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.

Not to be confused with “The Hitchhiker” from way back on October 25, 2017 (man, I’ve been doing this for a bit, haven’t I?). I mean, the “The” in that story makes it so different!! Well… I mean, it definitely turns out differently for the hitchhiker.

The full moon shone on the deserted stretch of road, turning the still waters of the lake just off the side of the road into shimmering silver in the night. The stillness belies the secrets hidden beneath the surface – especially the purported car that drove off the road into the water on a night just like this one, the woman at the wheel a jilted lover, distraught and didn’t see the edge of the road until she careened off into the cold waters, unable to free herself from the car and drowning beneath the waters of the lake… even though they never found the car… Or was she trying to get to her husband, but lost control of the car… Maybe she was trying to get to her children who she had left for just a moment, but a blown-out tire caused her to go off the road…

As the fog drifts up the short bank to the road, they say sometimes that woman can be found hitchhiking, hoping to get a ride to her lover/husband/children. When the hapless driver picks her up, she stares wordlessly out the window until one moment she just disappears…

Amanda had not heard this legend. Amanda didn’t care about legends because Amanda had just gotten off working a double at Valley General. Despite pounding her fourth (fifth?) Red Bull of her shift just before she left, Amanda was tired – wired, but exhausted. So Amanda didn’t notice her headlights shone through the bedraggled woman shivering on the side of the deserted road.

She pulled her Subaru Forester to the side of the road, lowering the passenger window.

“Why are you out this late?”

No response.

“You know what, just get in, honey.”

The woman wordlessly opened the back door and started to get in.

“Oh, shit, sorry – that’s my gym bag back there,” Amanda said, reaching back over the seat to awkwardly wrangle her lavender gym bag over the backseat into the trunk area, grunting with the effort. “Yeah, okay, that should be clear. Hop in!”

The hitchhiker climbed into the back seat and closed the door.

Amanda signaled and pulled back onto the road. “What are you doing hitchhiking at this time of night? Are you crazy? In that outfit? You’re going to die of hypothermia if you don’t get picked up by a serial killer first…”

The hitchhiker stared at Amanda with luminous eyes, filled with deep sadness.

“Hey, Sweetie,” Amanda snapped her fingers. “You with me, girl?”

The hitchhiker didn’t respond beyond her still, baleful stare, tears on the edge of falling down her pale cheeks.

“Where are you going, hon?”

No response.

“Yeah, okay…you just tell me when you need me to stop, okay? But really, what’s a girl like you doing out here? I was joking about the serial killer, but not really. I’m an ER nurse at Valley General and, let me tell you, I’ve seen so many young women just like you come in clinging to life. It’s so sad…” Amanda trailed off.

As a heavy stillness fell over the car, the hitchhiker turned her head to stare out the window into the darkness.

“I mean, they really should put up guard rails here, right? I’m not the first to suggest such a thing. But, noooo, they’re more concerned with wildlife crossings than keeping those of us who drive this road safe. Can I get an amen?” She waited a heartbeat, but when no “amen” was forthcoming, Amanda continued on, “I heard someone died out here when their car crashed into the lake.”

The hitchhiker’s face snapped back around to stare at Amanda in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t think that happened, though – we’d have heard about it in the papers, right? Okay, yeah, that’s dumb – who reads papers anymore. Maybe on Neighborhood or Reddit… though, come to think about it, what would be the Reddit that would cover this? R-slash-deserted-road-safety?”

The hitchhiker let out a sigh and stared out the passenger window again.

“But seriously, girl, what are you doing out here? Hitchhiking isn’t safe in the daylight. You’re out there in the middle of the night? There was barely a shoulder for me to pull off onto – did you think that through before you started hitchhiking?”

The hitchhiker in the back seat started to rapidly fade from existence.

“Hey, no, no, no, no,” Amanda said, noticing the girl’s increasing translucence, reaching her arm back to steady the girl even as she kept her face forward watching the dark road. Her hand passed right through the hitchhiker’s torso. But the look on the nearly-invisible hitchhiker’s face changed from resigned sadness to shock as a spark of life energy arced from Amanda’s hand, bringing the hitchhiker back into nearly solid coherence. Her mouth formed into a wordless “Huh?” as Amanda snatched her hand back.

