17 Creepy Driving At Night Stories That Will Freak You Out Every Time You Get In Your Car

A car pulled up beside me and told me that there had been a wreck over the next hill and traffic was stopped. They suggested that I take a "side road" that detours the wreck.

By Erin Cossetta

Updated 3 years ago, July 30, 2021

I asked Creepy Catalog readers for their spookiest “driving at night” stories” and they delivered. Be careful out there!!

The trap

“I had pulled over one night to fuss at my two young children. A car pulled up beside me and told me that there had been a wreck over the next hill and traffic was stopped. They suggested that I take a side road that detours the wreck. I thanked them and they left. I decided not to take that road cause I’m from the country and didn’t want to get lost. As I drove by the “detour” road, I looked over and saw the couple had stopped and had gotten out of their car. There was nothing but woods all around. It was just getting dark and that’s all I could see. The next morning as I drove by the same road, I saw the DEAD END sign just past where the couple had gotten out of their car. Still gives me chills when I drive past it now and it’s been 15 years since it happened!”

Black “cat”

“I was once driving home from my ex boyfriend’s house at around 3 am. As I was going down the street I saw what looked like a huge black cat. Something the size of a small horse. As I looked at it, it turned towards me and it had a human face. I freaked out and almost ran off the road. When I looked back it was gone”

Ghost crash

“My daughter were driving from Wichita Falls, TX to Oklahoma City on I-44 to catch our plane home to PA. It was 4:05am (I remember because I was afraid we’d miss our flight) & the highway was empty.

We were almost out of Lawton city limits when we saw an older model car, light blue or silver, launch off an embankment, roll 3 or 4 times, end over end. I could actually see a human fly through the air.

I pulled over and called 911 & gave them the GPS coordinates of the overpass. I asked the dispatch if I should back down the highway and she told me not to because there was an officer less than 2 mins away.

20 mins later, I get a call from the police, asking exactly where it was. I repeated the info. The officer said that he was sitting at that location & there was nothing there. Not a skid mark, broken glass or flattened grass. Nothing at all.

When I got home, I googled it. This what I found out:

Exactly ten years prior, a group of teenagers were speeding down a suburban road when they lost control, flipped over a guide rail & rolled down the embankment. All 6 kids were killed.

They were driving 1986 Oldsmobile. The time of the accident… 4:05 am.”

Wake up

“Driving home from work one night, exhausted after working a double shift. I was on the freeway, & fell asleep behind the wheel. I heard a woman’s voice, very gentle whisper in my ear, “Wake up.” Just loud enough to wake me up, but not startle me awake. Woke up just in time to avoid colliding with a bunch of road construction barrels. That was like 20 yrs ago, and I never forgot that voice.”

Hitchhiker

“Hated driving by a graveyard at night on the way home, because a male ghost would hop in, and sit in the back seat behind me. He looked solid too. I could see him in the rear view mirror. Never told anyone until my nephew told me he hated driving past ‘that graveyard’, because the ghost of a man would hop in the his car for a ride. He would tell him, “If you ain’t Jesus, get the hell out of my car!”.”

Mothman

“I drive a delivery route at night in a 30 foot box truck through different towns out about 30 miles east of Cleveland.

The area is naturally creepy, 2 lane asphalt cut through the forest for miles until you get to the next town, always foggy as hell. Anyway, one night I’m driving down 322 west towards chesterland, OH when I see this huge figure flying right at me in the moonlight. It was HUGE.

I realized I was about to hit it windshield level and ducked down below the dash and right as I did it I hear a loud thud at the front of the box right above the cab of the Freightliner I’m driving. I hit the brakes and come to a stop and think for a few seconds before I step out about if I should actually get out…but I do it anyway because I had to see what it was.

So, I get out and walk around to the back of the truck and I see it laying at the side of the road about 50 yards away. I swear, the thing was man sized but I figured maybe it was a huge hawk or maybe even an eagle that I had killed. So I start walking up to it thinking it had to be dead. Nope, all of a sudden the thing rolls over, stands up on 2 legs, jumps and flies off.

It took a hit at probably 45 mph straight to an aluminum box and it lived. When it stood up, I swear it was man shaped and at least 5″8, definitely no bird. I don’t know what it was.

When it flew off I got scared and ran back to the truck and continued the 4-5 miles into chesterland. I stop at the gas station and get out, look up at the front of the box and there are wing prints 6 feet across in the dirt/grime… and not like feathery bird shaped…bat shaped. If I could describe the looks of it, the closet thing I can come up with is it looked like the monster from Jeepers creepers or maybe the mothman. I’m not making any of this up, it still freaks me out every time I go down that road. True story.”

