“This 20-Minute Uber Ride Became the Most Horrifying Experience of My Life!”

Back in 2020, when everything felt like it was falling apart and the world was a half-lit shell of what it once was, I picked up an Uber gig to stay afloat. I had just lost my retail job. Rent was due. Food wasn’t going to buy itself. Nights became my shift. People came and went — drunk, quiet, chatty, lonely. But none of them stuck in my memory like the man I picked up on that cold October night.

It was just after midnight when I dropped someone off at a motel on the edge of town. I was planning to call it a night when the app pinged again. A ride request. Not far — six minutes. The pickup location was a bowling alley tucked into a dying strip mall. The name on the app said Derek.

When I pulled into the lot, I noticed how empty it was. The bowling alley was clearly closed. No cars. No sound. Just a few dim lights flickering like dying candles. And then I saw him. A man standing alone beneath one of the lights — tall, gray hoodie, jeans, head down. He didn’t move when I pulled up. Didn’t wave. Just stood there with his hands buried deep in his pockets like he was holding something… or hiding something.

I rolled the window down. “You Derek?” I asked. He gave a slow nod, stepped toward the car, and slid into the back seat directly behind me. No hello. No small talk.

I started the ride and asked if the address in the app was correct — some residential area I hadn’t heard of. He said, “Yeah, that’s right.” His voice was quiet, almost flat. No inflection. Like someone talking in their sleep. Something about it gave me chills, but I brushed it off. People are weird. I’ve driven weirder.

For the next five minutes, there was nothing but silence. Every time I glanced in the rearview mirror, he wasn’t looking out the window or scrolling on his phone. He was just staring — straight at the back of my head. Not blinking. Not shifting. Just watching.

I tried to ease the tension. “Long night?” I asked.

He replied after a pause. “Just needed to get out of there.”

“Out of where?” I asked casually, pretending I wasn’t uncomfortable.

He said, “Doesn’t matter.”

That’s when I stopped asking questions.

Fifteen minutes later, the surroundings started to change. We were entering a wooded area on the outskirts of town — no streetlights, no sidewalks, just long dark roads and huge trees that seemed to lean over like they were listening. Then, as we approached what I assumed was his destination, he leaned forward slowly and said, “Actually, can you pull into that driveway?”

I looked where he was pointing. The house looked dead. No lights. Peeling paint. A yard that hadn’t been touched in years. It didn’t feel abandoned. It felt… like something was waiting inside.

“You live here?” I asked.

He didn’t answer directly. Just said, “Just pull in.”

I hesitated. Every instinct told me not to, but my hands moved before my brain could catch up. I turned into the driveway and stopped the car.

He didn’t get out.

He stared at the house for a few seconds. Then said, “Wait here.” And got out.

Instead of heading for the front door, he walked around the side of the house and disappeared.

I sat there, frozen. Two minutes passed. No sound. No lights. No movement.

I had this rising sense — not of fear, but of wrongness, like I had stumbled into something I wasn’t supposed to witness.

I decided I wasn’t going to wait any longer.

I ended the ride manually and reached for the gear shift to back out. But just then, I saw him reappear.

He was walking quickly, his face no longer blank — it was animated now, almost excited, like he’d just found something he’d been looking for.

I panicked and hit the door unlock button before he could yank it open. He got back in without a word and said, “Take me to the other place.”

“What place?” I asked.

“Just drive. I’ll tell you.”

I told him I couldn’t go anywhere unless he updated the destination in the app. He didn’t answer. Just stared at me through the mirror again.

After a long moment of silence, he said, “Take me back. Where you picked me up.”

I didn’t argue.

The whole ride back, he didn’t speak. But I could feel him staring again, burning a hole into the back of my skull.

About halfway there, I tried one last time to make it normal. “Tough night, huh?”

“You could say that,” he said.

“Everything okay?”

“Not yet.”

When we got back to the bowling alley, I parked under the same flickering light. Before I could say anything, he leaned forward again. This time, his voice was calm. But the words still haunt me.

“You ever wonder how you’re going to die?”

I laughed awkwardly, not knowing what to say. “Not really something I think about.”

He didn’t laugh.

He leaned back and stared at the roof of the car for a second. Then said, quietly, like to himself, “I think about it all the time.”

The door opened. But he didn’t get out immediately. He paused — half in, half out of the car — then turned and looked at me.

“You picked the wrong guy up tonight.”

Then he shut the door and walked off into the darkness behind the building.

I sat there, not moving, not breathing, until the cold air from the open window finally snapped me back. I drove home, constantly checking the mirrors, half-expecting him to reappear behind me.

When I got home, I opened the Uber app to report the trip. That’s when I saw something that made my blood go cold.

There was no trip.

The ride was gone. No route. No payment. No name.

No Derek.

Just blank space where the ride should’ve been.

I contacted Uber support. They said the trip may have been canceled halfway through or glitched out. That sometimes it happens.

But I know I drove him. I know I dropped him off. I know he looked me in the eye and said those words.

I’ve never seen him again.

But sometimes, when I get a ping in the middle of the night… in a dark parking lot… and someone slides silently into the back seat… I wonder if it’s him. Or worse — someone just like him.

And I still think about what he said.
“You picked the wrong guy up tonight.”

Because deep down, I wonder…

Did I get lucky that night — or did he just change his mind?