This is a long story, but it's an unexplained and mysterious experience I still don't understand to this day. It happened when I was around the fifth grade. On a Sunday evening, my younger brother and I were playing in the sandbox at the elementary school we attended. As it gradually grew darker and I started thinking it was about time to head home, I happened to look up and saw an unfamiliar old man standing right beside us. He was wearing very worn-out, khaki-colored clothes—something like a wartime national uniform. I remember he had puttees wrapped around his legs, wore a cap, and had something like a drawstring pouch hanging from his belt at his waist. The old man was smiling kindly, but for some reason, it felt like his eyes were all whites with no pupils.
What I remember most vividly is the scene of the old man standing on top of the horizontal bar set up near the sandbox—for some reason, it was an unusually huge bar, high enough that an adult had to reach up to grab it. With those all-white eyes, he was smiling, balancing with both arms like a circus tightrope walker, and walking with his knees kept straight. Sensing something bizarre with my childish intuition, I stood up, sprinted, leaped onto the bicycle my brother had ridden there, and fled for home as fast as I could. My younger brother chased after me on foot, crying desperately. (Sorry, little bro.)
When we got back home while our mother was preparing dinner, my brother and I were talking excitedly, saying things like, "That old man earlier was so scary, wasn't he?" Then, the front doorbell rang. My brother and I exchanged glances, feeling a terrible sense of dread. Our mother went to the door. We hid behind the gap in the curtain separating the entryway from the living room and watched timidly. When our mother opened the front door, that very same old man was standing there. He followed us here!
Paralyzed by sheer terror, our hearts leaped into our throats when we heard the old man ask, "Is this the home of Ms. [Mother's Full Name]?" That was undoubtedly our mother's name.
Ending with our mother's bewildered reply, "Uh... yes, it is..." the rest of their conversation didn't reach where we were hiding. I think they stood and talked at the entrance for about ten minutes. I was so worried about my mother I couldn't stand it. Eventually, the old man left, and our mother returned to the living room. My brother and I clung to her and demanded to know who that person was. With a stern expression unlike anything I had ever seen, our mother only muttered, "Well... but that person is someone with extraordinary spiritual power."
More than ten years have passed since then, but I still don't know the true identity of that old man. What's strange is that our mother doesn't remember this happening at all. Both my brother and I remember it clearly, and the old man clearly spoke our mother's name...
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