Faded Town

I don't know if this can be considered a ghost story, but as far as I know, a ghost is something that's there one minute and gone the next. The experience I had with this "town" was exactly that way.

About a year ago, on a very windy winter day, I decided to go to San Francisco by myself for the day on one of my rare days off. I left my house in Los Angeles around 4 am (it takes about 8 hours to get there). The sun started to come out around 6 am, so I decided to stop and get some gas and find something to eat. When I decided to do this, all of a sudden, I got this really good vibe, and the scenery seemed like something out of a storybook. The day became very sunny, and there were yellow hills that seemed to be smooth and had not a spot of green or brown. I decided to exit on the next ramp I found. I can't really remember the name of that place anymore; all I remember is seeing from the highway a small faded water tower that had the name of the town painted on it. I remember the name was somewhere along the lines of Gordon or Gardon, something like that.

As I went down the ramp, that good feeling went out of me, and I felt like something really bothered me, but I couldn't think of what it was. I knew I was supposed to turn right onto the road, but for some reason, I turned left. As I went under the highway, I started shivering and began having a feeling of dread. I didn't really think about it because I knew I had absolutely no reason to feel that way! I decided to turn around and head the other way. Right when I decided to turn around, I saw another road, so I turned left into it with the intention of making a U-turn on that road because the other road seemed too narrow. But once I went into the other road, I realized this road was even narrower than the last due to the fact that there were trees on both sides of the road very close to each other and there were no sidewalks, so my car barely fit in the road.

I decided I would get to the end of it and then make a U-turn. As I drove further into the road, it started getting very gloomy and foggy. The fog seemed so thick all of a sudden that I had to slow down to a snail's pace. The line of trees ended very suddenly, and at the "end" of the road, I saw a gas station. I was kind of relieved because that was what I was looking for in the first place.

As I got closer to the gas station, I got a funny feeling that something was strange about the place. As I parked next to a gas pump, I noticed that the gas station was very old-fashioned. At that instant, I also noticed that the whole scene looked faded, sort of a yellowish color. I didn't give it much thought, thinking that it was just one of those gloomy, foggy days. Once I parked, I went inside to pay for my gas with my credit card. The minute I went inside, I felt like I had walked onto the set of The Andy Griffith Show. The place itself looked like a diner or a malt shop. It was very crowded, and everyone was dressed in old clothes (what I thought looked like clothes from the 50s), but the eerie thing was that everyone looked faded, a faded yellow. But it wasn't just them; it was the entire place.

I went up to the counter and just placed my credit card on the counter and told the man behind the counter that I wanted to put $30.00 worth of gas and the number of the gas tank. The man gave me an incredulous look and sort of waited for a minute before telling me I needed to pay him before I got the gas. I pushed the card toward him and told him I would be paying with my credit card. He looked at it with a look of amazement and told me he only took money. Because I decided to make this trip so unexpectedly, I did not have any cash on me (I know, very stupid), so I went to my car and started digging in between the seats for change. I came up with $8.00 and was upset because I knew this would not even fill half of my tank.

I took the change to the man, and he then took it and let me fill my tank. When it finally stopped filling, I noticed the total had been about $5.00, so thinking that the handle had popped, I tried again, but my car would not take any more gas. I went to turn my car on and saw that the gas needle went past the full mark. I was in disbelief. I went to look at the price sign and saw that gas was about $0.30. By this time, I knew something weird was happening, so I went back inside thinking it might be neat to take a picture of this place, but my camera was flashing that the battery was dead. I looked at my cell phone, and it was dead too. I got really creeped out because I knew I had just changed the battery on my camera less than a week before, and my cell was brand new.

All of a sudden, a woman with wavy hair and a really puffy dress came and stood next to me. She leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, "Decent women do not go about town in their negligee." I thought, "What in the world is she talking about?" I looked down to look at my clothes. I was wearing a blue tank top and had a zip-up sweatshirt with some pants. The woman then told me, "I'll take you someplace where you can find something to wear." Right after she said this, the woman touched my arm, and for an instant, the place made sense, and that faded dead look felt right. But right after that, I began to feel as if someone was smothering me. At the same time, I felt very weak and tired, like I wouldn't be able to pull away from her, even though I knew I should. The next instant, something came over me and made me pull away from her. I ran out of the place and drove back onto the road. I was so scared I couldn't even look at the road. I did not think about it until I was back on the highway. That's when I noticed that my gas was full, and my camera was working, and so was my cell.

On the way back from San Francisco, I passed by the same place very late at night, and I tried looking out the window to see if I saw the gas station from there, but it seemed like it was just empty space. When I tried developing the film I had in my camera, I was told that the whole film had been exposed to light somehow, and they told me that it was very strange because it would be extremely hard to do that and then put it back in the roll with the type of film I had.

So, does anyone know of an old gas station?