Ghost man

“Coming home from a night shift, driving down a back road I’d traveled (literally) thousands of times. On one side of the road, there is a six foot drop on to train tracks; the other side runs vertically up a hillside approx 25 miles – no guard rails. In my headlights, I saw a young man dressed in a white shirt and dark pants suddenly dart out into the road from the hill side, stop in the middle of the road to look at my truck and then sprint to the other side and down over the embankment. I slammed on my breaks, got out with the flashlight from under my seat and ran to the the track side thinking he HAD to be hurt. Nothing. Absolutely quiet except the sound of my truck engine. I got home (which took all of about 5 minutes in my mind, since I was shaking so hard) and said something to my Dad. He grinned from ear-to-ear and told me it was probably “so and so” who was killed on that road when my Dad was in high school. “White T-shirt and Jeans was what he was wearing. Whoever hit him ditched his body on the tracks and left. Sheriff found him the next morning. He does that every once in a while to people driving that road alone late at night. Scared the crap outta you, didn’t he?” I snickered and nodded.”

Spook road

“As a teenager I was obsessed with “spook road” where a car full of kids crashed and died, they still had the dash of the car still at the site. The roads fairly long, and we were driving at night about 30 mph, some how we took a 15 min drive and was capable of listening to an entire album. It was weird as though time didn’t move right. Still baffled at 32 years old.”

The people in the woods

“I was driving very slow down a supposedly haunted road where your supposed turn your lights on and off under the bridge and you may see the girl hanging that hung herself there, when I went to do this a bunch of random people came out of the woods and started banging on my car.”

Get back in your car and go

“A few years ago I was leaving my BFs house late at night. I had to stop to get gas before the drive home so I pulled into the first open gas station I saw. I started walking into the store when out of nowhere a man runs up on me and yells get back in your car and go!! Something in his panicked expression told me he wasn’t messing around and I got the hell out of there fast!! The next day we found out the gas station was robbed and the attendant was badly hurt!! I had to call the PD to tell them about the guy and to this day I don’t know if he was a good Samaritan or the robber!”

Fog

“I was driving home from work about 2 am, it was a beautiful night so I decided to take a route home that was more in the country instead of through town. I had to cross an old bridge that had been there probably 80-100 years. There’s no houses or lights except my head lights. Just as my front tires hit the bridge a red fog rolls in across it. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I got across that bridge as fast as possible. After I got across I looked in my mirror and the fog is gone but it looked like someone was standing in the middle of the bridge. I mentioned it to my parents the next morning and my dad said he’d always heard stories about that bridge and supposedly a young lady hung herself from it.”

Werewolf

“Used to work on Sanibel Island in FL.

I was driving across the causeway on my way home from work around midnight.

Went to accelerate because I was over the bridges and a huge, dog-like creature walked in front of my car. It looked ragged. It was as tall as the hood of my car. Really furry with fang like teeth hanging out the sides of it’s mouth. It looked at me like I was in the way then kinda sauntered off toward the beach. Scared the hell out of me!”

Aliens

“My mom and I had a light following us for 20 miles. Not a helicopter or plane. It would move side to side and then front to back. The radio went out and then it was gone.”

The man in the middle of nowhere

“Had to pee really bad, about midnight, pulled onto a dirt road out in BFE, turned headlights off did my business got back in car turned on headlights and saw a man about 20 feet in front of the car walking towards me…kinda shook me up a bit, backed up and got the heck outta there.”

Struck by lightning

“I was driving home from work in a torrential downpour. Merely 5 miles from home and I felt a tingling sensation on the back of my neck and the hair on my head start to rise.

Realizing static charging, I braced myself for the inevitable. Lightning struck my car, with an intense blinding light and causing an instantaneous ringing in my ears.

The dim lights on my dash glowed brighter than a spotlight due to the sudden electrical surge, the radio shorted out, and out blew out the actuators in the rear windows causing the windows to retreat into the doors.

By the time I got home and pulled into the garage there was 3 inches of standing water in my back seat. Car ran fine after. Tires did a great job grounding it.”

Followed

“A truck on a dark road with no lights following me. I had just left work 3 a.m. In the morning. I was the only car on the road. All I could think of was the movie Jeepers Creepers.”

The people at the cemetery

“I live in a small town in south Texas, when I was 19, a boyfriend of mine, myself and two other friends were driving down an old backroad towards a cemetery that hadn’t been used since the 1800s. It was about 3 am and we pulled up into the cemetery only to see off in the distance four white hooded figures circling a grave in the distance, we didn’t stay long enough to investigate. We turned around and left real quick.”