Seattle Forrest

The sun is going down earlier, and I'm doing more dusk and night riding lately. Between that and the weather dropping, there are less people out, and sometimes I'll have a road or a MUP to myself - which is kind of nice.

I was coming down a hill, with street lights above me, some rain on the pavement, and a leaf wafting down through the air. Then a mouse, or a rat, or something small and dark, ran out across the street. It was too erratic to even think about bunny hopping, darting left and right as it made its way toward my end of the pavement. So I tested my emergency stopping skills. When I got from about 20 to about 3 mph, I realized that my mouse was the shadow of that leaf I'd just seen falling.

It wasn't a frightening experience, but it was weird ... I was just so sure I'd seen something, and then it wasn't there. Have you ever had a sense of vertigo after you realized a situation wasn't what you thought?

Mazama

I ride at night, so yes...

I've ran over an opossum, dodged many fleeting cats and raccoons, been hit it the face by a bat, had dogs chase me and drunks yell obscenities at me. This is why I carry pepper spray, although I've never used it.

And sometimes the shadows do play tricks on you, but that just boosts your speed for a bit as you haul outta there.

Neil_B

I've had a couple of times where I've been stupid enough to not check my lights before a dusk ride. Ten miles on a dirt trail in the woods lit only my moonlight isn't fun.

CliftonGK1

On the 3 Volcanoes 300k about a month ago, I started mildly hallucinating during the last 15 miles. Shadows started looking like they were moving, and stationary things on the roadside took on a life of their own. The best one was a large stand of grass and weeds in a drainage ditch that I could swear was a 2 foot tall praying mantis. Scared the crap out of me.

XR2

Happens all the time. Means I'm paying attention,maybe a little too much.

shmily_dana

The strangest thing that happened to me was on a night ride in Huntington Beach. I had the beach trail to my self. I am sure that I heard another rider behind me (just bicycle noise that was not from my bike...) When I got to Warner, I was going to say "goodnight" and head home. There was no one else around. I will admit that I don't have perfect hearing. It might have been noise from my own bike bouncing of the walls, etc on the path.

daffonce

Worse spooking i have had was departing from a red light that turned green. I was with two others riding pace line. I was in front. A black SUV comes up and passes us going around a bend. A female driver coming the other way is at or crossing the double line while talking on a cell. The guys behind yell out. I am not sure what is going on. I then see the suv pass me. The female driver sees and locks up her brakes. I proceeded to check out the patch of woods to my right for a necessary escape route. Luckily she recovered, but for the next mile I was totally shook, so shook I couldn't bring myself to get off the front of the line. It was not a fun experience at all.

Scrockern8r

One of the mitigating factors in my getting into road riding was getting spooked while MTB'ing in the wintertime (wind, rain, grey sky and being alone). I've worked myself up to 99% of a full blown panic attack. The 1% kept me from stripping naked and running through the woods screaming gibberish! I put that effort into riding faster...
Rationally, I know I have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than getting attacked by an animal on the trail. (not counting humans here.) I'm working through it.
I'm still alert, because lerts live longer, while riding on the road. But the panic is virtually non-existent. Plus I really appreciate the different strengths developed with each type of riding.
The feelings still return in the summer, but there is something so calming about riding single-track on a beautiful summer day.

o0adam0o

On my commute back home from work there is a downhill i love to catch speed at. I was going about 30mph down the hill while on the bike lane, and all of a sudden i see about 4ft of loose gravel and debris. I had no time to check my rear for cars to jump in the car lane so i slowed down as much as i could and my bike slid sideways for a second and then caught tracktion again. It sucks because the debris is still there and i loved going fast down that hill. Now as i approach it i remember what happened and go slow.

Keith99

Never at night. Theclosest would have been seeing the eyes of several deer just off the road. Sort of funny how close to civilization deer can be.

Now during the daytime a few times, having rows of tarantuallas rearing up with their front legs off the ground at the side of the road was a bit spooky. If yuo got in a bad sci fi film mood yuo started to expect they would shoot out thread and try to pull you down. (Did I mention this was a ways into a double century and in hte mioddle of nowhere?).

But the spookiest was on a fairly hot day when there were vultures circling me. Never thought I'd be glad to come across some roadkill.

canopus 

Not from shadows.... dyno and a supernova.

However this story is what infuriated me and spooked me.

BigUgly

When riding MTB solo in the mountains in Central PA I constantly get spooked by noises off the trial which is mostly rustling leaves and everyonce in a while I swear I hear some grunting. Not sure if it's me grunting or an actual bear. I have seen bear while MTB the same trails in late summer. This encourages me to peddle faster and get the heck out of there when it is probably a little chip munk runing around the leaves. Call me crazy but way in the back of my mind, as a kid in the 70s they used to have these documentary films in the theatres, I grew up in a rural area next to forests and was petrified of BigFoot. I would wake up nights waiting for it to puch it's arm though my bedroom window and drag me into the woods just like in these documentries. That being said, there are these Big Foot experts out there and websites and there have been bigfoot sightings in PA. I still think it is most likely D.B. Cooper still hiding and living off the money jumped out of that plane with

Seattle Forrest

A couple days ago, I was coming down a very steep hill into the urban core ( ie "downtown" ). I was moving along, riding the brakes a bit ( there's a light every block, and a freeway entrance nearby ), and everything was normal. Then I went by a parking garage, with something loud going on inside. Somehow, the noise sounded like rubber on roadway, and coming from behind and slightly to my right, my brain decided it was something wrong with my tire on the road. It felt normal, was gripping ok, no wobble or anything ... but it sounded like I was about to blow out or something. I was pretty worried until I figured out what was actually going on.

