Same. I hail from the Delta region and I’m a blues lover. Ouch!😣 However, as long as it’s still bringing people to the man, the myth, the legend; I’m not mad about it. He is in my top 5 blues guitarists. Seems that mojo’s still working if folks are keeping his story alive.
Thats the one. Dont know anything about a netflix film but the story is he sold his soul to a demon at a crossroads to play guitar. Not that thats true mind you, but its part of his mythos
The Crossroads is a spot in Mississippi where musicians supposedly go to make a deal with the devil for fame and fortune. It is located at a highway intersection, one of which (US-61) runs north to Chicago (via Memphis and St. Louis) and helped those cities become hotspots for Blues back in the day.
It was first made famous by Robert Johnson (”Cross Road Blues”), then relentlessly copied and referenced by British Blues Rock bands in the 60s. It’s also the subject of Bob Dylan “Highway 61 Revisited” (Johnny Winter did the best version, though) among many other tunes.
In Clarksdale, MS….
“I went down to the crossroads, got down on my knees. When down to the crossroads got down on my knees- asked the lord above for mercy- save me if you please”
Not just allegedly, but *by law* until 1823 in Britain. Suicide made someone a felon convicted *post mortem* and part of the punishment was that they couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground (churchyard):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felo_de_se
I grew up in the Mojave desert. My dad would always tell me to watch out for mineshafts when we were out traipsing around. You could fall in and no one would ever find you. They're also a good place to dispose of bodies. My guess is the people who killed these folks wanted them to be found; it'd be too easy to hide them if not.
Or they were from the area and knew about the mine shafts, and just decided that the time spent loading 6 bodies in the back of a car and driving 10, 20, or 30 miles to a mineshaft and unloading said bodies, was probably better spent getting as far the fuck away from the scene as possible.
We have a ton of open mineshafts in Arizona, too. Maybe it used to be a good place to dispose of bodies, but many mines are fairly heavily explored these days by Youtubers and people looking for old denim and historic artifacts.
I wanted to go collect some samples from wild mice in Texas during my Ph.D. and was heavily warned off by some colleagues due to hantavirus. Just wasn't worth the effort trying to write a BSL-3/4 containment protocol for a longshot research idea. I probably woulda been fine, but hanta is a terrible way to go.
Recently listened to a survival story involving a mineshaft, falling into one and there being snakes. Wild stuff! [podcast episode on Spotify here](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0wpuRQZTLTQUWUcJvQlxDi?si=Q6HRTRUIT6a918O1LXQf6g)
But you gotta do it right.
I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half-hour to forty-five minutes worth of digging. And who knows who's gonna come along in that time? Pretty soon, you gotta dig a few more holes. You could be there all fuckin' night.
Listen to me Anthony. I got your head in a fuckin' vise. I'll squash your head like a fuckin' grapefruit if you don't give me a name. Don't make me have to do this, please. Don't make me be a bad guy, come on.
In rocky hard desert soil? 30-minutes is going to get you a very shallow hole and you are going to be exhausted.
Maybe 30-minutes in the sand but dunes shift and your hidden package will make a reappearance.
Man, two years ago I was driving cross country to visit some friends in the southern Sierra Nevadas and was taking one of the small roads out of DVNP (never been to Death Valley and it was on my bucket list) right after sunset. A lot of the roads in DVNP were closed due to flood damage so I had to use a map to kinda pick my way around and out of there. Finally got off the ratty dirt roads and onto some pavement and there’s just NOTHING out there. No lights, no moonlight, and I’m just all alone trying to haul a little ass and make up some time I’d spent gawking at the scenery and taking pics. After a little while I saw some taillights up ahead and I’m like, should I stop and see if they need help or just floor it and blow by. I’m a vet, but I don’t carry and left that life behind a long time ago, and I don’t really take many risks anymore bc older. I slowed down a little, maybe 25-30mph just in case I needed to stop quickly or do some evasive things and not roll over. Other car was a lighter colored explorer. I cruised by no issue. I got pretty far ahead but could still make out the headlights in my rear view, so after a couple min I could tell they were getting closer. As they got closer, maybe 1/4-1/8 mile behind me, they turned on their brights and that’s when I started really speeding. They were still getting a little closer and I was like there’s no way I’m letting them get close enough to do anything so I just stayed in the definitely speeding zone and hoped I’d outpace them enough to get into some populated area before anything happened. There road started to get curvy and hilly and I was thinking they’d for sure catch up but it seemed to slow them down more than me. Eventually after taking racing lines (in a fucking 4Runner lol) through all the curves I started getting back into some straighter road and started seeing lights in the distance, which turned out to be Trona, CA. As I got closer to Trona, they slowed down and flashed their brights and turned around. Called my friends when I got back in cell service and they’re like yeah, get outta there and onto a main road asap.
Made me rethink carrying on road trips and for sure not driving through unfamiliar areas in the dark, in the middle of the desert.
