road was slick enough to make me choose speed over curiosity. I'm writing this because I don't want luck to be the only plan anyone has. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars.

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Jasper and Hinton after dark, remember this. I'm not posting for drama. I'm a 29-year-old electrician, born and raised in Hinton, the kind of guy who keeps tire chains in the bed before the first frost and shuts off his high beams for oncoming trucks out of habit. I've seen pretty much everything that moves out there. Elks strung out along the shoulder, Bighorn balanced on outcrops, the odd black bear nosing the ditch. I know you don't hunt inside the park.

My buddy Tyler and I had camped near the boundary for a long weekend, hiked up by Pyramid Lake, and ended the night with a soak at Miette. We left the Jasper Townsite late with a thermos of coffee, rifles locked and cased from a range day earlier in the week. Last weekend of September, air cold enough to burn your lungs. The highway thins to nothing after 11. We were eastbound, the flat stretch by Talbot Lake opening in front of us like a runway. Water sat black on both sides of the causeway.

The brush along the ditch had that silver crust you get when the temperature drops fast. You can always see a faint glow in the distance where the park's east gate lights hang over the road, and farther still the smear of Hinton. It's a straight run most of the way. If you've driven it, you know the feeling. The world narrows to the lane, the paint, and whatever your headlights can hold. That's where we saw it. Off the right shoulder, a dark shape slumped against the grass.

It looked like a fresh moose hit. One hind leg lay twisted at a bad angle. breath hung in a low cloud over the ditch. I hit the hazards, eased down toward 40, and told Tyler to watch for a kilometer marker so we could call it in when we had bars. Reporting a carcass keeps somebody else from ending up through a windshield.

It's what you do out here. The light swept across the body and something didn't line up. The hide wasn't right. In places it looked peeled back, hair slipping off in greasy clumps. I could see pale tissue, where a rib should be, too clean, like a strip cut wrong. The eye facing us gave no normal shine.

It flashed chalky and dead. I nudged the truck left to give it space and that's when it twitched. The mass rolled at the shoulder and got up in one heave. It didn't rise like a moose, front leg straightening, back legs bracing. It planted the front wide and pushed into a crouch, then took one staggering step with joints that bent wrong. Instead of the clean hinge of a foreleg, there was an angle like a human elbow breaking the outline. The head swung toward our lights. The muzzle looked long enough to sell it, but the jawline was narrow and tight against a thin neck.

There was a tear in the chest where Hyde peeled back, showing a pale line underneath. It stepped into our lane. I didn't think about it. I gunned the truck and tried to pass wide. Gravel spit from under the right tires, and I felt the rear end break a little before the rubber bit back on the blacktop. Tyler's hand hit the dash.

He didn't say much, just enough to make my foot stay down. As we drew level, the thing lurched off the paint toward us like it had been waiting on that queue. The first hit came near the Talbot Lake Causeway. A heavy thud clipped the tailgate hard enough to pop the cab and set both mirrors buzzing. The smell rolled in after, the kind of sweet, spoiled stink you only get from meat that sat too long. It coated my tongue. I tasted it more than I breathed it. I knew we weren't outrunning an animal that weighed a thousand pounds from a standstill,

but the way it moved didn't match that kind of weight anyway. It covered ground with a bounding shuffle. The front, limbs, punched down like elbows while the rear drove, the bend in the legs too high, like knees were somewhere they shouldn't be. I kept it pinned and watched the speed climb. The highway there isn't a place to play hero. You keep it straight, and you keep it smooth. In the side mirror, I caught a smear of dark shape with that pale rip across

the chest and, once, the white flash where an eye should reflect. No glow, no magic, just wrong. Landmarks clicked by. The green sign for Miet Hot Springs Road flashed on the right. The cabins down there threw a dull glow into the trees. We blew past the junction and I didn't lift. The orange dome over the east gate grew brighter with every second. The moose veered out of the direct beam, dropped into the dark strip along the tree line, and paced us. It would surge when we bled speed for a curve, then fall back when the road straightened and I could hold 90.

There was method in it, like it knew where the light started and ended. When we hit the gate area, I ran the truck straight under the lamps by the closed kiosk and on toward the big lit signs. I didn't look back until the highway was, empty behind us. The smell still rode in the cab, sour and thick, and there was a tremor in my hands I only noticed when I tried to reset the cruise. We didn't talk about turning around. We didn't talk at all. Hinton's canopy lights might as well have been a lighthouse by then.

