You never know where you’re going to have to stop on a road trip, whether it’s for food, gas, or to let nature take its natural course (we’re talking about peeing).
This man made a routine pit stop in an unknown neighborhood in Dallas, but when he got there, the vibe was totally off, and the weirdness of it all has stayed on his mind ’til this day, years later.
Now, commenters are speculating about where he was and what kind of sketchy situation or danger he might have been in.
‘Do You Know Where You Are?’
In a viral video with more than 2.5 million views, content creator @nomadsanimalencounter recounted what happened when he and his wife stopped at an older, rundown gas station somewhere in Dallas.
He explains that he and his wife were on their way back from picking up a puppy from a busted puppy mill. (They still have the dog; his name is Arlo.)
“As soon as I pull in, everybody’s, you know, they stopped talking and doing what they’re doing,” he recalls. “They looked right at the car.”
Despite the immediate tension, he desperately needed a bathroom and hadn’t seen another gas station in a while, but the second his car door opened, someone yelled out to him.
“They’re like, do you know where you are?” he recounts.
His wife refused to get out of the car and locked the door behind him as he headed inside. He wasn’t even sure if they were talking to him at first, but then the clerk said the same thing.
“Do you know where you are? You shouldn’t be here,” he says the clerk warned him.
As he used the restroom, he says he could hear people openly talking about him. When he came out planning to grab an energy drink and a Hershey bar for the long drive ahead, the clerk stopped him cold.
“No. You’re not buying nothing; you need to go. You need to get out of here,” he says she told him.
The Strange Demographics
What made the situation even more confusing was the makeup of the crowd. Almost everyone at the gas station (both inside and outside) was a women. He estimates there were eight to nine women and only three or four men, across a mix of races.
But no one made direct threats.
“They were just like, ‘Do you know where you are? You shouldn’t be here,'” he explains. “But no one was like, ‘We’re gonna hurt you.'”
Still, the message was clear. He left immediately without buying gas or snacks, despite needing both for the three-and-a-half-hour drive ahead.
“I don’t know what we walked into or what we drove into,” he says, asking viewers for their theories. “Was I about to be kidnapped?”
He continues, “Was I about to be carjacked? Was I about to be just straight up murdered?”
Understanding Dallas’s Crime Rates
According to Security.org, Dallas ranked 15th in the 30 largest U.S. cities for total crime in 2024, with a rate of 4,010.1 incidents per 100,000 residents, nearly double the national average of 2,119.2 per 100,000.
The city’s violent crime rate was 658.2 per 100,000 residents in 2024, nearly double the national average of 359.1.
However, Axios reports that Dallas saw a significant decline in violent crime during the first half of 2025, with homicides dropping more than 30% compared to the same period in 2024. Rape decreased 13%, robbery dropped 13%, and aggravated assaults declined 15%.
But crime in Dallas isn’t evenly distributed. According to PropertyClub, the most dangerous neighborhoods include South Boulevard-Park Row (where the crime rate is 277% higher than the Dallas average), South Dallas (147% higher than the Texas average), and Cedar Crest (142% higher than the state average).
Commenters React
“This is actually heartwarming bc you experienced being a woman at night,” a top comment read.
“YOU STOPPED AT A GAS STATION AT 9PM IN PLEASANT GROVE?!? Dude when people tell you to leave, you leave! I need yall to be situationally aware man, they were looking out for you,” a person said.
“Survival instincts of a fart in the wind,” another wrote.
@nomadsanimalencounter What was going on in Dallas #dallas #texas #creepy #scary #truecrime
BroBible reached out to @nomadsanimalencounter for comment via Instagram and TikTok direct message.