As soon as The Fog ended, the gray, threatening sky outside finally broke, giving up a quick dashing of rain. The downpour lasted only about 3 or 4 minutes, and I stepped out onto the back-porch concrete slab after it stopped. In a moment nearly as eldritch* as some of the movie’s sequences, I saw a dark, fluttering shape in the sky, which I first took for a bird or a bat. The black jagged silhouette moved back and forth, up and down in a crazy rhythm, dictated - I soon realized - by the currents in the air. Finally, gravity kicked in, bringing the leafy windship spiralling to the ground where it landed about 20 feet away from me. As soon as it hit, I was off, bounding to the spot to see whether I’d actually find something resembling that which I’d seen against the backdrop of fast moving cloudbanks. The leaf stood out, immediately, in the wet grass, and I retrieved it within seconds of its landfall.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this retelling really evokes the uncanniness of the situation as I experienced it. Carpenter’s creepy film and the unusual nature of the weather outside obviously primed me as a “weird magnet,” and I was (honestly) strangely moved by what one might otherwise consider to be a common occurrence.

*Thanks, Suzanne!