It was early in 1996, February. I remember because it happened on my way to my birthday gathering. I was in my first year of college, still living at home in Abbotsford.
One of the guys in my group of friends at the time had a house out in the Matsqui Flats where his parents had let us convert the car garage into a club house, complete with ping pong table, wall murals, board games, etc. This is where we were having my birthday party, which was really just an excuse for a get-together.
At this time there was something else going on in my town. Girls were getting escorted to their vehicles in the evenings at my college. A girl had been brutally murdered and her friend badly beaten. The friend had managed to get away but the man had still not been identified and was pulling cruel pranks on the family, such as removing the headstone from her grave, and calling the radio station. I did not know a lot about the case, to be honest. I just knew the basics. Everyone did.
So I am always early to things. It got dark around 5 or 5:30 at that time of year, or sometime around then. I'm pretty sure it was around 7 or so when I was driving out there. I just know it was dark.
Matsqui flats didn't have any street lighting and the houses were far away from each other, with ditches lining the roads, from what I can remember. Farmland, close to the U.S. Boarder. Not a lot around. So I'm driving and listening to music on the radio and as I am approaching the old one room schoolhouse and about to make a right, I see a girl standing on the road by the ditch on the right. So I braked and swerved and then she was gone. I shook it off and drove the rest of the way to my friend's place.
When I got there, him and another friend were still putting up decorations and I recounted what happened to them, saying I must be crazy. The friend whose house it was just looked at me and said that's around about where the murder was. That gave me a bit of a shiver but I still thought I was imagining things, or that my friend was trying to give me a scare.
About 10 minutes or so later, 2 more friends arrived. They came in the club house freaking out, and I listened to them both recount the exact same story I had just told. This was before cell phones, and the house was at least a 20 minute drive away for all of us. These 2 girls were also very logical, level-headed people.
Years later I'm still trying to find out the exact place the murder took place, but I don't want to be disrespectful to the victim's family or surviving friend by asking. I've just always wondered if that was really a ghost we saw that night.
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