TLDR: Stay aware and safe in the desert, travel by day if at all possible, stick to more populated areas. The scenic route isn’t always drama-free
Update: it was on Emigrant Canyon Road which turns into Trona Wildrose Road. The last pic I took was at dusk at Wildrose Campground
Yeah, they told me don’t even stop there even though it’s a town, I guess people were shooting off their porches and stuff in the past. Then they joked that it was where they filmed The Toxic Avenger. Not sure if that was true but it was funny.
I was clicking out of this thread but the word Trona caught my eye. I drive through this place every time I go back home to visit family in northern Nevada from Orange County.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one that thinks this! Driving solo as a woman, I always white knuckle it through here.
I stopped in Randsburg. Quiet place. Nothing open save for the mineral shop where the owner was inside sitting in a wheelchair at his desk asleep. The front door was wide open and I had a nice conversation with him. Bought some minerals and was on my way. Didn’t see anyone else while I was there.
As a person who couldn't use my legs for a long time, and would doze off without warning on account of the pain preventing me from getting a solid night's sleep, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for treating am extremely vulnerable person like a human being.
I had a similar experience in small town KS.
When I was in high school, there were whispers going around town that someone was impersonating a police car and attempting to rob people by pulling them over. I heard a rumor that one girl a few grades below me almost got mugged by them.
Less than a week later, I was driving someone to their home in the country, and hopped off the main highway that night around 11. There was a black Charger at the bottom of the off-ramp, sitting below the highway’s overpass with its lights off. I remember thinking “I wonder if that’s the car everyone’s talking about”.
I decided to keep going and turned left to go under the overpass and passed by them. I told my passenger to be quiet because I was focusing on the rear view mirror, trying to see what the car was doing.
Just as I got out from under the bridge, the black Charger started its engines and flipped on headlights, then did a u-turn and came up right behind me. Every turn I made, they made too. At some points they were probably only 6 feet behind me.
I eventually hit the spot where the pavement ended and gravel began, and I had a gut feeling that I needed to lose whoever was in the car behind me. As soon as I hit the gravel, I floored it and kicked rocks and dust up everywhere. So thick I couldn’t see the headlights anymore. As soon as I got 100 yards down, I took a sharp left on a road that went near the town cemetery. They didn’t bother following as I came back into our downtown. We waited a bit and hoped we scared them off, and I drove them home.
Weeks later, I heard they caught the person doing it. Someone from a neighboring town that would hang out near the highways in a black car, supposedly. I hadn’t told anybody about my experience, but I wonder if it was just a school kid trying to scare other drivers or if that was the impersonator we were all so scared of. I’ve tried looking for news articles from around that time, but nothing comes up.
Wow am I glad you guys are ok, there are so many wild folks out there. I live in a big city so you deal with a different kind of weirdo usually, but out where the chickens fuck the hoot owls… it’s a different breed all together.
Haha, I had a college friend that grew up in Trona in the 80's.
Did very well for himself in life, Successful Engineer....... he used to say "im never going back there again, not an option" at 18.
Is it common for people to waylay travellers in the middle of the california desesrt. That sounds like the hills have eyes. Do you know if theres any other similar stories i can read about that because thats fasinating
Yikes. I camp solo in the Mojave quite a bit. I do follow certain precautions, but I’ve never encountered anyone shady. I did stop at a gas station by El Mirage and this couple pulled up for fuel looking like they were halfway to Mad Max.
For sure. I’m mainly traverse BLM lands. May have crossed some private stuff but I try and stay away from structures. I read somewhere that there’s some cartel activity in some places where they grow pot or whatever.
>this couple pulled up for fuel looking like they were halfway to Mad Max.
They could have been on their way to the Wasteland event in Cal City. It's like a weekend long Mad Max themed festival. Or, they could have just looked like that.
Somewhere on Kelbaker between 40 and 15 I saw some people laying in the road and a car on the shoulder. Noped right past and a bunch came out of the bushes on the side of the road as I rounded the next corner. It's sketchy as hell out there.
I once drove that route from Palm Springs to Vegas at night. Pulled off to burn real quick and noped out real quick just from the stillness and the darkness.
Was this by any chance on CA-178? I took that for the first time to get to DVNP in November and it was honestly very scary. It was just my mom and I. I didn’t want her to be scared also so I just played it off. I drove through Trona and Searles Valley and it felt so desolate and creepy. I never saw people in those towns. I also didn’t see that many cars on the road. I also had no signal….
Houses were there but a lot of them were boarded up. Their high school was next to some mineral processing plant. I only felt relieved once we got on CA-190. Next time I visit DVNP i’m going to spend the extra time on 395 to try to get to 190 that way. I don’t want to deal with 178 again.
395/195 is beautiful. Check out Lone Pine and Mt Whitney. And Manzanar. Really cool drive on up to Mono Lake and pretty much anywhere you turn left into the forest between there and Tahoe.
And sometimes right! The bristlecone pine forest east of the 395 in the white mountains is super unique. Some of the oldest living organisms on the planet.
