The Man with the Lantern

from: Fiona Livingstone tangents@tangets7.freeserve.co.uk

About 9 years ago, I was staying in a cottage in the west coast of scotland for Christmas with my parents. We decided to go for a drive down a small windy road to visit my aunt. If you're familiar with Scotland and its severe weather conditions, you would understand that driving at night down these road can be hazardous.

We decided to take it easy and drive slowly, mainly at my insistance! When a car overtook us at a high speed and driving rather erratically, we didn't think anymore of it until about five miles down the road when I saw a man by the side of the road, he had a black jacket on with a large white frill at the front, I think it may have been a shirt, he had a cap on and was waving a large lantern to and fro as if he was beckoning for us to slow down as there was danger ahead. Naturally I said to my father to slow down and he did, which was just as well as around as a corner we saw the car that had overtaken us lying across the road, upside down. It had taken this corner too fast, lost control of the car and somehow flipped over. If we hadn't slowed down then we wouldn't have seen the car in time and ploughed into it ourselves.

My father asked me how I knew that we had to slow down at that point and I told him about the man by the side of the road with the lantern, to which my father replied, "what man?".

I now believe that this ghost saved our lives for whatever reason, but I've never been scared of ghosts since.

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