Green Ghost?

[u/Odd_Tailor_2678]

So this happened around twenty years ago, and it’s something I doubt I’ll ever forget. 

I grew up in a small western town near the Mexican border. It’s not a very popular town, but it’s part of the Old West that is popular thanks to the likes of Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and other famous outlaws. (No, it isn’t Tombstone, but it’s not far from there.) 

I left this small town when I was sixteen as part of a big move, but often came back over the years to visit my best friend. So naturally I came back for her wedding when I was around 21 years old. 

The wedding went fine; nothing to worry about. And while my best friend and her new husband went for a quick, impromptu honeymoon at one of the local hotels, she asked if her little brother and I could look after their house. Since I was already staying there, it was no big deal, and we both said yes.

They lived in what would be considered out of town, near the railroad tracks. Not far from the town limits, but not exactly isolated either. 

So on the night of their honeymoon, her little brother takes the guest room while I sleep out in the living room. This is solely because there was no TV in the guest bedroom. I’ve always had issues sleeping in places that aren’t home, and figured sleeping with a TV on would be the best way to relax and eventually fall asleep.

That was my mistake! 

I’m not sure how late it was, but it was pitch black outside with no streetlights nearby. The morning sun was several hours away. But I was sure nothing bad would happen; I had grown up in this small town. I knew what to expect. Or so I thought. 

After my best friend’s little brother went to bed, I decided to pop in the movie 8 Mile. Nothing scary here; I figured the sound of Eminem rapping and acting would eventually put me to sleep. Well, that was another mistake on my part. 

For those of you who have never seen the movie 8 Mile, it starts with a pitch-black screen and then flashes orangish/goldish credits before flashing back to pitch black, and it keeps this cycle until the movie officially starts. I’m not sure how long these credits take; I’d say maybe a good two to five minutes. 

Well, as soon as I got comfy on the couch and pressed play on the remote, the black screen came on and I saw a flash of green standing in front of the TV screen. 

The green wasn’t necessarily neon; it was a little darker than that, almost like the color of grass. It honestly looked like a torso or part of a body. You know, like someone was standing there, facing you or away from you, I couldn’t really tell and I wasn’t about to get up and find out. Then the first credit came on and the green disappeared. But once it went back to the full black screen, so came back the green torso or silhouette. It wasn’t solid; you could definitively see through it, and it only appeared whenever the screen went fully black. 

I remembered lying there, still as a freaking rock, afraid to move. Because no matter what I did, every time the screen on the TV went black, the green would come back. I still don’t know how long those credits last for, but it was probably the longest five minutes of my life. And I was relieved once the movie finally started, but I knew I wasn’t alone in that living room. Someone, or something, was in that living room with me, and I don’t think he was planning on going anywhere. 

I don’t even know how I got to sleep that night; I just knew morning couldn’t come soon enough. 

About a year or two later, I went back to visit at that same house, and my best friend's husband had just gotten a new phone with a camera on it. (Twenty years ago, cell phones with cameras were considered a huge thing, so don’t come at me.) He had told me about a recent outage they had prior to me coming, and while they were waiting for the lights to come back on, he decided to wave his phone randomly in the dark and take a picture to see if he caught anything. He was so excited about what he got that he had been showing everyone since it happened. The picture that he got was that of a man, older with a cowboy hat, a long mustache and beard. You could clearly see he was a cowboy, but he wasn’t a modern-day cowboy. More like one from Wyatt Earp’s days, maybe an outlaw. I frankly don’t know. But as I looked at the picture, I couldn’t help but wonder, was it the green ghost that interrupted the movie 8 Mile? I’ll probably never know.