Vol. 1: Disturbing TRUE Highway Stories
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Escaping harrowing situations with creeps, sociopaths, and other ne'er-do-wells is something that I've had to do many times in my life. This, however, is only the second story that I have ever shared in a public forum, so please go easy on me. This took place during the late summer of 1993. I was living in Montana at the time, but had a boyfriend in British Columbia, so I often traveled between the two places.

We were broke and carless, so we hitchhiked when we needed to get somewhere further than biking distance. I had spent the month of August with him in BC, and eventually it was time to get back to school. I, of course, not having worked much at all that summer, had no money. My bum-ass boyfriend hadn't come through with any money for a bus ticket either. My parents were mad at me, so they weren't going to cough up any cash. And all my friends were broke as well, but we didn't have a phone to call them anyway.

At this point, the decision was made. I was already two days late for school, and I didn't feel like panhandling for a bus ticket. I had to get back, and I couldn't wait for the boyfriend's money to materialize. This would be my first time hitchhiking alone. I put my backpack's worth of stuff together, making sure I had my ID because one time we hitched to the border, left Canada, and tried to get back into the US.

before I realized that I had left my identification in Canada. Meaning, I had no ID to enter the US, but also no ID to get back into Canada. But that's a story for another day. After checking all my boxes, I hit the road. Things went surprisingly smoothly for the majority of the trip. An elderly couple picked me up as soon as I got off the mountain and into town, and they took me all the way to Creston, right near the border crossing.

I walked across and was picked up almost immediately by a guy who at first gave me the mild creeps, but all he did was lecture me about how dangerous it was to hitchhike alone and how much I reminded him of his daughter. He took me all the way to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which was damn near half the trip. I was actually having phenomenal luck. I walked to just outside the city limits and stuck my thumb out. An hour went by, then two.

You're often walking really slowly when you're trying to catch a ride, and eventually, I came across a small flap of cardboard. I picked it up, thinking I could walk off at the next exit, borrow a marker at a gas station, and make a sign. I thought this move might help me to nab a ride, so I'm walking along just a little bit faster now, and suddenly I see something moving in my peripheral vision. I tense up, look, and see that it's a two-foot, thin, dark snake.

trying to get over the cement guardrail to the shoulder. He was never going to make it. He was kind of trying to throw himself over it sideways. I happen to kind of like snakes, and he looked pretty harmless. So I used my sign as a shovel and pitched him up over the wall. In hindsight, however, I should have realized that the snake was a bad omen before I could reach the next exit. A car slowed to a stop. It's always creepy when a car stops and you're walking up to it.

trying your best to judge if it's Ted Bundy or just an eccentric like you. My heart always sank a little when it would be a single man, but I soon realized that this guy wasn't alone. There was a kid in the front seat who looked to be between 10 and 13 years old. The guy was a little too friendly, but what was he going to do? Murder me in front of the kid? I'll admit right now, I was young and very dumb. I decided to get in. The man himself was pretty chatty,

introducing the kid as his nephew. He said they were driving back to where they lived in St. Louis from visiting his brother in Seattle so the kid could visit his grandma. The whole time I was in the car, the kid hardly said a word. If I remember right, and it's been a very long time, it's about three hours to where I live from Coeur d'Alene. He was taking Highway 90 right past the city that I lived in. So I was relieved I wouldn't have to get out of the car and thumb it again. The first hour goes by,

And it's all friendly chit-chat, lots of family anecdotes, and general small talk. The switchblade my boyfriend gave me was cradled in the bottom of my palm the whole time, up my sleeve and out of view. But after a while, I began to relax a little. The man kept up the friendly chatter, but eventually the questions he was asking took a raunchier turn. Like, did I have a boyfriend? What was he like? What did we like to do? What was our favorite position? Uh, what?

I silently panicked. Turns out, this guy was a creep after all. My instinct was to play along with his conversation while I tried to figure out what to do. I was pretty sure the drink he had in the console and a convenience store cup had more than pop in it, because you could see him physically getting looser as the drive went on. He kept up with the gross questions, and I was so embarrassed for his nephew, although I still played along. I just tried to breathe deeply to keep from having an anxiety attack.

and concentrated on extricating myself from his car. Eventually, he made it clear that he expected me to have sex with him in exchange for the ride. Door-to-door service, he said. But then, it only got worse. And find one of your girlfriends for my nephew, he said, with this hyper-cheerful, yet also menacing smile that made my stomach drop. Yeah, this only served to confirm that I needed to get away from this guy ASAP.

