Rest stops on highways are liminal spaces where the veil is thin and nobody can tell me differently
Explain
The explanation is that liminal spaces are in between places that bridge Here with There, so in fairy tales we often have the Fairy Ring, the Forest Clearing, the Sudden Misty Foggy Forest, the Bridge, the River, graveyards, in some cases
We also have a ton of american urban mythology around famous roadways and sites off the sides of roads
Archetypes like these occur to mark the places in the world where the veil goes thin and humans can have extra-worldly experiences, out of the ordinary way of living
So why wouldn’t transient spaces like rest stops where everyone is just passing through from one place to the next, never stopping for too long, not be a liminal space where spirits frequent, too
Especially since nobody would know if they were real or not
Ok but this speaks to me
I always feel like something isn’t quite right at rest stops
I once slept though three gas stations on a road trip, and the second the car started to slow to turn into a rest stop, I was basically wide awake.
My mom and I were on I-90 in a blizzard once and pulled off at the first exit we could find. Turns out that if we’d gone even a mile further, we would have happened on a 49-and-counting car pileup, and that 90 was closed for MILES. How we found an unblocked ramp was a matter of great debate, but where this gets weirder still is that at the bottom of the ramp was a closed truck stop and an open church full of teenagers–they went for youth group, the blizzard started, and they were stuck until the snow stopped. They fed us leftovers from their potluck dinner, prayed with us for safe travel, and when the snow let up they saw us on our way.
Three days later–Sunday–we were traveling back and decided to stop at that church to thank them. We found it thanks to the truck stop, but this time it was the truck stop that was open and the church that was closed. Neither of us remembered it looking so decrepit on the trip down, and granted we saw it first at night in a snowstorm, but you’d think we’d have noticed the boarded-up windows. So we asked in at the truck stop.
The church had been abandoned for ten years. And yet I still had one of their youth group programs under my sun visor, very clearly labeled for the previous week.
To this day I’m sure we crossed dimensions somewhere on I-90, and that’s how we stayed safe. You could tell me it’s because the truck stop was a liminal space and I’d 100% believe you.
I don’t mind when this post goes around again because sometimes I get stories like this
A few months ago my family and I were traveling from Dallas to Austin and we pulled into one of the rest stops with a little park and the tornado shelters (we have those in Texas) and I saw a little girl crying. Her clothes were dirty and he hair a mess. When I asked her what was wrong she said she fell down and took a tumble and couldn’t find her mom. So I walked around with park area with her. She got excited and pointed at a young lady dressed in clothes from what looked like the 40s and said “that’s my mommy”. I walked the girl over and it was her mother. She was happy to see her little girl and thanked me profusely. When I left to go back to my car I found a bear that had to have belonged to the little girl, but when I went back to where they were, they were no where to be seen. When I asked my dad if he had seen the pair, he had no idea what I was talking about. So I definitely did some time hopping or something
This is a really common tale with ghosts, a lot of times you don’t even realize you’re talking to one until someone else is like what do you mean you were talking to a person, there was nobody there
Yes, I find this happens a lot when I’m in London. I’ll move out of someone’s way, or hold a door open for someone and the people with me will all look at me as if I’ve lost my mind because I’m apparently moving out of the way of thin air.
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