Paranormal Story Archives
March 2002 –
Page
1
Drunken
Apparition
by Douglas T.
It was sometime in the first part of November 1995, it was an especially warm autumn in north central Montana; I can remember this fact due to I was still riding my motorcycle.
There was this bar I would occasionally frequent, though while on my bike, I always limited myself to perhaps one or two drinks, especially when I am packing another rider along with, this fact alone was without exception.
During the day I decided to work on one of my motor bikes and after completing the work it was now time to test my mechanical accomplishments. In doing this I rode for many miles through the lower elevations of the mountains out skirting the town on which I lived. While I was out, I ran into a friend of mine that was heading back to town and wondered if I wanted to meet up with him later on that evening, and after not seeing my friend for quite some time, I thought it would be a great idea to catch up on some small talk. So we set the time and I got to pick the place.
Beings that we were both USAF vets that took the early retirement program as it were, I thought of a particular bar that was just a stone's throw from the main gate or entrance of the base that we both a few years before left, vowing never to return passed through them. So far, I have fully lived up to that promise.
Eventually I made it back into town and satisfied with my work, I cleaned up and prepared for that evening. Another friend of mine came by wondering what I was going to do that evening and wondered if we should go out. After explaining that I ran into another friend, a friend I haven't seen in such a long time, that I planned on going out to a bar, by the way, the bar is simply known as "The Spot."
My friend that dropped on by, as I remembered, stood there smiling. The Spot bar was an old somewhat dilapidated structure that stood before a large cow pasture in front of the only four lane road that lead from the city to the base that in my opinion was not much better off.
"Why this bar?" you might ask.
That is simple, usually it is full of some old time vets, and new troops that don't want to hang out on the base itself.
So I invited him as well to come along, and beings that his car was in the shop getting fixed that I would pick him up on the way to the Spot. Finally that evening came, and I was well on my way. I remembered I wanted to catch the early evening news for the weather. During the day I heard a few people commenting on a change of weather coming in a day or two, and beings that I planned on taking my bike, it was important to get the latest information, besides I didn't want to get stranded, especially in a place like that just outside of town.
I planned on only staying for a couple of hours or so before going to dinner and returning home. There was of course no indication from the local weather service substantiating the information I heard earlier. So I elected on taking my bike, the very same one that I worked on earlier that day.
Everything went on as planned, I picked up my friend and rode to the Spot and upon our arrival, my other friend was sitting up at the bar waiting for us. As the evening began to pass, the wind outside began to pick up considerably and I remember taking notice of the lights blinking due to the pending arrival of a storm and the high winds. So I decided to leave somewhat early than expected to head home. The bar was pretty much empty as it was usually. So I asked my partner that I picked up if he wanted a ride back into town, or if he wanted to get a ride with someone else, it really didn't matter much to me.
As we began to leave, I remember the lights going completely out for a few seconds and then returning. By then I started up my motorcycle and we then began heading back into town. It wasn't raining yet, but you could smell the rain in the air, and we were riding towards the direction of the storm. I remember how thankful I was to keep hold of my promise of limiting my drinks to just a couple. It was a bit difficult to fight against the wind.
As we rode, the city lights went out completely, least from the area I was riding towards. There were only a few scattered buildings along the way. One was a gas station that long passed it's usefulness that stood empty that I remembered passing, and the other building was an old church that God must of left abandoned like that of the gas station.
As I rode up a slight hill and reaching the top, I remembered looking down the other side and there was a traffic light, it was the only thing other than my head lamp and instrument lights on my bike that was on. The wind was whipping this light violently around. I thought it was odd that it was on, after all there were newer building and other structures on each corner, but the power was off in the adjacent places.
Oh yes, and wouldn't you have guessed, the light was red. So we stopped, and I remembered commenting to my friend on the bike about it in jest. As I waited, I could see no other vehicle in any direction and that night was especially dark.
