Seeing Ghosts

This morning seemed like a normal morning. 

I was up at 5am and out the door by 5:10am for the first of two runs today.  It was an easy run around the neighborhoods that surround my house but it was quite dark.  Late August means dark mornings with the sun not rising until 6:30am.  I am not ready to break out the headlamp yet so I just rely on my neighbors having their outdoor house lights on. 

From my driveway the mornings look like this...

Pre run

Slightly eerie I must say (and a little foggy).  But I know the area around my house pretty well.  I know the houses and the roads and although I vary my route up each day, I have run the area so many times that I feel pretty comfortable running in the darkness.

There is this one street that is always seems darker and slightly scary.  There are fewer houses with porch lights on and then there is a stretch of road where it is always dark.  Sometimes when I see this street in the dark, I don't even venture down it because I just feel uncomfortable - I get a weird feeling in my gut and so I listen to it and just keep going and avoid this street.

This morning, I turned down this street even though it was dark.  I wasn't afraid, I didn't get a feeling I shouldn't run down the street and I was pretty alert.  No one else was around; the road was dead silent but peaceful.  I was keeping my eyes open for anything suspicious and just kept putting one foot in front of the other.  As I ran through the particularly dark portion of the street, something caught my eye in a driveway to my left. 

It looked like a person all dressed in black just standing there.  I continued to run, trying to figure out if it was a person or not and what they were doing.  I glanced back and forth between the road ahead of me and the driveway beside me as I passed.  The person didn't look up, didn't even move, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I got wild goosebumps up and down my legs and arms.  I kept looking and looking trying to get my eyes to focus more in the dark and tell if it was a person, but I couldn't see it - the driveway was too dark and there was not enough light.

My pace picked up significantly at that point.  I still was not sure what I had seen.  Was it just another morning runner/walker or was it something else.  The fact that it had not even moved worried me and I kept looking behind me as I continued up the street.  At that point I decided I wasn't going to run down that street on my way back home, I was going to avoid it because it has really freaked me out.

I continued on my run, not seeing another soul the rest of the way.  I kept thinking back to what I had seen.  Was it really a person in the driveway or was it just something.  Sometimes the shadows play tricks on my eyes and I see things that aren't there, but usually as I get closer to that object I see that it is really just a mailbox or a sign or something.  But not this morning, I still have no idea what it was in that driveway.

Post run

When I got home, I showered and ate breakfast like usual.  As I was getting ready for work, I kept thinking back to that driveway and what I had seen.  I was curious.  I wondered what it was.  So as I drove into work, I took a mini detour to that neighborhood and drove by the house.  There was nothing in the driveway - just two cars which I had seen when I passed but nothing else.  Nothing that could have resembled a person or anything.

I may have been watching a few too many episodes of Ghost Whisperer.  It seems I have become addicted to that show and have been watching repeats on TV for the last month.

This morning was one of the weirdest/scariest thing I have come upon during a morning run.  I will most likely be avoiding that neighborhood for a while now until I feel more comfortable or until I start wearing my headlamp again. I just can't help but wondering what I actually saw this morning in that driveway.