Phantom Bicycle Rider

My one and only encounter with a "spirit" happened when I was 16 years old. It was a summer night in Pascagoula, MS where I grew up. I was spending some time with my grandmother and I had a friend of mine stay over one night.

Pascagoula is on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and my grandmother's house is about a half mile from the Gulf of Mexico. My friend (Tim) and I decided to take a walk down to the beach. It had been storming and I knew the water would be rough. I have always enjoyed stormy weather and big waves.

Anyway, the street we were taking to the beach cuts directly threw the 'Longfellow House' estate. There are many stories and legends about the place being haunted, especially in the house. My wife worked there at one time and she herself has had encounters with a ghost named 'George'. But that is for another story for another time. Back to my story.

As I was saying, the street we were taking to the beach cuts right through the Longfellow house property. I have heard that the place was a plantation back in the days of slavery, but I am not sure. Tim and I were walking down this street which is lined with trees and is very dark. There are lights from the neighboring apartments, but they do not illuminate the street very well.

We were walking and shooting the bull when I noticed someone riding a bike approaching from the direction we were heading. He or she appeared very distorted, which could have been the bad lighting, but it made me think of the way a really hot street makes distant objects shimmer.

It spooked me a lot, not so much because I thought it was a ghost, but because we were on a very dark street at about 1am in the morning with a person on a bike who may be a freak.

Tim and I kept walking and talking until the bicycler was almost upon us when it disappeared. Poof, gone, nowhere to be found. Vanished into thin air. Tim and I stopped walking, and I asked him if he saw what I saw. He said he saw a guy on a bike that disappeared about 100 feet ahead of us. That was it all it took. We took off running like we were being chased by wild and hungry Pit Bulls.

We made it back to my grandmother's house without looking back. We told my older sister(who lived with my grandmother) what happened and she just said "Oh well, you know the place is haunted." I wanted to walk through there again years later, but the street is fenced closed. Oh well, maybe I'll meet George some other time........