It happened back in the late ’70s, and I’ve never been able to explain it. The strangeness, the surrealness of it all, I can still feel it today. Because it’s such an odd story I’ve only told a few people about it. I didn’t want folks to think I was, you know, cuckoo or something. Bottom line it happened, and I’m sure there was a reasonable explanation for it. Still, it haunts me.

I was heading home after leaving my girlfriend’s house. It was probably 1:30 a.m. and a very foggy night. Because of the fog I was driving very slowly. There are some winding curves about three to four miles from my house, and as I approached them something caught me eye on the left side of the road.

As I slowed down to take a look I saw it. An overturned car was in the ditch, lights still on and nobody else around. There was nowhere for me to pull over because of a guard rail on my side of the road, so I had to drive about 30 yards ahead and pull over. I hit my emergency flashers, got out, and ran back to the scene of the accident.

Like I said, the car was down in a ditch, probably 10 feet below the road level. I stood at the top of the ditch and yelled down to see if anybody would answer.

Nothing.

About that time another car went by, slowed down and asked if everyone was OK, and I told them to call somebody for help. Then I slid down the embankment to the car, which was completely upside down. Like I said, its lights were on so I could see a little, but the inside of the vehicle was pitch black.

I bent down close to the door, which was actually the driver’s side window. Just before I started to yell again to ask if the occupants were OK, a face appeared, contorted in terror, screaming to me and yelling “Get me out of here!” Yeah, if that doesn’t curdle your blood I don’t know what will.

After getting the bejesus scared out of me and regaining my composure (somewhat), I eventually ascertained the following:

1.) The guy wasn’t seriously injured, and …

2.) The person with him, his girlfriend, although she was moaning, wasn’t seriously injured either.

At that point I sort of sat back on the bank and talked the poor guy through his predicament, assuring him that help was on the way, to just hold on and he’d be fine.

The situation then became a little surreal, because it was basically just an upside down car in a ditch in the fog, late at night, with a girl moaning and me sitting on an embankment, waiting. But then it got a lot weirder, because I heard a voice from behind me: “Is everything OK young man?”

After nearly jumping out of my skin, I turned around. Please understand that I’d heard no vehicles, no footsteps, nothing. What I saw next was the epitome of surreal. It was an elderly man at the top of the bank, dressed inexplicably in a tuxedo, wearing a fedora with a red band and sporting a red bow tie.

I promise you I couldn’t make this up. To this day I can still see him standing there. He had white hair that stood out against the black sky behind him.

After gathering myself, I told him I thought that the occupants of the car seemed to be fine, although the woman may be banged up a little. Then we had this exchange:

Tuxedo Man: “Are you sure? Nobody’s seriously hurt?”

Me: “Uh, I don’t think so.”

For a moment I glanced back at the car, then turned back around to the tuxedo-clad man at the top of the bank.

He was gone.

I swear it was the strangest moment I’d ever experienced. I just had the craziest vibe ever at that moment.

Then, probably a couple minutes later, I was startled by another man coming from the same direction as the Man in the Tuxedo. It was a guy I’d gone to high school with, asking if there was anything he could do to help. After climbing up the bank, I told him assistance was on the way. Then I glanced back down the road from whence he came and, somehow already knowing the answer, asked the question: “Hey, when you walked up here did you pass a man in a tuxedo?”

“What? Man? Tuxedo? Uh, no. I did not,” he said.

“You didn’t see a car back there? Or an old man in a tuxedo? White hair? Hat?” I asked.

“Huh? Why would I… no. No man, no tuxedo, nothing. Why do you ask?”

Oh, no reason really. I just encountered Mr. Death checking to see if he needed to escort somebody to the Netherworld, that’s all. All good man! How about those Bengals, huh?

Seriously, the whole scene creeped me out. Still does. I swear I’ve always wondered that if I’d responded to The Man in the Tuxedo with “No, somebody in the car is seriously injured,” he’d have walked down the bank, opened the car door, and gently carried one of the people inside back up to the road, through the fog and presumably into the everlasting hellfire of Satan’s bottomless pit.

Or, maybe he was just an old, well dressed dude who’d been to a lavish gala in Bainbridge, Ohio? Because Bainbridge is know for its elegant parties, right?

Still, after the ambulance came and took the car’s occupants away and before I went back to my car, I glanced back down through the fog from whence The Man in the Tuxedo came, half expecting him to emerge from the mist, crooking a finger towards me and beckoning me to come to him.

Thankfully that never happened, so I then did a brisk Olympic speed walk back to my car, only glancing over my shoulder a couple times. OK, maybe a couple hundred times. I also made sure to check out my backseat before heading home.

So there you have it, my Man in the Tuxedo story. Just an old dude trying to help out or one of Satan’s minions? You be the judge. No matter your thoughts, I know I’ll always get a little shiver telling it.

Dave Shoemaker is a retired teacher, athletic director and basketball coach with most of his professional years spent at Paint Valley. He also served as the national basketball coach for the island country of Montserrat in the British West Indies. He lives in Southern Ohio with his best friends and companions, his dogs Sweet Lilly and Hank. He can be reached at https://shoeuntied.wordpress.com/.