3: The Haunted Roads

Some roads are ordinary. They take us from point A to point B, lined with familiar landmarks and the comfort of the known. But some roads are different. They carry a weight that cannot be measured in kilometres or signs. They are etched with history, tragedy, and stories that linger long after the last car has passed.

These roads seem to remember. Every rut, every bend, every stretch of tar or dirt hums with something older than the traffic that wears it down. On certain nights, when the air is too still and the dark too thick, you can feel it pressing against you—the sense that you are no longer alone. The headlights cut only a narrow path forward, and beyond their glow the world feels watchful, waiting. The silence isn’t empty. It breathes.

Along these roads, the ordinary twists into the uncanny. The echoes of past tragedies seep into the present. You catch movement in the periphery of your vision—shadows that gather at the edge of the trees, shapes that vanish when you look too directly. Figures standing by the roadside, pale and patient, as if they’ve been waiting all along. The temperature drops without warning. Your chest tightens. The car feels smaller, fragile, and the road ahead stretches out not as a promise, but as a question: what lies waiting in the dark?