Few know of an abandoned facility known colloquially as the "Insane Asylum". Located on on Krome Avenue's west side, south of Southwest 8 Street, it would be the best setting for a ghost story if it didn't seem so trite. The location is not open to the public, as is made clear by the concrete barriers erected in front of its entrance. Even so, the very barriers set up to keep people out announce the presence of something beyond them, where otherwise no one would think to look.

It seems like Krome Avenue gives off all sorts of bad vibes. Also known as Florida State Road 997 and West 177 Avenue, Krome is a 36 mile stretch of two-lane highway running along Miami-Dade County's western fringe. The highway is a traffic bypass through a sparsely populated region of the county. Straddled on one side by the sprawling Everglades swamp and on the other by a whole lot of nothing, no matter where you are on Krome or which direction you travel, you are in the middle of nowhere.

I'll warn you here: you're about to read a ghost story. Unlike most you've read or heard, this one isn't fiction. It's real. It doesn't have any plot or character development because its purpose is to relate the facts of these experiences. Believe what you will, if you wish, or not, if it suits you. As with last week's entry, its point is not to convince you that these events happened. Rather, it is to share with you that they did.

Backed by a small army of friends in three cars, I set out for the asylum on a clear Miami night. We left our homes and ventured west, leaving civilization behind as we pressed into the swamp. We turned south when we hit Krome. Short of our headlights and those of the tractor-trailers roaring by, the roadway was pitch black. For the most part, Krome Avenue is devoid of streetlamps. Geddy Lee of Rush fame sang of those places beyond the bright lights that lie in the far unlit unknown -- I knew then what Geddy meant, as I was in one of those places.

We pulled off the road when we saw the concrete barriers. The tall brush that flanked the roadway had all but consumed the facility entrance. Scaling the barriers and pushing through the brush put us at a chain-link gate that had been punched through. Beyond that, to the left, was a concrete hut, where once a guard might have stood watch.

Once past the entry checkpoint, we found ourselves on a tarmac path that cut a swathe down the length of the facility. There was no way to tell how far the path went. It was too dark, and although we shined our flashlights  down the path, the road far outran the flashlight beams. To the right was a length of hedge, or a shoulder-tall string of trees (the exact details escape me, but I recall there was a line of foliage). Up ahead and to the left was a fork in the road that led to the facility's main entrance.

As I was one of the three in our group with the foresight to bring a lantern, I took up the rear position. Our flashlights were interspersed -- with our group marching in single file, we had one flashlight at the lead, one in the middle of the line, and me at the end. We were a group of about fifteen, which meant there around five bodies between flashlights. There was just enough light to see by, but not enough to feel comfortable.

As the group marched ahead and to the left, toward the structure's entrance, I spied a pair of shadows out of the corner of my eye. They were humanoid, but I could not make out their finer details. The shadows stood against the line of trees to our right, opposite the group's bearing. Interestingly, there was no ambient light in the facility. Remember, we were in the swamp by a rural road, and it was the middle of the night. Light from passing trucks' headlights could not get in to where we were because of the thick overgrowth at the facility's perimeter. What's more, the only lights in the facility were our flashlights. The only other two flashlights were already well along the path, meaning that whatever light made that pair of shadows visible had to be coming from my flashlight.

Then it hit me -- my flashlight was pointed away from where I'd seen the shadows.

I turned in place to look straight on at the shadows. As if sensing they had been spotted, the two shadows ran -- as in, they seemed to pivot in place and pump their arms and legs and flee -- away from the hedge and out into the open air. They vanished. Once in the open air, there was no surface against which they might be seen.

My flashlight swept into the spot in the hedge where I'd seen the shadows only a moment ago. There was nothing there. Tentatively, I took a step toward the hedge, wanting to know more but knowing it would risk separating me from the group. Nothing. There were enough gaps in the hedge to clearly see through it. Nothing hid within it, or behind it.

Check back soon for this story's continuation (click here for part 2), for photographs and a description of the derelict facility's interior.

How do you chase something whose footfalls make no sound? What nets do you use to snare something incorporeal? And, assuming you can catch it, who in their right mind would dare hunt something no one knows anything about?

Believe what you will, if you wish, or not, if it suits you. The point is not to convince you that these events happened. Rather, it is to share with you that they did.

