I’ve always believed in ghosts and spirits. Perhaps it was because it amused me, or perhaps it was because I’ve been stuffed with ghost stories ever since I was old enough to comprehend them. I’ve been around a lot of people who grew up in remote areas of the world. You know, the place where electricity doesn’t exist, and running house water is just a myth. Well, anyway, I’ve heard many ghost stories from them, mostly drawn from their actual encounters and experiences. These stories were pass on to me on many different occasions. Like say around a campfire, a mid-night drive across towns, or just under the dim candlelight of my friends’ basements.
One of my friends’ stories was about his dad. You see, back in those days when my friend’s father was just teenager, water was a rare commodity. At every dawn, he had to leave his home with two vases on either side of a stick on his shoulders to get drinkable water from the village’s well. The walk was about two miles. People did not live close to each other in those days, they lived on their farm, and every house was quite far from each other. There wasn’t any pavement, or cement street, roads were simply made out of rocks, and mud, and dirt. And the only mean of transportation was cows. Nevertheless, my friend’s dad always stopped by his neighbor’s house, the two boys grew up together and they’ve always walked alongside each other to get water. When Mr. Shoe, my friend’s dad, was fifteen, his friend died of malaria, so from then on; he had to walk to the well by himself.
One day, while coming back from the well, Mr. Shoe heard running footsteps coming from behind him. So he stopped and turned around, no one was there. The footsteps then slowed down to a jog, and then to a walk, then it stopped next to him. He was puzzled, but he wasn’t scared, so he kept walking. The footstep started again, but this time it was next to him. The footstep’s pace matched Mr. Shoe pace evenly as he walked down the street.
