A Question

My name is Anna and I used to live in a western suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. I would like to share with you an experience I had a couple of years ago. The encounter was brief, but intense for me. I still find myself trembling when recounting this story.

Let me first give you a little background on me. When I was fairly young, 4-7 years old, I was troubled by what I now believe was a poltergeist. Every night, my parents would put me and my sister to bed in our second floor bedroom. And every night I was consistently harassed by a "fly" buzzing my ear. I never SAW the fly. I only heard it. I would pull the blankets up or try covering my head with a pillow. Nothing lessened the volume of the sound I heard. It happened winter, summer, spring and fall. My parents would come into our room over and over; assuring me that there was no fly in the room. They even armed me with a can of "yard guard" for my childish protection. Nothing helped. My sister who shared the same bedroom was never bothered by the fly. And on the rare occasion I could talk her into sleeping with me or allowing me to sleep in her bed with her, I had a restful nights sleep with no buzzing. This went on until we moved into a new house when I was about 7-8 years old.

On the night of the experience I would like to relate to you, my husband and I had decided to stop off at the video rental place on our way home one night. Now, I have to confess up front, I hate going to the video store. It's always a long and tedious adventure. So I usually stay in the car and wait.

The store is located in on a main road that has lots of traffic. It was around 6:00 or so on a weeknight. We pulled into the lot and parked facing the front of the building. My husband went inside and I just kicked back to relax. I love people watching, so I occupied myself with my normal wonderings about the people coming to and from the video store that night.

I was sitting in the passenger's seat, facing the store when a reflection in the side view mirror of my van caught my eye. It was a young man, around 16-18. He wore a white T-shirt with some type of black picture or symbol on it. He had short blond hair that was longer in the front. He was walking toward my vehicle from the rear. I have three teenage children so I am used to kids coming up to me to say hello or enquire what my kids are doing that particular night and such. I did not recognize this boy as a friend of any of my children.

Now, I know you all have had this feeling at one time or another. You KNOW when someone is walking toward you and is about to speak to you? Somehow your senses let you know this person is going to engage you in some type of conversation. Be it short or long. At this point I was still watching him in my side view mirror. Well, I just had a feeling that this young man walking towards my car door was about to say something to me. He looked as if he needed to ask me a question. I was expecting him to say something like "do you know what time it is?" So to be friendly and seem approachable, I turned to speak to him. I could still see him coming towards my car in the mirror. But as I turned to speak to him face to face, there was no one there.

I leaned out of my car to look around, nothing. I began to get a little freaked out that someone was going to pop up and carjack me or something. I opened my car door and jumped out, nothing. I ran around the rear of my car to see if he had ducked down behind it, nothing. Around to the other side—nothing. I was really frightened now and I began to cry. I made it quickly to the front door of the store, still looking around frantically for this young man I had just seen. There was no sign of him anywhere. I stood there a couple minutes just inside the door watching the parking lot. He never reappeared. The entire front of this building is windows, yet no one seemed to have seen what I had seen. I was trembling so hard by this time; I could barely make my way through the store to find my husband. He took one look at me and asked what was wrong. I told him "I don't want to tell you. You'll think I am nuts". I finally calmed down enough to let him know what had just happened. Although he tried, he had no comforting words for me. What could he say, really?

I was sill tearful and shaky when I got home. My middle daughter asked me immediately what was wrong and I told her the story. She looked at me with wide eyes and said "MOM! That is the intersection where KC was killed last year". KC was a boy that was from the neighboring school district that had been killed in an auto accident right in front of that video store the year before. We did not know this boy and I do not know what he looks like. I am not saying it was him. What I DO know is that someone who is not of this world needed to ask me a question that night and either changed his mind or was frightened off when I turned to face him.

To this day I wonder what he wanted to say...