Ghost Deer?

Author’s note: The following is a true story. Completely contrary to the natural order of things, it has been embellished very little. I might say that it has not been embellished at all, but that would surely strain the bounds of credibility, so I won’t. What you are about to read is, therefore, substantially the truth — at least so far as my foggy, addled, semi-geriatric brain can recall.

 

“Ghost deer?” Now, that’s a textbook oxymoron if I ever heard one. You know, like jumbo shrimp, marital bliss, and honest lawyer. It seems a little silly to even put the two words together. Why? Because it’s absolutely irrefutable: deer are not scary! Even in those rare stories wherein deer were said to have attacked humans, they are still not scary, especially since you know that any attack was caused by some mutton-head doing something he shouldn’t have been doing in the first place.

And just what reason could a benign creature like a deer possibly have to want to become a ghost, anyway? Of course, there is that hunting thing. I mean, to a deer, the word, “duck,” has little to do with a fat bird with a funny walk. It is widely believed among the human species that hunting is good for the deer population, but do you suppose that deer buy into that line of reasoning? I wonder.

It’s not common knowledge, but deer are, except, of course, during hunting season, naturally friendly creatures. They’re all of the time trying to help farmers dispose of excess crops, for example, and what do they get for their trouble? Hunted, that’s all! Those of us who have gardens never have to worry about our pea vines growing like kudzu and swallowing the chicken coup as long as there are deer around, and how do we show our gratitude? With a large caliber projectile moving along at high speed.

And then there are the cars. Many times, when they see a car coming, deer will step out into the road just to say “Howdy,” and what happens? We all know, don’t we? We don’t talk about it, but we all know. So, ghost deer? Well, maybe. Even so, deer are not scary, and I certainly was not scared on that night a few years back. Not really. Not to speak of, anyway. Of course, I may have been just a tiny bit goose-bumpity, and the Twilight Zone theme song just may have been bouncing around in my head, but I’m getting ahead of my story. Is it scary? I don’t know. Probably not, but here it is. You be the judge.

It was the fall of the year, and the nights were cool. It may have been October, but it may not. It may even have been close to Halloween, but I can’t say for sure. I do remember quite well, however, that it was one of those Georgia fall evenings when the cool night air descends upon a still warm land and creates patches of wispy mist which hang eerily over the ground. It’s as if the land is exhaling, and you can see its breath. It’s even easy to imagine that you can almost hear it sigh. I don’t recall the exact time, but it was late enough to be completely dark with no trace of the sunset still upon the western sky. I know, because I was travelling west at the time.

This particular evening found me driving home from Forsyth to Barnesville on old Highway 41, keeping the speedometer needle of my full-sized Blazer around the double-nickel mark. Because of its curvy nature, it was not a road to speed upon. During the rush hours of morning and afternoon, a considerable volume of traffic would be encountered on the road due to people with jobs in the Macon and Warner Robins areas going to work and then coming home again, but, at this hour, it was all but deserted.

Every few hundred yards or so, I would hit a patch of mist, but then, before I could lift my foot from the accelerator to slow down, I would be through and into crystal clear country air once again. So the mist pockets were not of any great concern. It was just another evening and another drive home, and I was more or less on automatic pilot, my mind less upon anything which may lay immediately ahead than upon home, supper, and the easy chair. In retrospect, it was probably a really spooky scenario — a deserted highway, a dark night, and pockets of mist hanging menacingly over the ground — but I can honestly say that I had no feeling of trepidation, of apprehension, or of anything impending.

Just out of Forsyth — perhaps a mile or so — is a stretch of road where the forest comes nearly all the way up to the shoulders, just a few feet from the pavement on both sides. In some places, the branches of the trees actually meet over the middle of the road. As dark as the moonless night was, it was darker still in these areas, because it seemed that not even starlight could penetrate all the way to the ground.

I was travelling along this particular stretch when I rounded a curve while traversing yet another mist pocket. This one seemed a bit thicker — and maybe a little longer — than the others, and I was just about to lift my foot from the accelerator when the curve and mist ended at about the same time, and there they were — six or seven gray figures scattered across the pavement and on the left shoulder — just standing and looking at me, no discernable sign of fear in their eyes, almost as if I were expected. I said “gray figures” and not “ghostly figures” because, quite frankly, the notion hadn’t occurred to me at that time. Right in the middle of my lane stood a very large doe. Her left flank was broadside to me, and, like the others, she was just standing and looking. For some reason, she made no attempt to move. The other lane was blocked, too, so swerving around her on that side was not an option. And the trees were way too close to make the right shoulder a viable alternative.

