This happened in 1992 or 93. I was living in San Diego and working at a shop down in the Pacific Beach area of the city. It was a slow day, I don't remember what time of year it was, but given that it was slow it likely wasn't summer. A co-worker and I were passing the time talking and staring at the walls when a peculiar man walked in and stepped up to the counter we were both sitting behind.

He was dressed as if he was from another time, and the closest comparison I could make was that of an old fashion carny talker or medicine show hustler. Black pants, white shirt, a black sort of almost western tie, and a black vest. He was at least 60 years old with a grey beard, slight of frame, about 5'6" tall or so and moved quite slow. He began thumbing through a bin of stickers that were sitting on the counter. After a few minutes, he pulled a couple of the stickers out and asked what we wanted for them. I explained the price, .99 cents each, and it is here that the whole thing began to feel a bit odd.

The man responded as if the idea of money was completely foreign to him. He wanted to barter for the stickers, and genuinely seemed confounded by my explanation he needed to pay for them with money. He was difficult to understand and spoke only minimally. The man just sort of stared at us both with a furrowed brow, frustrated and confused that we weren't able to communicate our points to each other. He put the stickers back into the bin, and turn to leave. After taking a couple steps he looked at us both and uttered the words...

"I missed you when I was dead."

With that he walked out of the shop. My co-worker and I exchanged "what the hell was that" glances. It couldn't have been even 45 seconds before we both jumped up and went outside to see where he was headed. He was gone. The shop was on Mission Blvd. in San Diego, it's a long essentially straight road that runs along the beach boardwalk. There are alleys he could have walked into, we checked the two closest ones and there was no sign of him. He didn't move fast enough to get even half a block from the store before we were out the door and yet he was gone.

The co-worker and I still discuss this from time to time and neither of us can make any more sense of it now than we could that day. I'm not suggesting it was a ghost, because he was flesh and blood 3 ft in front of us, but I don't know quite what to think. He seemed like a person who was from an earlier time that had no idea about the world he found himself in now. "I missed you when I was dead." I still think of it often. As direct a sentence as it is, what it means is difficult to resolve.

- Prof Gruntsplatter