SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Night Freight
Headlights carve a narrow path through the dark, and beyond that glow the highway starts to whisper. A longtime listener—an over-the-road driver—sent us a note that opened the door to a vault of stories truckers trade when the rest of the world is asleep: phantom hitchhikers who vanish at the truck stop door, rest areas that feel alive after midnight, sensitive freight that turns ordinary runs uncanny, and a black rig that appears from fog and dissolves like a thought you can’t quite hold.
We dig into why these legends persist and how they map onto real conditions of the job—fatigue, solitude, vigilance, and the way certain routes gather reputation like weather. You’ll hear first-hand accounts of swings moving as if weighted though the lot is empty, radios that wake to 1950s music on the worst bend of a mountain pass, and CB voices that slide in from nowhere, warning of ice or singing a lullaby you can’t place. We balance folklore with grounded explanations—ionospheric skip, stress, mechanical quirks—without sanding off the edges that make the stories stick.
Along the way, we talk cursed cargo and the psychology of hauling what you can’t identify, how specific mile markers become haunted by accidents and time, and why truck stops become communal memory palaces where waitresses give ghosts names and regulars nod like it’s just part of the route. Whether you believe in spirits or in the human mind’s need for patterns, the night road teaches the same lesson: look twice, listen close, and respect the places where history thins the air.
If this journey through highway folklore sparked something—curiosity, a memory, your own late-night encounter—share the episode with a friend, leave a review, and subscribe so you don’t miss what the road wants to tell us next.
Hey everybody, it's Dr. G, Spirit Tales, and Magic. It's about 7 30 on an idle Tuesday in Arizona. I hope this finds you well. It's getting dark earlier and earlier, as we know. Tonight is exceptionally noisy all the way around us. It's uh about 79 degrees with a nice breeze. So everybody has crawled out from under the rocks that they are usually under, and they're all deciding to zoom around here. We have an email today from a guy I used to know from a couple chapters back. He is a truck driver, and he's a long haul driver, so he goes out for weeks at a time, sometimes longer. A couple of chapters ago I did some security for I guess I can say Trism, because I don't know if they're still in business or not, but in the sensitive freight division, that's where we gotta stop with that. But he had some interesting things in his email that reminded me about some of the things that occur out on the highway. So I told him that I would make tonight about that. Long haul trucking. So it's as much of American folklore as baseball or apple pie. It's been a century, longer than a century. Trucking industries played a big role in connecting vast stretches of this country, moving goods from coast to coast through big cities and towns that aren't even on the map. You could say it's an industry that thrives on the open road. But there's another side of these journeys. As day gives way to night, the landscape changes. What might have been at one time a scenic highway flanked by forest or farmland can very quickly turn into a desolate stretch of road, illuminated only by the faint glow of your headlights. Rest stops, normally a welcome sight, sit eerily silent, except for, say, the occasional howling of the wind, or if you're out here at distant coyote cry. It's these moments that the outside world fades away, and the cab of your truck becomes your solitary world. Many drivers say it's the line between the ordinary and the unexplained, and this is the time that it begins to blur. Shadows move, strange noises echo from nowhere. Tales of the supernatural emerge from the darkness of the highway. It seems the trucking industry then carries with it not just freight, but a trove of paranormal tales and some haunted legends. There's the tale of the Phantom Hitchhiker, and we've covered this before, but the open road can be a place of solitude for many truckers, but every so often it offers up encounters that well, they defy explanation. One of the most enduring ones of these that has persisted in trucker lore for about a century. Imagine driving on a remote stretch of highway. The monotony is only broken by the occasional sweep of headlights across the tarmac. These quiet moments, some truckers report spotting a lone figure, some outstretched, seeking a ride. Now sometimes moved by a mix of compassion or perhaps just a desire for some company, even though it is usually strictly forbidden by most companies, and for good reasons, they still sometimes stop and offer a ride to someone who doesn't look like a threat. But as it turns out, this won't be your average hitchhiker. As the miles roll by and the conversations flow, everything seems normal. However, when it's time for the hitchhiker to disembark, a glance in the rear view or perhaps to the passenger seat reveals that they've vanished. Gone without a trace. As if they were never there to begin with. The person who sent me the email tells a story. He's coming out of California headed for Arizona. There's a long stretch of that that is very, very desolate. It's raining. I believe, Peterbilt truck. Can't see the end of the hood hardly. So some other traffic was passing on the other side of the road. I just caught the glimpse