My first impulse was to brake, and that is what I did. As a result, I couldn’t have been travelling more than twenty-five miles per hour when I hit her. When I did, she went down. Or, rather, she disappeared. The last thing I remember before I hit her was her head above the hood of the Blazer. At that instant we were eye to eye. Now, one would think that, when I hit her body, inertia would have caused her head to come back and impact the hood, but that is not what happened. One moment she was there, then I hit her, and she wasn’t there anymore. My quite logical brain told me that she had to have gone under the vehicle. There was simply no other possibility.

A few yards farther on, the vehicle finally came to a complete stop. I just sat there for what seemed like minutes but was probably only seconds, adrenaline pumping, heart pounding, wondering what had happened. I looked around me. Darkness enclosed all sides of the vehicle except for the front where the headlights still illuminated all in that direction. All of the deer seemed to be gone. I do not recall seeing them leave, but then my eyes had been focused upon the lane directly in front of me at the time. Of course, as dark as it was, they could have been licking the side windows, and I might not have known it. When I finally regained sensibility enough to move, I put the Blazer into ‘reverse’, with my foot still upon the brake, so that the backup lights would come on and looked in the left-hand mirror, fully expecting to see the crumpled carcass of the doe in the lane directly behind me. Instead, all I saw was empty road. I put the Blazer into ‘drive’ and eased forward a few feet in case she lay immediately behind the Blazer so that I could not see her and then re-engaged the backup lights. Still nothing but empty lane. There were no deer in sight, alive, dead, nor otherwise, and, what was even more peculiar was that there was no longer any sign of the mist which I had come through only minutes before.

Still in ‘reverse’, I eased my foot off of the brake pedal and onto the accelerator so as to allow the Blazer to creep slowly to the rear until I was all of the way back to where I had first exited the curve. Now, the entire — and completely mistless — panorama of where the event had occurred lay in front of me. I flicked the lights to bright and slid the transmission into ‘drive’, easing forward slowly, all the while looking for any sign, whether it be blood, hair, a deer carcass on the shoulder, or anything else which might prove that I hadn’t gone completely off my rocker. I saw nothing but empty pavement trailing off beyond the lights with darkness on either side. I applied the brake, and the Blazer came once again to a dead stop.

The Blazer may not have been moving, but my brain was in overdrive! What was going on? I had hit that deer dead spanking center. She couldn’t possibly have moved out of the way. No animal on earth is that fast. Maybe I can’t explain exactly what happened, but one thing I do know with absolute certainty is that, when the Blazer traversed that piece of real estate which the doe had been occupying when I first saw her, she was still upon it! So, I was going over the events again in my mind when I remembered something which caused a chill to ripple down my spine: When I hit that deer, there had been no sound or other sensation of impact! Nary a crunch, thump, groan, or bump. Except for the sight of her going down, there had been no sensory evidence at all that anything had happened.

After a while, I eased my foot from the brake to the gas pedal, allowed the Blazer to accelerate smoothly to cruising speed, and proceeded on home. Less than twenty minutes later, I pulled into my driveway and was, quite honestly, relieved to be home. After I parked the Blazer, I retrieved a flashlight from the console, got out, and gave the Blazer a detailed inspection. Even with a vehicle as large and as sturdy as a full-sized Blazer, it is simply impossible to hit a hundred pound creature without there being some physical evidence of the encounter, yet, once again, I found nothing.

Now, I’m not one who believes in spirits. I’m really not, but, if such a thing were possible, and, if this had been a spiritual manifestation, I would pose this question: What could possibly have been its purpose? To slow me down, perhaps, so that I wouldn’t be at that place where some truck veered across the centerline at the exact moment when I should have been there, thereby saving my life? Or, perhaps, in a more sinister vein, to steer me off of the pavement and into the forest on the right side, and, if so, what would have been my fate there? Might I, do you suppose, have found myself tied across the hood of some spooky old pickup truck with Bambi, the Not-So-Friendly Ghost, at the wheel? Who knows?

So, as the venerable Alex Hawkins once said, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. What possible relevance could it have to the well-being of Earth and its inhabitants? None that I can think of. It’s just a mildly interesting anomaly in the otherwise routine existence of a single individual. I would, however, offer the following advice: Should you ever find yourself driving along a deserted Georgia road on a dark Fall night when the breath of the land is visible, it would be wise to pay close attention to the road ahead, for it just may be your turn to experience one of life’s interesting anomalies.