It was 1992 and I was miserable.
I was 18 years old and it was less than 2 months after graduation. I should have been partying with my friends, having a blast enjoying the last summer of my life when I could say I had no real responsibilities.
Instead, I was laid up, leg broken and in a cast up to my hip from a car accident less than 2 weeks after graduation. No money, no job anymore and no car because of the accident. Angry and feeling like this was the worst summer of my life. Dependent upon my parents and a few friends to get me around.
I had gone with my parents up to my aunt's place, 'cause it beat sitting around the house, flipping through channels and trying desperately to fill the mind numbing hours. Yet, here I was, laid out on her couch (it was the only place I could lay down with any comfort), bored out of my mind and listening to her and my mom and dad bitch about their jobs, their lives and the president. The three of them occupied the kitchen table that stood off from the end of the couch my head was at, (it was a combined kitchen/living room area), while my grandmother was sitting in a recliner across the living room from me. Directly at the end of the couch I lay on was a hallway which led to the open door of the bedroom at the end of the trailer. I could see the bedroom light shining and I was thinking of asking mom to take me back home. Mind-numbing TV was better than no TV at all.
That was when it happened.
I had just turned from looking at my grandmother and asking her what time it was. As I stared down the hallway, the light in the bedroom suddenly went out and I remember thinking, Is someone else here? That was when I saw it. At first it was visible only as a movement, an impression of something or someone, and I thought that whomever had turned out the light had stepped into the darkened hallway.
Then it passed the lighted, open door to the bathroom.
A dark shape, more like a shadow really, vaguely man shaped and transparent, like smoke, glided through the light. It was featureless except for that smokey aspect, swirling and darkening in some places while lightening up in others. It quickly glided up the length of the hallway and through the middle of the living room. As it passed between me and my grandmother, she dimmed, like looking at her through a piece of glass that has a film on it.
I was in shock, unable to speak or even make a sound as the form went through the room and exited through the closed door that led to the front porch. As I looked at my grandmother, I could only stammer, "Did you....?"
"Yes, I saw it." She said.
Relief flooded through me and I sat up, swinging my 100 lb leg off the couch and turning to see the reaction of the rest of the family.
There was nothing. They were all engaged in a discussion over unions and the local garment workers industry that, at the time, was the lifeblood of our small local community. None of the other three people in the room had seen a damned thing.
I looked back to my grandmother and she smiled at me. "It's ok. He can't hurt us," she said.
Keep in mind, this trailer sat at the edge of what was once (according to local legend) a Civil War battlefield in northern Tennessee. There had been many people who had found relics in the area; old buttons and pieces of muskets and the like. It wasn't hard to imagine the spirit of some Union or Confederate solider lingering about the place where he died, unable to move on, trapped in a never ending "in-between" due to the violence that claimed not only his life but the lives of his brothers and his enemies. The place had always had a solemn feel to it, even back when it was just a field and my teenage rock band had put on a show there. There had been many stories told over the years regarding that stretch of dirt road and the woods and fields that lined it. This isn't the only experience I've had in that area, although, I believe this was my first.
I'd always been fascinated with the occult and supernatural events. Many times in my life (up to that point) I had wished to see something otherworldly or unexplainable. Now that I had been given my wish, I regretted it. It was fear that I felt. Not of the spirit, that had been harmless. No, It was fear of what the existence of that spirit meant. If life DID exist after death, was that it? Lingering for eternity around the place of your death, trapped in a state of non-being, unable to communicate but in ephemeral ways? I think it was at this moment that I first confronted the idea of my own mortality, even more so than when the accident that had so recently left me lamed had erased a whole afternoon from my mind.
My grandmother smiled again and stood, walking over and taking my hand. "It's OK. He only wanted you to see him, to let you know he was here."
I gave a wan smile back, trying to master the emotions that were coursing through me. I might have been legally an adult, but who is really ready to stare at the abyss at 18? Only the bravest and most secure of us, and, trust me, I was far from either.
The rest of my family turned, seemingly together and silence reigned as my mother, who had always been good at reading the air in a room said "Who saw what?"
My grandmother and I exchanged a knowing look, and I let her explain. I still wanted to go home, but at least I wasn't bored anymore.
There are things that none of us can explain out there. I firmly believe that the truth IS stranger than fiction and that *there are levels to the universe and secrets that we are only aware of at certain times or in certain places. Over the years I've looked back on this memory many times and honestly, I can't tell you I understood what I saw. All I know is that
it happened.
Peace