We were due for another tale of high strangeness around this place. And as usual, synchronicity provides.
Here’s a headscratcher I was just told yesterday.
A family was vacationing in a mid-sized town in the middle of Florida. While they were driving down one of the main thoroughfares that run through town, the wife had an unusual sighting.
Cryptid fans can settle down. It wasn’t an albino gator or a skunk ape.
It was a teen girl strolling past a convenience store.
What’s so strange about that?
Nothing, in and of itself.
But this girl wore her wavy blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, Walkman-style headphones, and jean shorts. Plus, she was blowing a big, pink, bubblegum bubble as she walked.
To hear it, the account made her sound like a Claire’s ad ca. 1987 come to life.
Again, you could say even that wasn’t too strange. Eccentric, perhaps – like a local going through a retro phase – but not on the order of Mothman or the Kelly, Kentucky goblins.
And you’d have a point.
But this girl’s appearance clashed with her surroundings enough for it to make a big impression on the family. And they saw some pretty exotic stuff on that trip.
Make of that what you will.
If the story ended there, I wouldn’t be sharing it with you.
But I am. Because there’s more.
So this family keeps driving down the highway, speculating about the 1980s valley girl they passed a few blocks back, when a road closure sign comes into view ahead. The wife, who’s navigating, advises turning off the main road to get around the construction. So they delve into this wooded, mixed commercial-residential neighborhood. They go a couple more blocks and make another turn – always heading, bear in mind, away from the convenience store.
And as they make their final turn to successfully circumvent the road block, they catch another glimpse of a blonde girl with headphones and jean shorts ambling around the corner in front of them.
The second sighting only lasted a moment, but the wife is sure both figures were dressed exactly the same and behaving in the same general manner. And they looked eerily out of place in the exact same way, to the point that she identified both as the same person.
Yet the time and distance between the two sightings dictate that for the same girl to have gotten ahead of the vacationers’ vehicle, she’d have to be an Olympic-class runner capable of 30+ mph bursts. And that’s without correcting for the family car’s head start and the fact that she’d have to run all-out through heavy traffic and streets obstructed with buildings, hedges, trees, and other pedestrians.
Maybe it could be done. But the idea of a world-class teenage runner deciding to hang around a gas station in throwback clothes while waiting to freak out the occupants of a random passing car – with no way to know for sure she’d been spotted – has no more plausibility than paranormal explanations.
What about a pair of identical twins who’d recently parted ways after an 80s themed party?
OK, but the timing of the same carful of people spotting both twins at those exact intervals still puts us in Ripley’s territory. And that’s the most Florida explanation, to be honest.
But we’re not in weird territory confined to Florida at all?
What if this is similar ground treaded by Resurrection Mary or the Versailles timeslip?
If there is a Moberly-Jourdain type time warp in the heart of Florida, chances are it would take you somewhere like this …
Who knows for sure? I guess in Florida, anything is possible.
It sure is spooky, though.
If you want a longer-lasting case of the spooks, read my award-winning horror/adventure series:
