ago on a lonely stretch of the Trans Canada
Highway just east of Winnipeg, Manitoba


This is an incident that happened to my ex-wife (before she was my ex) and myself. We were driving from Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada's west coast) to Toronto, Ontario, that's a 2700mi / 4600km trip. It was November so winter was already gripping much of the eastern prairie provinces....Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Anyway, we had a pretty rough days drive under our belts with snow storms and icy roads by the time we reached Winnipeg, Manitoba, so we decided to just by-pass the city and look for a motel on the outskirts of town. As we got past the city, the gas stations and other businesses and factories thinned out to nothing pretty fast. It took almost another hour driving before we found a motel. By now it was about 10:30 PM

We pulled in and went and got a room. It was quite a large place, lots of rooms but it looked pretty much empty. Anyway, we were so tired by now from 14hrs. of driving that all we could do was shower and go to bed. At about 3:30 AM my wife woke me up whispering "Roger, there's someone in here." I opened my eyes and though it seemed really dark in the room, I could make out silhouettes of people standing around the bed. I slowly reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. As the room flooded with light, these "shadow people" faded away. It's not like they just "poof" disappeared, they actually faded to nothing.

Needless to say, we got up right away, grabbed our bags and left. When we got outside, I was surprised to see that we were totally alone in that place. There wasn't another vehicle to be seen anywhere around there. Also, the parking lot was covered with about 6 inches of virgin snow, no tire tracks or footprints, nothing. I stopped by the office to drop off the key and it too was deserted. The door wasn't locked but there wasn't a soul around. Everything, with the exception of the quiet rumbling of my pick up's exhaust, was deathly quiet.

Well, the following May, we were driving back to the west coast and decided to watch for that motel. When we were just over a hundred miles away from Winnipeg, we started paying close attention to the highway. Mile after mile went by with no motel. Finally, we reached the city but there was no motel on the highway where we had spent that night. I'm pretty sure we hadn't driven by it, there was nothing along that stretch of highway to distract either one of us.

I was only just turning 26 at the time and I don't mind saying, the implications scared the crap out of me. I wish I knew then what I know now. I still get the willies when I think about it now. Because of my relative "youth" and the general mentality of the day, this story has gone relatively untold......until now.

Anybody have any thoughts? Thoughts like "This guy's nuts!" are still legitimate thoughts