Your True Tales
October 2007 - Page 23
Black-Cloaked Entity
by Tom M.
I live in Mesa, Arizona and I want to know if anyone else has experienced anything like this also. It was a late September evening, about three years ago and we were driving home from an evening with friends. The wind was blowing hard outside that night. My wife and I were talking about the evening and laughing about nothing in general. The music was playing in the car and we were looking forward to getting home, seeing as how it was already after midnight.
I pulled into our apartment complex and drove to our building to park, but upon seeing the usual spaces near the sidewalk were full, I turned down the music and started to back up to our, further away, covered parking space. While turning my head to back up, I caught something with my eyes. A shape of something, darker then the shadows moving down the sidewalk, it had a point toward the top at a slight tilt and then it angled down on each side at about 45 degrees, almost like someone wearing a cloak. As I watched, it gradually faded until I could no longer see it. My head felt kind of swimmy and I remember the dull thought of "That was weird."
I finished pulling into the parking space, and I unconsciously made a quizzical sound. "Hhmm." "Did you see that too?" Monica, who was sitting next to me, asked quietly. Not really sure how to respond, I said, "See what?"
"That black thing."
"Yeah, I saw it. What did you see exactly?" Still trying to comprehend what it was I really saw.
"It was like a triangle-shaped, black thing. Standing under the light pole. Then it went that direction." As she pointed further down the parking lot. "What was it you saw?"
"A, sort of, triangle-shaped black thing moving in front of those cars. Then I couldn't see it anymore as it went further over there," I said, motioning past the cars, toward a tree. "But it kind of faded as it was moving. I wasn't sure if I was really seeing anything. You saw it under the light pole?"
"Yeah, it looked like someone dressed in a cloak," she said somewhat apprehensively.
"That was the impression I got too."
"What the hell was that, Tom?" she said in a more anxious tone.
"Maybe it was just a shadow," I tried to convince myself as I watched the trees blowing feverishly back and forth. "Right, that could be it?"
We both stared in the direction of where the figure had been, trying to make our brains come up with a logical explanation. After some minutes of silence, I opened the door and got out of the car and stared at the shadows, desperately watching for something to move in the same way as before. Monica came around to my side of the car where I was standing and grabbed my arm.
"It wasn't a shadow," she said quietly.
"What else was it then?" I said, not wanting to think about that question too deeply. We walked closer to the sidewalk. I was compelled to try and figure this out. I kept thinking there had to be a logical explanation. There is no way I just saw something "glide" down the sidewalk and gradually fade away into the shadows. I felt like laughing as if I was a crazy person. But then the logical side of me took over. I started to become almost frantic in finding a reason to explain this.
I walked up onto the sidewalk and looked down the direction the figure went. I just stared for what seemed like hours watching every movement. Monica came back up beside me and we walked further down, the wind whipping around us. It was so dark out that night, even the illumination of the lights seemed dulled. As I started to realize that I wasn't going to see a shadow make the same movement I saw before, a fear started to set in, stronger then I had ever felt before. I wanted to run, but I contained that feeling as I turned, taking Monica's hand, and quickly headed towards the apartment.
My senses were on overdrive, I heard every noise around me. Rushing up the stairs, I felt as if something was right behind me, a feeling I would normally have shaken off as ridiculous, but I couldn't this time. At the top o f the stairs I fumbled with the keys to the gate that led to our balcony and then to our front door, my nerves completely on edge. Monica was anxiously standing next to me, ready to rush through as soon as I opened the gate. On the balcony, I remember looking over at the tree that seemed to angrily blow back and forth and noticed again how black even the leaves seemed that night.
Walking inside the apartment was more than a relief; the contrast from outside was drastic. It was bright and warm and most of all still, the only thing moving was the ceiling fan in our living room, although you could still hear the wind blowing wildly outside. We didn't speak for several minutes. I feel like we where in almost a state of shock. Within a half hour we were in bed exhausted and trying to sleep.
The next morning we got up a little more reluctantly then usual. We were sitting on the couch in the living room, the TV was on but muted in front of us, drinking our usual cups of coffee. I was trying to shake the uneasiness from the night before, but it wasn't working. "So, what are you thinking about?" Monica asked me.
"Just trying to make sense of that thing we saw," I said, not really wanting to talk about it, but somewhat needing to do so.
"Same here. What do you think it was?"
"Not sure. Could it have been someone with a costume on or something…maybe it was a kid on a skateboard? That is kind of what it looked like."
"No. Not the way it moved after it saw us."
"It saw us?" I said turning toward her.
"Well I guess so. That was the impression I got anyway. It turned toward us and then took off, like fast. It wasn't the type of movement you would see when someone was on a skateboard, I know that."
"Yeah, we would have heard the wheels on the sidewalk and it didn't make any sound at all. I don't understand, Monica. Did we see some kind of ghost?" I laughed, uneasily. "What was that?"
We debated this question for while that morning. Taking both recollections of what each of us saw, it was a black figure in what looked like a cloak. It was standing under the light pole, looking down the sidewalk. As we pulled up it turned in our direction then took off fast in the direction it was originally looking and faded into the shadows. I distinctly remember being able to see through it as it faded away. There was no sound from it all that we could tell.
Later in the morning, we went back down to the parking lot and tried to come up with explanations, but couldn't, no matter how hard we tried. I have no logical explanation for it and I now believe there is more then what you see around you. It was so unreal, like I was above it all watching as a bystander. The event definitely had an almost movie like feeling when I think back on it. Has anyone else experienced something like this? What could it have been?
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