Feeling Of Dread In The Middle Of Nowhere

crazypaws, Like AugustaM my first thought was of the mountain meadows massacre. After murdering everyone in the wagon train (older than eight years old), the locals stripped the bodies and left those bloody clothes in a rotting heap of stench in the basement of a building somewhere near. In addition to the testimonies of the surviving children, there is very strong historical documentation of the tragedy and other violence against indigenous people and anyone else the church wanted gone. It is all very sad stuff. I did not know about slavery in the cotton fields in addition to horrific things that happened to Asian people building the railroad in Utah. It would make sense that the whole area is still frightening, even to drive through.
I know the area where you were, all the way west to the Sierras is featured in an awful lot of UFO research. The whole state of Utah gave me the creeps when I lived there, which was before I read up on it's violent past. It seems like the dirt itself is angry in some places. Most of the people I met in Utah had at least one or two stories about strange things in the sky. There are a lot of military ranges and bases as well.
Thank you for sharing your story.

MrsRamsay - fascinating story! It's nice to be validated when your husband (or in my case my friend) admits to feeling the same thing. Good to know we're not crazy:)

AugustaM - thank you for that feedback, it's very interesting reading about the area. With everything that happened there in the past, I guess it's no wonder there is some residual bad energy "haunting" the area.

We went out to area 51 in Nevada back in the 70's and we all got the same feeling of dread. The stillness in the air was so deafening. I'm sure you both did experience something supernatural. Great story and I hope you find out more about it.

Ugh lol for the record, during my proof-reading, I neglected to realize that auto-correct had "helpfully" changed the word "crossfire" to crossword in my initial response! Sorry for any confusion that may have caused 😆

Hmmmm...well...the area was first inhabited by the Anasazi (a name meaning "ancient enemy" as their real name has been lost to time) - a group shrouded one way or another in mystery. And even after their eventual "disappearance" and in spite of a lack of decent academic documentation on local Native American groups (whose populations eventually dropped as low as the low hundreds as a result of European and Mormon settlers) online, the area does have some rather significant history.

Just a 40min drive or less north of St. George is Mountain Meadows where a posse of mormons descended upon and killed most every living soul of a non-mormon wagon train. The area where you were driving may have been in some way tangentially related to those events (i.e. An escape route, the wagon train's route of approach, a muster site etc). For much of the 19th C, Mormons were not welcoming, to say the least, to outsiders in Utah.

The mormons attempted to pin the massacre on local Paiute tribes who inhabited the territory through which runs the main thoroughfare between St. George and Springdale, Route 9 - as many of residual energy related to their presence also could have been what you experienced. Many Paiutes perished as a result of Brigham Young's efforts to set up an Indian Mission/cotton empire in the region.

State route 59, which intersects 9 at Hurricane was the site of a notoriously bad accident where a truck crashed the guard rail at 80mph.

During the 1950s, St. George experienced a tragic streak of cancer etc as it bore the brunt of the fallout from nuclear testing in Nevada.

Without getting too deeply unto politics on one side or the other, LaVerkin, which also falls along your route of that evening, has seen some rather dramatic political divisions and significant far right wing activity; it declared itself a "UN Free Zone" in the early 2000s. More recent political maneuvers have also reduced national park area in the region by half.

The area has also been historically plagued by river flooding, quicksand, rock slides and malaria through the ages.

In sum, the area has known more than its share of divisions (and often violent ones at that) between groups and overarching them all was a constant struggle against a rather difficult environment. Not even the land itself has been able to escape the crossword. As a result, I would imagine there to be a surfeit of resultant energy lingering in various pockets about the landscape - no way of knowing now, I suppose, just which kind you happened to pass through.

Crazypawz, where I live we have experienced similar feelings. First it was just something I felt on this one road near our neighborhood, somewhat deserted, a bridge over a creek. Then my husband mentioned it to me probably a couple years' later, so I did some research. Turns out a Civil War skirmish took place there at the bridge (when it was the old bridge) and men died. It's interesting that you both got "the feeling" even while driving in your car! Thank you for sharing.

Hi crazypawz, very interesting that you both had this feeling of dread.
I do not know the history of the area, but reading up a bit on the towns on that route there seems to have been some conflict beween natives and settlers, as well as slavery (Indian and African on the cotton farms).
That could result in residual bad energy?