We sat there for a few minutes and realizing that the light was not changing, I decided to drive through the intersection. As we continued riding into town, and the electricity still off, we were approaching another intersection that had a stop light. But unlike the other, this stop light wasn't working at all. I remembered we were about no closer than fifteen-hundred feet from the intersection when my headlamp caught the image of a man walking smack dab in the middle of the road, he was walking towards us right on the dotted white lines. I remembered riding my brake and yelling at my friend to hang on. I wasn't going that fast, but this Idiot I thought came right out of nowhere. I, like my buddy noticed something that still raises the hair on the nape of my neck, and that simply was the fact that my headlamp went through the man.
My bike barely missed him as he seemed like that he didn't even notice us. By the time I came to a complete stop, we both turned around yelling at the man that seemed other than I mentioned, drunk. As we began yelling, we noticed there was no one there, I drove the bike around and could clearly see a great distance down the road, including both sides of the road on where there were no trees, no brush, and even if he had fallen, we would of seen him clearly lying in the field both in either direction of the road.
I remembered the cold feeling, and the shock of attempting to believe on what we had both just clearly seen. We both called out to the man, but we obviously didn't get an answer. I remember beings there were no traffic; I actually got off of my bike while I put down the kick stand leaving the engine running so it could power the lamp.
My friend on the back was also off the bike and looking as spooked as I was. He was convinced that we saw a ghost, but couldn't explain it any further. We got back on the bike and drove in the other direction before giving up our search. As we headed back into town, a large tree practically fell down upon us, and barely missing our deaths, we made it back to my house.
I pulled the bike over and parked it just as the rain began to pour. We both ran in on where I grabbed the keys to my truck and began to head back out. I didn't really want to talk about what we've just saw. It was the first time my friend ever experienced anything supernatural or paranormal. For me it was just another confirmed episode.
I told him we shouldn't mention this to absolutely no one, not until I began checking into it.
When I dropped my friend off at his house, I told him to write everything from the point of leaving the bar and the ride to his house, that way everything was still fresh in his mind. In doing this, then I could compare my version and description of what I saw with his.
I went back home and began to write everything down. I had difficulty going to sleep that night thinking of everything that had happened and all that I saw.
In a brief description of what the apparition looked like, he was of a man in his mid to late fifties and about 180 pounds at five ten or perhaps eleven. He was wearing a red and variant washed out flannel shirt practically un-tucked from his faded tan or gray gleans. I know he was wearing shoes, not boots, but shoes something like deck shoes. He had a leather belt that looked as worn as his clothing, and in his left pocket looked like he might have had a tobacco pipe and a bag of tobacco. His left pocket had pens or pencils and a notepad or paper of some sort. He was balding considerably, his hair was gray and white with darker colors perhaps originally dark brown, or black. His face was cleanly shaven, weathered with both age and the elements. His eyes cloudy and perhaps like a gray or steel blue. His face was expressionless to the event of my bike nearly clipping him.
He was looking straight forward and his gaze was intoxicated and looked like perhaps he was looking at something that we could not see. That was all I could remember on what he looked like.
I wrote everything out in the clearest detail that I could. A few days later I went over at my friend's home and we compared our notes. In his notes, though he didn't get a chance to really see him like I did beings he was sitting directly behind me, he saw enough to let me know that I didn't miss a stitch, he noted as I did in my notes that his shirt was unbutton two possibly three buttons down from his neck exposing his tee-shirt. He however did not notice the type of shoes, nor if there were did anything affix to his belt such as perhaps a beeper or folding knife.
Both accounts spoke of the look, the fact that the bike's headlamp went through the person and we could both see the ground behind him that the light caught.
We both revisited our adventure in the paranormal a few times since then, but we never told anyone else about it. I never did attempt to do any investigation on the subject afterwards. Though I did think about it.
It wasn't until about a year after this happened in the fall of '96 when I mentioned it again. Both my friend, the very same that was on the bike with me, spoke to another person about it.
It all came about at the Spot Bar, the bartender, a person we called simply as "Big Mike" was telling us about some strange things that has been happening around as he put it, ".the neighborhood".
He told us about one of the regulars there having gone home a few days before hand about 10:30 pm when he almost ".hit a drunk walking down the centerline of the road he was traveling down." This grabbed my attention and I asked him precisely what rode, and where.
