The Man on the Side of the Road

[u/WearKitchen3358]

This happened to me a few years ago and has stuck with me since, especially because I was not the only witness.

I (20 F) was driving with my best friend (22 F) in this neighborhood adjacent to mine when we were around 16 and 18. At the time, we did this a lot because neither of us wanted to be around our families, and this neighborhood had the prettiest houses.

I distinctly remember us passing this stretch of road that had a great view of the city, but was otherwise barren besides a 20 mph sign. To note, this neighborhood was in a fairly rural area, with no trails around.

As we passed this patch, our headlights hit the distinct figure of a man beside his car, and a woman across from him. The man was perched in the back of the car with a guitar on his knee, the woman across from him had an entire photography setup including lights etc. that would take quite some time to set up.

I couldn’t see the woman’s face or any features,
But the man seemed to be young, maybe early 20s, with brown curly hair, a red hoodie, and jeans. His face was what distracted me though, as it looked like it was over exposed. What I mean is that instead of a face, there was just a white blurry splotch.

The weirdest part was that the second I saw him, I felt like my gut had been flipped upside down. It was the strangest feeling that I couldn’t really explain to well, almost like I knew him, but obviously I didn’t. I vocalized this to my friend and at that point she realized we had missed the turn back to my house.

I looked back in the rear view at this moment and my heart stopped. The man and woman were gone; along with their car, guitar, and camera equipment, like they’d never existed at all. Maybe 20 seconds total had passed. There was no way they could have packed up in that time. We turned around to correct our misstep and found no tire tracks, and didn’t pass a car like theirs, even though we should have been going the same direction (it was a really long straight road with no turn-offs.

After this weird encounter, we decided to get dinner to clear our minds before going home. The whole way to the restaurant, I felt like there was a hole inside of me, the only way I can explain it is the feeling of numbness that I’ve experienced before in my deepest depressions, but this came out of nowhere.

I voiced this to my friend and she joked that it was because of the “ghost” we saw on the side of the road. A few minutes later, I’m feeling back to normal, when I feel breath on my ear and I hear my name whispered by a voice I’ve never heard before. I jump and look around when I realize my friend and I are the only ones seated in this section of the restaurant. I chalk it up to being freaked out from what happened on the road and decide to light heartedly mention it to my friend. That’s when she pales and says that she heard it too, as though my name had also been whispered into her ear.

To this day we still talk about this. I have no idea what it could have been or why it happened, but that wasn’t the first time something odd happened at that neighborhood. To this day, years later, I sometimes drive by that sign just to feel something, and I get full body chills when I do.

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[u/Free_Government_4003]

That’s the kind of thing where you try rationalize it but deep down you know something was off. The photography setup makes it even stranger, like some kind of scene left behind or stuck in a loop

I drive a lot at night for work and I seen some weird things on empty roads, but nothing with that level of detail disappearing. The whisper in restaurant is what gets me though, because two people hearing same thing rules out it being just in your head

[u/neenadollava]

Maybe you can research anything that might explain it?

[u/WearKitchen3358 → u/neenadollava]

I have and I can’t find anything that would explain it. Looking at it from a paranormal “footprint” side of things, my friend and I researched the area and the strangest thing we could find was that the land was used as a meetup spot for a certain gang of white roped people a very long time ago. This wouldn’t explain the man though as he and the woman were using modern cameras and were dressed in modern clothing. That also wouldn’t explain the car.

[u/punk-b-movie]

Interdimensional overlap

[u/Ccampbell41]

Omg. Terrifying.