Night of the Androids

A Fortean Times Forum-user named ‘SkepticalX’ shared a bizarre experience that he and his cousin Tony had in Summer of 1973.

## The Incident

SkepticalX was eighteen at the time, and he and Tony were out late on a Friday night and decided to go and buy a six-pack of beer with which to sit on the steps of a nearby elementary school and quench their ‘*teenage, summertime thirst*’. They hadn’t been there very long when they heard the rumbling of a ‘*very loud*’ car coming towards them. As the vehicle came into view, they could see that it was a 1959 Cadillac convertible, and was moving no more than about 10mph. The reason that it was making so much noise was because it had no muffler. The witness and his cousin watched it pass them by, ‘*wondering why such an unusual, old car would be cruising through our neighborhood after midnight*’. Eventually, the car disappeared up the street and the two boys put it out of their minds.

After a while they got bored of sitting around, and so they got up from the school steps and decided to walk around for a bit. They rounded the side of the school building, only to find themselves ‘*on a dark side street with no street lights and few houses*’. They hadn’t made much progress down the road when, once again, they heard the ominous sound of the strange car’s engine. About quarter of a mile up the street, a pair of headlights swung into view towards them. They froze in shock.

The side of the street on which they had been walking was wooded, and so they ‘*slowly edged back into the tree line and waited*’. The car approached them, nad as it slowly passed them they could see that it contained three people. There was a man driving, a woman next to him in the front passenger seat, and a small boy in the back seat. Although the street was dark, ‘*their faces were illuminated by the glow of the dashboard lights*’. None of the people in the car moved while the witnesses could see them - saying nothing, never moving their heads, and never changing their facial expression. SkepticalX claimed they looked ‘*absolutely*’ like mannequins. The Cadillac vanished down the street and they never saw it again…

Because they were teenagers and because they were out late, they were ‘*freaked out*’ a bit, and decided that they’d had enough for the night and so got ready to head home. As they rounded the block, they were approached by a police car - which stopped them and the officer asked them what they were doing out so late. After that, he asked them if they’d seen anything unusual that night. ‘*Of course, at this point, we spilled our whole story. He calmly explained that the car contained a family of bicycle thieves. Somewhat relieved, we continued home.*’

However, SkepticalX eventually came to think that it was ‘*awfully convenient*’ that the officer had pulled up when he did only to offer a perfectly reasonable explanation for what would’ve otherwise been a highly questionable experience. ‘*You have to wonder what kind of parent would take their kid out for a night of larceny*’. Although there are apparently some quite dysfunctional families in the region, SkepticalX says that this just seemed too odd. There were also no visible bicycles in the car, even though another commenter later clarified that it would’ve been possible to fit one or two in the boot of the car.

To this day, SkepticalX remembers how eerie it was to see ‘*these motionless people driving down that dark street*’. If they had been looking for bikes, wouldn’t they have been searching front yards, instead of simply all looking straight ahead on a dark and lonely road...

## Source

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/night-of-the-androids.64975/