The home where I grew up was built in the 1950’s, in a quiet suburban neighborhood. Its living space was distributed in such a way that the master bedroom was at the extreme front corner of the structure, with a window looking out into the front yard. The other bedrooms were connected along the same side of the house via a corridor.

When my sister was born, we built a second master bedroom for my grandparents to live in, and the rest of the family played musical chairs with the living arrangements. My sister took my old bedroom in the middle of the hall, I moved into my parents’ former bedroom at the front of the house, and my parents took my grandparents’ old bedroom at the opposite end of the hall.

By the time my brother was born, there wasn’t any more room to make additions to the home, and so he moved in with me. My bed was arranged parallel to the wall closest to the street. Were you to enter the room from the hallway, you would see my bed in the far left corner, with my brother’s along the opposite wall.

One night, when the house was quiet and everyone was asleep, I awoke. I found it strange that I should be awake because there hadn’t been any loud noises or anything that would have roused me. Lying on my back in bed, I actually considered this, when I noticed a faint light in the hall. It was pale green, like the face of a glow-in-the-dark watch. The light slowly grew in strength, as though its source were drawing nearer.

I was terrified. I had no plausible explanation for what I was seeing. At the time, we did not have any motion-activated lights in the hallway, and when my mother did eventually buy those, they were incandescent orange. Worse - whatever approached was coming from the hallway, which was the only way out of the room.

The glow entered and lit up the doorframe with a sickly green haze. The light was pale, and transparent - even as it drew closer I could see through it to the desk and television hutch behind it. The glow moved toward me. Once it had wafted halfway across the room, it changed. The light shifted to its extremities and became a ring. It did not become brighter - it was as if the light compressed itself and had become opaque in the tight area of the ring it formed. Within the ring it was as dark as the rest of the room, but not so dark that I was blind. My bedroom walls were painted stark white, and I had white furniture and so with the scarce light of the streetlamp beyond my window I could still see.

The space within the approaching green disk darkened, as if it had become a sheer film of black silk. The figure within the disk was human. It had a clearly discernible head, trunk, and limbs. I could not see details. I could not see its face, or digits, nor could I tell if it had either. The legs and arms were positioned away from the trunk in a posture that might have been uncomfortable for a person to maintain for too long, but this made it abundantly clear to me the figure was human-like. The air space that the figure occupied was perfectly dark, opaque. The area it did not occupy I could see past.

It floated toward me in a slow, even pace, as though it were on a conveyor belt. It did not swing its arms or move its legs as it approached. It did not have feet, but the pointed ends of its legs appeared not to touch the ground.

Just as it brushed against my bedside, numbers lit up in the glowing green circle. Twelve at the top, three to the right, six at its feet, nine at the left. In the center of the figure’s torso appeared a tiny disk of green light from which shot three bars - an hour hand, a minute hand, and a second hand. The seconds ticked with rigid precision.

I watched, wide-eyed, as the figure drew within arm’s reach. Meanwhile, my brother slept, unaware of any of this. Had it gone for him instead of me, I don’t know what I would have done, if anything at all. It was all I could do to keep from screaming.

The figure brushed against my bedside, then, as abruptly as it had appeared, it vanished. The shadow in the clock was gone. Without its green glow, the bedroom was darker than before.

I did not sleep the rest of that night.

Most ghost stories are fiction. Some are written with a moral theme in mind, or perhaps tell a story of some too-good protagonists triumphing over (or falling prey to) an age-old curse. The ghost story presented here doesn’t fit those norms because it isn’t fiction. Believe what you will, if you wish, or not, if it suits you. The point of this is not to convince you that this event happened. Rather, it is to share with you that it did.

Krome Avenue runs north-south for the length of Miami-Dade County, approximately 36 miles. It is a two-lane highway located on the county’s western fringe, bordered on the east in some areas by nothing for miles, and on the west by the sprawling swampland known as the Everglades. No matter where you are on Krome or which direction you travel, you are in the middle of nowhere.

There is a gas station on Krome Avenue at a four-way intersection. At the extreme corner of the gas station lot, facing the roadway, there is a triangular-shaped section with a ground-level backlit sign advertising the station’s brand and prices. Separating this section from the station is a chest-high hedge.

 The three other parcels along the roadway are plots of dirt and tall grass on which nothing is built. These plots run for acres in every direction.