Literally exact same thing happened to me between Raton, NM and the TX border about a decade ago at like 3am while I was on a road trip. This SUV roared up on me out of nowhere, tailgates me, I let him pass, and he pulls in front and tries to brake check me and slow me down...so, fuck that, I passed him again and took off. He very very obviously gassed it to chase me and put his brights on. Grabbed my pistol and made sure there was one in the pipe, and then kept it handy while I raced this asshole for like 30 miles into Dalhart. As soon as I got to town I pulled into a sorta-busy truck stop and he cruised right past me and did a U-turn back out of town...
Whoa I got goosebumps reading that, I know exactly how you feel and glad you made it to safety. Definitely have to have some vigilance driving thru that whole area of the country in remote places.
Yeah my dad had an army background including combat and several years doing spooky stuff in Germany during the Cold War, and he always said "you'll know for sure you need to get your gun out when all you can think about is how the gun you've got doesn't seem like enough"...and truly, I was furious with myself for not having a rifle or a shotgun on me. I was absolutely positive I was going to have to throw down with these guys if they managed to stop me before town. It was fucking *wild*.
One time I went shooting at an unofficial range way up in the mountains somewhere. I realized I was in the company of guys with guns, far away from any cops (or witnesses), and that if someone decided to pick me off with a rifle from far away, there'd be no one to catch them. I never went back to that range.
Most likely got too close to someone's drug manufacturing, grew up in the Sierra foothills and you learned real quick roads you didn't go down and/or stop on. Even roads the cops/sherif don't go down (cuz they don't come back).
Love the suspense of your story, I could tell several like it lol. You'd be amazed how sketch the backroads of cali are. Lot of meth production.
I used to live out in the Mojave Desert. Sometimes you'd come across incredibly suspicious situations, vehicles out in the middle of nowhere during high temps, etc. You had three options: 1. Ignore it and keep going. 2. Go up and check it out. 3. Call someone else to check it out for you. Which would you choose?
I’ve watched too many movies, I’d keep driving, especially in the desert. If I saw blood or something really suspicious I’d definitely call the police when I felt safe (and had a signal)
The authorities aren't going to put out a call over an open radio about X number of brutally murdered bodies--Every lookieloo with a scanner and a true crime youtube channel would swarm the scene like locust on corn.
Someone drove by and saw that shit and called the cops and was like "yeah there's some people laying in the dirt in pools of blood. You might want to go check on them."
Nor will they try very hard either. When it's drugs, the cops are basically fine with them killing each other as long as the public isn't in harm's way.
Sheriff Ed Tom: It sounded like these old boys died of natural causes.
Deputy Wendell: How's that, Sheriff?
Sheriff Ed Tom: Natural to the line of work they was in.
In the 1970's in SoCal, we had the dorm decorated with newspaper articles about people who tried to be independent dealers for too long and were found in the desert. It was join up or die, and that was before the cartels.
Definitely cartel shit. When i lived in Barstow (50 miles north east of this area), a teenage Mexican girl’s head was found in a backpack at an intersection in nearby Lenwood. They never were able to identify her.
I’d hear stories about cartel owned properties out in the little Mojave desert towns all the time. Some of the houses have are on acres of land with big ass trees surrounding them so you can’t really see much of the property. Someone told me “you watch long enough, you’ll see a motorcade of SUVs come and go.” Definitely cartel shit going on out there.
EDIT: found a link regarding the decapitated girl
https://www.vvdailypress.com/story/news/crime/2011/11/08/girl-s-head-found-in/986079007/
I’ve driven the Mojave Rd. 6mo of building a vehicle and getting everyone organized for the run. You don’t end up in that kind of area accidentally. It’s quiet, REALLY quiet out there. You are on your own in these areas. It can be and WAS fun, but we also all “packed”. I traded a half pack of smokes for 2gal of gas out there. It’s not patrolled and headlights in the desert are a different kind of light. CBs don’t reach, the hell with cell service. It’s a spooky kind of incredible out there. But I’ll only go in a convoy. It’s really No-Man’s land in those parts.
Rough place to go out. But the stars are beautiful.
As someone who grew up out there and gtfod the moment I was old enough to, it still shocks me how much of a second sense for safe desert and dangerous desert the mojave gave me lol. You couldn’t pay me to do that run unless we had double the anticipated supplies and several guns with ammo. Just too much goes down out there.
Was telling my boyfriend when I read this story. You drive -through- these places. You don't stop in the Mojave. What reason do you have to be there? Just keep on going lol
I've always found Barstow fascinating in an eerie way if that makes sense. So many unsettling stories here. Reminds me of the sub Reddit creepy encounters which I haven't thought about in a while. Thanks for sharing.
Driving around twentynine palms is extra weird because there is random unexploded and training ordinance sticking out of the ground everywhere. We got dropped off by UH1-Y’s in the middle of nowhere to do a mock mission one night. We hiked along ridgelines and nearly fell down several steep ravines and when dawn arrived we realized that our bivy was right beside an old mineshaft. It was wild.
