Canucks Skated and Oh, I Saw a Ghost

Occasionally I will write about some of the adventures or misadventures that occur while covering the Vancouver Canucks. Tuesday’s dealie doo takes it to a different level.

“Did you drop acid after breakfast,” was the reasonable question asked of me after I informed my Canucks media cohort that I had seen a ghost.

No, I hadn’t done any drugs.

I’ve been very fortunate to pack three lifetimes into one and have done and seen a lot of wild and wacky stuff, but I didn’t believe in ghosts until today.

As illogical as this may seem, this happened.

I have my bike and I’m standing on a Millennium Line sky train in the last section between the doors against one of those middle poles. I’m facing out towards the doors that aren’t opening during the trip. I’m facing to the left, the doors are opening on the right.

There are two people sitting in seats between me and the back of the train, two people sitting in the next section just a bit forward, and a heavy dude standing up behind me. I’m going to be getting off at the Burnaby Lake stop.

We’ve just pulled into the stop right before that, Holdom, and the doors have opened behind me. In the reflection in the glass of the closed doors in front of me, I see the shadow image of the dude step through the open doors behind me and walk away from the train.

An old man, holding three bags, like grocery sacks, slowly steps on the train behind me and quietly turns his back to the divider between him and the seats and stands sideways in the doorway. I’m watching this shadow figure, the reflection, and I’m thinking, “old guy’s gonna get shmooshed by the door, he’s not in far enough’. But he doesn’t. The doors close, he’s in, and the train pulls away.

My literal next thought is, ‘oh crap, now I have to kind of spin around and manoeuvre me and my bike around the old guy’. But I’m still facing the other doors. I look down at my phone to check the time, I glance out the back of the train, click my helmet clasp, and start fidgeting the bike. It’s a pretty short distance between those two stops.

The train slows. I lift my bike a bit and turn to say “excuse me” to start to leave and the man’s not there.

“Holy &%$@#?. What the ….”

I look left. Nope. Look right. Nope. Unless old guy very quietly became the onboard Usain Bolt of train sprinting, while carrying bags, he was nowhere to be seen. The doors hadn’t opened yet.

There is no other explanation.

Nighttime, scary, haunted this or that, I think that’s cliche’. Daytime, just as possible, if the light and shadows and imaging is right. I was seeing the shadow/image of a man who physically wasn’t there.

IN THEORY.

I’d love to hear from anyone in the comment section of this website or via twitter @simmerpuck where I’ll post a link to this, to see if anyone has experienced anything along the same lines anywhere. Or, if you simply think I’m ‘cuckoo for cocoa puffs’.

Which happens to be one of my ex-girlfriend’s nicknames.

That’s a different adventure. Way scarier.