“Ow, shit,” she said pressing her fingers to her mouth. “I think I got shocked…”

The hitchhiker stared back and forth in the car, shocked she hadn’t vanished.

“I bet if that woman who ran off the road were in like a Tesla she wouldn’t have drowned – probably electrocuted, right?” Amanda laughed. “I mean, I don’t know if that’s how that works. It’s just like a lot of electricity, you know?”

The hitchhiker reached for the door handle in desperation, but the door didn’t open.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, the child locks are still on from when I had my niece this last weekend. She’s such a doll. I took her to the other lake – the one that’s not creepy and has ducks?” She smiled at the memory. “Did you know you’re not supposed to feed ducks bread anymore? I mean I guess we were never supposed to feed them bread – it’s not good for their little duck stomachs. But who knew? And, if I’m honest, I let Danni – my niece, Danni – feed bread to the ducks. Because, what? Am I a monster?”

The hitchhiker clawed desperately at the door handle, then tried the window with the intention of throwing herself out the window.

“Yeah, same thing – Danni was playing with the window and I told her, ‘Danni, if you put your hand out the window it’s going to go home in another car.’ That’s terrible, isn’t it? I mean that’s what our parents told us, right? But speaking as someone who has had to handle a hand in a baggy of ice that really did go home in another car just the other week in the ER… man, that got dark…” Amanda laughed.

The hitchhiker sat back, resigned to spending the rest of her afterlife in the back seat of this Subaru Forester.

“…They did get the hand attached again. But, you know, I don’t know if they got full functionality… I’m guessing they’re not going to grow up to be a concert pianist or anything.” She laughed as the car drove on through the night, beneath the full moon as the road curved away from the lake and the hitchhiker stared through the back window at the lake, wishing she were under its cold, silvery surface gasping for air.

My evening walk takes me past an old cemetery. I know, I know – that’s like the perfect setup for a ghost story. But it’s not like that. I mean, yes, my walk takes me past an old cemetery, but it’s literally just along one edge of the cemetery. It’s not like I go through into the cemetery and walk among the gravestones.

Well, usually that’s the case.

For one, Noodles (my husky) will not go in the cemetery. Like, period. He flattens out like a Berkeley protestor and will not budge. But Noodles wasn’t with me tonight. If he had been, the creepy guy in the Chevy Malibu almost certainly wouldn’t have immediately turned around after passing me and drove past really slowly while looking at me.. and then turning around again…

Before you ask, yes, I have several ways to defend myself. When he first turned around my hand fell instinctively to the small pocket in my exercise shorts that held my mace. My other hand tightened around the Nightcore T4K flashlight that could deliver a 4,000-lumen burst of light that is quite disabling. I swallowed hard as he drove by and felt the chain around the kydex sheath concealing my Bastinelli PiKa Karambit knife that my dad taught me to very effectively use against a tree in our yard whose bark is extremely carved up as a result. So, yeah, when I use terms like “layered defense,” trust me that I have an idea what I’m talking about.

That said, best way to survive an encounter is to avoid it in the first place. So, when the Malibu made the second lazy U-turn, I hesitated for only a moment before turning and vaulting over the low stone wall surrounding the cemetery.

The tall trees that ran along the stone wall swallowed the light from the streetlights almost immediately, and I turned my flashlight on a much more sedate and useful light level, hurrying deeper into the cemetery to put as much distance between me and the creepy guy as possible. My vague plan was to cut through and come out the west side of the cemetery and pick up Oak Avenue which I could use to get home. That was the plan, at least.

But it was very dark, and the flashlight created eerie shadows among the pale gravestones. I was only about a hundred meters in before I started to lose my nerve and wonder if maybe testing my pepper spray might not have been the worst idea as the familiar warm concrete smell of the sidewalk gave way to the earthy smell of watered lawns – I could hear the distant chick-chick-chick of automated sprinklers in a far-off section of the cemetery. A nearby owl hoot-hooted, startling me. I hurried deeper into the cemetery.

