I was 16 and staying the night at my best friend Jill's house. I'm not using her real name since we've long since lost touch and I don't know what her memories may be of this particular night. Back then, Jill lived in Churchville on the one and only main street, which was and is Route 250 and it, runs right through the town and on into West Virginia and Ohio, ending at Lake Eerie. The middle of the night is quiet in this little town, with rarely a car on the road. I've had only a few unexplainably scary experiences in my life - this is one of them. Whether or not this was indeed a ghostly encounter is a mystery. I know for certain it was spooky and weird.
It was late at night in the summer, and Jill's family had all gone to bed. She and I lay across her bed, in the dark, with our faces close to the open window, looking out toward the main street - desolate, dark, but lit in regularly spaced spots by the streetlights. We were smoking cigarettes and blowing the smoke out the window to keep from getting caught.
From her room on the second floor, we could see a pretty long way up the street, toward the east. We noticed a car coming from that direction - again, an uncommon sight for the wee hours in Churchville. We watched it approach, commenting to each other that it seemed to be moving slower than the 35mph speed limit. It got closer and we could see that it was an older model car, like something from the 50s, light-maybe-white in colour with some darker colour panels on the side. Certainly it was nobody's car we'd ever seen around there before. Then, we couldn't believe it... As it got closer to Jill's house, the car slowed down even more and pulled over on her side of the street in front of the empty lot next door, right in full view of where we were looking down from the window. "Who the heck is that?" I remember already feeling nervous - even before the driver cut the motor and the lights and stepped out of the car.
He was a completely dark, black figure, backlit by the streetlight. The shape of his hair was kind of like a 50s slicked-back hairdo. He appeared to be wearing a short jacket, maybe black leather, and jeans, but I could really only tell from his outline. He stepped around to the front of the car, toward us. I got the feeling that he was focused on our window, like he knew we were there. I was thinking, "There's no way he can see us. We're in a dark room." He took a few more steps in our direction and he was standing in Jill's yard. He seemed to be looking up at us, although I still couldn't make out any real details of his face or clothing - he must've been just 25 or 30 feet away. Jill and I both held very still, shushing each other, and trying not to be seen. Then very quickly the guy raised an arm toward us... Pointing? "He's got a gun!" I scream and pulled us both below the window, with Jill smacking at me to shut up and let go (she was obviously braver than me). Eyes squeezed shut and breath held I waited for a bang. But I heard nothing.
Jill wrestled free and peeked over the window ledge. "Now he's gone!" And he was. The car too. Jill was a little ticked off at me for screaming. I didn't think scaring him off was such a bad idea, but she apparently wanted to see what would have happened next. After all these years, I wonder too.
We should have heard him start the car and pull off, but it didn't seem like he would've had time to do that. The bedroom window didn't allow us to see down the road, west, in the logical direction he would've gone. And neither of us wanted to run downstairs to get a better look. I don't think we slept much that night, fearing the stranger would return. But he never did. And we never knew if what we experienced was a real person or a ghost.
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