We pulled into the 24-hour gas station right off the highway. Semis idled at the edge of the lot. Harsh white bulbs threw shadows under the canopy. I must have looked as bad as I felt because the guy behind the counter watched us from halfway across the store before we even stepped inside. Is there a number for Parks Dispatch? I asked. Or fish in wildlife. He studied my face, then Tyler's, then the truck, then said, almost bored, you're not the first ones this week about a half-dead moose near the flats. That sentence took more heat out of me than the run from the gate. He handed over the number. I called from the forecourt, gave our names, our truck, our direction and the landmarks east of Talbot Lake before the Miet Road turn. The dispatcher didn't

sound surprised. She told us to wait. A Parks warden would meet us at the station. She also looped in Alberta Fish and Wildlife and Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They showed about 20 minutes later, green and white parks truck, a fish and wildlife SUV, and then in police cruiser. We walked them around our tailgate. There was a fist-sized dent low. on the right corner and a smear of hair and something oily dragged across the metal seam by the taillight. The warden snapped on gloves and plucked a tuft of dark hair free. He bagged it. I tried to hand him the story fast so I wouldn't rethink it. Wrong joints. Tear in the chest. Flat white eye, the way it hugged the dark. The warden and the officer exchanged a look that wasn't for us.

The police asked whether we were willing to follow back as far as the gate so they could check the shoulder under the lights. We said yes. Under the lamps at the entrance, the world felt sane again. They had us tucked behind the warden's truck and then we moved west, shoulder to shoulder with flashlights throwing bright cones into the ditch. It didn't take long. You get used to what normal traffic leaves on a shoulder. Bits of rubber, glass glitter, old snowplow gravel, boot prints from tourists who needed to pee where they shouldn't. This wasn't that. This wasn't that. We found a drag line angling up from the ditch, like something heavy had been hauled to the edge. Two parallel scuffs tracked along the pavement. Thin, rubbery streaks that weren't

tire width. Grass near the culvert had raw grooves cut through it, as if rope had burned it. A small sapling held a wad of rotted hair and hide. Half buried in silt, someone's canvas strap lay with a rusted buckle at the end. The smell hung in one spot near the ditch like a pocket of heat, even in the cold. The fish and wildlife officer crouched, looked at the tracks, then pointed at bootprints mixed in with moose tracks in the soft dirt. The kind of mix you don't see unless people have been right up in it, not just driving past. He said something low to the warden about it not looking like a clean roadkill site. The warden straightened up and told us we were done for the night. They'd stage near the Pocahontas area and sweep the pullouts. He took our

statements and thanked us without any cheer in it. Back at home, I hosed the bedliner because I couldn't stand the smell. I used pliers to pull a tuft of coarse hair out from the taillight seam and dropped it in a bag for them. I slept badly, and woke with the taste of rot still ghosting my mouth. Around noon, the police officer called. They'd found a man just north of the highway near the old Pocahontas mine access. He tried to slip into the bush when they pulled up, but what he was wearing slowed him. They stopped him by the foundations of an old structure. The officer wasn't sharing for gossip. He gave me the summary because our truck was part of it.

Here's what he said they took off the guy. A section of moose hide cut and stitched into a jacket, hair sloughing off in patches, stiff where it had dried wrong, a mask built from the top of a moose skull plate with hide attached over white fogged safety goggles, explaining that flat milk white eye in our lights. Homemade shin rigs. knee braces and padded hockey shin guards strapped outside his pants, which shifted where the legs looked like they bent. Two short poles with rubber crutch tips lashed to the ends, used like front

legs when he dropped into a crouch and walked on them. Rope and straps stashed by the culvert with a spoiled moose quarter dragged earlier in the week to make scent and a visual. It wasn't a monster. It was a man who had learned how to look like one long enough to make you stop. As for motive, there was nothing clever about it. He'd been living. living rough near those old buildings. According to the officer, he planned to scare drivers into stopping or swerving and then approach as if injured wildlife needed help. He wanted either a quick robbery or a truck.

He picked the Talbot flats because the road is straight, cell service can be spotty, and people let their guard down once they think they're past the park interior. He didn't count on drivers punching it for the gate lights. The warden sent the hair from our tailgate for comparison, but they already knew what it was. The dent lined up with a shoulder plate he'd strapped under the hide. Those thin parallel scuffs on the asphalt matched the crutch tips. The rope grooves matched the strap they recovered. Parks cleaned the site and threw up temporary signs reminding people not to stop for wildlife

unless they could pull into a lit area. The police took him in. End of story in the official sense. For me, closure came when I rinsed the last smell out of the truck and tossed the gloves. I didn't keep the tuft of hair. We finished the written statements the next day, and that was that. I still drive that stretch a lot. I still slow along the flats because you'd be stupid not to.

But I don't stop on the shoulder for anything I can't see clearly under a canopy or within sight of the gate lamps. If something looks off, I get to light and people first then make the call. You'll hear folks in Hinton say they've had the half-dead moose chase their bumper out of the park and into town. You'll hear variations. Most of them are noise. What matters is simple and ugly. Someone figured out that in the right place, at the right hour, a silhouette and a smell can do more than any weapon. They can make you hand yourself over. So if it's late and the temperatures dropped, and you're coming off the Talbot Lake flats, and see a shape on the shoulder that doesn't sit right, don't be a hero. Keep your wheels straight. Keep your speed. Put your eyes on the glow ahead. Report it when you're under the lights. The thing in the ditch isn't a ghost and it isn't an animal that needs you. It's a problem wearing a costume and it moves fast when you give it darkness.