I still don’t know what happened that night. Even now, whenever I think about it, I get goosebumps. I’ve tried to find a logical explanation for what I saw, but there’s one thing I just can’t understand. If what I saw was real, then why was there no evidence of it? And if it wasn’t real, then how could I remember everything so clearly?
It happened one night when my entire family was fast asleep. I was sleeping in my room, and my sister was lying beside me. Everything was quiet until suddenly, I heard a loud THUD coming from somewhere above the house.
I woke up immediately and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, trying to figure out what that sound could have been. It was so loud that I couldn’t understand how nobody else had woken up. My sister was still sleeping beside me, snoring peacefully, and there wasn’t a single sound coming from the other rooms. Everyone seemed to be in a deep sleep.
At first, I thought I might have imagined it. Maybe I had heard something in my sleep, or perhaps something had fallen outside. I didn’t want to overthink it, so I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.
But just ten minutes later, I heard it again.
THUD!
This time, I was wide awake. I couldn’t convince myself that I had imagined the sound twice. It seemed to be coming from the terrace, and I couldn’t understand what could possibly be making that kind of noise at that hour.
I got out of bed and opened my window, hoping I might see something outside. But the road looked completely normal. There was no one walking around, no unusual activity, and nothing that could explain the sound. Everything was calm, almost unnaturally quiet. I stood there for a moment, looking outside, and then I started wondering what was happening on our terrace.
My curiosity finally got the better of me. I opened my bedroom door, walked through the hallway, and made my way to the terrace. I was expecting to find something there, perhaps a fallen object or something that had been knocked over by the wind.
But when I reached the terrace, there was absolutely nothing.
I looked around, trying to figure out what could have made those two loud sounds, but I couldn’t find anything unusual. I was about to give up and go back inside when I noticed the wind. I could hear it blowing toward me, and as I stood there, I realised just how cold it was.
There was fog everywhere.
And when I say fog, I mean the kind of fog that makes it difficult to see anything beyond a few metres. Everything around me looked completely white. The neighbouring houses, the road, the buildings in the distance—almost everything had disappeared behind that thick layer of fog. I could barely make out what was in front of me.
I stood there for a while, feeling the cold wind against my face, trying to understand why the weather had suddenly become so strange. And then, out of nowhere, I saw a light approaching on the road.
It was the headlight of a motorcycle.
At first, I didn’t think much of it. Someone riding a bike late at night wasn’t unusual. The light slowly grew brighter as the motorcycle approached my house, cutting through the thick fog. As the rider came closer, I could finally make out his figure.
There was something strange about him, although I couldn’t immediately explain what it was. Still, I didn’t think too much about it. I assumed he was just another person passing through the neighbourhood.
But then he did something that made my entire body go cold.
After crossing my house, he suddenly applied the brakes and stopped in front of my neighbour’s house.
For a moment, he just sat there on the motorcycle.
Then, slowly, he tilted his head.
And looked directly at me.
I was standing on the terrace, watching him from above. There was fog everywhere, and it was the middle of the night. I hadn’t made any noise, and I hadn’t called out to him. Yet he seemed to know exactly where I was standing.
And then I saw his eyes.
They were red. Not just a little red, but so bright and intense that I still struggle to describe what I saw. I don’t know whether it was the way the light fell on his face or something else, but in that moment, his eyes looked completely unnatural to me.
The way he tilted his head and stared directly into my eyes was what frightened me the most. It wasn’t a casual glance at a house or someone standing on a balcony. It felt as though he had specifically noticed me, even though I couldn’t understand how he could have seen me so clearly through the darkness and fog.
I stumbled backwards.
I didn’t wait to see what he would do next. I turned around and ran down the stairs as fast as I could. I rushed inside, locked the terrace door, and went straight to my parents’ room. I was so frightened that I wanted to wake them up immediately and tell them what I had just seen.
But they were sleeping very deeply. I tried waking them, but I couldn’t get them up properly. It was already well past midnight, and a part of me didn’t want to disturb their sleep over something they might not even believe. So, after trying for a while, I gave up and went back to my room.
