out of how everyone else on the street had completely disappeared, including all the vehicles. No children, no parents, no neighbours, no cars or bikes. In fact, one of my neighbours had been cutting some limbs in his backyard, and I realized then that even that noise from the chainsaw had been eliminated. It was completely and eerily silent.
And then I saw her. As I stared up the street, looking for even one school kid, when there should have been dozens, I saw a lone figure walking slowly toward my house. I stared at her with relief at first … at least there was another person, and surely, I thought, more would start to fill the street again soon, as usual. But the silence remained, and the odd chill in the air made me rub my bare arms with my hands, trying to warm them. I kept glancing in the window at the baby, and she kept her eyes fixed on me the whole time. I’m sure she knew something bizarre was happening, but I had no idea what it was either.
As the woman approached I saw she was wearing a very heavy brown sweater. It was early spring, and the temperature earlier that day had been unseasonably warm, which was why I was wearing a sleeveless blouse myself, and the baby was so lightly dressed. I was a bit surprised to see her wearing something that heavy and warm on what had been such a hot day. But the sudden plunge of the temperature made me think she was probably more comfortably dressed than I was at that moment.
She walked slowly but deliberately toward my home, and I assumed she would acknowledge me as she approached, especially with the two of us suddenly being the only ones around. I planned to ask her if this didn’t seem very strange to her too. But when she got close enough for eye contact and to exchange comments, she completely ignored me. It was as if she didn’t even see me standing there, just a few metres away from the sidewalk. She didn’t pass by, though, as I had expected her to. She stopped when she got to the large maple tree growing on our boulevard and stared at it for several seconds with a look of rapture on her face … and that unsettled me. But nothing prepared me for what she did next.
What I had thought was a heavy woollen sweater covering her arms and upper body was actually countless tent caterpillars. I finally realized this as I watched in horror as she slowly started to peel them, one after another, off of herself and place them onto the tree. I stood watching this for a few moments, completely shocked and frozen to the spot. I could not believe what I was seeing. Finally, my anger at her deliberate infestation of our lovely tree surpassed my bewilderment and fear of the strangeness of that whole experience.
I called to her from the porch, “Hey, stop that!”
She either ignored me or was unaware of my presence, because she never even turned to look in my direction. She just continued to peel off caterpillar after caterpillar from her upper body and place them gently onto the trunk of the tree.
“What are you doing?” I yelled again. This time she did acknowledge me. She turned and glared at me in the most terrifying way, and I almost fainted on the spot. I was prepared to just rush back into the house and let her strip every last caterpillar off of herself as she seemed intent on doing, rather than confront her again. But before I could move she backed away from the tree, still wearing hundreds of the caterpillars on her arms and body, and slowly retraced her path back down the street.
Twice she turned and glared at me again, but she finally reached the intersection and turned the corner out of sight. I felt weak with relief. And as quickly as the clouds had set in and the sun had disappeared, the day was bright and beautifully warm once more. And all the usual noises filled our street again within the split second it took me to leave the front porch and re-enter the living room to pick up my daughter from her playpen and hold her close. I was even relieved to hear the chainsaw in my neighbour’s backyard again. I talked calmly and reassuringly to my baby, but I was shaking like a leaf.
After knowing she was all right, I put her in the playpen again and headed back out to the boulevard with a broom in my hand. I knocked as many caterpillars off of the tree as I could reach, but many more had already climbed too high into the tree’s limbs. And, no wonder, we did have a terrible infestation of tent caterpillars in that tree that year. My husband knew that was true, because he was the one who dealt with that difficult situation along with his usual yardwork that summer; but I know he could never really comprehend this story I tried to explain regarding the cause. I don’t know that I could have truly believed it either, though, if I hadn’t experienced it myself.
Everything about it was so eerie and surreal. My daughter was too young to retain the memory, but at the time I was grateful for her company. Her wide-eyed amazement validated everything I also was experiencing that day. I know it wasn’t a dream or hallucination, and really did happen just as I have described. I just don’t understand why or how.
Haunted Neighbour
My neighbour’s house was haunted. It was built on an empty lot, and the house had just been built when they moved into it when I was a teenager. Their son was my age, and we were friends.
He always preferred to be at my house instead of his, and at first I thought he liked the commotion of being in our large family’s home filled with lots of people, unlike his quiet home where he was the only child.
But one day he told me that he was scared living in his house and wanted his parents to sell it and move, but they wouldn’t. He even asked if he could go and live with his grandparents in another city because he hated it there so much, but they wouldn’t let him do that either.
He told me he had seen and heard ghosts in his house, but his parents wouldn’t believe him and got mad if he talked about it. I asked what he had seen, and he listed off a lot of things, but I remember these two the most. An old lady walked into his room one night when he was reading in bed and sat down in a nearby chair and smiled at him. He said he screamed and she disappeared and then his father yelled at him for scaring his mother. Another time a little girl was sitting on the floor in his kitchen when he got home from school. No one else was home. She looked at him for a couple of seconds and then vanished.
Looking back now, I wish I had realized and been more sympathetic to how badly this was affecting him; but I was just a kid too, and unfortunately was more fascinated than sympathetic. I thought it was great, like something out of the movies, and wanted to see these ghosts too. So I started suggested going to his place whenever we got together from then on.
It was a while longer before I saw anything there myself, though, and I was starting to wonder if he had been making it all up. But one time (the last time) I spent the night at his place we stayed up late watching TV. Finally, after he fell asleep and the TV was turned off, I lay there still wide awake and heard someone walking down the hall with heavy footsteps. At first I assumed it was one of his parents, because their room was across the hall from his. But I knew they had both gone to bed long before we did, and I hadn’t heard anyone leave that room since. I could see from the space under the door that the hallway was still dark (I figured they would have turned on the hall light). And the footsteps came to his door, not theirs.
I could hear (and sense) someone on the other side of that door for quite a while. I was a pretty cocky teenager, but I’ll admit now that scared me, and I wanted to wake up my friend, but kept straining my ears instead, hoping to hear the footsteps walking away. I could hear the muffled sounds of someone leaning or brushing against the door, and I can still remember how it made me feel lying in the dark, not knowing what I was hearing on the other side of that door.
Finally, I heard what sounded like muttering, and then the loud footsteps went back down the hall again.
I didn’t sleep for the rest of that night. Next morning I told my friend what had happened. He just nodded his head and told me he had heard that same thing before too, many times.
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