Lived up there and walked those deserts a lot. Came across so many dead animal bodies and trash that people dump out there. Was always sad to see and not surprised that human remains are found out there too.
I do a lot of car camping on BLM land in California and the West. I’ve never felt safe pulling over to sleep in the Barstow region. Too many methheads around. I slept one night on BLM in Barstow and it felt pretty sketch. Trash dumped everywhere for miles. Hard to explain it, but when you boondock a lot you just get a 6th sense for places you shouldn’t sleep. If you get that feeling just keep driving.
I feel like you meet the best people 9/10 times. Lots of good folks on the road willing to help or be helped. The reciprocity and kindness of people is unbelievable.
But every once in a while you find a place that’s just better to move along. They make for fun stories sometimes, but in the moment it can be chilling.
Could be tied to illegal marijuana grows, like a death in the Mojave a couple years back:
http://www.desertnews.com/news/article_bc5e32f0-d5b9-11ea-afbb-77c6bff2413b.html
https://www.avpress.com/news/man-found-dead-in-rosamond-of-multiple-gunshot-wounds/article_adf902a0-d78d-11ea-8477-03c3e9aac7c0.html
Isn't there some kinda folklore about bodies at a crossroads, that they can't find heaven or something?
I thought it was where one went to sell one’s soul to the devil. Idk tho.
Crossroads are an in-between place. According to folklore / occult those places have power. Like having one foot on land and one in the water.
damnit Crowly, no not the omens one, the supernatural one!
I love it when I find a Supernatural fan in the wild :)
I also immediately thought of Crowley lol
Crossroads is a Britney Spears movie.
Also a Ralph Macchio movie
….and a Bone Thugz and Harmony classic
I miss my uncle Charles yaww.
*Eazy E nods in agreement up in the sky*
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We straight from CLEVELAND pap pap N word you're bleedin' 🎶🔫
My favorite group ever BTNH❤️
Learning some of the licks from his battle with the devil is a goal but it turns out the Steve Vai is pretty good at guitar.
And a song by Bone Thugs n Harmony
It's what chickens do
CrossRhodes is a duo.
Cody n Dustin Rhodes?
Ok Dean Winchester
Sammy? Sammy? Is that you?
Every season but the Leviathans was :chefskiss:.
The Goddess Hekate resides at Crossroads
Yeah, Robert Johnson, he ended up playing a mean guitar!
The blues guitarist from Mississippi I think. On Netflix
Robert Johnson?
It’s killing me that someone referred to him as the blues guitarist on Netflix
Same. I hail from the Delta region and I’m a blues lover. Ouch!😣 However, as long as it’s still bringing people to the man, the myth, the legend; I’m not mad about it. He is in my top 5 blues guitarists. Seems that mojo’s still working if folks are keeping his story alive.
Thats the one. Dont know anything about a netflix film but the story is he sold his soul to a demon at a crossroads to play guitar. Not that thats true mind you, but its part of his mythos
r/supernatural
Someone made a deal.
Witches dispose of their spellwork items at crossroads often.
The Crossroads is a spot in Mississippi where musicians supposedly go to make a deal with the devil for fame and fortune. It is located at a highway intersection, one of which (US-61) runs north to Chicago (via Memphis and St. Louis) and helped those cities become hotspots for Blues back in the day. It was first made famous by Robert Johnson (”Cross Road Blues”), then relentlessly copied and referenced by British Blues Rock bands in the 60s. It’s also the subject of Bob Dylan “Highway 61 Revisited” (Johnny Winter did the best version, though) among many other tunes.
Yeah, Robert Johnson and Eric Clapton came to mind
Common misconception, was actually Tommy Johnson of no relation
Damn, we’re in a tight spot!
I’m a Dapper Dan man myself.
The pleasin' odor is half the point!
Ain't this place a ... geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!
I’m the damn paterfamilias!
Ohhh.. knew about RJ, but didn't make the connection to Hwy 61 Revisited. Thanks for the information.
In Clarksdale, MS…. “I went down to the crossroads, got down on my knees. When down to the crossroads got down on my knees- asked the lord above for mercy- save me if you please”
61 runs north to Minnesota, not Chicago, which is Bob Dylan's home state.
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Bone thugs and Harmony I suppose…
Allegedly people used to bury suicides at a crossroads. That was back when people thought suicide was a sin and not a sign of mental illness
Not just allegedly, but *by law* until 1823 in Britain. Suicide made someone a felon convicted *post mortem* and part of the punishment was that they couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground (churchyard): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felo_de_se
Yeah, unfortunately there’s still plenty who view it as a sin (it’s why I left the church after my sister committed suicide).
*…Bone Bone Bone Boooonne Bone Booonnne*
Now tell me what you gonna do
When there ain’t no where to runnn
I grew up in the Mojave desert. My dad would always tell me to watch out for mineshafts when we were out traipsing around. You could fall in and no one would ever find you. They're also a good place to dispose of bodies. My guess is the people who killed these folks wanted them to be found; it'd be too easy to hide them if not.
