Our son Joey was about thirteen years old when this happened. We’d built a few new hunting stands on the property that year, and one of them sat down below Papa’s old house. It was early deer season, and as was custom, we were headed in well before daylight — about an hour before sunrise — when the woods are still heavy with night.

It was dark enough that Joey and I couldn’t see each other. The air was cool, and every sound felt sharper — the kind of quiet that presses in close. I had my flashlight, but I kept it off, trusting my boots to know the way.

Then it happened.

I heard a faint noise, and something brushed past me — close enough that I felt the air move against my sleeve. It wasn’t a twig or a branch, and I didn’t feel the texture of anything. Just motion — fast, silent, and close.

I froze. My first thought was that we’d startled a deer from its bed, but the feeling didn’t sit right. It wasn’t the sound of an animal bounding away. It was quieter — deliberate, almost aware.

“Did you feel that?” I whispered.

Joey’s voice came back from the darkness. “Feel what?”

He hadn’t felt a thing. But I had.

At the time, I brushed it off — no pun intended — and we went on to the stand. But the moment never left me. As the years have passed, I’ve thought back on that morning more than once. And I’m not so sure it was a deer anymore.

Maybe it was Papa — Elder Levi Scales — brushing by just to say hello. His old house still sits down there, quiet now, the boards weathered and gray. It’s easy to believe that a place that once held so much love and laughter might still hold a bit of his spirit too.

Or maybe it was something else altogether. Earlier this year, I wrote in this very column about The Thing on Ralph Joyce Road — the strange, unexplainable figure my dad and Uncle Obie saw one night coming home from their second-shift jobs. Whatever it was, they agreed it wasn’t a threat. It just was.

What brushed by me that morning felt the same way — not frightening once the moment passed, just present. Like a reminder that the world holds more than what we can see.

Lately, I’ve been reading Laura Lynne Jackson, who writes about how our loved ones find ways to reach across from the other side — not through grand gestures, but through small signs: a touch, a feeling, a sudden memory that arrives out of nowhere.

Maybe that’s what this was.

Maybe it wasn’t about hunting at all. Maybe it was a quiet moment when two worlds brushed against each other — the living and the remembered — and I was lucky enough to be awake for it.

So now, when I walk that same path before daylight, I don’t rush or flip on my light right away. I just let the dark settle around me and listen. And if something brushes past again, I think I’ll just smile and whisper, “Good morning, Papa.”

And if I’m brave enough — and the vibe is right — I might just tell The Thing on Ralph Joyce Road it’s got some explaining to do.

As Best As I Remember It.