A frightening experience

I am not one when is frightened easily; but I must admit that one night I saw a figure that struck: terror into my heart.

It was a moon-lit-night. I was returning home on foot from a town a few miles away. That was the first night in my life that I was out alone. The read along which I was walking was not used much at night.  Even during the day, it was used only by these who worked in the rubber and banana plantation along that road. As I was walking, I could hear the noises made by squirrels, insects and owls. Creatures that love the night world such as bats were very active, and there were hundreds of shadows. All these did not, however, frighten me. I held a stick in my hand and moved rapidly towards home for my dinner. Then, suddenly, I caught sight of an old lady, a short distance away. Her head was covered with a white cloth, and she was waving to me.

Curious to know why she was there at that time of the night, I stopped for a while. As I stood there, however, vague memories of stories about ghosts began to come back to my mind. I was soon gripped with fear and took to my heels. I ran as fast as I could, and when I reached home I could hardly speak.

On the next day, however, I visited that place again to make sure that the woman was indeed a real person and not a ghost. But I could find no footprints there. Only a banana plant stood there with its leaves moving in the breeze realised then that it was the banana plant with its leaves moving in the breeze that looked like a woman waving her hand. I had indeed made a tool of myself; but after the previous night's experience, this discovery was small relief to me.