» Sat May 12, 2012 11:23 am
I don't have a video, but rather a story about something that happened to me some time ago.
There used to be a guy in my community called Herbie. I think almost everyone knew him. He was endlessly wandering around town, looking for change to get alcohol. He was quite old, very very skinny, and had a distinct walk and posture. Even out of the corner of your eye, you would be able to tell it was him at once.
Apparently, he often went to his brother's house to spend the night. One extremely cold winter night in the late ninties, he went there, but the door was locked. He sat down in the yard and froze to death. Everybody thought it was a shame, but knew it was just a matter of time before something happened to him. He was frail, and hadn't been healthy in some time.
One night about eleven years ago, I had been visiting a friend, and now it was time to walk home. The quickest way was to travel along a trail that used to be train tracks. There have been no trains on the island for around twenty years, and the tracks were converted to trails during the ninties.
I was walking along, looking down as usual (you'd be surprised how often you can find money lying on the ground). Whenever I was about to cross a road, I'd look up to make sure there were no cars coming. At one point when I looked up, I saw someone standing in the next section of the trail. He was at the edge of it, with his back to me. It looked like Herbie.
My rational mind immediately took over, and assured me there was no way it could be him. It was dark, I have much too active an imagination, it must be somebody else. I was a little creeped out, but dropped my head again and kept going.
When I reached him, I looked up again to reassure myself that this was someone else. I was less than five feet from him, and it still looked exactly like him. He was standing there, completely motionless, looking into a ditch. I kept walking, praying that he wouldn't look around at me. After about half a minute, I looked back to make sure he wasn't following me, or watching me. He was still standing in the same spot, not moving. He was in this same position everytime I looked back, until I could no longer see him. At this point, I walked so fast the rest of the way, that it was practically a jog.
Separated from that moment by more than a decade and the safety (hopefully) of my bedroom, right now my brain is still trying to rationalize that it couldn't have been him. When I was looking at him from an arm's length, though, I was absolutely positive that I was looking at a dead man.