A Spooky Real Life Encounter
Since it’s almost Halloween, this seems like the best time for a tale like this, as it’s something that still gives me chills just thinking about it. Years ago, I was walking home from a session at Knight Library late one stormy night. I left the library some time between ten-thirty and eleven, so after trudging through downtown to the Ferry Street Bridge, then along the river in the pouring rain, it was probably at least midnight. It was just past one last stretch of woods before I made it to the Valley River Hotel, the VRC Mall parking lot, when I first spotted it. I remember at first just thinking it was someone else on a late night errand, though even in Eugene, where folks joke about having webbed feet, it was rare to see anybody out in so late in this weather. Yet for some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off the shadowy figure. As the figure drew nearer, I finally figured out what my eyes had instinctively locked on to wasn’t the man himself, but his shambling, swaying gait. After all, I had long-since learned to spot drunken wanderers from a good distance, as, while most are fairly harmless, others can be quite troublesome. Still, there was something about his movements that I had never seen in a drunken stagger before, that was trying to raise the rain-dampened hairs on my neck the closer it got. In all my life, I have never seen another human being nail such a perfect zombie-walk. It all felt so unreal, every minute of it. This creepy figure in a dark raincoat slowly stumbling toward me, barring my path to the Mall— where I could at least get help from the security guards if need be— and my own feet drawing me steadily nearer, even as I tried to tell myself to calm down, that I needed to figure out what to do before we met. After all, on my right was a bank of blackberry thorns to climb, with only a fence and a deserted stretch of road beyond. To my right, the blackberry-choked riverbank, with the rain-swelled torrent of the Willamette to fall into. Only the trail behind me to retreat, nearly a mile to Coburg Road, and any hope of help. And that eerie certainty that when we crossed paths, he was going to lunge at me. One half of me kept refusing to retreat, given that I would have to go miles and hours out of my way to avoid him, and I had to work the next morning. The other half primed to shove my umbrella in his face and run like hell if he made any sudden moves. To make matters worse, the figure was swaying near the middle of the trail, so I found myself shifting slightly off to one side of the trail to stay out of arms’ reach once we met, wanting to give myself some buffer space to dodge if he did try to attack me… I don’t know exactly what I expected, but my mind kept coming up with all sorts of creepy things the closer he got to me. His face was still shrouded in the shadows of his hood, so part of me kept expecting him to look like the walking dead, as George Romero himself would weep for missing the chance to film this guy in motion. Or would his face look perfectly normal, but he would do something creepy, like part open his coat to reveal only a cob-webbed rib-cage, or start doing or saying ominous and menacing things up close? Whatever my racing mind was expecting, what did happen was unsettling enough for me. As we closed the gap between one another, I could see his coat was dark green without sheets of rain between us washing out colors. The closer we got, the more unnerving his jerky zombie-shamble became as I realized that my eyes were not playing tricks on me in the darkness and limited visibility. Finally, I could see his face as we passed under one of the few lights along this stretch of trail, and though he at least didn’t look like a ghoul or anything, it still did nothing to calm or reassure me. It only raised the question of how he could stay so on-center with his eyes closed. The winding of the trail, the swirling of the wind, the swaying, unsteady steps. It wasn’t that they were closed for only a moment, for I never took my eyes off him once we were this close, it was that he never opened his eyes once in all that time. Just kept putting one foot in front of the other, his lips working silently, as if in a trance. If he was even whispering, I couldn’t hear it over the drumming rain, and I couldn’t see even a sliver of his eyes under those closed lids. He paid me no mind whatsoever, not even turning his head to acknowledge my existence, and I felt it was probably safer to not draw his attention. I have a friend who sleepwalks sometimes, but even his eyes are half-opened when he does it. I’ve never seen a drunk who could pull that off, and I’m not so sure even meth could do that, either. I turned, and even walked backwards for a good twenty feet or so before daring to take my eyes off of him. I don’t know where he came from or where he was going like that, but if he was content to keep on and not trouble me, I was willing to leave it at that. Though I recall a certain wariness as I got closer to Valley River Center; after all, that was where that guy came from, was always the way back into the neighborhoods along River Road, where I lived, and I was plagued for a good while with the irrational fear that there would be more of them. It was such a relief to see the Security truck cruising around like it was nobody’s business when I made it to the mall parking lot, still I kept my guard up as I crossed the foot-bridge and passed through the park to get to River Road. And frequently looked over my shoulder every step of the way, most likely spooked enough to break out running if I actually saw anyone at all behind me after that harrowing encounter.
