Did You Just See What I Saw?

People say nothing ever happens in our town, but they're wrong!

A couple of years ago my son and I were returning from a shopping spree at an outlet store in a nearby town. It had gotten dark by the time we were heading home, but it was a clear night and traffic was light. We were both in a good mood, feeling as we had amassed bargains galore on our excursion. We were traveling on a short-cut road that runs by a major river in our area and by this time were only three or four miles from home.

As we came to a part of the road where an old bridge used to be, suddenly a shadowy figure of a man (as far as could be told in shadow) dashed across the road just at the point where my low - light headlight beams reached. As soon as the figure had made it across the road to the other side it was just "gone", because in the 2-3 seconds it took for my car to "catch up" to where the figure ran to there was nothing, and the area was open and clear--no bushes or anything to hide in, just an open, cleared-out field.

My son and I both looked at each other and said, nearly simultaneously, "Did you see what I saw?" and the answer was an unequivocal yes! We both had seen what looked like a man's shadow, running faster than we had ever seen a human run, and as it got to the adjacent side of the road it simply was no longer anywhere in sight.

My son and I have discussed this event at length and have yet to come up with a rational explanation for what we both clearly saw that night. The area where this occured is in a somewhat "seedy" section of town and a lot of crime has transpired there, everything from prostitution to murder. As I commented earlier, this road runs right by a river, and I know that for some reason "unexplainable" things seem to often occur near bodies of water. Also, a bridge was there long ago and there seems to be something about bridges and strange manifestations.

I often travel that road and whenever I pass near where we saw the "shadow man", I slow down a bit and look intently, just in case he feels a need to streak across the road in front of my headlights again..