Headless Ghost: A True Story

Incidents happen at almost any age that can never be forgotten. One such incident happened to me when I was five.

The hot summer day had given away to a warm evening. I sat on the back porch steps enjoying the day as it turned to dusk. Then I spotted him in the alley no more than 100 feet away. He strolled down the alley wearing a heavy winter coat with the collar turned up. And no head.

I screamed and raced around the house to the front. Steve, my brother, and a neighbor boy played in the front yard. Their attention moved from their toys to me.

"What's a matter?" Steve asked.

"There's a man in the alley with no head!" I cried.

Steve and the neighbor darted out of the yard towards the alley with me following. We saw nothing. My brother and neighbor dashed into the alley and looked both ways. Then they meandered back.

"There's nothing there," Steve said. "You were just imagining things."

"No I wasn't," I said, as Mom came out of the house to see what all the commotion was about.

"I saw a man with no head in the alley." I told Mom.

"It was just his imagination." Steve told her.

"You go home," Mom said to the neighbor boy. "You two, get in the house." Mom shoved us into the house and locked the backdoor. Then she scampered to the front door and locked it. "Make sure all the windows are locked." She ordered.

"Oh, come on, Mom," Steve said. "He was just seeing things. Or he just made it up."

"I did not!" I shouted at my brother.

"We're not taking any changes," Mom said. "We're staying in the house where it's safe."

"You ruined a good evening." Steve popped on the couch. "Now there's nothing to do but sit here and twiddle our thumbs. And all because you had to make up that stupid story."

"Be quiet," Mom said. "It's nearly your bedtime anyway."

Over the next few days the kids in the neighborhood teased me about seeing a ghost or called me a lier. There were a few who had good explanations of what I saw. One boy said his dad claimed it was probably a teenager who threw on a winter coat, turned the collar up so it appeared he had no head, then strolled down the alley to see if he could scare someone.

A girl said her parents knew I had seen a ghost and who the ghost was. A night railroad watchman, who died several years before, used to walk down the alley to go to work at about the same time I saw the ghost. The girl said he probably had turned the collar up to keep his ears warm. That's why he looked headless.

To this day, I only know one thing. I saw a man who appeared to have no head walking down the alley and he disappeared in a matter of seconds. Ghost? Teenage prank? I'll never know.