Pinyon

Pretty common for me as well. It usually happens to me when I'm thinking about something on a flat stretch, and am still sleepy. I suddenly think that I see something like a deer, person, bear, dog, cat, fox, etc. sitting behind a bush or rock that I'm passing, and am sure that it is ready to jump out in front of me. So far, it has just been other shrubs that the wind is moving around a little bit. Un-nerving, though. Puts me "on-edge" for a half our after.

seenoweevil

In the 70's, I forked out a lot of money for less!

Mattrek

Riding on the dirt roads of rural Nebraska at night will do some wierd things to your head.

I was riding about 10 miles outside of the city limits of Lincoln with corn fields on both sides of me, it was about 10:00 P.M. and every time the road would loop to the left or the right, I could have swore that my headlight was shining light on someone standing in the corn... talk about creepy... I have never ridden so fast in my life.

Seattle Forrest

Was it the same (really, really fast) person, or was it a network of folks conspiring to watch you ride? Or did your brain not go that far down the wrong path...?

Hillbasher

Now that is a good one.

funrover 

Happens to me, night riding will break of the habit some. But I swear I hear more at night

callmeclemens

Just last week I was commuting home around 8, forgetting that it's getting Darker this time of year.
Those electric cars are really quiet, I was riding through a heavily wooded street surronded by a nature reserve, when from around a bend and behind me and electrical car wizzed by at about 50 mph. I swear I didn't hear a damn thing, I was heading downhill probably at about 20-25 mph kicking it. Put I almost wrecked.

DieselDan

Spooked on a ride has a whole different meaning here, and it is considered racist.

Brian Sharpe

I buried my father this past Wednesday and rode my first ever metric century on Saturday (the ride was a fundraiser for cancer research and he died from cancer so there was no way I could miss this ride). The first 75km went surprisingly well but the remaining 25 were a bit of a struggle, on a couple of occasions I noticed the shadow of someone right behind me and felt my father's presence encouraging me (he was old school Army - you never quit) - when I turned my head both times there was no one there.

It was probably the culmination of an emotionally difficult week plus a healthy dose of exhaustion but I definitely got spooked. And, no I don't believe in apparitions or hauntings and have not been partaking of recreational pharmaceuticals.....

Neil_B

Oh please. It's an innocent word when used properly.

whitecat

I'm sorry to hear about your father. All of this what you said made me remember something I had experienced a few years back when my grandpa died. I remember walking into the store where I worked (I was a manager at that time there, electronics store), and generally having a day where I was feeling like I was watched all day by something or someone. It'd gone that far that I had gone to look over the security cameras, to be sure no one was following me around the aisles. Alas, there was none of that. So, then I saw an older man standing by the entrance, and waving me on. I went there, ask how could I help him, and he proceeded to ask me questions about different computers and so on, very technical questions, which was a bit weird, because older people usually are not that well versed in that.

So there I was, having that conversation with him that started to feel surreal, and I couldn't help but to notice that there was something awfully familiar about his eyes. Then he looked at me and said: "I just wanted to let you know it's ok, it's all fine on the other side, no need to worry". So I stood there speechless, then he said that someone is waiving for me from behind and I turned around - when I turned back there was no one there in front of me.

I asked the cashier's did they see the man I was just talking to go out or something, and they asked me - which man? They said they saw no one there. That it was just me. So I thought I might be loosing it, I went back to the cameras footage and what I found amazed me - all the footage has timestamps down to the second - and right in that time that I talked to that man, there was a faint swirl of colors, somewhat resembling a human shape, standing across me. I almost fainted, and then showed that footage to the rest of my people on the shift who were there, because they were taunting me saying they want something of that that I had that day - they thought I was talking to myself. They turned a bit pale in their faces, and simply walked away without comment. No one was laughing anymore, and I got the feeling that they got too much of what they wanted, this time.

And after that experience of mine, I can tell you this - there is so much more out there then we care to admit to ourselves. We can sense and feel more then our primary senses can tell us. I wouldn't be surprised if your senses were right. But we can be very effective constructing all kind of arguments to explain why we saw some things that our reason and logic are telling us are impossible.

In the end it's not even down to what you believe in; such experiences are vastly known for hundreds and thousands of years, over all the different people on this globe we call our home, with all their different beliefs. One thing holds steady over everything - that was known and documented for decades. So, if there is so much documented occurrences of that, why would I try to deny it? I think that there are a lot of things out there that we don't yet understand; but, I do not think that fear should stop us from looking at it like it is.

CraigB

Brian, yours and whitecat's stories brought to mind a memory I had forgotten, from when my father died, a little over 7 years ago. I was at my parents' house for a few days to help get things settled, and one morning I had to don my father's jacket to walk out to the mailbox. It makes no sense at all, but for that short walk in his windbreaker, rather than feeling his presence, I felt like I was my father - like he had stepped into my body. One of the weirder sensations I've had in my life, and quite palpable.