The World’s Most Polite Car Thief

A lot of us question our sanity at some point in life. I had a moment just like that in my twenties, and it didn’t involve a ghost, a full moon, or a single thing I write about for a living. It involved my car, quietly leaving the driveway every weekend without me, and just as quietly coming home again before I ever woke up.

Back then I was dating a guy and spent my weekends at his place. My car sat in his driveway the whole time, right where I parked it. Or so I thought.

At first I figured I was losing my mind. Things from the back seat kept turning up shoved under the front, like someone had gone digging through in a hurry and hadn’t bothered to be tidy about it. Then the gas gauge started dropping faster than a snow cone melts in a Texas parking lot in July. I told myself I was imagining things, the way you do when something’s off, and you can’t quite prove it.

Then I checked the odometer, and the odometer did not care one bit about my peace of mind.

And yep. The miles had climbed, way more than they should have, and I definitely hadn’t driven that far. My car had been going places without me. Then coming right back to the exact same spot in the driveway, like nothing ever happened.

My car had been going places without me.

We finally caught him in the act. A noise outside late one night, and the two of us crept over to the bedroom window, doing our very best impression of stealthy. We were not stealthy. He heard us instantly, and I watched a man in a ski mask climb out of my car and bolt into the dark.

Here’s the honest truth about that moment. Yes, I felt real fear, a hard drop in my stomach at the sight of a masked man where my car should’ve been sitting empty. But right behind the fear came something else, and honestly, it was closer to amazement. Because who does that? Who steals a car every single weekend and brings it back, gas and all, parked exactly where they found it, week after week, like the world’s most dedicated and most confused delivery service?

We called the police within a couple of minutes, about as soon as the shock wore off enough for either of us to remember how to use a phone. They never found him. Honestly, I don’t think it was ever high on anyone’s priority list, since nothing was ever taken and the car always came home safe. I had the locks changed, and that was that. Never happened again.

It still makes me laugh, even now, decades later. Somewhere out there is a man who spent who knows how many weekends borrowing my car for reasons I’ll never know, careful enough to always bring it back, careless enough to finally get caught by two people who couldn’t sneak up on anything.

I think about that story sometimes when people ask me why I write what I write. Real life just doesn’t stay in one tidy genre. That night was frightening and ridiculous in the very same breath, and honestly, most of the strange things that happen to us are like that, too odd to be pure fear and too true to be pure comedy. I didn’t need a ghost to learn that some mysteries never resolve the way you want them to. Sometimes you get your car back, your locks changed, with a story you’ll be telling for the rest of your life, and that has to be enough.

Mary Ann Poll is the author of the six-book Ravens Cove Iconoclast supernatural thriller series and host of the podcast Real Ghost Chatter. Learn more at maryannpoll.com.