On The Ranch

I grew up on a ranch, about 10 miles from the nearest town. One of our favorite things to do in the summer was to spread out a few sleeping bags in our backyard and have “camp outs.” We have a huge dark activated light attached to our barn that we would turn off with a high powered flashlight to tell ghost stories and try to scare each other.

One night I had two of my friends over for a camp out. We shut off the barn light and sat in complete darkness (if you haven’t been out in the country, it might be hard to appreciate exactly how pitch black it can be), talking in those low scary-story voices. One of my friends was in the middle of her story (probably the one about the serial killer licking that girl’s hand) when she stopped short. She said, “Who’s that?” and up to the road.

We all looked and saw what she was talking about. You could barely make out a figure, certainly the silhouette of a person, walking down the road. That was unusual enough, but the way this person was walking was what was unsettling. The figure was standing straight up, and was walking in such a stiff and unnatural way that s/he could have been marching. We couldn’t make out any other defining features of the figure.

After watching and having a whispered debate on what to do, we decided the best course of action would be to shout at the figure. I screamed, “WHO ARE YOU?” at the top of my 12 year old lungs. One of my friends pointed the flashlight at the figure, but it was too far away to distinguish any features. The figure heard us, and just sort of turned around, walking in that peculiar way. We watched it until it was out of sight, then woke up my parents. I still have no idea who s/he was or what they were doing way out in the country.

#Area/Country #Person/Stranger #Unexplained