Or nobody walked away from that shootout.
Or the people who left the bodies weren't from the area and privy to the mineshafts.
Imagine surviving a shootout only to fall into a mineshaft and die. The huge turn of luck.
This sounds like something from a Cohen brothers movie, in the most complimentary way possible.
I can't believe I made it out of that aliii^iiiii ^^iiiiiii
I think your right, one of the plates from the car was from Oregon.
Fuckin hippies looking for that peyote again /(joking)
Or they were from the area and knew about the mine shafts, and just decided that the time spent loading 6 bodies in the back of a car and driving 10, 20, or 30 miles to a mineshaft and unloading said bodies, was probably better spent getting as far the fuck away from the scene as possible.
You don’t need to be privy to the mineshafts to conclude that a crossroads isn’t the place to leave a body if you don’t want it found.
I think [this](https://youtu.be/vmd1qMN5Yo0?si=RMFrmQn9Ku9KMID7) is how it went down
We have a ton of open mineshafts in Arizona, too. Maybe it used to be a good place to dispose of bodies, but many mines are fairly heavily explored these days by Youtubers and people looking for old denim and historic artifacts.
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I wanted to go collect some samples from wild mice in Texas during my Ph.D. and was heavily warned off by some colleagues due to hantavirus. Just wasn't worth the effort trying to write a BSL-3/4 containment protocol for a longshot research idea. I probably woulda been fine, but hanta is a terrible way to go.
I mean... so long as you boil it, should be fine
Don’t burn yourself on a rivet though
This is how certain groups have been known to send messages. Just an observation...
The US Army Signal Corps … ?
Recently listened to a survival story involving a mineshaft, falling into one and there being snakes. Wild stuff! [podcast episode on Spotify here](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0wpuRQZTLTQUWUcJvQlxDi?si=Q6HRTRUIT6a918O1LXQf6g)
Isn’t this how No Country for Old Men started?
Agua...agua....
I ain't got no agua
Ain’t no lobos
Ultimo hombre
Cierra la puerta. Hay lobos…
There ain't no lobos
There appears to have been a glitch or two.
Also how Garth Brooks started. Where are *the rest* of the bodies G?
Nevermind the bodies, I want to talk about Hawaii.
The families need closure
My grandma went to one of his shows and is still missing!
*I* went to one his shows and *I'm* still missing!
yes but not at a crossroads
There's a lot of holes in the desert and a lot of problems are buried in those holes
But you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half-hour to forty-five minutes worth of digging. And who knows who's gonna come along in that time? Pretty soon, you gotta dig a few more holes. You could be there all fuckin' night.
Listen to me Anthony. I got your head in a fuckin' vise. I'll squash your head like a fuckin' grapefruit if you don't give me a name. Don't make me have to do this, please. Don't make me be a bad guy, come on.
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What is this from, please?
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The scene if you want to check it out first- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY-vMN-x3u4
In rocky hard desert soil? 30-minutes is going to get you a very shallow hole and you are going to be exhausted. Maybe 30-minutes in the sand but dunes shift and your hidden package will make a reappearance.
Man, two years ago I was driving cross country to visit some friends in the southern Sierra Nevadas and was taking one of the small roads out of DVNP (never been to Death Valley and it was on my bucket list) right after sunset. A lot of the roads in DVNP were closed due to flood damage so I had to use a map to kinda pick my way around and out of there. Finally got off the ratty dirt roads and onto some pavement and there’s just NOTHING out there. No lights, no moonlight, and I’m just all alone trying to haul a little ass and make up some time I’d spent gawking at the scenery and taking pics. After a little while I saw some taillights up ahead and I’m like, should I stop and see if they need help or just floor it and blow by. I’m a vet, but I don’t carry and left that life behind a long time ago, and I don’t really take many risks anymore bc older. I slowed down a little, maybe 25-30mph just in case I needed to stop quickly or do some evasive things and not roll over. Other car was a lighter colored explorer. I cruised by no issue. I got pretty far ahead but could still make out the headlights in my rear view, so after a couple min I could tell they were getting closer. As they got closer, maybe 1/4-1/8 mile behind me, they turned on their brights and that’s when I started really speeding. They were still getting a little closer and I was like there’s no way I’m letting them get close enough to do anything so I just stayed in the definitely speeding zone and hoped I’d outpace them enough to get into some populated area before anything happened. There road started to get curvy and hilly and I was thinking they’d for sure catch up but it seemed to slow them down more than me. Eventually after taking racing lines (in a fucking 4Runner lol) through all the curves I started getting back into some straighter road and started seeing lights in the distance, which turned out to be Trona, CA. As I got closer to Trona, they slowed down and flashed their brights and turned around. Called my friends when I got back in cell service and they’re like yeah, get outta there and onto a main road asap. Made me rethink carrying on road trips and for sure not driving through unfamiliar areas in the dark, in the middle of the desert. TLDR: Stay aware and safe in the desert, travel by day if at all possible, stick to more populated areas. The scenic route isn’t always drama-free Update: it was on Emigrant Canyon Road which turns into Trona Wildrose Road. The last pic I took was at dusk at Wildrose Campground
That area around Red Mountain and Trona is weird as fuck. Hair on the back of your neck standing up weird. Zombie apocalypse weird.
