Highway to Hell
Road trips are a gateway to terror in horror stories.
Long drives down isolated roads and highways during late night or early morning hours come with the territory of a sports journalist who covers college football and basketball. I’ve spent 20 years in this profession and have logged countless hours and miles trekking to far-flung arenas and stadiums as part of my job. Even normally busy streets and highways are lonely ghost towns when the clock ticks past midnight. It makes for a lonely drive home.
It is also the perfect setting where a horror story can unfold.
Road trip nightmares
If you think about it, travel is a useful vehicle for driving the plot in a horror novel or movie. Characters driving on a lonely, isolated road become vulnerable targets for Murphy’s Law. Disturbing scenarios inevitably unfold and instantly turn a mundane road trip into a direct route to their worst nightmare.
These scenarios typically include one of the following elements:
Car accidents or running out of fuel.
Encounters with psychopathic hitchhikers or drivers.
Getting lost after taking a wrong turn.
Spending the night in an isolated town with sinister inhabitants.
What follows from this initial catalyst is battle for survival as the main character has their worst nightmare unfold before their eyes. It becomes pure nightmare fuel for anyone who ever worries about traveling on isolated roads.
Traveing to terror
While it is more grounded in the science fiction genre, my novel Under a Fallen Sun does employ some distinct travel-related horror elements to fuel the main plot.
Paige, her boyfriend Jason, and her friends Rich and Heather are forced to seek help in an isolated West Texas town after their car breaks down along a nearby highway. The foursome is trapped inside the town by a mysterious energy field. They soon are forced to battle alien invaders fleeing a dying planet who've laid siege to the town as part of a plan to gain a foothold on Earth and turn it into their new homeworld.
My short story, In Hell’s Shadow, also plays on travel-related horror tropes to set the events of the story in motion.
Kate becomes lost while traveling through a canyon outside Deer Falls during a blinding rainstorm. What began as a planned romantic weekend rendezvous with her girlfriend Sarah takes a wrong turn into a nightmarish ordeal when Kate suffers a serious car accident, leaving her stranded and at the mercy of a mysterious stranger.
I love incorporating travel as a catalyst leading to terrifying situations for characters in my stories. Travel-related fears are universal fears and how characters react to travel-related adversity can shed light into important aspects of their personalities — showing us a side of their thoughts and emotions we may not see otherwise.
If you enjoyed this article, check out past Behind the Pages features exploring the characters and worlds populating my stories in the archives.
