Your True Tales
September 2008 - Page 10
Ghost Wanted a Lift
by Tom T.
I've seen a number of things over the years, but the hardest to explain away happened around July, 1997. I was working as a pizza delivery driver and received a delivery order for Windemere Beach Road in Claremont, Tasmania, Australia. It was roughly 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night and a bit chilly out, but fairly calm, no rain or wind despite the start of winter.
The order I delivered with no hassle, but when I walked back to my car I saw an older man, around his late 60s, on a walking frame, beside the passenger side door. Nodding to him, I opened the back passenger door and threw my empty delivery bag in. It was then he asked me if I could give him a ride. He was quiet and polite, so I asked him where to. Without looking at me directly, he said he needed to go to Belerive, which was a long way in the opposite direction to where I was going, and across the bridge. At this I had a bit of a laugh and told him sorry, but I was working and my boss would kill me if I didn't head straight back. I asked if he'd like a lift as far as Moonah and I could call him a cab.
Despite it being chilly, he was only wearing a thin, older style jacket and I was a bit worried about leaving him alone wandering the streets, mainly because he seemed slightly distressed and distant. He seemed to shrug a little after I made my offer and didn't say anything, so I wished him luck and said I had to go, that we'd been busy when I left.
I walked around my car and opened the driver side door and looked up at him again... but he was gone. In the second it took to look down and open my door, he'd vanished. There were streetlights, a bright moon, and Windermere Road in that part was all lawns, no fences, hedges, or even large trees to hide behind. The road was empty for 200-300 meters in every direction. Somehow, a man as solid and real as myself, maybe 5'10" and 70 kg -- on a walking frame, no less -- had vanished. I even checked under my car and around the other side of it, worried he may have collapsed.
The only explanation I could think of is he had been a ghost. Even now, years later, he haunts my thoughts. I wish I had given him his ride, rang my boss with some excuse. And I still can't shake the feeling that on my drive back to the store he had been in the car with me, that he'd taken me up on the offer of a lift back to where I worked... though that could have been a bit of paranoia.
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