I’m writing this here because someone was brave enough to share his story on a public radio station, only to be ridiculed for his traumatizing experiences. I’m here to vouch for him — his story was true. What happened to him happened to me. Let me tell you about my horrifying ordeal.

I was driving home from work, which was outside the city. I liked to avoid the highways and take the country roads — quiet and calm. The timing matters for understanding what happened, so bear with me: I left work at five, and my commute was around forty minutes, which meant my wife expected me home by six o’clock at the latest. During those forty minutes, I’d try to decompress from the day, listening to the radio and clearing my mind.

I remember I passed the old abandoned mill, the sun setting low, and then these rows of lights appeared up ahead. I began to slow down, as lights usually meant a stopped truck, roadwork, or some kind of checkpoint. Feeling a little annoyed as I had a good way to go before I was home, I leaned closer to the windshield, trying to get a better look and gauge the delay. As I approached the lights, they got brighter, and I noticed there were no signs, no cones, and most of all, no people.

Then the bright white lights started to change into what I would describe as shifting, frail colors. Suddenly, everything around me began to sound muffled, as if my head was slowly submerged in a tank of water. The engine, the radio, the tires against the road — gone simultaneously. Then I heard nothing, no sound, as if it was all inhaled by something. However, the thudding of my heartbeat and my breathing filled my ears — they were the only noises I could hear. These isolated sounds grew stronger as my heart began to pound faster and my breathing got heavier and more difficult.

My senses turned inward: my teeth ached, a pressure formed behind my eyes, and a metallic taste spread across my tongue as if I were licking a battery. I knew I was still driving, but it was hard to see anything around me as I was engulfed by that light. I felt my grip on the steering wheel and my foot on the pedal. It made everything around me feel like an illusion — fading out and flickering back into reality. Suddenly, a black figure appeared in front of me. It wasn’t black like the color; it was more like a three-dimensional cutout of the space in front of me — just emptiness.

It was humanoid, but its height and proportions made me feel unsettled. Whenever I locked on to one of its features, it refused to settle, as if its form didn’t want to make a decision. Then, I stared at what appeared to be its eyes. They were the only part of this thing that gave anything back — red, not glowing, but somehow looking back at me.

I felt fear, but it wasn’t the dominant emotion. I felt little, insignificant, as if this thing was something much more than me. It was like being looked at by something that had no reason to care for my existence. Almost like someone walking down the street, noticing an ant on the pavement — we don’t think of its importance. We just keep walking, and our lives don’t change in the slightest. What came off that figure wasn’t just fear. It was something worse — the certainty that I didn’t matter.

All at once, the bright lights and the feeling all around me vanished, with those red eyes remaining, but only for an instant, then pure darkness. I was conscious, but my mind was empty of all thought and sensation. Then I fluttered my eyes open, and the world around me returned to normal. I heard the noise of my engine and the static of the radio, and felt the steering wheel in my hands. I looked around me, and reality settled back into place; everything was solid and real again. I blinked furiously, making sure it stayed the same, and nothing changed. I sat motionless, collecting my thoughts, as if pulling my consciousness back into my body.

I then noticed that my headlights were illuminating the darkness around me — it was pitch dark outside. I looked at the car’s clock, and it said 8:13. Three hours had passed, and I don’t know where that time went. I know I wasn’t asleep; I didn’t feel like I had just awakened — there was no usual grogginess or dream residue. It didn’t feel like a blackout either. It felt like only a moment ago I was driving and saw that figure. And suddenly, I was there, three hours later. I wanted to puke. That was when I noticed an unfamiliar sensation in my mouth — I was missing a tooth. I flipped the sun-visor mirror down and looked at the back of my mouth, and sure enough, my back molar was gone. I was scared and bewildered — I didn’t feel any pain from it.

Panic began to consume me, as I frantically looked left and right, trying to see anyone or anything around me, but there was nothing. Then it hit me: I had no idea where I was. I was on a road, in the middle of farmland, but I couldn’t place it — nothing looked familiar as it was hard to see. I looked down at my gas gauge and it had dropped noticeably, meaning my car had been idling the entire time, as I had just filled my tank the prior day. I threw the car into drive and floored it. Turning down random roads, trying to find something I recognized, I finally reached a gas station. Feeling paranoid as I filled my car with gas, I went inside, checking over my shoulder repeatedly, and asked for directions. Luckily, I was only a mile away from the abandoned mill. I hurried back to the car, drove to the mill, and headed home.

I parked my car in the driveway and sat in it for a while to collect my thoughts, trying to grasp reality once more. As my mind wandered, I looked up and saw my wife peering through the window — she didn’t look happy. I went into the house, and she was clearly waiting for an explanation for my tardiness. I tried my best to describe what had happened to me, but even I had to admit: I sounded out of my mind. She looked at me with disgust, like I’d embarrassed her, as she thought I was lying to her and making up poor excuses. In fact, she accused me of being on something that made me delirious. She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night.

I decided to take a shower and go to bed. As I was trying to enjoy the hot water on — what now seemed to be — my fragile body, I felt pain on my upper back. As the water droplets touched it, a stinging sensation shot down my spine. I stepped out of the shower and turned my back to the mirror. I saw a clean divot of missing flesh between my shoulder blades. It was circular with four pinholes around its edges, as small as a needle prick. But the wound was already healed over smooth. I couldn’t reach it to feel it. Then I noticed the pain was gone, as if it only responded to the water. Out of the shower, I felt nothing at all.

A missing tooth, a mark on my back, three hours of missing time, and a wife who believed I was hiding something. It was time for bed. As you can imagine, I didn’t sleep well that night. In fact, I was terrified to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, the darkness reminded me too much of that emptiness. I was eager for the night to be over, so I could go to work and keep my mind busy. That morning drive, I didn’t take my usual route. I avoided those roads and took the highway. I turned on the radio and tried not to think about the previous day. But something unimaginable happened: the radio host had someone call in to tell a story — a story similar to mine.

This man described with terror in his voice the same details: the light, the black figure, the lost time, the missing tooth. And then he described the wound on his back — a circular divot between the shoulder blades, four pinholes around it, healed smooth. The same mark. The exact same mark as mine. He struggled to describe it — just as I had. The radio host asked where it happened, and he said near the old abandoned mill. Unfortunately, the host was making light of it, half-mocking him. Of course the man sounded crazy, but his emotions were real — I don’t know why no one could see that.

I was listening, nodding to everything I understood. When he got to the part where he came back to reality, I thought his story was over — it wasn’t. When he was lucid again, he began to drive, but stopped not too far ahead, because he saw a red sedan, my sedan. He saw me parked on the side in the darkness, engine on, lights on, so he pulled over to see if I needed help. Even after what he went through, this man still had the courage to try to help someone else. When he peered into my car, he saw me — eyes wide open, seat reclined, still as a statue, as if I were paralyzed. But when he looked to the passenger seat, that black figure was there, with those red eyes, and it was doing something to me. He fled — and who could blame him. He said it felt like the figure had told him to leave us be.

I don’t know what it wanted. I don’t know why it took a tooth, or a piece of my back, or three hours I’ll never get back. I just know I’m not the only one — that somewhere out there is a man with the same mark between his shoulder blades, who stopped to help me and got laughed at for it. If you’re reading this and you have it too — the circle, the four marks — then you know I’m telling the truth. And you know we’re not crazy.