of somebody off to the right of their shoulder. It looked like they had their thumb out. Now I never pick up hitchhikers, but it was kind of lonely. It was a young lady, she didn't look like she was much of a threat. So I picked her up and we talked. I said there's a truck stop about two miles up the road. I uh I probably will have to let you out there. Well, she asked me where I was going and I told her, which I don't usually do. She said, Well, that's too far for me. I uh don't venture out that way. But yes, I will ride with you to the truck stop. And he's very tired, he says, and I can believe that. He's a long haul guy. So they get into the parking lot, they park. He walks around the truck to let her out, steps up on the board, he opens the door. She's not there. He searches the truck. The driver's side door is still locked. She's gone. It took him a while to tell me that. Because I don't know if he thought I would think he was crazy or what. But this is a common thing that happens in hand folklore with truckers. So details vary, but the essence of the story remains consistent. Some regions, particularly stretches of road with tragic histories or known for their isolation, seems to be hot spots for these phantom encounters. Desolate highways of the American Southwest or full covered roads in the Pacific Northwest. There's a palpable, if you will, authenticity to some of these stories. Now, one driver from Ohio spoke of a young woman. He picked up outside of Columbus, Ohio. They spoke at length about stars and the vastness of space and the universe. He reached a truck stop, turned to offer her a coffee. She was gone. This is almost the exact same story. All that remained was a cold passenger seat. We're going to back up to a minute if you go way back in the podcast. I'm not sure if it's called Egypt Bottom or Lady Ben Hill. A friend of mine that I went to high school with doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, it doesn't none of it. Comes rolling up on the ramp of the firehouse where I was with firemen, crying, hysterical. She picked up a hitchhiker in Egypt bottom. Young girl, looked very distressed. The girl tells her about a very tragic thing that happened and how she died there as she vanished. She still tells that story years later. Whether these tales are a product of fatigue or maybe a play of shadows in the dark, or there's something truly inexplicable. They remain an intriguable part of trucking folklore. The story of the Phantom Hitchhiker always serves as a reminder of the mysteries that still exist out on the open road, waiting perhaps for the next unsuspecting driver to encounter them. And what about rest stops? You know, there's a certain solitude to rest stops after sunset. They can be havens for weary travelers, but they often transform to early silent landscapes. Once the night descends, it's a whole different world. It's against this backdrop that tales of the rest stop ghosts have taken root. If you can hear that, I apologize. We're having a what sounds like a pretty good pulley sense and outside. This adds a layer of mystique and unease to otherwise very common and boring stopovers. We talk about the silence vector. It's one of the many long-haul truckers nod in agreement when you start talking about this. It's usually the dead of night when most of the world's asleep. Drivers have reported glimpses of shadowy figures wandering in parking lots or restrooms of these stops. It could be the briefest of encounters. These apparitions often fade away just as quickly as they appeared, and they leave behind nothing but a little bit of a chill. A lot of whispers among truckers unless they share these tales of phantom footsteps echoing in the distance or soft murmurs in otherwise deserted restrooms. Yet perhaps most of the tales are of ghostly children. It is not at all uncommon to hear stories from drivers who've taken a break only to hear the distant laughter of children playing. As one would expect, the sight of children at a rest stop at three o'clock in the morning would be a little disconcerting. But on closer inspection, these playful shadows often just dissipate, leaving only an empty playground or a parking lot. Jeff tells a story of coming out of a roadside restroom deep in the south. I'm not sure what part of the south, but he describes it as a deep in the south. There was a small swing set there and a little merry-ground. He says to this day he gets a little nervous when he's the only vehicle in a rest stop. It is illegal in most states to carry a firearm in a commercial vehicle, but he always does it. Sometimes that makes him feel better, but he comes out of the restroom and the swings, there are four swings on the set, and they're all swinging. Like someone was in them. He looked around, he didn't see any other cars or anything. He got back in the truck and just watched the swings as they came to a stop. I said, Do you believe it was the wind? No, they were swinging like there were people in them. Some people believe that these tales are tied to maybe a tragic event from the past, accidents or misfortunes that occurred nearby. Others suggest they might be remnants or forgotten stories playing out their final moments in some sort of eternal time loop. Connecting these tales to historical events can be challenging, however, in certain locations, if you have a documente uh tragedy involving children, the legends seem to hold more weight. Local archives or old timers might recall an accident or an incident from decades