At this point, we were about 20 minutes out from the town that I lived in. I was like, "Sure, sure," and started making stuff up about a phantom hot slutty friend that I had. Then, it finally hit me what I could do to get away. I put on my best come-hither smile and said to him, "You know what? I bet she's home now. Let's go straight over to her place when we get into town and get this date started."

So, I had him get off at my exit and asked if we could get some beer first for our date. I'm not so sure about in other states, but in Montana, you can buy beer at gas stations. So, I had him stop at a place a few blocks from where I lived when he somewhat reluctantly went inside to buy the beer, which I knew would be at the back of the store. I opened my door and sprinted down the alley about a block and dove into a huge clump of bushes, folded myself up as tight as I could, prayed, and waited.

I still had my knife, but now it was out of my sleeve. I was shaking and my heart was pounding so hard, I was afraid it would explode. I tucked my head in between my knees and continued to wait, listening for his car to come roaring down the alley. When we pulled into the gas station, it was about 4pm in September, so there was still plenty of light. I stayed in those damn bushes until night fell, and then I finally got up the courage to sprint home. The guy's car never came down the alley,

Although, I could hear him yelling for me, and he sounded pissed. I got in my front door, locked the deadbolt, and collapsed. Dirt and little leaves still all over me. My roommate walked in and was like, what the f*** happened to you? I gave her the abbreviated version, and she said, why didn't you call me? I would have picked you up at the border. Great information to have now, I suppose. When I was younger, each summer and almost every new year,

my family would pack the car up and go on a road trip to visit family in Mexico. We never had any problems on the road until one particular trip when I was 8 years old. Like every road trip before, we left our home in North Texas at around 6pm in order to reach our destination the next morning. So at around 2am, we crossed into Mexico, and that's when things began to get weird. When you're on the only stretch of freeway in the middle of the desert,

You don't tend to freak out about having the same car behind you for miles. It was practically pitch black outside our car windows, the only visible shapes being the dotted stars and the eerie silhouettes of the cacti. We'd been in Mexico for about an hour and a half, and still had a few more hours to drive. And I remember sleeping but still being semi-conscious of what was going on around me, because I didn't really have the skill to fall deeply asleep in the car. So when my mother suddenly spoke my dad's name,

I heard her loud and clear: "Miguel, that car behind us, it's been on us since we left Laredo." My dad peeked at the car, shrugged off my mother's tension. A lot of cars use this road. He's probably going to Reynosa or another city before leaving it at that. Despite his sureness, my mom kept a wary eye on the car behind us. By this time, my siblings and I were hyper aware of the car and entertained ourselves with watching the car through the gaps in the luggage that blocked the rear window.

Although, we got tired of this pretty quickly. After a little while longer on this road, I hear my mom again, only more in a hushed whisper. "He's getting closer!" In response to my mother's note, all of his kids turned to watch as the car inched closer and closer to ours. "He's too close, Miguel," and she was right. By this time, that car was practically pressed against the rear of ours, and on a lonely stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere, with another few hours until daylight,

This was downright scary. We couldn't do much. My dad didn't slow down, didn't stop, and he didn't speed away either. He just drove, and the car followed. The next 30 minutes were the most tense that we had ever experienced as a family. The car would ease off sometimes, only to press its blinding headlights against our rear once more. Like, whoever the driver was knew that he was freaking us out, and rather enjoying it. It was during one of the periods that the car had pulled away

Then my mom spotted a police car up ahead, parked on the side of the road, and she didn't miss a beat. "Pull over, right in front of the police. Pull over right now, Miguel." And he did, and the car that had been following us kept driving. I wondered just how confused the policeman must have been as he watched my dad park our car right in front of him. The cop came over and asked what was wrong, and that's when my mother urgently told him everything: the car, the way it followed us, and the way it taunted us.

The policeman took her claim seriously and told us of how people were victimized and had their cars stolen on these empty highways by both thugs and criminals. Then he offered to drive behind us for a while in order to ward off any unwanted attention and make us feel safe. We drove off with the police cruiser right behind us, relieved, until about ten minutes later when we saw something that confirmed the policeman's words and my mother's worst fears.

We saw that same car that had been following us pulled over on the side of the road. Only its front end was exposed from behind some sort of desert plant. I'm not a betting man, but I'd wager my last dollar that they were waiting for us. I also don't doubt that that police escort saved us from something terrible. Although what that was, I'll never know, and I'm just fine with that.