I drank some water and sat there, trying to calm myself down. But my mind wouldn’t stop going back to that man.
Was he a real person? Why were his eyes so bright? Why had he stopped right after passing our house? And how had he known that I was standing on the terrace?
The more I thought about it, the more frightened I became. I had never seen that man in our neighbourhood before. I couldn’t remember seeing anyone who looked like him, either. And that strange head movement kept replaying in my mind. I could still picture the way he had tilted his head and looked straight at me.
I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Every little sound made me think about what had happened. I kept wondering whether he was still somewhere outside, whether I should have woken my parents properly, and whether I had just witnessed something I couldn’t explain.
Eventually, morning came.
As soon as I got the chance, I went to my parents and told them everything. I explained how I had heard the loud thud twice, how I had gone to the terrace, how the fog had covered everything, and how the man on the motorcycle had stopped in front of our neighbour’s house and looked directly at me.
My mother listened to me and then said, “Maybe it was just a dream. There are no ghosts.”
I understood why she would think that. After all, I had been sleeping before it happened, and it was possible that I had been half asleep when I went to the terrace. But I kept insisting that I had seen someone. I remembered getting out of bed, walking through the hallway, feeling the cold wind, and watching that motorcycle pass by. It didn’t feel like a dream to me.
Finally, my father said, “Okay, let’s check the CCTV footage. We’ll see what happened.”
I felt relieved. At least we would have something concrete to look at. If the motorcycle had really come down our road, there should have been some record of it. Even if my parents didn’t believe everything I was saying, the footage might help me understand what I had seen.
My father started checking the CCTV footage from that night.
We went through the recordings and looked for the time when I remembered hearing the thud and seeing the motorcycle. I kept watching the screen, waiting for the moment when the bike would appear.
But it never did.
There was no motorcycle.
We checked the footage again, thinking we might have missed it. We went through the relevant recordings carefully, but there was still no sign of the rider. The bike I remembered seeing so clearly was nowhere to be found.
I was terrified.
I knew what I remembered seeing. I could still picture the motorcycle approaching through the fog, the way it stopped in front of my neighbour’s house, and the rider turning his head to look at me. It wasn’t some vague image in my mind. I remembered the entire scene.
But the CCTV showed nothing.
My father and I decided to check the neighbours’ CCTV footage as well, hoping that perhaps their cameras had captured the motorcycle. We looked through their recordings, too.
Again, nothing.
There was no clear evidence of the motorcycle passing by at the time I remembered. It was as if that entire part of the night had never happened.
But there was one thing I noticed.
At almost exactly the time I remembered seeing the rider, I noticed a glitch in the footage.
The recording seemed to skip or distort for a moment.
I can’t prove that the glitch had anything to do with what I saw. It could have been an ordinary technical issue, completely unrelated to the incident. But the timing made me uncomfortable, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I told my parents about the glitch, but it didn’t change anything. There was still no footage of the motorcycle, and no one could explain what had happened.
I was left with nothing but my own memory of that night.
Even now, I sometimes wonder whether I had experienced a vivid dream without realising it. Maybe I had been half asleep, and my mind had somehow turned a strange sound into an entire experience. Maybe there was a perfectly ordinary explanation for the fog, the motorcycle, and the rider’s eyes.
I can’t rule that out.
But there’s a part of me that still remembers how real everything felt. I remember the cold wind blowing toward me on the terrace. I remember the bright headlight appearing through the fog. And most of all, I remember the way that man tilted his head and looked directly into my eyes.
Sometimes, when I think about that moment, I can still feel that same tightness in my throat.
I don’t know who that man was. I don’t know why I couldn’t find any evidence of the motorcycle on the CCTV. And I don’t know whether I saw something real or experienced a dream that felt completely real to me.
Maybe my mother was right. Maybe it was all a dream.
But if it was…
why do I still remember his eyes so clearly?