Driving back home to Calgary from Ontario we realize the next closest gas station is closed, and we don’t have enough gas to leg it to the next town, or even double back to the last town, so we’re stuck in Upsala. We pull out our phones and start googling all possibilities, gas stations motels, anything at all, but nothing’s open or in reach, there’s one hotel in the little town, and it only a few KM away, so we drive down to see if there’s any hope of anything, and what we found was just peculiar. The place is completely empty. Not one single car, except for a truck parked by the dark office. The super weird thing is, every single room, clearly has a Tv, because we see they’re all turned on, we don’t really register at first, we’re just desperate for beds, because our vehicle is stuffed full of cargo we’re bringing with us, we can barely lean the seats back, if we have to sleep at the gas station, it’s going to be uncomfortable, so we leave the hotel, go back to the closed gas station and begin to resolve to our fates of crappy car sleeping, when it starts to dawn on us, there were no cars in any of the parking spaces.. but every single tv is turned on. Why is absolutely every tv on? And weirder still the casted light was eerily similar, we start joking that, oh maybe all the tvs were playing the same thing, maybe just one of those hotel default channels that show previews of movies you can rent? We’re sitting ald listening to Dexter’s Final Cut while we try to fall asleep, but something about the place has us just weirded out. The place is totally empty, but every tv is on, just why?
We decide we have to get another look. We’ll burn more precious fuel to answer the itching questions, it’s only a couple KM. So we roll up and it’s the same scene, empty but we can see light casting in the windows for every unit, and again eerily similar, but wr can’t see the actual screens from this angle. We go back inside the parking lott, noting the noise our muffler makes, using our phones zoom, i peek in the window and snap some pictures, as quickly as i can, and i see a man in a helmet throw up the Sig Hiel solute, and some tanks and then a wide shot of what looks like a concentration camp or army base, unable to recognize the film playing we roll down the line of units and see the exact same stuff playing on every single screen in the place, we flip around to drive back out, and see tvs on the opposite wall, because this place flips the units every other unit so the tvs are on either side of the same dividing wall, and again, same exact film, every unit, it doesn’t appear to be switching content showing previews, it looks like every tv is on the same channel or playing the same content, in sync! If it’s the same channel or a CCTV system, okay, fine, but why is every one of them on, if there are no cars in the whole place? Who was like, okay for our CCTV promo, lets go with soluting Nazis, or lets put all the TVs on the same channel and scare the shit out of people who get stranded here.
Now we’re back at the closed gas station. In total, we’ve seen 4 or 5 other cars show up, check the gas pumps and either continue down the road, or double back. Now, this place is pretty dead quiet, other than the occasional semi or train, but for some reason, we’ve heard multiple, quickly stifled car alarms, from the direction of the hotel. At least one of them happened a few moments after one of our stranded mates in another car headed up that way, and it sounded about that far away. Just a couple quick blasts thst sounded like an alarm or a frantic honking, then silence.
What the fuck have we stumbled upon, why are all the TVs on, why the fuck are they all playing the same thing, and why is it Nazis??? I’m going to post all the photos in the comments as well. I’m hoping someone can tell what film this is and it’s something benine.
If i’m still alive and not tied up with my eyelids sliced off i. Front of one of those creepy screens, i’ll go try to take another look tomorrow morning, but first i need gas and to try to get a little bit of sleep for the 19 hour drive.
The extra kicker is that this gas station in the middle of nowhere, features a tesla supercharging station which is 24/7. If we only had a tesla, we’d be laughing.