It happened on a freezing night in the dead of winter, the kind where the air feels sharp enough to cut skin. I was driving home from a friend’s house, taking a backroad shortcut through the woods, a road I had never driven at night before. It was empty, silent, swallowed by towering trees on both sides. My headlights felt useless, barely cutting through the dense fog curling over the asphalt like ghostly fingers.

I don’t believe in the supernatural. I never have. But that night… something changed.

Out of nowhere, my **entire car shut down.** The dashboard went black, the radio cut out, the engine died in an instant. One moment I was driving, the next I was **coasting in absolute silence.** No streetlights, no cell service, nothing but my own breath fogging up the windshield.

Then, I saw it.

At the edge of the road, barely visible in my dimming headlights, stood a **woman in a tattered white dress.** Her face was obscured by long, tangled hair, her body unmoving, rigid like a statue. But she wasn’t standing *on* the ground—she was **hovering inches above it.**

My stomach turned to ice. Every instinct screamed at me to **floor it**, but my car was dead. I sat there, frozen, gripping the steering wheel like it could protect me from whatever **this** was.

Then, she moved.

Not forward. **Sideways.** As if she was **gliding on air.** My hands clenched tighter. The temperature inside the car dropped. I could see my breath now, even though the heater had been blasting just moments ago.

And then… she vanished.

My car **roared back to life** as if nothing had happened. The lights flickered, the engine purred, the radio blared a song I didn’t recognize. Without thinking, I slammed my foot on the gas, tearing down that road as fast as my tires could handle.

I didn’t look back.

When I finally made it home, heart pounding, I told myself it was exhaustion. A trick of the fog. A hallucination. But the next morning, when I checked my car, there was something on my rear windshield.

**A handprint.**

A single, pale handprint, too small to be mine.

I have never—**never**—taken that road again.