Tattooted's post pretty much sums up my attitudes; a sort of ignorance-is-bliss hopefulness. Keep walking, keep humming, look for an exit, follow the sun, don't look, don't acknowledge. Past few years have been lovely and virtually incident free. I'm hoping I've grown out of it and long may that last.
The old woman on the bridge event happened simply as posted. No way to stop; it was a bridge and there were vechicles ahead and behind; a one-way bridge, the road curved shortly afterwards, at night on a long, dark country road. I was concentrating.
I felt badly about not stopping to do something. On my own, I may well have stopped further along and gone back for her. I've done that sort of thing before; made a billy of tea and pile of slapdash sandwiches and went across to the railway stock-yards to give the meal to a man and some younger people (his teenage children, I believed) whom I'd seen herding cattle into the stock yards in pouring rain at about nine at night.
My parents were in bed at the time. No-one knew I'd left the house. I ducked through several barbed-wire fences, over the railway lines and wandered around the stock yards for five or ten minutes, looking and calling out for the rain-drenched family. Not there. When I arrived home, feeling a bit stupid, my father was in the kitchen, watched me come in. 'Where have you been?'. ' Taking some food to those poor people over in the stock yards.'. 'Which people?'. ' A drover and some kids.'
My father went to the living room, peered through the window. Then went out on the verandah to see if he could spot anyone from there. Came inside and said to me: 'There's no-one there.'.
' I know, I couldn't find them.'.
' Well get to bed then and don't go wandering off again without asking first. And you can take those sandwiches for school lunch tomorrow and eat the lot. Teach you to go wasting food'.
Next day, in daylight and sunshine, no-one in the one-horse town knew anything about a drover and others herding cattle into the stock-yards. We owned the local-store; my parents were the first to hear everything.
' You want to be careful,' my father warned me later, ' that imagination'll get you into trouble one of these days.' Every now and then, he'd say something about not being stupid enough to open my big mouth and talk about certain-things, or I'd just make a fool of myself. ('What things?' Response; 'Never you mind. Just watch yourself. Get your mind on what matters.'
But I'd seen the man in oil-slicks, sitting on his horse and had seen how worn-out his face was, and his children's faces. I'd heard the cattle. No-one else had heard or seen them, apparently.
I figured they must have loaded their cattle into a truck or something, very early in the morning, before anyone was awake. They couldn't have loaded them into the train, because it only came through a couple of days a week. Usually, the cattle had to wait in the yard until then. The stock-yards adjoined our property, I knew what cattle sounded like. So I have no idea what that was about, but I do remember seeing the man and kids faces, absolutely exhausted. They'd broken my heart. I saw the man's face in close-up, actually, can still remember it, with his face twisted and worried. Which is why I'd made the sandwiches and gone looking for them.
I've stopped for people on the road in the past. When I first gained my licence and got a car, in my mid-30's, I felt guilty about passing anyone on foot. It lasted a while, still bothers me often enough.
I probably would have stopped for the old woman or gone back for her. It was my son of all people, who repeatedly stressed I must not do so. He's extremely low key. He's the type to shrug and say (if he says anything at all) regarding people's less than wise decisions: ' Hey, no-one made them do it, it was their choice ...'. He doesn't get involved; he's an observer; he's not given to offering advice and certainly not forcefully, so the event was notable for that reason alone, from my point of view. Even so, as I was approaching the roundabout at the crossroads, it was only my son's insistent voice in my ear that prevented me from taking the bridge road to see if I could help the old woman.
No, it was not a case of my forming an impression of the old lady and transmitting it to my son. It was night-time. The bridge was a hazard. I was concentrating on the road and bridge and other cars and so only caught a momentary view of her. She was on my son's side of the car; he was closest to her and because he wasn't driving, he got a much better look at her and was able to continue looking at her to a far greater degree than I.
