jupiterjames:

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duskenpath:

oli-via:

duskenpath:

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

We don’t have rest stops like this in the UK. We have motorway service stations. And they have high street shops, only miles from anywhere, only accessible from the motorway. It’s as if the high street shops are all on a little trip away from their home town and this is as far as they got.

I had to go to a hospital miles and miles away from my home in Japan because the one in my town wasn’t equipped to run the tests I needed. So a friend drove me since the train would have taken hours, and we had to go through these dormant fields on a mostly dirt road. Nothing for miles as far as you could see except for grass and a river. Not even houses or anything. So, at some point as the sun’s rising, her car stalls. Right next to a soda vending machine. In the middle of a field. With no discernible power outlet or power lines or anything. But it’s on. No cell phone reception, either. We pop the hood and I look around, but neither of us know anything, and we’re worried because we haven’t seen another car or bicycle or scooter in ages. 

We think we’re going to be stranded for a long time, so she buys a couple of canned coffees and we sit down in the car to drink them, and suddenly, the dash lights blink back on. We turn the car on, and it’s fine. 

We get on our way, a little weirded out, and I say, “I’ve had a bizarre feeling the whole time we’ve been driving here. It makes sense now.”

And she says, “yeah, I’ll bet there was a spirit there. It wanted an offering, and then let us go. My mom said that can happen where there aren’t any other real shrines or temples around.”

So our liminal space demanded ￥400 before letting us through.