I caught movement in my periphery and trained the beam of my flashlight in that direction – nothing. I kept moving only to hear the distinct sound of leaves underfoot from that same direction. I shone the light again. Again, nothing. I moved faster. The footsteps on dead leaves seemed to keep pace. I had almost sped up to a run now. I spotted another flashlight beam ahead in the distance, and as the steps behind me picked up their speed, I broke into a sprint towards the flashlight in the distance hoping it was some night watchman. I thought I heard the footsteps sprint after me, but I wasn’t certain – I wasn’t going to check. I ran at a breakneck speed towards the person with the flashlight.

The flashlight holder clearly heard my desperate footfalls and my own erratically moving flashlight beam. “Whoa, whoa there,” a female voice came from the flashlight holder.

“Oh my god,” I panted. “Thank god. There’s something following me..”

She trained her light behind me and increased the brightness. There among the gray and bone-white tombstones stood… a deer. Well, a buck. With a pretty nice set of antlers. It paused for a second as the light reflected in its eyes like, well, a deer in headlights, before turning his head and darting into the darkness.

“Well,” she laughed, “I think you’re safe from marauding deer now.”

Her laughter made my fear evaporate, replaced by embarrassment. “God, now I feel dumb…”

“You shouldn’t. It’s spooky as hell in here. Getting scared of an animal skulking in the dark just seems reasonable.” The silence around us pressed in before she added, “Hi, I’m Mara.”

I smiled in the darkness. “I’m Leah. Thanks for, well, for being here.”

She chuckled. “Just taking my nightly walk through here. What are you doing in here, Leah?”

“Ugh,” I sighed. “There was a creepy guy… I decided to cut through the cemetery to try to get away from him.”

“Holy shit, did he hurt you?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Nothing like that. He just drove by slowly, then again, then turned to come around again.”

“Jesus, that’s scary…”

“I mean… yeah…” we were quiet. As my heartrate slowed, I broke the silence, “You cut through here regularly?”

“Oh yeah, it’s my usual route.”

“You don’t find it scary? I mean there are terrifying deer in here and everything,” I said dramatically.

Mara laughed. “No, it’s peaceful. Well.. at least it’s usually peaceful.”

“Usually?”

“You were just terrified by a ruminant; I don’t want to add to your fears.”

“Oh, now you’ve got me intrigued.”

From the light of our flashlights I could see Mara sizing me up. “Yeah, well, this one time I ran into something a lot scarier than a buck.”

Maybe it was the company, but I felt less afraid. “Yeah? Go on…”

“I don’t know what it was. I was walking through in the middle of summer, so the sun had set and there was still just enough light for me to see an unusual statue on one of the mausoleums by the west entrance. I didn’t remember it being there before. A few steps in, I turned to look at it again and it was gone.”

“That’s… disconcerting.”

“Right? I told myself I just needed to get through, so I sped up. I passed the groundskeepers shed and heard a loud hissing. I had my flashlight,” she gestured to the light in her hand, “and shone it towards the sound…”

“And?”

“I saw… I don’t know. It was like a shadow that the light couldn’t penetrate. Pure darkness, just hovering there by the corner of the structure. Then burning red dots appeared, like it opened its eyes and looked at me.”

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Yeah. I booked it.”

“Hell yeah, you did.”

“I got maybe thirty yards before it appeared directly in front of me, the darkness coalescing into the form of an enormous crow – like ten feet tall. It spread its gaping wings to engulf me. I skidded to a stop and bolted across the grass. I could hear it take flight, I thought I could feel the wind from its massive wings, but when I stole a glance over my shoulder I could just see the dark shape and fiery red eyes soaring after me.”

“Jesus…”

“Yeah, well, I probably shouldn’t have looked behind me as I ran across the grass because I tripped over one of those low grave stones and went down hard.”

I winced just thinking about it.

“My foot went numb – I don’t know if I sprained or broke my ankle, but it didn’t matter as that.. thing settled right in front of me. I scrambled backwards and I could see other shades moving in towards me from other directions. The main being floated closer, its eyes boring into me…” she trailed off into silence.

I waited a long moment for her to continue, but the silence hung heavy in the darkness. Finally, I couldn’t stand it and asked louder than I intended, “Well? How’d you escape that thing?”

My question startled Mara. “Oh? Oh, yeah. I didn’t. That was, what? Ten years ago? I’ve been here ever since.”

My blood froze in my veins as I staggered backwards, my flashlight pointing at Mara… through Mara, before I turned and ran for the exit.