Urban Legends

The Gas Station

I was driving across country with my mom and sister. I was 16, my sister 20, my mom in her 50s. It was late, but we were well rested still and alert. We were driving along an interstate and needed gas and they needed to pee, so we stopped at the only rest stop in ~200 miles.

There was a van full of teenagers on some road trip and a small grey compact car, like a Honda Accord or some shit, parked at the pump in front of us. Two men about 17-20 were standing outside the Honda in hoodies, like a statue they stood still. The teenagers were to our left.

When we got there everything felt wrong. There was a deep and unsettling feeling about the place and we'd not felt that way at any other rest stop. We'd been on the road for days and seen many rest stops at night and had never been afraid until then. My mom and sister went inside and I stayed in the car.

I heard the teenagers say they were creeped out and couldn't get the pump to work and they left in a hurry. I was mostly watching the car in front and the two men who had still not moved at all. Not an inch. They weren't talking. They weren't on phones. There was no light anywhere but the dim overhead lights on the gas station awning. They were just standing there, still as stone.

My sister and mom came running back out to the car and when they got in, the two men slowly turned to look at us while not moving or pivoting the rest of their bodies, and I swear to God, we all saw the same thing - they had eyes dark as pitch and empty. Truly empty. Not black, not reflecting any light at all, just a void.

We Booked It. We have not traveled in excess of 100mph before or since, but that day it was warranted. We drove until we were in the next city before we got out of the car again.

And you know the worst fucking thing about it? Not the eyes, not the stillness, not that horrible feeling, not the weirdo in the gas station who kept telling my mom and sister "my mama will like you" over and over while mopping the same spot on the floor with a dry mop and an empty bucket.

It was the fact that we couldn't find the place on any map. We knew exactly which spot on the interstate to look, and we couldn't find it on Google maps or any paper map we had.

We even asked locals about the creepy gas station out on that stretch of road to confused looks, and "are you sure you weren't traveling on [highway] and not [interstate]?" We'd traveled on that interstate since and there was no rest stop.