Let's Not Meet Again

The Man in My Driveway

In order to tell my horror story, I have to preface it with another tale of horror that is not exactly creepy but no less terrifying: in July of 2012, I had just returned from a work trip to New York City, where I lived at the time, when I got a call from my aunt telling me that my childhood home (which my parents and sister still lived in) had inexplicably burned to the ground. Luckily, no one was home when the fire started, but in minutes the entire house was up in flames, and in hours all of our worldly possessions and memories were burnt to a crisp. Investigators determined that the fire somehow started in the garage, but to this day the underlying cause is still a mystery.

Fast forward to a several months later, when I was still grieving this unimaginable loss, but in a place of more-or-less acceptance of what had happened: my husband (boyfriend at the time) and I were back in my hometown for a weekend escape from the city. My parents were renting a house one town over and we visited them frequently in an effort to be together and there for each other after such a tragic loss. My husband and I had gone out to dinner and decided to drive by the ruins of my childhood home in an effort to bring some closure to what had been a long, painful ordeal. I thought that seeing what was left of the debris—the ghosts of my childhood memories—might help me move on.

It was about 10 o'clock in the evening when we turned our car down toward my old street. My house was set in the suburbs of Connecticut, in a quiet beach town of only 10,000 people. My neighborhood was not very populated, and certainly not one you would frequently—if ever—see someone walking around, especially at night. But as we turned onto my street, I saw a man in the distance walking down my street. I thought the site of him was odd for the reasons I just said—there was nowhere to really take a stroll to in this neighborhood, and I can't remember ever seeing anyone just walking aimlessly on my street at night.

When I saw him, I told my husband to lock the car doors, apologizing for my "paranoia" but wanting to take the precaution just in case. He laughed at my propensity to "scare easily" but nevertheless obliged me.

I forgot about the man as we drove up the hill of my driveway, parked the car, and stared in disbelief at the wreckage before us. There was nothing left of my childhood home but for some burnt wood that once held up my house and provided the foundation for the place I spent the first 18 years of my life. A tear streamed down my face as I gazed at the ruins, unable to even speak.

It was then I noticed a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. I turned my head to the right and saw, to my horror, the same man I saw walking down the street in the distance only about 6 feet away from my window, staring in to the car. He had walked all the way up the driveway to where our car was—there was no chance he just lost his way. I will never forget the look in his eyes—vacant in a way, yet also filled with some kind of intense craze, like he was about to do something that I'm glad I will never know what.

I immediately began screaming my head off, imploring my husband to drive away as fast as he could. My husband put the car in reverse and sped down the driveway—I remember hearing the screech of the wheels which sounded just like they do in the movies when someone is trying to get away fast.

When we got to the bottom of the hill and my husband moved the car from reverse to drive, I looked back out my window and saw the man sprinting down the driveway toward us. I started screaming again begging my husband to drive. I turned my head as we flew down the street and saw that he continued to chase us on foot, but being that we were in a car we lost him quickly.

I never reported the incident and have no idea who this man was, or what he wanted from us. My husband believes I overreacted, and that the man simply saw how scared I was and decided to "fuck with us." That still doesn't explain why he would walk up the hill in the first place and just stare into our car. And like I said, the look on his face was not a benevolent one, but was unquestionably nefarious.

So much for getting the closure I so desperately wanted and needed after the fire. I haven't been back to the house since that experience, and maybe in a way that man—whoever he was and whatever his intentions—helped me move on because I never looked back down that road again.