Shelby County couple reports strange incident on Alabama's 'haunted highway'

I-65 in Conecuh County, just north of Exit 93 in Evergreen, Ala.

I received an interesting and unusual e-mail a few days ago from a man who lives in Shelby County, who reported seeing something out of the ordinary late one night recently on Interstate Highway 65.

Shelby County resident Lee Prewett e-mailed The Courant to report that he and his wife were traveling north on I-65 on Dec. 29 when they passed through Conecuh County around 1 a.m. Prewett said they traveled under a bridge with no exit ramps (likely the Middle Road bridge) and then noticed what he thought was a single headlight a mile or so behind them that wasn’t there before.

“It looked like maybe a car with only the right headlight,” Prewett said.

The light appeared to get closer and closer as the minutes ticked by and then suddenly it disappeared.

“I thought maybe the road grade changed and blocked the light,” Prewett said. “But the light became visible again and disappeared again.”

A few minutes later, Prewett saw the light again and, thinking that he was seeing some kind of odd reflection, asked his wife if she could also see it. She too saw the light, and they both watched it disappear in an area where the highway was generally flat.

As they watched, the light turned on and off two more times, and they reported being able to actually see the roadway behind the light due to the moonlight. Later, the couple could see the roadway behind the strange light due to the lights of an 18-wheeler that was two to three miles behind them.

Around this time, Prewett began to draw closer to an 18-wheeler that was in front of him, and he needed to move over into the left lane to pass that truck.

“At that point, the road was so dark behind us I was scared to move over because I thought maybe this light we saw was a car with no lights, and it might be coming up fast,” Prewett said. “But I took a chance and passed the truck. We never saw the mysterious light again. It gave us both the creeps.”

When Prewett got home, he began to research ghost stories involving I-65 and Conecuh County and discovered that the 40-mile stretch of I-65 between Evergreen and Greenville is considered a “haunted highway.” The best description of this area can be found in a 1996 book called “Haunted Places: The National Directory: Ghostly Abodes, Sacred Sites, UFO Landings and Other Supernatural Locations” by Dennis William Hauck.

“A section of this modern highway is haunted,” according to Hauck. “Engineers built the highway over sacred Creek Indian burial grounds. The hills around Evergreen remain the Creeks’ spiritual home, and many believe that their ghosts haunt the white man’s highway that runs through the middle of it. The Creeks loved the land so much that they said goodbye to every tree and hill when they were forced to leave the area in the 1830s. Of the fifteen thousand Creeks marched to a reservation in Oklahoma, over 3,500 died along the way. Between 1984 and 1990, there were 519 accidents, 208 injuries and 23 deaths on this 40-mile stretch of highway. The road is even, straight, and well-maintained, but the accident rate is well above average.”

With this in mind, Prewett and his wife began to think back on their unusual experience to see if they could remember anything else about it.

“I remember the light looked a little bigger than a headlight and less bright, but still white light and either not complete or maybe a little translucent,” Prewett said. “My wife and I thought back to think if we saw any other unusual things, and we remembered a man walking on the side of the interstate in the middle of nowhere, and I remembered seeing what looked like just a flash of a black wedged-shape object flying past my vision, just a split second. It startled me but didn't make me panic. I thought at the time it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Maybe the man was legit, but the other things were a little strange.”

In the end, Prewett’s tale is very unusual and interesting. It’s not the first time that I’ve heard of unusual happenings out on the interstate. Perhaps some readers will be able to shed more light (no pun intended) on the strange light the Prewetts saw. And perhaps other readers have strange tales of their own they’d like to share. If so, do what Prewett did and e-mail me the details to courantnewsdesk@gmail.com.