I drive freight through Louisiana a few times a month. Same route. Same stretches of dark highway, same damn gas station with the flickering light. I’m not a guy who scares easy. But I don’t take Dead Man’s Curve anymore.
Not after what I saw.
The curve’s off Highway 90, somewhere between Raceland and Des Allemands. Locals say it doesn’t show up right on GPS anymore—like it’s been shifted or buried under a highway update. But every trucker who’s driven long enough knows where it is. It’s the one that sharpens too fast without warning. Takes lives every year, even now.
Legend says a trucker lost his brakes there back in ’78. His rig jackknifed, flipped, caught fire, and slid into the bayou. They found the cab. The trailer. Not the driver’s body.
But they did find his head—days later—wedged in a cypress stump downstream.
People say it never left.
I always thought it was just truck stop talk. A way to freak out rookies on their first overnight haul. But two months ago, I saw it for myself.
It was just after 3:00 AM. I remember because I’d been falling behind schedule and ignored my gut telling me to take the longer, safer bypass.
As I approached the curve, my CB started crackling. Not just static. Breathing. Slow, wet-sounding, like someone was struggling to inhale underwater. I killed the CB. It didn’t stop.
That’s when the fog rolled in—fast and low, hugging the road like spilled milk. My headlights barely cut through it. And then, something darted across the road.
A head.
Just a human head—gliding through the air, like it was on an invisible string. No body. No neck. Just a soaked, mud-caked face with dead gray eyes and an open mouth, lips moving like it was trying to scream but couldn’t.
I slammed the brakes and skidded off the shoulder. Truck stalled. CB still hissing. And then, nothing. Silence thick enough to choke on.
I looked around. No other cars. No movement. Just the fog… and a shape in my mirror.
The head was floating just behind my trailer—closer now.
I don’t remember starting the engine. But I remember flooring it. I peeled out so fast my wheels tore up the gravel, and I didn’t look back.
The fog lifted just past the curve like someone flipped a switch.
A week later, I met another driver at a weigh station. Younger guy, hadn’t been on the route long. Said he thought he hit a deer on the same curve.
“Except the deer didn’t have legs,” he told me.
“It was just… a face. Like a balloon. Floating.”
I didn’t say a word.
I just handed him the alternate route map and told him, “You don’t need to prove anything on that road. You just need to keep driving.”
And if you’re reading this, maybe you should too.
They say the head still waits for people who don’t believe.
Just make sure your mirrors stay clean.
Because the moment you see it—it’s already too late.
