I was 12 or 13. My twin brother and I used to spend every summer on my grandfather's farm near North Platte, Nebraska ("put those city boys to work, god durn it!"). It's small, 120 acres, he grew mostly seed corn with some beat and bean rotations.   My mother owns the farm now and we rent it out (someone else farms it for us).

My grandfather had an old '61 or '62 Oldsmobile that was a derelict carcass (mighta been as new as a '65, I'm not good on my Oldsmobile recognition!).   The thing had jackknifed pulling a camper trailer over on Highway 30 back when the car was near new -- it was raining or icing that night of the crash, I forget which. There was a family in it...two children in back. My grandfather said that one child was killed and a second hurt very badly.

The back end of the Olds was totalled, and my grandfather, always the very UNsuperstitious and thrifty Depression era sort of man, he bought the thing for like $100 of the scrapper (he told me later there was still blood on the backseats!!!)(they were those cushy white leathery like seats with all the pleating).   My grandpa sawed the rear of the body off from behind the front seats on back --- it was just the chassis frame from about the center to the rear bumper!    He used it as a pickup!

(I have a picture of it somewhere!) It looked really goofy from the side, but from the front (which is how you saw it on the farm roads) it looked badass and big ... a beautiful car !

He would pile his black rubber irrigation hoses, all about 3 or 4 feet long, into the back of it (he'd made a bed back there from plywood and whatnot - but that was gone when I saw it the first time). And he would just run the ditches setting up the irrigation hoses on their cycle along the corn rows.   He used that Oldsmobile in the fields for years until it finally gave out and he didn't bother fixing it again--he just parked it in the pasture.

He called it the "irrigation car" (as opposed to a pickup which everyone else used to carry their hoses!!).

By the time I came along, this faded powder blue/silver Oldsmobile was sitting in an unused side pasture at the very end of the property just rusting away. It had been there so long it was settled into the mud up to the axles. It had so much chrome though, it still shined and tried to be a princely beauty!!

My brother and I would play "Starsky & Hutch" in it (or "Spaceship"). It had a push-button tranny! And all these other buttons, it was serious luxury for the time!   We had to be careful because all the woodticks would climb up from the pasture ground and try to get into the car with us!! YICK! There were a lot of mice living under the hood too...because the giant, juicy grain silos were about 50 feet away and they could hide from all of our wild cats in the engine block (it sat so far down in the mud the cats couldn't get under the front)!

One day I was playing in it and when I was done I left the driver's door wide open on it (for no apparent reason).   I then went in and had some lunch or something like that. Then I hopped on our old dirtbike motorcycle (that was also circa 1965-to-1970 somewheres!) and I went out and rode the field roads and river bottoms for as long as I could! (it must've been a Sunday because no one was working)

At about 5 or 5:30 PM I headed back into the farm for supper (and was probably VERY low on gas)(I pushed that heavy thing home more than once!), the sun was setting but it was very bright - still another 30 or 45 minutes of sun left!!   I slowed way down as I entered the area where all of the buildings, silos, and pastures were and I looked over at the Oldsmobile----which was at the very end of the "non-crop space" of the farm in the furthest pasture (the car sat up against some trees that were a snow break, with the passenger side lined along the trees).

There was a man leaning on the open driver's door...like you would if you got out and were just resting your arms on the top of the window looking at something far away in front of the car.   I can see his face distinctly even right now. He was in his forties probably, dark hair, kinda pale but handsome, a bit scruffy, and he had on one of those plaid red & black checked flannel shirts. He was a big, strong man. He was looking RIGHT at me. I coulda sworn his hair was even blowing in the wind. I was about 40 feet from him and the Olds on the main field road.

I remember being stunned---but not thinking "ghost" at all! I only saw him for about 2 seconds - but he was very real and very solid. Then I had to make sure I was steering the motorcycle on the gravel road leading into the farmhouse area and concentrate on my forward motion, if you know what I mean. My grandpa got pissed if we raced thru the gravel on the bike...because we'd crash all the time, or kick up rocks at the metal silos (a dead giveaway!! PING PING PING). Also, I was only 12 and was kind of scared about who this rather large stranger was on our property messing around in our pasture.

I rode into the farmhouse yard area and my grandfather was under the hood of one of his grain trucks (where he'd been all day fixing it), and my twin brother was climbing in one of the huge old trees lining the entrance to the farm. I cut off the bike and asked my grandfather, "Who's that guy in the south pasture?".   He said, "Huh?"

Well, long story short...my brother and I hopped on the bike and zoomed back out there in less than 2 minutes -- my grandfather followed on foot through the opposite pasture by the barn and silos.

