The driveway to our house was a mile-long tunnel, hand-cut by men long forgotten. In daylight, sunlight danced like fairies through the trees. But at night, shadows twisted into monsters that chased our old ’66 Chevy. I was five years old, safest tucked on the car floor before seat belts were a thing.
The first time I saw him, it was a warm afternoon. I was wandering the woods around our house when I spotted an old man mowing a lawn I hadn’t seen before. He wore baggy grey pants, suspenders, and an off-white t-shirt. His hair was short and grey, his face clean-shaven. The lawnmower made no sound. Neither did the birds. The air chilled, and my skin tingled.
He felt different, but I didn’t understand how.
I returned often that summer. Sometimes, only trees and rubble remained. Other times, I saw him pushing that silent mower again, a small stone house behind him—only visible on certain days. When the air thickened and sounds warped, I knew I was close.
I decided to talk to him.
One day, I pushed through the invisible wall of static, stepped onto his lawn—and he stopped mowing. He looked at me, smiled, and in that moment my head throbbed, my breath caught, and I fell backward. He—and the world he came from—vanished.
Later, he began appearing closer to home, sitting silently in one of our colorful metal lawn chairs. I’d tell him about my dog. He’d never speak, but I could feel his presence. I wanted him to acknowledge me. One day at lunch, he arrived. I jumped and danced in front of him. He smiled—then faded away.
When I told my grandmother, she became angry. She called me a liar. “That man is dead. That house was torn down long before you were born.” My mother tried to explain it away as an “imaginary friend.”
Desperate, I led them through the woods. But the house was gone.
I was no longer allowed to wander alone, and he never came back.
Years later, as an adult with a child of my own, I returned. Our old house was decaying—windows broken, graffiti on the walls, squatters likely nearby. The air felt wrong. We left.
Even more years passed, and I returned again. The land was gone, replaced by townhouses. But I found what remained of our swing set and doghouse in the woods, took home a rusted piece of the past.
Still haunted, I dug through property records. There it was: our home and his, built in the 1870s by a man named S. Disney (I’ll keep his full name private). His house sat exactly where I remembered.
I never found a photo. But I found enough.
Was he a ghost? My imaginary friend? A child’s dream or something more? I don’t know. All I know is I met a man who mowed a lawn that doesn’t exist anymore.
You can believe what you want.
But sometimes, life is stranger than fiction.
Deborah Sickle Hill 