As Big Mike back up and retold us everything that was said to him, I looked over at my friend that was as looking as shocked as I was. I then turned my complete attention towards Big Mike as he continued on.
Then after finding out that this occurrence happened right along the very same location as we both experienced a year before, we shared our account with him. This nerved Big Mike, because you see he had trouble believing the story before ours on the account that the person telling it was perhaps drunk.
There was another, the owner of the Spot Bar that over heard our account and told us he had seen the very same thing several years ago and the four of us obviously saw the same ghost. Big Mike while listening was far from smiling and this caused him to think about an accident that happened seven years before of a man, or person walking from a bar on the corner of that intersection. He said that he would check into it. We then talked about other things that night and we didn't give it another thought about it.
It was about three or four weeks later when a woman ran off the side of the road, hit some ice and darned near rolled her car over when she told the police that she practically hit a drunken man walking right in front of her, coming at her car. She avoided what she thought was a drunk and nearly got seriously injured.
As I read this, the police said alcohol wasn't a factor in her accident, but they could not find any proof to her story. I suppose ghosts don't leave tracks in the snow and ice, least this one didn't.
I remembered driving out during the day a few days after the mentioned accident above on which I visited Big Mike and he told me that there indeed was a man, an older man that fitted all of our descriptions of the apparition that did leave the bar some seven years before this conversation that I was having with Big Mike. He said that he knew the manager at the other bar and her if she knew about the event that he nearly forgotten about.
She told him that she was working the night this fellow, a regular came in and got drunk. He was argumentative and especially obnoxious so she told him to go home. He said a few choice words and said something to the effect he wasn't going home that all's he needed was some air. She said to the best of her knowledge that she didn't care where he would go as long as he wasn't planning to stay there any longer, and then she said he got up and left.
Big Mike said the next thing that happened was a few minutes later someone came rushing in and yelling for someone to call the ambulance and the police, a man was struck by a pickup. The man of course didn't have a chance and he died on the spot so we were told.
The manager speaking to Big Mike also gave to the best of her knowledge a description of the man that was struck, and though it was vague at best, it could have been the same man, he was the same age, dressed the same sort of fashion, but it has been a long time for her. She didn't have anything more to say about it, other than she has heard stories of people seeing the man a couple of years later walking along the same stretch of road. She said the folks that knew him best were either gone, or found somewhere else to drink.
But one thing was for certain, and that was simply whenever there was a sighting of the drunken apparition walking down the street, it all happened within the first week, precisely in the first seven days of the month of November.
In the fall of 1997, the owner of the bar that the apparition walked out of saw a man standing just outside the entrance in the parking lot. According to the owner, he yelled out if there was something he needed. The owner was leaving after the cleaning person arrived. Both he and the cleaning person noticed that they could both see the man, and noticed the man was beginning to walk away with his back turned to both of them. They also noticed something alarming, and that was they could see through him clearly. He vanished as he crossed the street. The owner remembering some of the people mentioning about the sighting believed he saw the ghost of the man that was killed. The owner didn't know, nor did he own the bar during the time of the death.
Later in that week, Big Mike was heading home from s shift at The Spot, he was driving into town and as he went through the first intersection I mentioned earlier, he almost hit a deer, swerving to miss the deer, he lost control of his pickup and hit an oncoming truck full of teenagers. The truck filled full of teenagers was traveling at a high rate of speed that for whatever reason did not have any lights on. Big Mike was seriously injured and several of the teenagers, the driver of that vehicle was under the influence as several of the other ones from alcohol died within minutes of the accident.
The survivor, a teen in the cab of the truck said that they were traveling down the road and crossed over the second intersection that I mentioned and noticed a man in the middle of the road, they were traveling in the wrong lane, in the opposing traffic lane. The driver swerved barely missing the man and thinking that they might of hit them sped away from the seen. The reason for the lights being off is a mystery, least to me. As for Big Mike, he was later released from the hospital but quit his job at the Spot and found employment elsewhere.
Is it possible that the teens saw the same person which is now a ghost, who's to say, but as for Big Mike, he thinks they did, and as for me, I know they did.
< Previous story | Next story >
|
Do you
have a paranormal tale to tell? |