The only light comes from the gas station, which, at night, is lit up like daytime with harsh florescent lighting. Otherwise, the roadway is devoid of streetlamps. Nor are there any sources of light on the undeveloped plots. Geddy Lee of Rush fame sang of those places beyond the bright lights that lie in the far unlit unknown - I knew then what Geddy meant, as I was in one of those places.

Very late one night, some friends of mine and I were in my car at this particular intersection. We were coming home from a day at the beach. We had had a good time and were all talking. I sat in the driver’s seat with my date to my right, a guy friend of mine (Chris) in the seat behind her, and his date sitting behind me. We approached Krome Avenue from an orthogonal street, about to make a left turn to head south. The gas station loomed ahead and to the left. It was pitch black in every other direction.

I stopped at the intersection to check for oncoming traffic. I looked both ways, and as my eyes shifted forward and I started to make my turn, I spotted a man standing beside the gas station’s backlit sign.

I hadn’t seen him when I first approached the intersection, but after I’d noticed him, I realized how hard it would be to miss him. The man was easily six feet tall and was wearing a stained tanktop shirt that glowed white in the harsh glare from the filling station. His paunchy gut stuck out from beneath his shirt and over the waistband of his denim pants. He was of heavy build, his shoulders drooping at his sides from the weight of his meaty arms.

His head was lowered. I could see his chin was pressed up against his chest. His full pink lips were drawn slightly, as though he were breathing through his mouth. He had greasy black hair that hung in curling strands before his face, forking like a river at the bulb of his nose. I could not see his eyes. Inky blue-black ringed the spots beneath where his eyes would have been. These rings stretched down well into his cheeks. While I couldn’t see his eyes, a strange feeling in my gut told me he was watching us.

Just seeing the man made me feel uncomfortable. I locked my eyes on him as I drove into the intersection, and then looked away to see where I was going. After the moment it took to complete my turn, I glanced at him in my side-view mirror. The man had shifted impossibly fast. He had turned 180-degrees to face me and stood now not on the grass by the backlit sign but on the gravel approach to the gas station. His arm was raised, hand balled up in a fist pointed at us.

“Did you see that?” I asked, cutting short the conversation.

“No,” said my date, sitting shotgun.

“No,” said my friend’s date, sitting behind me.

“Yes,” said Chris, after a moment’s hesitation.

Silence.

“Chris,” I began. “What did you see?”

Again, he paused. “I saw a guy.”

None of us spoke the rest of the way. Later, after I’d dropped the girls off at their homes, I gave Chris a ride to his house. Along the way we talked about what we’d seen. Interestingly, Chris related that he had continuous visual contact on the strange man, while I had to look away and then look back, since I was driving. According to Chris, the man never shifted position or raised his hand, which was bizarre because I was certain he had.

Admittedly, there are other explanations for what we experienced that night, but I maintain that we saw something supernatural. Everything about the man we saw, from his appearance to the sentiment he evoked in us, exuded menace.

Then, also, there is the fact that he came out of nowhere. The only plausible place he could have come from was the gas station, as there was nothing but open land around. Even so, he would have had no business standing by the backlit sign at the roadway. There isn’t even a bus stop there. And for him to have appeared there so suddenly would have required him to jump the hedge. The hedge was chest-high and thick, and it wouldn’t have been possible for a man his size to get across it so quickly.

My mom says I’m meticulous. I say I’m thorough. My doctors say I’m paranoid. All the better for me if any of us are right; these are tense times we live in.

The news man is calling it a cold war, like that’s supposed to sound reassuring. It’s still a war. The White House and the Kremlin are primed to bomb each other flat if one side so much as sneezes. If - hell, when - that happens, everyone will go up in smoke.

That is, except me.

I’m ready. It’s taken a year and a half, but the concrete bunker under my house is stocked: food, communications, even foil caps. Rumor has it the reds are working on mind control. They can’t get their x-rays into your head if you chrome up your lid.

Now that I’m ready, what’s left is to stay vigilant. Playing defense is a loser’s strategy, and holing myself up in that concrete cave is a last resort. I listen to the ham radio every night. The airwaves are filled with commies chattering in code. They’ll let something slip eventually.

