GIBSONS, BC

Not only is seeing a full-bodied apparition as rare as it is frightening, imagine how one man felt when he witnessed it in his own backyard!

Late one night in 2005, Mike S., whose full name has been omitted for privacy, was watching TV in his upstairs bedroom. It was approximately 5 am when the then 14-year-old decided to peak through the blinds to see if the sun was beginning to come up. Staying up that late wasn’t uncommon behaviour for the young man who, to this day, still describes himself as somewhat of a night owl. What followed is a memory the now 33-year-old still vividly recalls, nearly two decades later.

Squinting through the opening in the shades, Mike’s focus was immediately turned from the status of the sun to a lone figure, moving slowly across the backyard of the family home. 

“I’ve never been so caught off guard in my whole life.” 

Mike knew immediately that whatever he was seeing was not of this world. 

“It was like a mist almost—a weird mist, but in the shape of a person.”  

He described it as “tall—translucent but white.” According to Mike, it appeared to resemble a woman, as it seemed to have the shape of “a veil” over where its head should’ve been. It walked at a side profile, with its hands up in front of it, pointed upwards as if in prayer. 

Mike watched in astonishment as is moved from right to left across the patio area the family used as a makeshift basketball court, directly below his bedroom window. It moved in the direction of the back deck off the kitchen until it was no longer in view. Mike says it moved very slowly. 

Badly shaken, the teenager fled down the hall to his parents’ bedroom to wake them. 

“I woke my dad up.”

However, Mike’s father–groggy from sleep–quickly wrote it off as a dream.

“He[was] like: ‘oh go back to bed, there was nothing. You didn’t see anything.’ Obviously, my dad’s not a believer in those types of things”

Hardly convinced, Mike returned to his bedroom to see out the rest of a sleepless night.

“I knew what I saw. I knew it was there and that it was real.”

The teen wasn’t under the influence of anything, nor does he believe what he saw was any figment of the mind. Before then he’d never experienced anything strange on the property, nor since. 

Mike says he has a couple theories as to what he might’ve seen that night. It was during that period in 2005 that a woman a few houses down passed away in her home. The person’s remains went undiscovered for a period of weeks and it was during this window of time, he estimates, that he witnessed the apparition. A second theory, he adds, is that his grandmother had passed away just a week prior. 

To this day, he’ll never know for sure what it was he saw, only that it’s a memory that will stay with him for a long, long time.