I haven't re-read my post, but in it, I may have said that I was hesitant to even remark about the old woman to my son, because he's not that way inclined; he doesn't like anything that smacks of the paranormal and has clammed up when his sister's attempted to discuss various things from childhood. He wouldn't even consider watching a horror movies. He is sports mad. He likes to stay in the here and now. He prefers to live within a very narrow band and anything remotely hinting of supernatural is entirely excluded, as is his right (and as may be a wise decision on his part).
That night, he was impatient to get to our destination and immerse himself in a televised football match. He wanted old mum out of the way. Being a teenager, he didn't enjoy being driven around by old mum and in order to deal with that, he used to sit largely unspeaking in the car as if he was a passenger in a taxi with a faceless driver.
It was my son who was most disturbed by the old woman. I was amazed he'd seen roughly the same thing as I had because when I'd hesitatingly remarked about her, I'd fully expected him to scoff or snort and say he'd noticed nothing. I had no way of knowing if my impression of the old woman was accurate. My son confirmed what I'd seen. I then felt confident enough to continue in saying that I'd formed the stupid impression that if we'd given her a lift, she would have turned into something ghastly. Again I expected him to scoff or give me one of those looks to mean ' You're crazy - I don't know what you're talking about ! ' But he agreed, with energy and he wasn't joking. You'd need to know him to know how unusual this all was.
So the incident was memorable enough based in the fact he'd not only seen pretty much what I'd seen, but had actually admitted it. I get over things quite swiftly, based I suppose on being assured from childhood on, often quite forcefully, that 'imagination' is responsible for so much. Of course you doubt yourself and your own experiences. Of course you subject them to scepticism, much as an outsider would. Of course you want to conform, want to please. You tell yourself it's highly probable that others are correct. Better to have friends and their approval in the here and now than insist you know what you experienced. Crazy people insist against all odds that they're right. Who wants to be crazy? Who wants to be regarded as crazy? I'm sure many people reveal things in these forums that they'd never consider discussing with their family and friends.
So by the time I'd driven my son to our destination, I was moving forward in my thoughts. Chatted a moment with the host and was ready to be off. Didn't expect my son to even acknowledge my departure, because that wouldn't be regarded as 'manly' before other males. So I was hugely surprised when he not only managed to keep his attention from the already-in-progress football match but also revealed 'unmanly' concern for his mother before the other men by warning me emphatically and repeatedly against stopping for the old woman or even taking the bridge road. My son made deliberate eye-contact with me, in order to silently extra affirm his concern.
I've only raised the issue a couple of times in all the years past. By this time, I'd expect him to have long forgotten the incident. Last time the event was mentioned (considerable time ago) I was surprised to learn that it is still charged with considerable energy in his mind, is still fresh and affects him as strongly, I would estimate, as the night in question. He prides himself on betraying very little emotion, so I know the event had considerable effect upon him ----------- far more so than on me.
Like most, I've seen and interacted with quite a number of old women. When I was younger, I boarded in a place in which I was the only person under 65. They used to creep around silently, in slippers, their white hair framing their wizened faces. They used to stick newspaper on their cuts and bruises because they didn't want to waste bandages. They were yellowish and covered in liver-spots. They were odd sometimes. They used to extend their knobbly, wasted hands out of nowhere and stroke my hair or arm as I was engrossed in making a meal in the common kitchen. They'd invite me into their rooms under some or other pretext, and then slip their photo albums on my knee as they had so many times before, and tell me in detail about every single blurry individual within them. I tried to please them and make their past live again by remembering as many people and events from their past as I could. They pressed horrible tea on me and I drank it, even though the milk was rancid and I knew flies had raised entire generations within the sugar bowl. I missed dates and appointments rather than leave them mid-sentence. I was there when some of them died. They never scared me in an important way, other than give me a shock on occasion when they slipped up behind me. They never haunted my dreams or days after they died. They never hurt me or ever intended to.
In recent years, my work involved daily contact with elderly and mostly house-bound old people. I've no fear of them, quite enjoy them. They have never frightened me. Annoyed me sometimes, yes, but even the most decrepit have not frightened me. Whether the old woman appearing creature on the bridge was a version of the old Hag, I wouldn't know. I've never thought of it in that light -- just reported the incident as I remember it.
