The Man Behind

An acquaintance of mine was returning home late one evening. He was walking along a deserted, but well-lit and straight street. He kept a watchful eye on his surroundings, glancing back occasionally—it was, after all, very late, and the street was deserted... Basically, he was a little scared, to say the least.

And then, glancing over his right shoulder once, he saw a thin man in black following him. The thin man had emerged from somewhere, from some entrance (many of the surrounding buildings have entrances facing the street, not the courtyard) and was walking in the same direction, sometimes about a hundred meters behind him. The man looked rather gloomy, but didn't seem dangerous. Nevertheless, after half a minute, my acquaintance glanced back again, as usual, over his right shoulder, and noticed that the thin man had gotten a little closer. Just in case, the acquaintance quickened his pace and glanced back again—this time over his left shoulder—and discovered the thin man was gone. Well, no, he'd turned somewhere else, into another building. A friend's, for example.

The acquaintance would have forgotten about the thin man, but just to be sure, he decided to glance back one more time. He glanced over his right shoulder. And confirmed that the thin man was still stomping behind him, and now significantly closer.

The acquaintance quickly figured out that if he looked over his right shoulder, he could see the thin "pursuer," but if he looked over his left, he couldn't. This scared him to death and he took off running—luckily, his house was already very close. The thin man didn't try to catch up and quickly fell behind, if that's the right word for it under the circumstances.

 Later, the friend said that the next day, as he thought about the incident, he even somewhat regretted not having thought of, say, looking back between his legs, bending over—or, conversely, leaning back far, holding onto a tree or pole (like doing a "bridge"). But at the time, he had no time for such experiments; he was too frightened by what was happening.