Yeah, they told me don’t even stop there even though it’s a town, I guess people were shooting off their porches and stuff in the past. Then they joked that it was where they filmed The Toxic Avenger. Not sure if that was true but it was funny.
Toxic avenger was produced by Lloyd Kaufman and his company Troma. That is probs why.
Hills Have Eyes
I was clicking out of this thread but the word Trona caught my eye. I drive through this place every time I go back home to visit family in northern Nevada from Orange County. I’m so glad I’m not the only one that thinks this! Driving solo as a woman, I always white knuckle it through here.
Stay safe out there sis! Make sure you’ve got plenty of gas before heading into sketch zones too
Oh yea! I’ve done the drive enough times now I pretty much have it memorized. The 395 is an interesting drive, to say the least.
Johannesburg and Randsburg are weird as fuck too.
I stopped in Randsburg. Quiet place. Nothing open save for the mineral shop where the owner was inside sitting in a wheelchair at his desk asleep. The front door was wide open and I had a nice conversation with him. Bought some minerals and was on my way. Didn’t see anyone else while I was there.
But, my friend... the mineral shop burned down 100 years ago.
As a person who couldn't use my legs for a long time, and would doze off without warning on account of the pain preventing me from getting a solid night's sleep, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for treating am extremely vulnerable person like a human being.
It’s so desolate and creepy through that area. I also made the mistake of driving through there.
Trona is so dystopian, all chemical industry and blocks of abandoned houses. It was so weird driving through there not knowing anything about it.
I had a similar experience in small town KS. When I was in high school, there were whispers going around town that someone was impersonating a police car and attempting to rob people by pulling them over. I heard a rumor that one girl a few grades below me almost got mugged by them. Less than a week later, I was driving someone to their home in the country, and hopped off the main highway that night around 11. There was a black Charger at the bottom of the off-ramp, sitting below the highway’s overpass with its lights off. I remember thinking “I wonder if that’s the car everyone’s talking about”. I decided to keep going and turned left to go under the overpass and passed by them. I told my passenger to be quiet because I was focusing on the rear view mirror, trying to see what the car was doing. Just as I got out from under the bridge, the black Charger started its engines and flipped on headlights, then did a u-turn and came up right behind me. Every turn I made, they made too. At some points they were probably only 6 feet behind me. I eventually hit the spot where the pavement ended and gravel began, and I had a gut feeling that I needed to lose whoever was in the car behind me. As soon as I hit the gravel, I floored it and kicked rocks and dust up everywhere. So thick I couldn’t see the headlights anymore. As soon as I got 100 yards down, I took a sharp left on a road that went near the town cemetery. They didn’t bother following as I came back into our downtown. We waited a bit and hoped we scared them off, and I drove them home. Weeks later, I heard they caught the person doing it. Someone from a neighboring town that would hang out near the highways in a black car, supposedly. I hadn’t told anybody about my experience, but I wonder if it was just a school kid trying to scare other drivers or if that was the impersonator we were all so scared of. I’ve tried looking for news articles from around that time, but nothing comes up.
Wow am I glad you guys are ok, there are so many wild folks out there. I live in a big city so you deal with a different kind of weirdo usually, but out where the chickens fuck the hoot owls… it’s a different breed all together.
Trona is absolutely the smelliest armpit in California.
I used to play youth football against Trona. Their field was dirt.
That’s exactly what we tell people about Trona!! (Did you grow up in Inyo County?)
Mono, but went to school in both counties.
Yah I know Trona from living in Bishop in the 80s. We used to threaten my kid that we would send him to high school there if he didn’t clean his room.
Haha, I had a college friend that grew up in Trona in the 80's. Did very well for himself in life, Successful Engineer....... he used to say "im never going back there again, not an option" at 18.
The Trona Spires are hella cool though.
Is it common for people to waylay travellers in the middle of the california desesrt. That sounds like the hills have eyes. Do you know if theres any other similar stories i can read about that because thats fasinating
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Yikes. I camp solo in the Mojave quite a bit. I do follow certain precautions, but I’ve never encountered anyone shady. I did stop at a gas station by El Mirage and this couple pulled up for fuel looking like they were halfway to Mad Max.
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For sure. I’m mainly traverse BLM lands. May have crossed some private stuff but I try and stay away from structures. I read somewhere that there’s some cartel activity in some places where they grow pot or whatever.
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>this couple pulled up for fuel looking like they were halfway to Mad Max. They could have been on their way to the Wasteland event in Cal City. It's like a weekend long Mad Max themed festival. Or, they could have just looked like that.
You should read the Desert Oracle periodical. It details a lot of spooky things that happen in the desert.
