Kevin burst into the late-night diner. He’d sent me a breathless text a half hour ago saying I had to meet him somewhere public, somewhere anonymous because he had huge news – he couldn’t tell me more over text. I suggested the Denny’s off Petaluma Boulevard because neither of us had been to that location and it’s like twenty minutes from either of our houses, so, you know, anonymous. He texted back that that was a good idea. He’d be there in like ten minutes (ten minutes in Kevin time is generally forty minutes – I checked my watch as he burst into the diner looking around wildly for me; he was early for Kevin time).

I waved to get his attention. I met Kevin through another friend and we hit it off right away – mostly owing to our mutual interest in the paranormal which none of our other friends shared. Kevin was a big guy in a teddy bear kind of way, sandy hair disheveled as he sat down a little breathless.

“Ben, oh my God, you’re not going to believe it…”

“Hi hon,” the waitress interrupted. “Can I get you something?”

Kevin looked up, surprised. “Oh… Umm… Moons over My Hammy?”

“Anything to drink?”

“Coke.”

She threw him a practiced smile, “Thanks, hon.” Then, to me, “Yours is comin’ right out.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Ben looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. “What’d you get?”

“Cali Club Sandwich,” I said.

Kevin nodded thoughtfully. “Good call. Mind if I steal some fries?”

“Anytime.”

“Awesome,” he smiled.

“So… what am I not going to believe?”

The switch flipped and Kevin was back into hyperactive mode. “Bro, I saw a UFO.”

“Get out!”

“No, seriously! I was driving on River Road and I saw lights come out of one of the vineyards. I had to pull over to film it. Here…” he fumbled with his phone and pulled up a dark, shaky video of… sky. He looked crestfallen as we reviewed the footage. “I don’t get it, it was right there – a saucer-type shape with bright flashing lights…”

The waitress brought my club sandwich. Kevin snagged a few fries, which was fine; I wasn’t going to be able to eat the whole thing anyway. “Saucer-shaped? Not like the dark triangle you saw a few months ago?”

“No,” he said around fries. “Definitely saucer-shaped…” He studied the video again. “I don’t understand why the phone didn’t capture it…”

“I mean, it was dark… you know how hard it is to get a good picture of like a giant full moon…” just then a light streak came from the side of the frame. “What’s that?”

“Oh, man, that’s another thing! I was filming on the side of the road, watching the saucer rising and this car blows by me—that’s the lights—and boom, right into floodwaters!”

“Floodwaters?”

“Yeah, I didn’t realize the road had flooded ahead. Dude went straight in up over his hood.”

“Holy shit! Good thing you saw that saucer!”

“Right?”

Kevin had an uncanny proclivity for paranormal encounters. Before the UFO encounter, he told me about going ghost hunting at an abandoned asylum up in Lake County that had been condemned. He and another friend were inside. On the second floor, Kevin saw an orb back downstairs. He went down to investigate. His partner kept going and fell through a rotted section of floor and broke his leg.

Another time he was camping up in Six Rivers National Forest up in Northern California and had a bigfoot encounter. He was asleep in his tent when he heard grunts and footsteps and then the tent started getting pummeled by sticks and branches. He tried waiting it out but eventually the sticks turned to rocks and he grabbed what he could and made a break for his car, hightailing it back to Leggett.

“We should go camping out there, Ben!” he suggested after telling me about that encounter.

The pragmatist in me thought hiking out into the middle of bigfoot country with a guy who is clearly a paranormal magnet sounds like a recipe for disaster. On the other hand, another part of me really wanted to go and see for myself what’s going on.

Okay, confession time. I see ghosts. I don’t talk about it to anyone – it’s always awkward. It’s just easier to keep it to myself. Besides, life is a lot less complicated when ghosts don’t know you can see them. So, if I act like I don’t see them, they don’t bother me and I don’t look like a crazy person talking to thin air and everyone wins!

But I’ve never seen a bigfoot!

The next weekend Kevin pulls his Jeep Wrangler onto a goat-trail of a dirt road.

“Umm, do you know where you’re going?”

