During the 1980s, a company called General Development Corporation purchased several miles of land in Palm Bay, Florida.
Their intention was to build a large community of houses on the land.
The company started by paving a winding series of streets, which equated to about 200 miles total.
kevinborland/flickr
Updated 2/10/2020 – Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt in 1991.
Nobody has successfully acquired the land since.
As a result, the area, now known throughout the community as The Compound, has become a local hang out for people who enjoy drag racing, ATVs and other fast moving hobbies.
Having recently acquired her own ATV, Alexa joined a group of friends at The Compound one evening to test out her new toy.
“I had only been to The Compound a couple of times prior to that, and always as a passenger, so all in all I knew it would be a crazy experience for me,” she smiled.
“Little did I know what kind of night I was really in for.”
The Dark Visitor
hubpages.com
“My friend put my ATV on a trailer and drove it out there with his pick-up truck.
He has his own ATV, so my first ride in it wound up being a solo one.
My friends all took off into the night, and I scrambled into my ATV, trying to keep up with them.
“There aren’t any road signs or anything out there,” she said.
“And for some reason my phone never gets good reception in that area.
So when I wound up getting horribly lost, the only thing I could do was try to find my way back by retracing my steps.
“As I looked at my surroundings I began to notice this strange noise coming from another field across the street.
It didn’t sound quite human, but it didn’t sound like a machine either, and for some reason I found that bizarre noise to be really unsettling,” Alexa said, shaking her head.
I decided that I would just drive around and hope to run into one of my friends.
“After driving around for awhile I began to notice this light far behind me.
Thinking it was one of my friend’s ATV lights, I turned around and started racing toward them.
Thinking I had found one of my friends at last, I started going faster and faster, seeing how quick my new baby could go,” she said.
“The light was growing larger as I approached, when all of the sudden I saw this…shadow step onto the road ahead of me.
I slammed on my brakes and jerked my wheel to the left all at once.
Me and my ATV careened off the road and partially down into a ditch.
“Within moments I heard my friend Derek screaming my name, and then he appeared beside me in the ditch.
He helped pull me out of the ATV and climb back up the hill.
‘What the hell was that?’ he said.
“’I don’t know,” I replied.
‘He…it, whatever it was, it just came out of nowhere!’
I exclaimed.
But Derek suddenly looked at me like I was crazy.
“’I meant your erratic driving,’ he said in carefully measured tones.
‘One minute you seemed fine, just racing along, and the next you were making a death wish.’
I asked him about the shadow that had clearly been in the road between us, but he had no idea what I was talking about.
“I’ve been back to Palm Bay several times since then, but now I always insist on going in groups,” Alexa said.
“And I put large flood lights on the top of my ATV.
Just in case.”
Address
1082 Melzer St
Palm Bay, FL
United States