Well, I've let this simmer and stew for a couple of days, giving me time to think about it and see if anything new would surface in my memory about this event. But no, nothing new has surfaced at all. I guess I want to just put this down somewhere in case my memory of it fades or gets distorted over time.
So let me back up and start at the beginning so I can get this all down before my memory changes facts into pseudo memories.
The date was Wednesday, 11/28/07. The time as close as I can figure it must have been between 3:30 and 4:30 pm. I can't seem to pin it down any closer that that if for no other reason than I really don't pay that much attention to the clock. The place is here at my residence in Crawfordville, FL.
I had driven into Tallahassee to run some errands earlier in the day, leaving around 12:30pm and I believe I got back around 2pm or so. Ate lunch, checked stuff on the computer, then cleaned off the C6 and put the cover on it. I then went into the reptile building to start cleaning snake cages.
Sometime between that 3:30 and 4:30 time window, I heard the front driveway alarm go off. Thinking it may be FedEx, as one of the drivers sometimes stops by even if I don't have a pickup on Wednesday, I opened the door to the building to look out. Looked for a few moments, but didn't see any vehicles, so I figured maybe a raccoon, dog, armadillo or something was down in the driveway that set off the alarm. So I went back in the building and put on my glasses and walked on down the driveway to see if I could see anything. Obviously I didn't rush right on down the driveway, and several minutes elapsed from the time the alarm went off and I finally walked on down there to see what had set it off.
I wasn't being particularly stealthy walking down the driveway, as if it were an animal, I just wanted to shoo it away from the alarm sensor anyway. Most times when I do that I never see anything down there anyway. When I got to the bend, I looked to the right down the path to the tangerine grove, but didn't see anything there. I was still walking and swung my attention to the left and at that time glanced down the driveway towards the road and where the paperbox was at.
At that time, I saw what appeared to be the legs and trunk of someone standing to the left of the driveway. I remember thinking something along the lines of, "Damn! Someone is walking around in my driveway." I have to admit I was somewhat startled that someone would be standing in the driveway, and this is the point that my memory apparently falls apart.
What I can remember is that I could only see the legs and trunk, but they were indistinct, almost shadowy looking. I could not tell if "he" was facing towards me or away from me, but I could see both legs so I was looking at the front or back. One odd thing was that the gap between the legs at the crotch was quite wide. The legs seemingly forming an "H" appearance. Both straight up and down and no curvature at all visible. The sides of the legs clean up to the lower torso visible to me formed pretty much a perfect straight edge both left and right.
I had thought the reason I couldn't see the upper torso, head, and face of this "person" was because it was obscured by a low hanging branch. But when I looked at the scene again, that did not appear to be the case at all. As best I can tell, there really was nothing at all to block that view from me.
Now, there is no sense of motion or continuous time at all after this point. The next memory I have is of either a closer view of the legs and torso or merely a CLEARER view. I believe the view had to be closer, because in my memory, the legs and torso appear to be larger than my initial view. But there is no transition from the first view to this second view at all.
Several things drew my attention at this point.
- The lower torso and legs were evenly covered with thick coarse glossy black hair with no variation in shade or color. I remember thinking how shiny black the hair was.
- The legs were cylindrical in shape with no curves showing the musculature of the legs, nor any indication of a kneecap or other bending of the legs.
- The crotch was evenly covered by this hair and there was no hint of genitalia of any type nor anything breaking the uniform covering of hair.
- The legs were widely separated at the crotch, being roughly half the width of one of the legs and squared off. Again giving that "H" appearance.
- The legs seemed long and rather narrow in this view, moreso than what my initial impression was. The initial impression seemed like the legs were shorter and stubbier, but that may have been because I was seeing less of the legs and they extended further below my view than they did in this second view.
- The outside of the legs and the lower torso that was visible formed an even straight edge, with no curving of the waist at all. If you could visualize a pair of hip waders covered in black hair, that is pretty much what it looked like to me. Artificial...
- I do not recall being able to see the feet nor anything above about what would be the navel on the torso. The memory of the legs and torso is razor sharp whereas the feet and upper torso are just not there in my memory. Kind of a tunnel vision effect where it is just as if I could not see the rest of the body.
- The memory is much like a snapshot in time. No feeling of motion or time, and the legs and body being much like a statue with perfect angles.
- I believe that I was closer to the "whatever" than my initial indistinct view of the body, simply because the details of the hair were much more distinct to me. Even being closer, there is not even a hint of the head shape or size that I can recall.
The third and last snapshot of memory is of the "whatever" leaving to the left of my vision into the woods bordering the driveway. Honestly, I cannot recall actually SEEING the body itself, just the "knowledge" that it had just exited the driveway. At that time, I hollered out "HEY!" believing I was just spurring on a bear to hit the road away from me. The time elapsed from when I walked down the driveway to the time I walked back after the incident is unknown to me. I will say, however, that when one of my workers came in at 5:30, I was surprised at it being that late.
I do not recall any noise whatsoever of anything moving into the woods when "it" apparently exited the driveway. Anything moving through the woods would have been going through fairly heavy brush and then into a heavily wooded area. It is not likely that this would be silent at all. I checked later and could find no evidence of broken branches or disturbed ground which an animal likely would have caused. The only physical evidence I could find at all was what looked like a pair of tracks in the damp sandy soil of the driveway. One being what looked like a pair of claw marks parallel in the soil, and just behind that what looked like some sort of paw print.
In this photo, the left side of the pic is pointing towards where I was standing, and the right side would be pointing to the end of the driveway at the roadway. The upper portion of the pic is pointing towards the wooded side of the driveway where my memory says that the "bear" ran off to.
