April 8, 2011

Ghostly Railroad Greeting

Rate this encounter:[an error occurred while processing this directive] Dawn -- Late 1980s -- Aiken, South Carolina

It was a rainy Fall afternoon on Wire Road in Aiken, South Carolina. I was riding shotgun in my own wood panel Cutlass Cruiser station wagon with my boyfriend at the wheel.

Wire Road has nary a house past the city limits and we came up to some railroad tracks way out past town.

As we approached, I saw a black man in a period style suit with pin-stripes, a vest, a pocket watch with a chain, and a hat. As we drove closer, the figure looked into the windshield of the car, smiled, and tipped his hat.

It was so out of the ordinary that we were at a loss for words.

We got about 1000 feet down the road, looked at each other and finally said, "Did you see that!" After playing back this event in my mind, I realized that my boyfriend never stopped on the tracks, and it was impossible for a living person to bend over the hood and look into the windshield to tip their hat. Also, it was raining and this man was dry as a bone.

The railroad tracks sit far out in the country with nothing nearby. It didn't make any sense. We concluded that we had both witnessed a ghost!