Michigan Truckers Reveal Their Most Frightening ‘Black Dog’ Encounters

There is lore in the trucking community about seeing the Black Dog. It's not a reference to the Led Zeppelin song, rather a warning about the dangers of the open road, particularly at night.

The black dog appears as a trucker is perhaps drifting off to sleep lulled by the late night and numbing repetition of mile-after-mile.

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The sightings are of a dark hound in front of you on the highway.

Some take a black dog sighting as an evil omen. Others say it's a protection. The sighting of the dog is your mind's way of telling you that you're too tired to continue driving and to pull over immediately.

Or a warning of progressively terrible outcomes:

It's a warning sign that your running to hard. Three strikes, and then you're out of the game of life pretty much. Ones a warning two is a near miss three is pretty much the fatal crash. It's a pretty wild legend

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There are Michigan truckers who have shared their own Black Dog moments.

A trucker who clocked a million miles over an 8 year stint tells of a

day before Thanksgiving in 2019 in northern Michigan, I just pulled off the highway and all the lights died out, turning to trees, no houses or mailboxes, no road signs.... just empty black road lit up by the headlights. I remember listening to some music and a song kicked on that I was going to skip, I blinked, and suddenly I was sitting with my family on the couch. I heard them talking and then my mom looking at me and saying "Luke, when did you get here?" Then my girlfriend at the time looking at me, saying "yeah babe when did you show up?"

Clearly a dream.

I sprung my head up to open blackness, seeing the trees get closer, hearing a voice in the back of my head sounding like a lady screaming, seeing the shadows dance some type of ritual-like dance. I hit the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left, seeing the trees line back up and seeing the white line move back to the right. I immediately pulled over and called my cousin and told him I needed him to talk to me for the last 14 miles, which he was upset that I woke up but when I explained to him what happened, I could tell the change in his voice he knew I wasn't messing with him, that I was truly that close to my life ending.

There's something about the solitude, loneliness and late nights that combine to spark creepy stories from truckers.

Rather than a black dog, this is from a lot outside of Detroit. The driver was instructed to

park right against a wall, he was allowed out briefly to use the washroom and get water. Otherwise, he was to back in such a way that his cab doors were stuck between two poles so they couldn't open (windows could though), and that his trailer doors were pressed to the wall.

Their last words before he was trapped in the truck all night was "Keep your curtains closed, ignore any shaking or movement of the truck during the night, ignore any gunshots you may hear. Do not exit the truck unless there is a severe medical emergency, if needs something he is to radio on his CB, otherwise keep the radio off."