“This is a tip I got for a campsite from one of the bigfoot Reddit forums.”

The road ended and we hiked in another mile until we were truly in the middle of nowhere.

“Want some help with the tent?” I asked Kevin.

“Nah, I’m good,” he said as he laid the flat tent on the footprint and started putting the poles together. “Why don’t you find us some firewood?”

“Yeah… sounds good.” I started down what looked like a trail. It ran straight for about a hundred meters and then abruptly ended at a dramatic overlook with a steep drop off. A dead tree had fallen a few meters from the edge and I managed to cut some branches and bring them back to camp by the time Kevin had our tent pitched and our packs inside.

Night fell while we were cooking dinner over the fire. I startled at the sound of coyotes off in the distance.

Kevin snickered. “Not much on camping?”

I shrugged, “Not since I was in boy scouts. And even then, I preferred day hikes to camp outs.”

Kevin smiled. “Hopefully we’ll hear something other than coyotes tonight.”

“Yeah,” I said equal parts hoping and hoping against hearing anything. The “Not hearing anything” part lasted until we were comfortable in our tent. We’d turned out the flashlights and were just settling in to bed when we heard footsteps outside.

“Ben, did you hear that?” Kevin whispered.

I nodded, then realized Kevin couldn’t see me nod in the darkness. “Yeah.” I listened carefully. “Maybe a bear?”

More footsteps around the camp outside our tent. Then a deep grunt.

“That’s no bear,” Kevin whispered.

“I mean, it’s probably a bear…” I started.

“It’s bigfoot!” Kevin hissed as he slipped into his boots and started unzipping the tent.

I struggled with the laces of my hiking boots, “Hey, Kevin, wait!” but he was already climbing out of the tent. In my mind I couldn’t imagine what he was hoping to happen if he did startle a bigfoot in our camp, right?

I was out and shining my flashlight around. “Kevin?” I called.

“He went this way!” I saw Kevin’s flashlight bobbing fast up the trail I had gone to get the firewood earlier… right towards the cliff.

“Kevin, wait!” I called, breaking into a sprint after him.

“I think I see him,” I heard Kevin’s voice ahead. I was gaining on him, but I didn’t know if I was going to catch him in time.

“Keving, be careful! There’s a..” before I could finish my warning, I heard an enormous crash off to the left. Kevin’s flashlight beam snapped towards the sound of the crash and he started in that direction, away from the cliff. I hurried after him, catching him as the thick brush slowed his progress.

We were both out of breath when we came upon the tree that had fallen, likely causing the crash we heard. “Whoa, look at this!” he said, shining the light around looking for a trail. “We need to find a way around it to follow the bigfoot!”

I looked towards the base of the tree and gasped when I saw a short old woman with curly gray hair in a faded lavender dress, a pearl neckless, and out of breath. Her eyes met mine and she looked as surprised as I was. A ghost.

“What? What’d you find?” Kevin asked.

“N-nothing,” I said. “Just surprised a tree this size fell.”

“Right? I bet that thing came through here and felled the tree to keep us from following.” He searched again with his flashlight. “We need to find a way around it!”

I looked back at the old lady ghost who shook her head.

“Kevin, I think we should head back to camp.”

“But the bigfoot was right here!”

“And he’s clearly gone. He came to our camp for a reason – maybe he smelled our dinner? He may be back for the same reason?” I was making it up as I went along.

In the beam of my light I could see Kevin thinking it through. “Yeah…” he said finally. “You’re probably right. Let’s head back.” He started back the way we came.

I turned to the old lady and said to Kevin, “I’ll catch up. I got some crap in my boots as we were chasing the bigfoot. You go ahead, it’s going to take me a minute. I’ll catch up.”

“Alright,” he said, “If you’re sure.”

“Absolutely,” I said and waited until the beam of his flashlight disappeared in the forest before I whispered to the ghost. “Who are you and what are you doing in the forest at night?” Then added incredulously, “Did you knock this tree over?”

She nodded and stepped closer. “I did. I needed to get his attention. He was heading right for that..”

