The Entangled Tales

Don't Walk, Run

I stretched my legs a bit as I waited for my luggage at Sydney International Airport, after a long, 8-hour flight from Singapore.

I yawned a bit, it had been a long day. Even though it was only 7 in the evening in Sydney, I felt drained from the long ride in a compressed metal tube. Jet lag was hitting me a little bit too, though I had gotten used to it for my job included frequent travelling to different parts of the world. In fact, I was on a business trip to Sydney.

Oh, did I forget to mention this incident was a few years ago?

Yeah, this was back in 2011, when I was in my late twenties. I had never visited Sydney before and had purposefully kept the evenings of this trip free, to go on tour.

Perks of having a job that makes you travel the world. :)

Where was I though? Oh, yeah, I had just landed.

After my luggage arrived, which was thankfully quick, I quickly hailed a taxi and reached my hotel. Tired from my trip, I decided to sleep early, and tour a bit in the morning, before my official meeting in the afternoon.

Morning arrived quicker than I thought, perhaps because I was tired, and slept well. I set out to check out the Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera house in the morning; both the spots weren't too far from my hotel.

There isn't much to tell about these locations though, this isn't a tourism account anyway, is it? They were just as magnificent as I thought they would be, just how all other tourism sites would tell you.

The real fun, or rather, adventure, began in the evening, once my meeting had ended.

I had cleared up my evening schedule for the first day to explore a very specific spot: Mrs Macquarie's Chair. It was the best spot in all of Sydney to capture the Opera house and Harbour Bridge both in one shot.

Being a photography enthusiast, I definitely had this on my bucket list for when I went to Sydney.

A little background to this spot, Mrs Macquarie's Chair is a sandstone rock, carved into the shape of a chair, specially commissioned by Governor Macquarie for his wife, Elizabeth. And yeah, I read that on the internet.

Located on a peninsula, it provides an awesome view of the Opera House, and it's near the Botanical Gardens of Sydney.

Now that you know about this place a little bit, let's go back to me travelling.

It was late evening, maybe something around 8:30 PM if I remember correctly. The sun had set, and I decided to grab my camera to take pictures from Mrs Macquarie's Point (It's the area beside the chair, in case you're wondering).

There is only one main road to the peninsula tip, Mrs Macquarie's Road. And at this hour, for some reason, it was quite deserted. Probably because nobody lives near that area, and most tourists come in the day.

I was walking down the road, rather slowly. There were huge bushes around me, and a road on the other side, for the Mrs Macquarie's road ran in a loop. On my right-hand side, there were bushes, and the sea beyond that, with the waves crashing on the rocks.

It was a peaceful walk actually, despite the fact that the road looked quite spooky. There was no one else except me, and apart from the wind rustling the leaves, and the lapping of the waves on the rocks, only the sound of my footsteps accompanied me.

Reaching the end of the road, I stepped down a few flights of steps, and the view was truly fabulous. In the darkness of the hour, the bridge and Opera house were lit up and looked like those straight out of a book.

I set up my tripod stand and camera and began taking my photos. I even decided to set a self-timer and click a few with myself in the foreground.

I was just finishing up, wanted only a few more pictures when the bushes to my left suddenly rustled violently.

I spun around, but nothing. I thought it must have been a rabbit or some other animal, and proceeded to focus on my camera and the pictures.

The leaves rustled again, this time, more violently. I spun around once again.

To my utter astonishment and disbelief, a girl wearing ankle-length jeans and white shirt stained with red ran past me. I don't know why I so explicitly remember what the girl was wearing; perhaps it was because the stains unnerved me too much.

She ran up the stairs, and turned left...which was a dead end.

This sudden appearance scared me a bit. It was dead silent, except for the sound of the sea, and a dark moonless night, it was eerie.

I quickly packed up my camera and tripod in my bag, and practically ran up the stairs myself. Before turning right, on the road where I came from, I looked towards my left. It was a dead-end, and I wondered where the girl would have vanished.

Thoughts of ghostly stories popped in my mind, and I refrained myself from approaching the dead end.

I started walking, at a steady pace, in the direction of my hotel, following the same road as before. But apparently, there were more surprises to come.

After walking almost halfway back on the road, I noticed something white in the middle of the road. Thank god it wasn't red...

But the white wasn't any less scary. In big, bold letter, in the middle of the road, a message was written with chalk. A bit roughly, but enough to leave one paranoid.

"Don't walk, run."

That was enough to bring back all of those ghostly tales to mind. I closed my eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and took off, rather fast.

I could have sworn I heard faint footsteps behind me, but neither did I turn around, nor did I alter my pace. But thinking that the surprises of the night would be over? Oh no...

The strange happenings didn't stop here. I was nearing the end of the road, already feeling super scared, when the bushes to my right rustled again.

The same girl emerged and ran diagonally across the road. My brain had almost stopped working, but the worst of it was when I tried to look down.

The girl's feet. They were gone!

And not like someone chopped them off kind of gone, they were invisible kinda gone. It was like there is nothing beneath her ankles, it was transparent.

The girl vanished into the bushes once again, on my left, towards the sea. I practically ran the rest of the way to the hotel after the girl disappeared.

That night, it took me a long time falling asleep. I couldn't get over the weirdness of it all.

I narrated the incident to my friends, who at first, didn't believe me.

I won't be lying if I say I could hardly believe it all myself. It was just so strange. Maybe it was a prank? Maybe it was just my brain playing tricks on me? I guess even after all these years, I shall never know the truth behind the girl. Maybe, I really had encountered a ghost? 

A/N- Based on real events :)