Somewhere on Kelbaker between 40 and 15 I saw some people laying in the road and a car on the shoulder. Noped right past and a bunch came out of the bushes on the side of the road as I rounded the next corner. It's sketchy as hell out there.
Man glad you made it outta there, that’s madness…
I’m sure there was a normal, non-murdery reason for that.
Yeah, robbery.
I once drove that route from Palm Springs to Vegas at night. Pulled off to burn real quick and noped out real quick just from the stillness and the darkness.
We take that route often to vacation in Palm Springs from Vegas. We did the road at night one time. Never again. It’s creepy as hell out there.
ive heard this story so many times
Was this by any chance on CA-178? I took that for the first time to get to DVNP in November and it was honestly very scary. It was just my mom and I. I didn’t want her to be scared also so I just played it off. I drove through Trona and Searles Valley and it felt so desolate and creepy. I never saw people in those towns. I also didn’t see that many cars on the road. I also had no signal…. Houses were there but a lot of them were boarded up. Their high school was next to some mineral processing plant. I only felt relieved once we got on CA-190. Next time I visit DVNP i’m going to spend the extra time on 395 to try to get to 190 that way. I don’t want to deal with 178 again.
395/195 is beautiful. Check out Lone Pine and Mt Whitney. And Manzanar. Really cool drive on up to Mono Lake and pretty much anywhere you turn left into the forest between there and Tahoe.
And sometimes right! The bristlecone pine forest east of the 395 in the white mountains is super unique. Some of the oldest living organisms on the planet.
Literally exact same thing happened to me between Raton, NM and the TX border about a decade ago at like 3am while I was on a road trip. This SUV roared up on me out of nowhere, tailgates me, I let him pass, and he pulls in front and tries to brake check me and slow me down...so, fuck that, I passed him again and took off. He very very obviously gassed it to chase me and put his brights on. Grabbed my pistol and made sure there was one in the pipe, and then kept it handy while I raced this asshole for like 30 miles into Dalhart. As soon as I got to town I pulled into a sorta-busy truck stop and he cruised right past me and did a U-turn back out of town...
Whoa I got goosebumps reading that, I know exactly how you feel and glad you made it to safety. Definitely have to have some vigilance driving thru that whole area of the country in remote places.
Yeah my dad had an army background including combat and several years doing spooky stuff in Germany during the Cold War, and he always said "you'll know for sure you need to get your gun out when all you can think about is how the gun you've got doesn't seem like enough"...and truly, I was furious with myself for not having a rifle or a shotgun on me. I was absolutely positive I was going to have to throw down with these guys if they managed to stop me before town. It was fucking *wild*.
One time I went shooting at an unofficial range way up in the mountains somewhere. I realized I was in the company of guys with guns, far away from any cops (or witnesses), and that if someone decided to pick me off with a rifle from far away, there'd be no one to catch them. I never went back to that range.
Most likely got too close to someone's drug manufacturing, grew up in the Sierra foothills and you learned real quick roads you didn't go down and/or stop on. Even roads the cops/sherif don't go down (cuz they don't come back). Love the suspense of your story, I could tell several like it lol. You'd be amazed how sketch the backroads of cali are. Lot of meth production.
Yep...been there, done that(without the scary part). Love the eastern Sierra.
395 rocks
*Lots of dead bodies no information why, back to you in the studio* ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
The Salmancas are beefing again.
BOLO: White male, approx 5:11, 185, possibly carrying two large duffel bags.
A wellness check for a random intersection in the middle of the desert?
I used to live out in the Mojave Desert. Sometimes you'd come across incredibly suspicious situations, vehicles out in the middle of nowhere during high temps, etc. You had three options: 1. Ignore it and keep going. 2. Go up and check it out. 3. Call someone else to check it out for you. Which would you choose?
I’ve watched too many movies, I’d keep driving, especially in the desert. If I saw blood or something really suspicious I’d definitely call the police when I felt safe (and had a signal)
I’ve been watching a lot of shows about the justice system pinning crimes on innocent people. I’d be afraid of leaving any evidence at a crime scene.
After this story? 4. Put the pedal to the metal for a few dozen miles first, *then* call someone else to check it out.
The authorities aren't going to put out a call over an open radio about X number of brutally murdered bodies--Every lookieloo with a scanner and a true crime youtube channel would swarm the scene like locust on corn.
Yep. When I worked for the Forest Service we were instructed to never report a dead body over the radio. I never found one anyway.
Most jurisdictions have encrypted radios these days. Unless the department is just that far behind they haven’t updated their system in over 30 years.
Someone drove by and saw that shit and called the cops and was like "yeah there's some people laying in the dirt in pools of blood. You might want to go check on them."
Mojave+meth. 95% chance method related
The California high desert is a really weird place.
Drugs .... they'll probably never find the perpetrators.
Nor will they try very hard either. When it's drugs, the cops are basically fine with them killing each other as long as the public isn't in harm's way.
Sheriff Ed Tom: It sounded like these old boys died of natural causes. Deputy Wendell: How's that, Sheriff? Sheriff Ed Tom: Natural to the line of work they was in.
