Ghost Rider?
09/2020
On the night of September 30th, of this year, I was biking home from work. It was one of the several times I decided to take the Interurban Trail instead of any of the residential streets. It was maybe about close to 10:30PM, when I got within several feet of 117th Street. Which is the only non barricaded access onto the Interurban Trail.
As I do normally because it's become a very strong habit of mine while riding, I looked into my rear view mirror that's on the left bar of my bike before making my left turn onto 117th Street (I was heading northbound on the trail from 105th Street). In my rear view mirror, I CLEARLY saw what was a very OBVIOUS sign of a cyclist behind me. They had a very bright bar light like I and many night time riders do, and they had a helmet light too.
When I made my turn onto 117th Street to get off the trail, I would have CLEARLY SEEN the rider go past me from behind as I turned my head to my right after making my turn. I would have seen their red tail light or whatever reflective tape they had on them on my left side by that point. Instead I saw nothing other than pitch darkness. The phantom rider was about 2ft behind me and was riding in the same line I was. So when I swerved to the left side, it swerved to the left side too like as if it was gonna turn onto 117th Street as well.
If I could describe how I felt after I noticed that there was literally no one behind me, It was a mixture of confused and unnerved. But not scared. I don't know if that makes any sense, I didn't dart out of there like a bullet. In fact once I made my turn, I got off my bike and went to investigate. I even took some time to make a FB post about what I just experienced.
Unfortunately I don't have any video or picture evidence because I was in the middle of riding when the incident happened. Only camera I have is a body cam that I didn't even have on me on that night. And it would've been of no use anyway.
Submitted by:
Olga L