ago. That's gonna lend some credence to the ghostly tales that could possibly now envelop the area. Excuse me for a moment. Now with all these stories, the lines between reality and maybe fatigue-induced hallucinations or the supernatural remain blurred. But for many truckers, the next rest stop might carry with it a heightened sense of alertness, maybe a quickened pulse or the hope that their only company is the distant hum of the highway. And what about the cargo that you carry? There are tales of cursed cargo. Every day, millions of items transverse the highways. Most deliveries are straightforward enough, but some carry with them some tales that challenge the boundaries of belief, giving rise to whispers around the truck's thoughts of cursed cargo or cursed freight. Some of these have made the most seasoned of drivers think twice, tales of shipments that for some reason are unexplained or seem to attract misfortune. Some drivers speak of eerie noises emanating from the cargo hold, or soft whispers, even distant cries or thumps that have no discernible source. Others recount unexplained malfunctions with their trucks only when transporting a certain type of goods, or chilling disturbances within the cargo area that defy any type of logic. Yet, within the books of trucking lore, there are those famous cases that stand out, whispered among truckers during late-night stops, or shared as cautionary tales for rookies. One such tale recalls a driver who was transporting a collection of antique mirrors. He claims that through his journey he was plagued by reflections and shadowy figures that he saw in the mirrors out the corner of his eye. But when he turned around, they were gone. Eventually the delivery was completed. The driver never transported antiques or mirrors again. Now, skeptics are gonna chalk that up as fatigue or effects of long hours on the road, or maybe even a mere coincidence, but these things remain a part of the industry's lore. These tales serve as eerie reminders that sometimes the cargo carried might hold more than just material goods. They might bear the weight of histories or memories, maybe even unsettled spirits. As an executive protection agent for hire, which I did for a little period of time, I was riding with a gentleman in a truck who was taking a run across the country. And his manifesto was classified. He didn't know it was in the back. That made him nervous. So he hired myself and a friend of mine. I would be in the truck with him, and we'd have a car following us just in case some crazy kind of thing happened. He explains that as a driver of what he called sensitive freight, when they won't tell you what's in the back, you always think it's something like, you know, a truckload of mutilated money or gold bars, or your imagination runs wild with what could be back there. And he said it was very unsettling to him. So we're going to have to go on this journey through five way stations. His route is planned out start to finish, where he's allowed to stop to go to the bathroom, how long he's allowed to stop, where he's allowed to stop to eat, and how much time he gets home mapped out by the Coal Kong. It's a like a little computer kind of thing in his truck. So it's he knows where he's going start to finish. He knows where he's going to fuel up, where he's going to eat, drink, stop, bathroom, all that stuff where he gets to rest. Second rest area. There's a loudspeaker that's up high by your ear. Driver pull around to the back. He starts pulling around to the back. What did you do? And I have no idea. Everything's in order. We get to the back, we park. Guy comes out dressed in a state police uniform. Could you gentlemen get out of the truck, please? Fine. We get out of the truck. He's looking at me. He says, Are you wearing a firearm in a commercial vehicle? So I gave him the paperwork. He's like, What are you hauling that requires protection in the truck? He got look at the manifest. I have no idea. So he cuts the seal on the back of the door. Now they're allowed to do that. They have to replace it with a special seal. So he cuts the seal, puts the electric tailgate to lift gate down, rides the lift gate up, all of us. And he shines his flashlight and we begin to walk in the truck. It's a refrigerated truck. What's in the truck? Kids and notch. Can't make this up. It's like huge Tupperware containers of body parts. Arms and some legs, some heads. Now these are going to be distributed to medical schools. It's a very legitimate thing. He very hurriedly gets out of the truck, puts his seal on the door, signs the papers he has to sign for cutting the seals, and it tells us, just get this stuff out of my rest thought. So that incident caused the driver when he was done with the run to switch companies that he worked for. He got a way less paying job. The hours were more crappy. I mean, he didn't want anything to do with it. Now, fast forward, about five years later, I have an occasion to be in that same way station. And it's the same cob. And he looks exactly like he looked on that day. So I pull around to the back. He comes out. I said, I don't think you'll remember me. No, I don't remember you, should I? So I explained it to him. Because I had to take three weeks off after that. That stuff kept haunting me. I find that interesting. It didn't haunt me. He was. But there it is. That's the story, right? Everybody looks at something different. To him, that was a very ghostly thing. To me, it was not. I'd seen other ghostly things that, you know, I