Our farm is very isolated and remote. The closest property is a half mile away and I knew all of them of course. The next closest property is 1 or more miles away.   At that time the corn wasn't even half a foot high .. and we would've seen anyone sneaking in or out of our property anyway---it just cant be done....it's too flat and you just KNOW when strangers are around, you know what I mean? Besides which, there is no reason why anyone would be out there without a vehicle.

I told my grandfather and he just made me feel stupid for making him walk out there to look at the Oldsmobile. He said I was seeing things, etc.   But I know I saw that man.   And in broad daylight too !!!

It was weird because I wasn't "looking" for ghosts - especially in the late afternoon after riding the motorcycle and generally just being a reckless boy, you know?   I don't know why he appeared to me. ????????????

And there was no "live" person out there. We looked hard because we had always had problems with people coming in and stealing gas from the big 500 gallon tank we used to top off the tractor (it didn't have a lock on the nozzle)(my grandfather used a shotgun instead of a lock!!!). The gas tank was in by the farmhouse and garages though. We would've seen any person or vehicle instantly, no doubt whatsoever about that.   There was nowhere to hide out there, absolutely nowhere (that we didn't look)!

The odd thing I never could figure out, I know a child died in it, but this was a full grown man that I saw (the year was like 1981 or 1982 by the way).

The pasture the Oldsmobile sat in had been the original site for the farmhouse, way back when. The foundations were still present in the corner opposite the Oldsmobile. But that old house was long gone and had probably been torn down in 1910 or so --- the guy I saw had clothing that dated later than that.

The farm has been in our family since 1935, give or take a year.

I cant explain it, and my grandfather was no help. Although he did tell me about the history of the Oldsmobile ... all those summers I had played in it he had never told me that a child had died in the backseat (the backseats where no longer there of course...)! He'd just said he got it scrap after it jackknifed and that it was a great bargain because the engine was practically bran new and it made a good field "pickup" with the big V8.   But that's the way he was.

The next day my brother and I tiptoed up to the Oldsmobile and kicked the driver's door shut!!! I had chills up my spine!   I wonder if leaving that door open (which we had never done before if I recall) had something to do with it???

We never played in that car again.   And it just sunk deeper into the mud and was completely ignored by all.

My grandfather passed away in 1989. We went to the funeral of course. About 2 weeks later we went back up to Nebraska and we helped my mother and her sister clean out the massive barn and outbuildings...and had a huge auction and sold everything.   Now we rent the cultivated land to a neighbor, and we rent the buildings to another guy.

In the two weeks that I had been away (between the funeral and the auction) my uncle had come in and taken the Oldsmobile out!!   He took it up to someplace along the Platte River (or a large side creek), in the sandhills, where they are piling up old cars and construction junk to keep the river banks from eroding. My Uncle Sonny dumped that Oldsmobile onto the river bank along with all the other used up cars! I have no idea where along the Platte he put it, though I think it's on one stretch I used to ride the dirt bike along.

What was eerie though...I went out in the pasture and the four tire holes were still in the mud, where that car had sat for a good 15 or 20 years!!!   And right where the grill would be was a chrome ring ... I think it was definitely off of the headlight.

I remember picking up that ring and getting the same chills up my back!!!   I tossed it down.

My wife and I stayed at a hotel in Winslow, Arizona, one of the old Harvey Girl hotels built in the 30's. It is called La Posada, and is nestled right between the railroad (Santa Fe?) and Route 66 in Winslow.

It was boarded up for years and some California type artists have reopened it and are renovating it wing by wing. It was designed by the famous Ann Coulter. It is lovely and laid out like a Spanish casa in Old Mexico. Sort of "taco deco", but classy and I love Ann Coulter's work!

Long story short....in the middle of the night (in our room at the hotel) my wife woke up and said I was sitting up in bed and talking in my sleep. This is something I NEVER do.

She said I was saying rather loudly, "Stop it, Rose...that's mean, come on, stop it!" Something like that. I was agitated and upset and whiney.

My wife said she pulled me by the chest back into a lying position, and then she turned to lie back down and saw a woman at the foot of our bed, standing there looking at us. My wife (Christine) said she freaked out and pulled the covers over her head and hoped she was seeing things.

After about 2 minutes she looked again and the woman was gone.

She said nothing to me about it and thought she was dreaming or hallucinating (we'd had a long drive in from Phoenix to Flagstaff to Winslow that day before!)

The next morning I got up and ran down and got some of the free breakfast muffins and stuff and brought them back to the room. Christine asked me if I remembered talking in my sleep.

I said, "No, but I saw a woman in the mirror". On my side of the bed there was a chest of drawers with a small stand-up mirror on top. I remember distinctly seeing the woman in the mirror and being chilled, but not scared, by it in the middle of the night!!!! I didn't remember talking in my sleep or any of that though.

Then she told me what she'd seen!