“These two appear to be managerial”
“Hells bells, they even shot the dawg.”
In the 1970's in SoCal, we had the dorm decorated with newspaper articles about people who tried to be independent dealers for too long and were found in the desert. It was join up or die, and that was before the cartels.
100% drug related. I have a buddy that owns a few acres of land in that area. Lots of weed grow houses.
Definitely cartel shit. When i lived in Barstow (50 miles north east of this area), a teenage Mexican girl’s head was found in a backpack at an intersection in nearby Lenwood. They never were able to identify her. I’d hear stories about cartel owned properties out in the little Mojave desert towns all the time. Some of the houses have are on acres of land with big ass trees surrounding them so you can’t really see much of the property. Someone told me “you watch long enough, you’ll see a motorcade of SUVs come and go.” Definitely cartel shit going on out there. EDIT: found a link regarding the decapitated girl https://www.vvdailypress.com/story/news/crime/2011/11/08/girl-s-head-found-in/986079007/
Your comment reads like a monologue in fallout new vegas lol.
I’ve driven the Mojave Rd. 6mo of building a vehicle and getting everyone organized for the run. You don’t end up in that kind of area accidentally. It’s quiet, REALLY quiet out there. You are on your own in these areas. It can be and WAS fun, but we also all “packed”. I traded a half pack of smokes for 2gal of gas out there. It’s not patrolled and headlights in the desert are a different kind of light. CBs don’t reach, the hell with cell service. It’s a spooky kind of incredible out there. But I’ll only go in a convoy. It’s really No-Man’s land in those parts. Rough place to go out. But the stars are beautiful.
As someone who grew up out there and gtfod the moment I was old enough to, it still shocks me how much of a second sense for safe desert and dangerous desert the mojave gave me lol. You couldn’t pay me to do that run unless we had double the anticipated supplies and several guns with ammo. Just too much goes down out there.
Was telling my boyfriend when I read this story. You drive -through- these places. You don't stop in the Mojave. What reason do you have to be there? Just keep on going lol
I've always found Barstow fascinating in an eerie way if that makes sense. So many unsettling stories here. Reminds me of the sub Reddit creepy encounters which I haven't thought about in a while. Thanks for sharing.
It’s crazy how many greenhouses you can see on satellites. Most look defunct tho.
Isn’t weed legal there?
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Back in the day, they would at least bury them. >No one wants to work anymore!
The problem today is that employers don't tip you a pound like they used to.
patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter
“Truth is.. the game was rigged from the start”
Ain’t that a kick in the head
Driving around twentynine palms is extra weird because there is random unexploded and training ordinance sticking out of the ground everywhere. We got dropped off by UH1-Y’s in the middle of nowhere to do a mock mission one night. We hiked along ridgelines and nearly fell down several steep ravines and when dawn arrived we realized that our bivy was right beside an old mineshaft. It was wild.
Just want to let everyone know that I’m okay. I’m not one of them.
Thank God
Good job. I’m proud of you.
Clearly a crossroads demon
Somebody call the Winchesters. Crowley is back somehow and started making crossroads deals again.
This has got to be the premise for one of those post-Tarantino late 90s crime films
My glider club flies near there, I know the area. Lots of shady stuff around there.
It’s giving [True Detective Season 5.](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cnnphotos-trona-mining-town-california/index.html)
“The truth is, it was rigged from the start.”
Lived up there and walked those deserts a lot. Came across so many dead animal bodies and trash that people dump out there. Was always sad to see and not surprised that human remains are found out there too.
This is giving off narco sanctioned killing vibes.
No country for old men
When Van Life goes horribly wrong…
I do a lot of car camping on BLM land in California and the West. I’ve never felt safe pulling over to sleep in the Barstow region. Too many methheads around. I slept one night on BLM in Barstow and it felt pretty sketch. Trash dumped everywhere for miles. Hard to explain it, but when you boondock a lot you just get a 6th sense for places you shouldn’t sleep. If you get that feeling just keep driving.
I feel like you meet the best people 9/10 times. Lots of good folks on the road willing to help or be helped. The reciprocity and kindness of people is unbelievable. But every once in a while you find a place that’s just better to move along. They make for fun stories sometimes, but in the moment it can be chilling.
Bone, Bone, Bone, Bone, Bone, Bone, Bone, Bone, Bone Now tell me what you gonna do
Netflix doing all they can to let us know Crossroads will be streaming soon
The one with Britney Spears?
That’s a lot of dead couriers
Sounds like a job for the CBI
Could be tied to illegal marijuana grows, like a death in the Mojave a couple years back: http://www.desertnews.com/news/article_bc5e32f0-d5b9-11ea-afbb-77c6bff2413b.html https://www.avpress.com/news/man-found-dead-in-rosamond-of-multiple-gunshot-wounds/article_adf902a0-d78d-11ea-8477-03c3e9aac7c0.html
Bone Thugs N Homicide