Munster, Indiana seems to be a hotspot for cars crashing into buildings. No one is exactly sure why, though, and locals are left to protect their buildings with bollards and large flower pots, wondering if some of the buildings are cursed, local news source NWI reports.
A 2010 survey listed Munster’s population as just over 23,500 people, so it’s not like we’re talking about a massive community here.
It’s reached the point where Munster Donuts, a shop that has survived over five decades and countless car crashes has run an ad during a local football game that read, “Please don’t crash into us.” Its most recent crashes took place in 2014 and 2016.
And the donut shop hasn’t been the only victim. The article describes the area encompassed by Munster’s Calumet Avenue and Ridge Road as being “the Bermuda Triangle of vehicular mayhem in which few buildings have gone unscathed.”
Aside from the donut shop, a driver fleeing police crashed into Miss Print on one side of Calumet, then into Munster Gyros on the other side. A U-Haul van crashed into The Commander restaurant. A speeding driver destroyed Jodi’s Italian Ice. And those are all in the last two years.
Locals are confused. The cause of the accidents has never been the same. Sometimes, it’s a police chase. Other times, it’s a driver thinking they’re in reverse when they’re really in drive. Sometimes, one car gets pinballed off another. Sometimes, it’s poor driving. Some of the buildings, like Jodi’s Italian Ice, are even deeply set back from the road. But there’s no way to link the crashes with a singular cause.
The city of Munster responded by requiring any renovated buildings on Munster to include large bollards in front of their businesses, and town manager Dustin Anderson told NWI that Munster is reimagining the plagued Calumet Avenue to include “additional landscape medians and pedestrian refuge islands” along with “improved curbs, parkways and sidewalks.”
Brian Tillman, co-owner of Jodi’s Italian Ice, probably put it best.
“It’s so odd to me because Munster is such a safe community,” he said. “It’s just that strip there. Munster Donut sits back off the road and has been hit so many times. I don’t understand this situation or what it is about that strip. Maybe it’s cursed. Someone needs to study it and figure out what’s happening with that strip.”
At this point, a curse is probably the one thing that makes the most sense.
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