One of our staffers, the editor who works tirelessly to edit all material for the main site, The X-Files Lexicon, and this blog, XScribe, shared with me the following two accounts. While I am redirecting my energies elsewhere, as well as focusing on material for the main site, I thought I’d share these two accounts on the sightings of ghosts. Aside from accounts of ghost videos seen on You Tube, and which are to me always debatable, most real ghost sightings are never documented, as they act as fleeting moments that validate a sphere of reality, or consciousness, that can’t be explained in a linear sense for many. Therefore, it not is always advisable to just dismiss someone’s experience as an act of imagination, or misconception, especially in cases of multiple sightings from witnesses that have no connection to one another, whereby it becomes difficult to argue these cases as personalized – their experience is always valid to them, regardless of what the facts might be -- one should be prudent to recognize that aspect. I hope others will enjoy this. - Matt
I was going home, driving westbound on historical Route 66, just a block north from my house. It was late afternoon, but visibility was still good.
It had been a perfectly clear day. That section of Route 66 is heavily traveled, with a lot of businesses along the way. It's now a six-lane highway, with three lanes on each side. Around that same time I'd noticed that more and more pedestrians had taken to ignoring the crosswalks, and tried running right through traffic, instead. Which is crazy, considering how busy it is and that the speed limit is 45 - 50 mph.
On that particular day, I saw a young guy wearing a long-sleeved, striped shirt and dark pants, walking on the left side of the road. Suddenly, he ran right out into the middle lane almost in front of me as I neared him, startling me. Because of the heavy traffic, I couldn't immediately check my review mirror to see if he'd made it to the other side of the road. I was relieved not to hear any screech of brakes or tires or worse; still, when it was safe, I glanced back over my shoulder, expecting to see him racing to the right curb. No one was there.
Soon after that, I heard that someone had been killed in the same vicinity, on Route 66. Then I never saw any more pedestrians trying to cross that road outside of the crosswalks. Recently, I read something online that really got my interest. Apparently, there have been many other sightings of a young guy fitting the exact same description, on exactly the same stretch of road, who would appear and then vanish.
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Right on the outskirts of the small town we used to live in when I was a kid, was an old road. It was called Agua Mansa, because it was on the edge of the Santa Ana River. The name means "gentle water." It used to be a small community in its own right, colonized in 1842, but was swept away in a huge flood in 1862. Not so gentle. Though the little community was completely wiped out, the dilapidated street remained, and thus was called Agua Mansa Road.
My dad used to drive down it as a short cut to any place west of our house nearby. Being kids, we loved when he drove that way because it was so creepy. It’s a completely rural road--no street lights and only one or two buildings or houses along its stretch. It has a lot of blind curves and broken asphalt that hadn’t been repaired in ages, yet people usually drove fast along it, despite the risk. Somewhere around the half-way point was a duck farm that provided a very feeble source of light at night on the south side and on the north side, was a steep, steep embankment down which thick rows of large, creepy, old, gnarled grape vines grew. No one tended those grape vines, so they were a mess. At the summit of the steep embankment, stood the gates to an old cemetery. It's the oldest cemetery in the county, I've since discovered and there's a lot of history to it, I also learned much later. People vandalized the cemetery and left headstones broken and overturned and dug up coffins, leaving bones unearthed.
To make it even creepier, our older cousin used to tell us frightening tales of homeless vagrants who would hang out at the cemetery. He said they’d hide in the grapevines and jump out and snatch children who misbehaved or just happened to be unlucky enough to be out there at night. I know he was just trying to scare us, but obviously vandals and vagrants actually had hung out there.
Many, many times while we were driving down that road, even after we moved away, I'd see a man walking down the road with his dog. I used to imagine stories as to where he was going. Perhaps he worked at the duck farm or the cemetery and was allowed to take his dog with him. Perhaps he lived at the one very old house that still stands at the corner of Agua Mansa and Rancho and just liked taking walks with his dog. I never knew. He was perhaps middle-aged and wore a dark jacket--perhaps flannel or wool--with an indistinct plaid design, and very beat up, faded dungarees--maybe a pair of overalls. He also wore a beat up, light, khaki brown hat with a brim. I could never see his face that well because his head was always down, but in back where I could see his hair, it was whiting, so I guessed at his age. The dog was medium-sized with fairly short fur, of a light color. Maybe light brown or dirty white. As I said, I saw him so often, I thought nothing of him. I even saw him later on when I worked in a town east of Agua Mansa Road and had to pass by that corner where the house stands. I was with my dad and I thought to myself, that guy must be old now, but he's still walking pretty well for his age. He had a dog with him--one I thought was just similar-looking to the one he used to have.
A couple of days ago, I read on the internet that this man had been sighted since way before I ever saw him. One guy reported that he used to drive down that road in the 1950s as a teenager and saw the man and his dog. Most of the other sightings reported that the man would step out in front of their cars, then just as they hit the brakes, he would disappear.
It turns out that my sisters saw him, too--we just never discussed it until I read that article. When asked, I described him and his dog. They were shocked, because they said that was exactly what they'd seen. One of my sisters said she remembered seeing him twice and both times he seemed to disappear. Once, in what she thought was a cloud of dust that must have been raised by a truck driving off-road through the dirt, and the second time on a foggy day. She said she thought the fog had closed in around him.
Over the years, there had never seemed to be anything strange to us about that man and his dog. Until I found the story of him on the internet.