don't know how either one of the two of them would have survived it. Shadowy highways and navigating the roads where spirits linger. Every country has a road steeped in legend. But for truckers, certain highways stand out. Not for their scenic beauty or their historical landmarks, but for the stories that shroud them. And I've noticed that over time specific routes gain more notoriety due to the sheer number of eerie incidents associated with them. Perhaps it's the dense fog that never seems to lift, or the unusual number of accidents that make history. Whatever the reason, these highways have become the stuff of legend, spoken about in hushed tones in truck stops and sometimes even around campfires. It seems behind each haunting or legend, there's a tragic tale. For instance, there might be a highway that winds through a forgotten battlefield where travelers report seeing spectral soldiers on the march. Another road might be known for a tragic accident from decades past, where the victims were said to make ghostly appearances, forever trying to find their way home. The true gravity of these legends is felt deeply through all these firsthand accounts of the drivers who are brave enough to transverse these roads irregularly. Now, one season driver spoke of a particular stretch in the American Midwest. He says, Every time he drives it, just past midnight, he sees a lone figure standing by the roadside, arm outstretched, thumb raised high in the air. But as the truck nears the figure, the figure just vanished into the night, leaving behind nothing but an empty road and a rather eerie silence. Another accounts a journey of a man in a mountain pass known for its treacherous turns. He navigated a particularly sharp bend, and his radio turns on, comes to life, playing an old song from the 1950s, despite the fact that he has never turned his radio on. Once clear of the pass, he claims that his radio returned to its silent state. He said it left me with an uneasy feeling uneasy feeling. Lasted the rest of my journey. So what about these tales of haunted highways? Might seem like mere campfire stories meant to spook or entertain. But for those who've experienced them, they serve as reminders that the road can sometimes hold a little more mystery than just the destination ahead. CB EVPs. CB radio calls from beyond the solitary world of tracking. The CB radio stands kind of like your lifeline. It connects you to each other, to the world beyond your cab. And every so often, amidst the chatter and all the routine updates, some drivers encounter messages that defy explanation. Calls from the unknown, perhaps, hailing from a frequency that resonates more with the otherworldly than with the mundane. Some truckers during their long night drives have reported mysterious dispatches breaking through the static, voices sometimes clear, other times distorted, reaching out seemingly from nowhere. Some tell of a lost driver desperately seeking directions to destinations that no one's ever heard of that don't seem to exist on any given map. Others whisper tales of long-gone truckers reaching out for one last call, perhaps trying to send a distress signal, or maybe even deliver an unfinished message. These EVP transmissions have become the stuff of legend in the trucking community. Some drivers swear they've communicated with a fellow trucker named Eddie, who met his untimely end in the 70s, yet still roams the airwaves, warning drivers of treacherous roads ahead. Now I will say that in the time I spent on a truck, I did hear of Eddie, or I did hear someone claiming to be Eddie. But if you look back through the podcast, you also see, I believe it was called Truck Stop Angels, where a man warned us of an upcoming disaster, and then nobody could find him to thank him. Another popular tale speaks of a woman's voice singing a lullaby late into the night. I have heard that one. Can't say what we were hauling or where it was going, but I did hear it, and the other two people in the truck heard it as well. Now that doesn't mean that there wasn't some woman a mile away on a bass station with a big linear singing a lullaby or child that forgot to turn the mic off. Could there be a more grounded explanation for these eerie encounters? Technically speaking, a CB radio is susceptible to all kinds of forms of interference, like atmospheric conditions, electrical disruptions, or even overlapping frequencies from distant transmitters. They all can result in unexpected and sometimes eerie broadcasts. Some of these ghostly messages might merely be distant transmissions carried from farther than usual due to unique atmospheric conditions. You hear me talk about my friend Woody every once in a while. Woody was a Navy SEAL. Six tours and all, and he'd been a prisoner of war three times. And he said that sometimes on their radio they could hear truckers talking. On the interstate. Having spent some time in the cab of a truck, I can tell you that sometimes you'll hear people going, skip land, skip land, can you hear me? And the radio signals sometimes skip a long way. So sometimes people in Vietnam could hear American CBs. And there is a radio station where I grew up called WWVA. And sometimes they can also hear WWVA. While many of the ghostly CB radio tales can be rationalized away with technical explanations, they don't entirely dispel the unease of or the allure of the stories. For many truckers, the CB radio remains not just a tool, but a bridge to a realm of mysteries where voices of the past and present