“For the cliff,” I interrupted. “I was trying to get him to stop.”

“That boy,” she shook her head then looked at the fallen tree. “Guess that’s just grandmother ghost strength,” she laughed.

“You’re Kevin’s grandmother?”

“Eleanor Levy, nice to meet you…?”

“Ben, Ben Adkins. You watch after Kevin?”

“Someone has to! That boy just blunders into everything like a bull in a China shop!”

The pieces fell into place. “Wait a minute, you’re the one causing the things he sees! The UFO?”

“I have no idea why he was out on that flooded road in the middle of the night. He would have drowned!”

“The orb in the asylum?”

“Oy, what was that boy doing there in the first place?” she threw her hands up. “And that friend of his ended up breaking his leg…” she pointed an accusing finger at me, “You’re not going to take him into some crazy dangerous setting, are you?”

“No, I was trying to stop him barreling towards that cliff.” She considered my comment as something else niggled my brain, “Hey, what was around our camp that got us out here in the first place?”

“That? Oh, bigfoot.”

“Holy crap,” I said.

“Yeah, he bounded down the cliff – they’re athletic like that. Kevin,” she shook her head, “Not so much.” She regarded me. “So you’re not some crazy adrenaline junky…”

I laughed.

“So, you’ll help me keep my Kevin safe?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Good.”

I looked back in the direction Kevin had gone and couldn’t see any trace of a trail. “Umm, Eleanor? Can you help me find the trail here?”

She laughed, “Follow me.”

I got back to camp without anything more than some branches scratching as I followed Eleanor through the think forest. Kevin was already in his sleeping bag talking about almost catching the bigfoot. I was tired and sore and climbed into my sleeping bag and both of us were out within minutes.

The next morning the fog had moved in thick and wet as we made breakfast and broke camp. We hiked back to the Jeep and talked about when we could come back out to find bigfoot. Kevin managed to steer the Jeep down the rutted dirt road, getting us back on the twisty back road.

The thick fog kept visibility to barely in front of our headlights, so we navigated the serpentine road slowly. Suddenly, Kevin jerked the Jeep to the side of the road, the Jeep at an awkward angle as he leapt out, calling, “Will-o-the-wisps!” as the door slammed behind him.

“What the heck is he going on about?” Eleanor asked from the back seat.

I stared after Kevin, “Will-o-the-wisps are ghost lights…” then I saw what drew Kevin’s attention – a pair of lights dancing off the road in the fog. But the two lights seemed to move too in sync with each other. “Oh shit, that’s…”

“A truck!” Eleanor said as she disappeared out of the Jeep.

I leapt out after Kevin, calling, “Kevin, wait!”

“You see them, right?” he said, pointing at the lights coming towards him. Now that I realized what they were I could tell the truck was just slowly following the winding road around the curve of the hill and that it would shortly bring it right upon Kevin.

“Kevin, those aren’t ghost lights!” I yelled as I hurried across the road.

“What? Of course they are,” he called back. “Look at how they’re moving!”

The lights were getting closer and Kevin was in the middle of the road.

Off behind him, I saw a luminescent figure step out of the forest. Even though the figure was nondescript, I knew it was Eleanor creating a diversion. “Kevin! Behind you!” I bellowed.

Kevin turned, saw the figure step into the forest and he bolted after it, just as the logging truck sounded its air horn and barely missed me and the Jeep on the narrow road – and absolutely would have taken out Kevin if he hadn’t vanished in the forest just in time.

A moment later, Kevin emerged from the forest as I crossed the road. “Wow, did you see that logging truck? That was close! We should probably get off the road…” he walked past me towards the Jeep.

Eleanor walked out of the forest and stared after Kevin as he climbed into the Jeep. She sighed and shook her head, “It’s going to take both of us to keep him from killing himself.”

“I’m figuring that out..” I laughed.

“Ben! Let’s go! It’s dangerous out here,” Kevin called through his open window.

“Thanks,” Eleanor said.

“It’s going to take a supernatural village,” I said as I headed back to the Jeep.