The radio is a real piece of work. It’s not powerful enough to listen in on the commies at home in the C.C.C.P. but I don’t need it to. They commies are here, in the States. My rig picks up restricted channels, so I’ll be listening when the Kremlin calls. When that happens, I’m taking a road trip. My van out front doesn’t look like much, but it’s a surveillance vehicle that the Federal Communications Commission retired last year. Uncle Sam used it to pinpoint people who beamed up unauthorized broadcasts on restricted channels. The government stripped it of all the equipment, but left the electrical hookups in place. It wasn’t too hard a job to wire it up with goodies from the electronics store where I work. All I need to do is dial in a suspicious frequency, and I’ll be pointed right to its source.

August 28, 1962

I fell asleep at the radio again. The clock says 3:42. Down here in the bunker, I can’t tell if it’s a.m. or p.m. The radio’s silent. I rub the sleep out of my eyes and reach for my glasses, when suddenly a boy’s voice comes on.

“Three times three is nine.”

Pause.

“Twenty-one. Forty-eight. Negative thirty-six.”

The boy speaks slowly and with long pauses between numbers. I snatch a notepad off the desk and jot down the numbers. Before I know it, a half hour has passed. The broadcast cuts off. Silence.

The numbers make no sense. I tear the page out and rewrite the numbers down the left margin of a new sheet. Holding both sheets up to the ceiling light, I can see the number’s I’ve written through the page. No matter how I hold the sheets to make the two lines of numbers intersect, nothing leaps out at me.

[START OF TRANSCRIPT]

Albert. Albert [REDACTED] is my name. I work at [REDACTED] just off of Interstate 398.

Yeah, I saw the guy we talked about. He came in out of the rain at about 2:00 a.m. Shabby looking guy in his forties, showed up wearing an old overcoat and beat up hat. Had a bushy mustache, brown and graying. Glasses. Couldn’t see his eyes. He wore his hat low over his face. He sat down at the counter, just crossed his hands at the wrists and looked down at his hands.

His hands? Uh, yeah, they were big. Very big. Long, thick fingers, meaty hands, big like catcher’s mitts. He was kind of a trim guy to have such big hands. They looked older than the rest of him too. Really veiny, creased. Those hands looked like they’d done a lot of work.
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This story was featured The Florida Writer, a publication of the Florida Writers Association, Summer 2013, Volume 7, Number 2.

Riding out of the setting sun, an old man roared up on his motorcycle, his flabby arms flapping like the leather streamers on his bike's handgrips. As he skidded to a halt in front of my repair shop, I knew at once he was Death. 

He killed the engine as the gravel he'd kicked up settled into little eddies by his front tire. Standing astride his bike, he lit a cigarette. He offered me one.

"Those things kill," I said, but took him up on his offer anyway.

He smirked at the sort of irony only he could enjoy. Death never spoke, unless it was your time to die. It was one of those cosmic secrets no one knew, but I'd only come to know from having him visit so often. Everyone needs a mechanic, even Death.

Death set the kickstand down and slung himself over the side of his bike.

"You came just in time," I said. "I was just closing up shop."

He paid me no mind as he crouched beside his bike and pointed to the front tire.

"That brake still giving you trouble?" I asked.

He nodded with arms crossed. Death was anal about these things. He had been around long enough to know you could never be too careful. Even so, I could never convince him to wear his helmet.

He jabbed his finger at the front brake, and again, to show how frustrated he was at having to come back after I'd told him the problem was fixed.

"Yeah, well, you shouldn't have bought such a beat-up old bike," I said.

Palms up, Death shrugged. As his arms came down, he gave a sigh that bowed his shoulders. He'd had a hard day's work, and it was clear that he was too exhausted to argue. He was almost pitiable, looking like a reject from biker gang tryouts.

I couldn't say I envied him his job. The hours were long and the budget was lean. His horse, skinny for centuries, was little more than a skeleton nowadays due to funding cuts. Still, the motorcycle was not much of an upgrade. If he turned in his horse in exchange for the bike, Death probably got a few dollars back in the trade.

"Fine," I said, uncrossing my arms. "I'll have a look at it. Pay me when you can, we'll just add the bill to your tab. Deal?"

He nodded several times to show his gratitude.

"You'll be the death of me," I said out of habit.

He froze, cocked his head to one side. We both knew I was right.

"All right," I went on, turning back around to yank open the roll-up door. "You'll have it on Wednesday."

"Clyde?"

I froze in place at the sound of my name.

"No rush."