A Fake Town

Lucas Bates (24) was driving to his parents' house to do some house sitting for the week in April 2006. Since he lived in Oregon and they lived in Wyoming, the drive Bates had to take was extremely long. At one point, his route got clogged by a traffic jam, but thankfully, right at the edge of the lines of stopped cars was a detour. It wasn’t a route he was familiar with, but it was better than being stuck with angry honking cars for an additional couple of hours.

For a while, Bates couldn’t see another car on the route. It was just him, his car and flat farmland that stretched out for miles. As he was driving up to an intersection, he noticed a sign for a town on his right. It was less than a mile away, so he decided to stop there to maybe grab a bite to eat. Upon entering the town, things seemed normal enough. There were a few houses, a convenience store with a gas station, and even a post office. Essentially, the bare minimum to make up a town of sorts. As he pulled up to the convenience store, he noticed something off about the people. In front of one of the houses, a man was raking his front lawn, only there weren’t any trees, let alone fallen leaves in sight. The post office had a still line of four people at the door, and the lights inside were out.

As Bates got out of his parked car and turned toward the convenience store, he saw the store clerk at the register through the window, giving him a wide eyed, blank stare that shot a chill through him. After several seconds of staring, Bates slowly turned around and saw the rest of the people staring at him with the same expression. A muffled thud behind him made him jump. He turned back and saw the clerk with the same stare, now with his hands and face pressed up against the store window, almost like how a child looks into a fish tank. After quickly getting back into his car, Bates sped out of town, turned back onto his route and made it all the way to his parents’ house.

After his parents came back, Bates said his goodbyes and left. Out of morbid curiosity, he cautiously drove back along the route he took. As he approached the intersection, much to his shock, the town’s sign was gone. To add onto it, there was no sign of the town, as the path towards it on the intersection was a dirt road with a dead end.