Who You Gonna Call?

Mystery:

In 1977, I was working at a metals company in SoCal, Pioneer Aluminum. Of a Saturday morning, I was with several other co-workers in the office doing some overtime — inventory transfers, i.e. logging numbers into a Cardex system, handwriting them. Five of us, I think.

At some point I went into the warehouse to get a Coke from the machine. I noticed a couple guys apparently taking inventory, standing in one of the aisles, looking at a rack full of aluminum extrusions. One of them, in a blue shirt and jeans, had a clipboard. I didn’t speak, and they didn’t seem to notice me. 

I went back to the office, and mentioned to my boss that I’d seen the warehouse guys.

He shook his head. Nobody is here but us, he said. Warehouse is closed.

Really? I saw two guys at the small-parts extrusion rack.

We went to look.

Nobody there. Nobody anywhere in the warehouse, which, save for the door into the office, was locked. The operation was shut down. Nobody had come or gone into the warehouse but me and my boss.

I saw them, I swear.

The place had a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed-wire around it and a guard at the gate, we checked with him, and no one had come or gone, save those of us working in the office.

So. What did I see? Some kind of apparition? An illusion? Two guys who hopped the fence, broke into a locked warehouse, then disappeared three minutes after I saw them?

Understand, I was twenty-years-old, had never done any kind of recreational drugs, didn’t drink anything other than an occasional beer, and was not prone to hallucinations.

And yet I saw two guys in work clothes who weren’t there.

• * *

Fourth of July weekend, 2001, Westercon, Portland, Oregon. 

I was on a panel, had gotten there early, and the room was empty. I went up to the table in front, sat, was fiddling with some notes. 

People started to arrive, and the first one was Poul Anderson, the writer. He sat out in the audience, smiled, I smiled and nodded back — we had been bumping into each other for twenty-odd years, but had only a passing acquaintance. Been on a couple of panels together, like that.

More people arrived, the panel cranked up, we did our thing, finished, and I left. Thought no more about it. (Didn't think anything of it at the time, actually, no reason to have done so.)

A few weeks later, an online note: Poul Anderson had passed away, on the 31st of July. 

Crap, I should have gone over and spoken to him. He was a nice guy, and I much admired his writing. A shame. 

Then there came the obit in Locus and assorted places, and apparently, Anderson had been ill for some time, and had died at home, in hospice care, after having spent the last month in the hospital.

So he couldn't have possibly been in Portland, Oregon at the convention if he was dying in the hospital in Orinda, California ...

Poul Anderson was not a man I'd mistake for anybody else; I'da been willing to swear on anything anybody considers holy, had anybody asked, that I'd seen him in that room before that panel. I could pass a lie-detector test, I'm sure.

No reasonable explanation I've come up with for this, or the previous event in L.A.. Hallucinations? Cosmic ray hit a dendrite? Some kind of  phantom projection? A glitch in time, maybe?

Dunno. No way I'll get to Heaven, but I'll ask the Devil if I see him ...