Well, folks, Halloween’s almost here for another year, and what better way to celebrate to spookiest day/night of the year than with a few trucker ghost stories?

We’re sharing a few stories from truckers (mostly those based in the US) who swear they have seen some otherworldly and strange apparitions while out on the road. You can read all of them here (plus a few others), but here are a few highlights.

The tall figure

“It was about 3 a.m., and I was westbound on Jensen Road in Fresno, CA, just before the residential area. I had slowed to about 40 mph when out of nowhere appeared this freakishly tall figure of a man in a black, buttoned up trench coat and a round, black sombrero standing on the white line of the two lane road. He must have been at least 6’7″ or 7’0 tall. My partner and I watched and he didn’t even flinch as the rig passed by. I swear, the side mirrors must have missed his head by only a couple of inches. My partner and I looked at each other with our eyes wide open and screamed ‘Did you see that?! What the f*** was that?’. I swear our skin crawled and we were both in a kind of shock. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a couple days.”

A crying child

(This story has been slightly amended to account for adult content.)

“I was driving at night when I heard an odd grinding noise, like I had run over something that got stuck. It was about 2 a.m., so I pulled into a well-lit rest stop and woke up my buddy. I explained it to him, and as we got out of the car, we heard what sounded like a kid crying. There were no other cars at the rest stop, but we frequently heard stories about child trafficking and kidnapping, so we decided to check it out. We grabbed our flashlights and headed towards the noise, which was coming from the bathrooms.

As we get closer, we realised it was coming from the women’s bathroom. It was a low, dull sobbing. We prepared for the worst and walked in, but there was nobody inside. The sound was still there, it was still clearly coming from the room, but the room was empty. We turned on the lights but still found nothing. We checked each stall, the trash can. Nothing. We even started looking for WHERE in the room it was coming from – nothing. We wondered, is it a hidden speaker? Are we on candid camera? What the f***?

My buddy climbed up one of the stalls to get to the top window in the rest stop which was vented out and open. He closed it, and the noise stopped. Completely. He opened it, and there was no more noise. We sat there for a few seconds, staring at each other. He shrugged. Then the window slammed shut again without him touching it.

We were out of that bathroom in seconds. The noise started up about 10 seconds later, and we tore out of the parking lot. The grinding noise was still there. So this time I pulled over a few miles later at a Flying J Truck Stop, one that was well-lit and occupied. We checked and saw a red and silver piece of metal wedged underneath. We couldn’t remove it by hand as it was really wedged in there, so we kicked at the metal to bend it and figure we’d remove it when we got back.

A week later, I had my mechanic take it out when he was doing a service – it was part of a kid’s tricycle, the red area where somebody can stand. That was one of those moments for me. Totally crazy.”

The “dog”

 (This story was shared on Reddit – view the thread here.)

“Many years ago I was on what is called a “meet and turn”. This is where a driver that is domiciled out of one city will drive a load halfway to its destination, while a driver domiciled out of that destination will drive halfway with a load that is destined for my city. We meet in a parking lot, switch trailers and drive back home. I had been on this run for a few months and found that I always got to the meet point about an hour before the other driver. It was a dark and empty dirt lot at about 3 am, so I would stretch out across the seat and take a short nap.

One night, about 10 minutes into my nap I was awoken by a barking dog. I tried to ignore it, but it carried on for several minutes and got louder as the dog got closer. Soon, it became apparent that the dog was right outside of my truck barking at me. OK, either this dog is Lassie and is trying to alert me to something, or else he is just a pain in the ass and I will need to throw something at him to scare him off. It is important to note that the barking had been going on for a good 10 minutes at this point.

So, I sat up and looked out my window. Standing there, mere inches on the other side of the glass was a man of about 35. He was a large fellow. And was barking at me. His eyes were crazy and he was frothing at the mouth a little – the scene really held my full attention for a moment. The sheer creepiness of this struck me. Gently, and making an absolute minimum of sudden movements, I reach down and started my truck and slowly pulled away. He chased me, much like you might expect an angry dog to do, barking all the while.

Needless to say, it played hell with my power naps from then on.”