Nothing Happened on Highway 400. It Still Scares Me.

Nothing Happened on Highway 400. It Still Scares Me.

By:  a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

Dear Henry,

Have you noticed that sometimes the story you're carrying changes the road you travel?

Some years ago, I had to make a quick round trip from Bentonville, Arkansas, to Pueblo, Colorado, and chose Highway 400 across southern Kansas. It's not known for haunted bridges plagued by women in white, nor was I chased by poltergeists or accosted by psychotic hitchhikers. Nothing happened along the road, and it still scares me.

It was a dreary, rainy, gray drive, and the eerie factor began at the first stop. At the junction of Highway 400 and 169 is a rest stop with a history.

During the 1870s, a family called the Benders owned a small inn nearby. This was truly a case where the road was better than the inn, because, according to the historical marker at the rest stop, travelers were attacked from behind as they sat down to eat their meals. Ultimately, eleven bodies were discovered on the property, and the fate of the "Bloody Benders" remains unknown.

Really, this is one of the weirdest rest stops to come upon by yourself on a rainy day in Kansas.

The drive got even stranger.

For the trip out, I had picked Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, his account of the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. It wasn't until I passed through Garden City that I realized I was traveling through the very landscape described in the book.

There is something particularly unsettling about hearing the details of a terrible crime while driving through the quiet, ordinary landscape where it happened. Even now, I am struck by the fact that something so horrific took place in such a small community.

Pueblo, Colorado, was uninteresting. Really, all I did there was finish up my business, grab a burger, and head back toward Arkansas along Highway 400.

The drive home was equally gray and dreary, and I had chosen another somewhat unnerving book for company: Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, an underrated and completely terrifying novel.

Somewhere along the road, the combination of rain, empty highway, and Finney's increasingly paranoid story got the better of me. Eventually, I had to pull over and make sure there wasn't one of his strange, not-quite-human "blanks" hiding in my car.

And naturally, the place I pulled over was the murder-death rest stop in Kansas.

Fortunately, I found neither a blank nor the Bloody Benders.

There is something fascinating about landscape and narrative. Garden City would have just been a small town in Kansas on a sunny day with a different book playing through the speakers. But because of the rain, the atmosphere, and the stories I carried with me, the tone of the road changed into something surreal and unexpected.

Nothing actually happened to me on Highway 400.

There were no ghosts, no murderous hitchhikers, no mysterious figures standing beside the road. There wasn't even a body in the trunk.

But sometimes, Henry, the scariest thing you can carry down a lonely road is a story.

xoxo a.d. elliott

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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