This is like 30 years ago, before electric cars were really a thing. Some friends and I were hanging out in the Pine Barrens one night. It was an area we knew pretty well, and we’d walked down this long sandy road with no turnoffs to get to where we happened to be hanging out.
Suddenly, all of nature around us went silent - and I mean all of it. Sound carries at night, especially with the lakes to echo off of. We looked up the road we were walking back along, and there was a pair of headlights coming our way. We could tell they were headlights because they were lower than a person would carry a flashlight, they were moving in that peculiar synchronization that headlights have, and they’d do several quick bounces when they hit a rut in the road.
So anyway, we’re in this road in the ass-end of the Barrens, everything’s turned absolutely deadly silent, and there’s this car coming down the road toward us. And the three of us suddenly realize that it’s absolutely silent. Not only is nature silent, but the car isn’t making any noise either.
We watch the headlights of this car headed down the road toward us - it’s a couple hundred yards away now, the Pine Barrens are still dead silent, and the car isn’t making any noise either.
My nerve broke first. I bolted off the road and partially vaulted over a couple shrubs, my friends close behind me. We turned around, and the car was still coming toward us - and then suddenly the headlights went out. We waited, but nothing happened - no car headlights, no interior lights, no car doors opening, no voices - nothing. We waited, and still nothing.
We dithered and talked over what to do and we eventually grabbed a couple branches and headed back up the road. We reached the area where the headlights turned off - and there was no car. We turned our flashlight on the (very) sandy road, and we could see our tracks heading down, but there weren’t any recent car tracks. We checked the road and the verge all the way back to our car, and - nothing. The forest went dead silent, there were headlights, the car didn’t make a sound, and then it just … disappeared. We went back the next day, and there still was no sign of anyone on that road that night except us.
.
There’s also a rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike heading into New Jersey. Like two miles before the rest stop, there’s a sign saying something like “New Jersey - 25 miles”. We pull into the rest stop, get some gas, relieve ourselves, grab a snack, get back on the road. Go maybe two or three more miles, and there’s another sign saying “New Jersey - 5 miles”. Like, wtf? If there a space warp at that rest stop or something?
At first I thought we were finally going to learn the fate of that Russian.
My gf and I thought we saw a disappearance in the mid-90s as well. This was next to an area with rented horse stables and the like.
We saw a girl walk into a fairly small grove of trees, didn’t think much of it, but it was noteworthy because we’d never seen anyone wander in there. It was on the edge of the property and there wasn’t much else around the trees.
After a bit we went to check on her, nothing. Nobody we could find among or on the other side of the trees. She probably had kept going out the other side or emerged when we weren’t paying attention, but at the time we were convinced she had vanished.
This is like 30 years ago, before electric cars were really a thing. Some friends and I were hanging out in the Pine Barrens one night. It was an area we knew pretty well, and we’d walked down this long sandy road with no turnoffs to get to where we happened to be hanging out.
Suddenly, all of nature around us went silent - and I mean all of it. Sound carries at night, especially with the lakes to echo off of. We looked up the road we were walking back along, and there was a pair of headlights coming our way. We could tell they were headlights because they were lower than a person would carry a flashlight, they were moving in that peculiar synchronization that headlights have, and they’d do several quick bounces when they hit a rut in the road.
So anyway, we’re in this road in the ass-end of the Barrens, everything’s turned absolutely deadly silent, and there’s this car coming down the road toward us. And the three of us suddenly realize that it’s absolutely silent. Not only is nature silent, but the car isn’t making any noise either.
We watch the headlights of this car headed down the road toward us - it’s a couple hundred yards away now, the Pine Barrens are still dead silent, and the car isn’t making any noise either.
My nerve broke first. I bolted off the road and partially vaulted over a couple shrubs, my friends close behind me. We turned around, and the car was still coming toward us - and then suddenly the headlights went out. We waited, but nothing happened - no car headlights, no interior lights, no car doors opening, no voices - nothing. We waited, and still nothing.
We dithered and talked over what to do and we eventually grabbed a couple branches and headed back up the road. We reached the area where the headlights turned off - and there was no car. We turned our flashlight on the (very) sandy road, and we could see our tracks heading down, but there weren’t any recent car tracks. We checked the road and the verge all the way back to our car, and - nothing. The forest went dead silent, there were headlights, the car didn’t make a sound, and then it just … disappeared. We went back the next day, and there still was no sign of anyone on that road that night except us.
.
There’s also a rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike heading into New Jersey. Like two miles before the rest stop, there’s a sign saying something like “New Jersey - 25 miles”. We pull into the rest stop, get some gas, relieve ourselves, grab a snack, get back on the road. Go maybe two or three more miles, and there’s another sign saying “New Jersey - 5 miles”. Like, wtf? If there a space warp at that rest stop or something?
At first I thought we were finally going to learn the fate of that Russian.
My gf and I thought we saw a disappearance in the mid-90s as well. This was next to an area with rented horse stables and the like.
We saw a girl walk into a fairly small grove of trees, didn’t think much of it, but it was noteworthy because we’d never seen anyone wander in there. It was on the edge of the property and there wasn’t much else around the trees.
After a bit we went to check on her, nothing. Nobody we could find among or on the other side of the trees. She probably had kept going out the other side or emerged when we weren’t paying attention, but at the time we were convinced she had vanished.