converge, reminding them that the road, like life, is full of the unexplained. I don't know if you can hear that high-pitched, like a grinding noise. I'm hoping the mic is filtering that out. I have no idea what that is. It's outside my window. I have heard, I have not seen this thing myself, but I was in a truck one time sleeping while someone else was driving, and they claim to have seen it. It's a tale whispered at truck stops and recounted around campfires. It's the legend of the black rig. It's a ghostly semi, draped in shadows and often illuminated by piercing headlights, has become a staple in folklore of the open road. Its mysterious appearances and eerie behavior have both alarmed and fascinated those who've encountered it. Adding another layer of intrigue to the trucking world's haunted tapestry. Many truckers during their late night journeys speak of encounters with this ominous semi. It often materializes seemingly out of thin air, blinding headlights, cutting through the night's darkness like a blade. Some tell tales of near misses or narrowly avoiding collisions with the black rig, only to see it vanish. Others speak of glancing in their rear view mirror and catching a fleeting glimpse of the dark truck tailing them. Then they look away and they look back, and as quickly as it appeared, the rig is gone. Now the origins of the Black Rig legend were as murky as the tales themselves. Some believe it's the spectral remnant of a trucker who met a very tragic end, forever roaming the highways in his phantom rig. Others speculate that it might be a manifestation of the well the collective fears or anxieties of the road, a symbol of the unknown dangers that lurk on long, desolate stretches of highway. There have been numerous accounts of sightings over the years. One driver spoke of a foggy night on a lonely highway in the Pacific Northwest when the Black Rig emerged from the mist, its headlights casting what he referred to as an otherworldly glow. Another recounted a drive through the desert of the southwest, where the truck appeared in the distance, its silhouette stark against the moonlight's hands, only to vanish as the driver approached. So is the black rig a ghostly apparition? Is it a figment of overimaginative overimaginative people? Or is it something else entirely? It does remain an indelible part of trucking lore. Its stories kind of serve as an eerie reminder that the road is full of mysteries. And what about the truck stops themselves? Truck stops for somewherey truckers are such a great place to be. I've heard them referred to as 18-wheeler heaven. It's all often called a beacon of respite. A place to refuel, grab a bite, perhaps catch a couple hours of sleep. Yet if you can believe that highways and roads can be steeped in legend, then so can some of these roads hide havens. So they're interspersed across the vast network of truck stops. There are those that carry tales of more than just diesel and dinner food. They're reputed hotspots for paranormal activity. There are historic truck stops. There are some of them that have been standing for decades, which have become rather infamous within the trucking community. Some of these locations are often built on grounds with deep-rooted histories, or they've garnered attention for their mysterious happenings. Some drivers report seeing apparitions, figures appearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye. Others have spoken of poltergeist activity. Items moving by themselves, doors slamming shut with no reason, and disembodied voices murmuring in the dead of night. But the personal experiences of truckers and regular petrons truly bring these stories to life. There was John. He was a trucker over, I believe, 20 years over the road. Recalled a night when he said, I was at a well-known truck stop. I don't want to mention the name, but it's in the American Midwest. As I settled into a booth for a late-night meal, I felt an icy chill and I witnessed a translucent figure of a woman drift across the diner and vanish through the back door. I must have stared a long time or had some kind of a look on my face because the waitress, seeing my pale face, casually remarked, Oh, that's just Ruby. She's been here since the nineteen fifties. Another patron, Linda, recounted her experience at a truck stop in the Midwest. While washing her hands in the restroom, she heard a soft lullaby, sung in a voice that she said seemed to come from the walls themselves. Startled, she asked others in the diner if they'd ever heard it. And to her surprise, many nodded, sharing that the lullaby had become a regular and unexplained occurrence over the years, and the regulars that came there daily don't think much of it anymore. Now, while some might dismiss these tales as mere fabrications or the result of overworked imaginations for those who've experienced them firsthand, they kind of serve as a testament that some places hold on to memories and emotions, creating echoes of the past that reverberate into the present. And we've talked about that before. And for the curious traveler or trucker, they offer a glimpse into the mysteries that sometimes lie just beyond the next exit. The open road has always been a campus for human experiences, where the line between reality and legend blurs. It becomes evident that the highway, with its endless horizon and ever-changing landscape, can be a window to a world unseen, a world that exists all around us all the time. And every now and then we catch a glimpse of it, and the dead get in.
