More like creepy Hollow.
Driving at night is frightening enough on its own, but there’s some scary streets that motorists should definitely avoid after dark.
Ahead of Halloween, a Florida car dealership ranked the scariest streets in America, finding that a notorious New York road topped the list.
The spine-tingling roundup was compiled by the Gunther Volkswagen dealership in Delray Beach, which surveyed 3,000 drivers about which roads they’re most likely to avoid when the sun goes down.
They then compiled them into a list of the nation’s 140 most petrifying stretches of pavement.
Scariness in this context wasn’t defined by the probability of an accident, but rather said streets’ association with haunted tales, spooky apparitions and other paranormal phenomena.
1. Route 9 (Sleepy Hollow, New York)
You might “get your kicks on Route 66,” but you’ll get a chill down your spine on Route 9.
This bucolic stretch was voted the scariest road in America because it takes motorists through Sleepy Hollow, the clomping grounds of the headless horseman from Washington Irving’s 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
According to the legend, this phantom cavalryman is the ghost of a Hessian Mercenary who got decapitated during the Revolutionary War and now haunts the Hudson Valley hamlet.
Come the scream season, rumors of the horseman surge, as people swear they can hear the bean-bereft revenant thundering down the path in search of his lost noggin.
Far more frightening is Route 9 itself, which has been dubbed the Hudson Valley’s “Autobahn” due to the preponderance of motorists who drive like they don’t have a head.
Poughkeepsie’s Route 9/44/55 interchange is reportedly the site of 460 crashes per year.
2. Old Ghost Road (Brooklet, Georgia)
Elm Street doesn’t compare to Old Ghost Road, a petrifying Peach State pathway that has become notorious for “sightings of shadowy figures that vanish when approached and strange lights flickering among the trees,” per the spooky streets list.
“This road is steeped in stories of wandering spirits and inexplicable occurrences,” the dearlership’s writers declare. “Passing through its quiet, eerie landscape, drivers often report an overwhelming sense of being watched.”
3. Apache Trail (Superstition Mountains, Arizona)
The Apache Trail, which winds through Arizona’s Superstition Mountains, is a gold mine for ghost hunters due to so-called sightings of spectral prospectors and “shadowy forms that seem to emerge from the desert itself.”
The region was notably featured on the Travel Channel reality show “Ghost Adventures” and is the subject of ghost tours through the Goldfield Ghost Town — a reconstructed 1890s wild west town — in Apache Junction, AZ.
“The Apache had a special name for the Superstition Mountains,” said Matt Mason of ghost tour company Fear Frontier during a 2022 excursion. “They believe this was the literal portal to hell.”
According to Apache lore, these Superstition Mountains were protected by a thunder God who would unleash their wrath on “anyone who dared trespass or dare disturb that sacred mountain.”
4. Haunted Highway 359, Louisiana
If there was a real “Highway To Hell” from the AC/DC song, it would probably be the Haunted Highway 359, an eerie freeway that traverses the bayous of the Cajun state.
Drivers have reported spotting a “young woman in a vintage dress, silently pointing toward the woods as if trying to convey a message,” per the list.
“We (the witness and her mother-in-law) were driving home from the casino one night when we saw something dark blocking the road about the size of a trash can,” said one anonymous alleged witness, who has lived by the highway for 30 years. “It was too late to switch lanes or swerve away, so we braced for impact because we were certain that we were going to hit it, but we just passed right through it.”
They added: “Afterward, we both looked at each other and said, ‘What was that!’”
5. Bayou Sale Road (Franklin, Louisiana)
Following close behind is Louisiana’s Bayou Sale Road, an atmospheric street that’s allegedly “haunted by the tragic story of a mother searching for her lost child.”
“Drivers have reported seeing ghostly apparitions emerging from the swamp and eerie fog rolling across the road, obscuring their path,” the survey reads. “The dense vegetation and isolation of the area make this stretch of road particularly haunting.”
The 10 scariest roads in America:
- Route 9 – Sleepy Hollow, New York
- Old Ghost Road – Brooklet, Georgia
- Superstition Mountains, Apache Trail, Arizona
- Haunted Highway 359, Louisiana
- Bayou Sale Road, Franklin, Louisiana
- State Road 14 (Turquoise Trail), New Mexico
- Stony Hollow Road, Burlington, Iowa
- Croison Creek Road, Salem, Oregon
- Highway 90, Gautier, Mississippi
- Highway 93, Arizona