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My family doesn't come for money, and to ship my car and fly out with all my stuff would have cost several thousand dollars. Plus, at the time, I was so afraid the airline would break my cello, the instrument that I got my scholarship for and was still making payments on, so that wasn't the move. I decided to pack my 1991 Toyota Previa full of all my stuff and hit the road.

I mapped it out that it would take 4 days if I hustled and cost me around $500 total with gas, eating off the dollar menu, and sleeping in my car. Good stuff. Fast forward one whole day and I'm like, "F*ck every single bit of this." I was at a pace of 16 hours a day driving, just starting my second day. There was nowhere good to sleep in my car out in the middle of nowhere that runs around I-90.

The only marginally okay place I found was the parking lot of a small hospital somewhere in Missoula, Montana, I think. And it felt so sketchy to be sleeping in my car. Like, I couldn't exactly put my finger on what made me feel some type of way. But the further I got from Oregon, the location that the tags on my car showed that I was from, the more I felt like I drew attention of people. I was just running off of adrenaline, covering nearly 800 miles a day.

calling my parents at every rest stop, and leaving voicemails on the machine letting them know where I was. Cell phones were just beginning to be popular, although they were expensive as hell, and I didn't have one. It was physically and emotionally exhausting, and I was so, so ready to just be at my dorm and sleep in an actual bed again. My car wasn't super old, but it was a flood salvage, and not the most reliable thing.

It permanently had some random dash light stuck in the on position, and I was so afraid that it was going to break down and leave me stranded in the badlands, or on a barren stretch of f*cking nothing. If you've never made this trip, at least at this point in time, you needed to pack cans of gas in your trunk because even with a full tank, it may be several hundred miles before you find your next service stop. I remember driving all day through nothing but literal tumbleweeds,

sleeping on the side of the road, waking up, and not seeing civilization again for a total of 12 hours worth of driving. Fast forward to Wyoming. I don't remember where, but I think that I was near the South Dakota-Nebraska border. I was running low on cash due to a rock hitting my side mirror and breaking the glass, and I needed to buckle down to have enough for gas. I saw a sign at some tiny church saying, free community spaghetti dinner, listed for that evening.

And I was like, oh yeah, let's do this. It was a few hours until it started, but I figured I could stop by and introduce myself, help set up, enjoy that sweet, sweet spaghetti, and maybe they would let me take a plate to go too. Long story short, it was great. Met some really nice folks and ate some really good spaghetti. Everyone seemed so amazed at my journey. The pastor ended up asking me if I wanted to sleep there for the night.

A lady chimes in that they would absolutely find some place for me. A third person chimed in that they had some cots down in the preschool in the basement that I could use. Yeah. So the time rolls around, we finish cleaning up, everyone leaves the church. I get shown to my cot. The inherent creepiness of sleeping on a cot in a dark preschool aside, there were no red flags at all. That cot was absolute magic compared to my car. I put a few of them together,

made a nest out of pillows, and I was able to stretch out mostly comfortably. I woke up at some point in the night to hearing footsteps. It seemed like they were just kind of wandering around. I sat frozen, holding my breath like, holy what? And then it hit me. I forgot to call my dad and tell him where I was. I was sleeping on a cot in the basement of a church. I actually just realized that I didn't even know the name of, didn't know what town I was in,

Nobody knew where I was, and there's some stranger wandering around this dark church. I decided then and there that it was time to leave. I quietly put my shoes on and tried to tiptoe opposite where I thought I heard someone. I felt such anxiety heading into the dark stairwell. I knew that there was probably an emergency exit at the end of the hall in the stairwell, and I decided I would just start running. All of a sudden, I hear someone shout, "Hey!" and grab the back of my shirt.

I felt their cold hand on the exposed skin of my back, and they ripped the spaghetti strap off my shirt. In some Houdini move that I'm still not sure how I managed, I slid out of the open button down without them being able to grab me again, and I just kept on running. It was too dark to see them or where they came from. I didn't turn around, and I sure didn't look back. Once I made my way outside, I kept running up the hill in the dark. I lost one of my shoes, and I cut my foot on something in the grass.

But at that point, I didn't care. I kept running with a single shoe on until I reached my car. Burnt rubber through that entire empty parking lot. I drove until my gas light came on and didn't even get out to refill the tank until the sun was high up in the sky. I don't know who was in the church with me that night. The voice didn't match any of the people that I had met only hours ago. The hand that I felt on my back was rough.

calloused, and it seemed to have the strength of many decades packed into each one of its digits. I just know that if they had gotten a grip on me, I wouldn't have made it out so easily.

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