In this photo, the orientation is the same as above. This print was farther away from me and slightly to the right of the two scratches shown above.
I walked the entire length of the driveway and out onto the unpaved road as well as down the path towards the tangerine grove but could not find any other prints or marks anywhere in the soil. Since I had driven the car up that driveway around 2 hours prior, my assumption is that those markings were made after that time, and by whatever it is that I saw.
Basically that is all there is concerning my memory of that event. Obviously ome details are glaringly peculiar.
Why could I not see the upper torso and the head/face of whoever or whatever was standing in my driveway?
So far, I have not been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for this oddity. Just to give me a reference, I asked Connie to stand where I thought I had first seen the "person" or "whatever" while I took a photograph from where I thought I was when I first saw "him" or "it". Here's what it looks like...
I used a focal length lens that approximates the actual visual perspective I would have had rounding that bend. Even if I had spotted the torso sooner, at best the
lower part would have been partially obscured by the branches, but I would certainly been able to distinguish the upper body and head. In the second memory snapshot in my mind, the detail of the lower torso and legs is such that there couldn't have been anything even partially obscuring my view, so there is really no logical reason why I could not have seen the entire body, from the feet to the top of the head. The thought might cross someone's mind that perhaps I just didn't LOOK at the upper torso and face, but that is highly unrealistic. In my first glimpse, I thought that there was a person standing in the driveway. It would have been a completely logical and consistent impulse to look at the face of this person to see if it was someone I knew. This is pretty much an irresistible first impulse when someone comes into your view. People recognize people via their faces, so that is usually the very first thing a person looks at. The argument that I just would not have noticed the head and face would be very weak, at best. Even had I been convinced that this was a bear and not a person, most certainly I would want to see if the bear was looking directly at me, if for no other reason than to determine if I was in danger of an attack by a pissed off animal.
Yes, I was startled to see that shape of what appeared to be a person in my driveway, but there was nothing inherently in that fact that would have caused me to go into a panic and lose my wits over it. That I would have blacked out in fear. Quite the opposite, really, as I had my Glock on my hip at the time (which I normally ALWAYS do). So I was armed and certainly able to defend myself, if need be. Even if it had really been a bear, I would have felt confident that I could reasonably defend myself against an attack. Heck, I have been around animals all my life, and certainly have never had any apprehension about coming up on an animal out in the wild suddenly and unexpectedly.
Blacked out? Well, if I had, I wouldn't have been standing up when I came to. I have blacked out for various reasons a couple of times in my life, but each time I came to finding myself flat on my back. And NEVER from something just scaring the daylights out of me.
Let me back up a little bit. At the end of the three still image stages of this event, when the supposed "bear" had run off into the woods, the thought in my mind was simply that it WAS a bear. I had turned around and walked back to the house, simply looking over into the woods trying to get a glimpse of this bear that as far as my memory was concerned, had just moments before run off in that direction. Nothing really stood out as being odd at all. Matter of fact, I just thought I would post this incident here in this thread as an interesting addition to the line of thought about country living, thinking an encounter with a wild bear would certainly be noteworthy. I remember thinking about what to entitle the post, perhaps something like "Something
unbearable happened to me today on the way to the paperbox..." And I had actually started typing away about coming up on a bear standing on it's hind legs in my driveway... I had typed in a couple of paragraphs, and figured I would find a photo on Google of a black bear standing upright, and post it along with my text. I figured people might want to actually see what I had seen. It was at this point that things began to unravel in my head. None of the pics I saw looked anything at all like what I had seen. Not even close. And the more I thought about it, the more the peculiarities of the entire situation began to percolate into my consciousness. WHY didn't I remember seeing the bear's head and face? I wound up deleting most of what I wrote and rewrote what you see in the original post about this situation. It was dawning on me that something was very wrong with my memory of the entire event.
I wish I could say how long this event took and whether I actually suffered a loss of sense of time. I would like to know how long my memory had been shut down. There HAD to have been more to it than I can remember, yet all I have are those three snapshots. Actually, it may only really be one. The memory camera stopped recording right after I saw the shadowy outline of what I thought was a person in my driveway, then the snapshot of the finely detailed image of the hairy legs and lower torso, and then finally the memory camera starting back up with the impression that the "bear" had just exited off of the driveway into the woods.
So, what the heck happened? I'm not one to hallucinate or tell yarns. I don't take drugs nor drink alcoholic beverages. I am not taking any sort of medication and am not one inclined to panic attacks or hysteria. Matter of fact, if anything, I am boringly methodical and logical about things in general. I held off saying anything more about this because I wanted to see if my subconscious would release something during my sleep via a dream. Or perhaps more of my memory would just loosen up if I walked around in the driveway trying to recreate what happened. None of which, unfortunately, has happened.
I don't feel at all apprehensive over this or in any way fearful or uncomfortable with the fact that I have no idea what really was in my driveway that day. Quite simply, from the best I can tell, if whatever it was had intended me any harm, I was powerless to do anything about it then anyway. So obviously no harm was intended towards me. Of course, Connie is not at all keen about hearing about this. She knows me well enough to know that I am puzzled about what happened, and is disturbed that something really odd happened to me that I cannot explain. Also disturbed that there is something out there that I can't describe nor identify.
Quite honestly, I would like to see it again in the hopes that this time around I would KNOW what the heck I was seeing. Or if at least not know, be able to accurately DESCRIBE it in detail. I doubt that anyone could NOT be puzzled about how and why a section of their memory is just inexplicably gone from what could potentially be something important. Quite likely, if not for that center snap shot memory, I would just simply have assumed I had come up on a bear and it had immediately jumped into the woods and been gone. I could have easily talked myself into believing that was what I had seen.
Oh well... Chances are, I will never know what really happened........
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