I've enjoyed the vast majority of your stories here. It was almost like sitting around a campfire at night with my four old buddies and swapping tales while we enjoyed some adult beverages. Whoever thought to start this should be commended.
It made me think of a few strange things that have happened to me in my soon-to-be 60 years, but first, and in reference to an earlier story here, I want to say right up front that if I was ever so unfortunate as to be ear humped by a monkey, that nasty little creature would soon be laying dead nearby with at least a couple of bullet holes in his sorry little backside! I, for one, will not suffer the indignity of being ear humped by any creature, though I did know this nasty old girl once... But let's not go there!
All your tales about spooky feelings and strange happenings reminded me of my favorite ad from about 40 years ago. The Colt company purchased full page ads in some of the magazines I read at that time, and I've always remembered them and thought they were a masterful piece of advertising. They were promoting the Colt Single Action Army Revolver which was back in production again after having been discontinued about the time the US entered World War Two. This ad showed a lone cowboy sitting beside his campfire, looking out into the darkness, and holding his Colt in his hand. It used only a very few words, something like, "Snapped twig. Confidence. Colt." At the time I couldn't even afford to buy a dirt cheap .22 RG Saturday Night Special (as the politicos used to call them), so even dreaming of one day owning a Colt was out of the question. But the ad stuck in my mind and about 10 years ago my wonderful wife bought me a nice 1957 vintage Colt .45. There is nothing like a heavy revolver in your hand to calm those spooky feelings and give a man confidence! Colt or not, you must have one!
In the pitch dark wee hours of a morning long ago, I was driving on a two lane back road when I spotted a small red light high in the air. It was not flashing like the beacon on a plane does, and it was moving roughly a couple of hundred miles an hour and maybe a mile or two high. Suddenly it made an abrupt 90 degree turn without changing speed. I watched it until it was out of sight. What was it? Beats me! Since then I've worked on and riden in a lot of planes and some helicopters, and what I saw that night was neither. But at least I didn't get abducted and probed. Did they know I was packing? That was when I couldn't afford to buy bird seed for a cuckoo clock, but I was carrying the .32 automatic Dad had relieved a German of in the war.
Lights are funny things. On another occasion my wife and I were on the short wooden boat dock where I kept my little skiff one night well after dark. It was on a large resevoir, and across the cove from us was a point of land that nobody lived on or near, and nobody went there because there was no access and it was covered by dense woods. We noticed a dim white light over on that point, but it didn't look like a flashlight. It was several feet off the ground and moving slowly in no particular pattern. I had a strong sealed beam spot light with me, so I shined it on the other point. Not only could I see nothing there but the trees and brush, but as soon as my light hit the dim light I had seen there it went out and stayed out. It was dead quiet and we heard nothing, so I don't know to this day what that dim light we saw about a hundred yards away on the other point was.
At that time in our lives my wife and I did a lot of bream fishing from that same little boat. Usually we were pretty close to our home dock, so often we stayed out until it was nearly dark. I rowed my boat, and I didn't own a motor, much less had it rigged with lights. One time the sun was down and dusk was settling in. We were in still water near shore with lots of brush and dead trees under the surface, but with a few branches sticking up. My wife told me there was a snake in the water near us. (Moccasins and other water snakes were plentiful there, so I always wore my small .22 revolver loaded with "rat shot" cartridges in the first two or three chambers, and hollow points in the rest of the cylinder.) I told my wife it was only a stick she had seen. A few minutes later she told me in no uncertain terms that "that d*** stick" had just put its head into her side of our boat, and for me to shoot it right now!!! Well, she was right and I did as I was told.
There have been other unusual happenings along the way -- big cat tracks following mine after I had hiked in a circle, mean feral dogs that threatened me at the dump, the owl that skimmed lightly through my wife's hair once, rattlesnakes under the edge of the house, strange sounds of all kinds in the night, the black bear that stood quietly watching my wife as she waited in the car for me while I checked my boat near dusk, and the two magnificent Florida panthers that crossed the road in front of my car once right in the middle of the day -- but that's more than enough for one night. :yawn:
