How The Pale Horse Found A Rider [updated: October 13, 2025]

[based on true-ish events]

Introduction: This is the story of how a horse who was ghosted and a woman who was a ghost before her time found each other on that backroad between the Living and the Lost. Like all good ghost stories, it begins with tragedy and a curse.

I.          Tragedy: Exit, Love

Part a:  Moon was a beautiful pearl-gray Morgan-Andalusian crossbreed - a rare breed with a rarer coat color that shimmers in the sunlight and disappears in the muffled white darkness of a heavy fog. Not much was known of Moon’s owner, save that the girl doted on her beautiful, well-tempered young mare, reading to her between rides, and spending hours grooming her remarkable coat, thick mane and long, lush tail. Warm summer days were spent happily immersed in the kind of horse - human companionship that forms the foundation of legends. They moved as one, thoughts entwined, steps synchronized with intent, well collected. Then, like little Jackie Paper in “Puff the Magic Dragon,” the girl lost interest in her pony as she discovered she was interesting to boys. One day she didn’t come, and she was never seen at the barn again. She said to herself, “I can’t bear to see her - it will hurt too much to say goodbye,” so she didn’t. Barn gossips claimed she ran off with the circus, or went away to college, then someone thought they saw her at a store in a neighboring town, buying baby diapers, but no one really knew. Forsaken and deserted, Moon found herself abruptly, cruelly ghosted.

Is there a word for “abandoned but no one knows you are abandoned because no one cares?” With food, water and shelter provided, Moon simply horsed on, even as her beautiful pearl-silver coat dulled with rain and mud, and her training diminished into a distant memory. Her paddock mates, Victoria the Haflinger and Jasmine the Thoroughbred were kind, cheerful companions, snuffling Moon’s withers and gently grooming her, but Moon missed her human girl. One foggy day a new groom just left Moon in the paddock, and error became practice. Afraid and lonely at first, Moon soon became friends with the night creatures and her namesake, The old owner of the barn, sliding down the dementia hill, tried to locate and bring to terms the absent girl, but she, reshaped with the craft of a fickle vagabond, evaded his muddled inquiries. A forced retirement and a money shuffle later, the barn was sold. The fates conspired; on the sale date, a thick fog rolled in on an easterly wind, and sweet Moon, alone in the back of the paddock, remained unseen, camouflaged by the white darkness of fog. Her stall was leased - occupied by another, leaving no one the wiser save a confused Victoria and Jasmine. The grooms noticed [as grooms always do] that on foggy days another presence lingered near the Haflinger and the Thoroughbred in the back paddock. But with no horse acknowledged, no horse was seen, and oblivious to her own oblivion, Moon waned.

Tragedy: Exit, Love: Part b:

Emily had just turned 57. Her husband, her Dougie, her rock, best friend and lover, died unexpectedly, knocked off his bicycle by an aneurism. The doctor declared him “dead before he hit the ground.” Their only offspring, a boy, found his happiness on another continent. His rare but reliable phone calls came at the holidays – usually. He was never close to his father and did not return for the funeral. Emily quietly grieved her absent son even as she openly grieved her beloved husband, but she was also deeply pragmatic. After the funeral, the flowers in the compost, thank you notes sent, clothes taken to Goodwill, accounts petrified into autopay, and Dougie’s smell faded from the pillow next to her head, she woke up early one morning and decided to go for a run.

Just before his death, Emily and Doug had moved to a new subdivision on the edge of town, adjacent to country roads and charming horse farms. On this particular April morning, she was moved to run a 2mile route that would take her by several of these idyllic farms. And so it was that, on that first early morning jog, she met a beautiful pearl-silver mare at the back of a paddock near the road. The other horses weren’t out for the day yet- this mare stood alone, gazing into a sunrise Emily couldn’t yet comprehend. As Emily trotted by, the horse chuckled with a kind of recognition, turning her regal head to look straight through Emily with huge, timeless, dark eyes. Emily paused – suspended, as the horse appeared to dissolve into the morning mist, enveloped in the thickening vapor rising from the heavy dew. Emily blinked, looked again- the horse’s outline shimmered like a silver mirage in the early morning sun. She took back her breath, turned, and jogged on, thinking “I have to come this way again.” A half hour later she arrived home, her cheeks unaccountably stained with tears.

II.         Curse: Invisible Middle-Aged Woman Syndrome

Widowhood and middle age simultaneously ambushed Emily. Never an extravert, there had been a brief period in her early twenties when men looked at her. It was in this period of her life that she met Dougie. She wasn’t particularly good looking but wasn’t bad looking either. A little overweight, she was comfortable in her body, but never a fashionista. Her one indulgence was to wash her curly hair with a shampoo that smelled of hibiscus and coconut. Dougie loved to snuffle his nose in her hair – a gentle, sweet gesture of abiding endearment that twisted her viscera with a feral glee. They raised their son, they joined a church; with little cause for contact with distant relatives, they enjoyed a quiet, undramatic life.

Alone now, Emily deeply grieved Dougie’s passing, but each day brought a little more time to look out and a little less time sobbing on her knees in the kitchen. She soon realized that no matter how much she looked out, no one looked back, even when she spoke. Men didn’t look at her like they used to. Men didn’t look at her at all. Women didn’t either. Occasionally a child would catch her eye, then quickly glance away. She and Dougie had been viewed as such a pair that old friends didn’t call anymore, self-conscious as they were of her singleness. She was too poor to be a Cougar, not old enough to be a Grandma. No longer able to have children, she was, in society’s subliminal estimation, of no use, therefore she was no longer relevant. No one expected anything of her because they had nothing to expect. The unexpected pain of this unsought anonymity devastated her morale in the midst of her grief, but she soldiered on tenaciously. Mundane moderation came naturally to her as she disappeared into her own mediocrity. She was a lot of not much, an invisible woman –a ghost before her time.

She didn’t mean to do it. She wandered out of the store thinking about Dougie, when she realized with a jolt that she was loading groceries into her car- and had no receipt. She thought about going back to pay for them, but when she caught sight of herself in her rear-view mirror - face red, eyes swollen from tears - embarrassment over-ruled propriety. She carefully drove home. $27.88 in groceries – the only thing that surprised her was how little guilt she felt.

Invisibility proved to be a superpower tailor-made for a fixed income. She started small, with low-volume retail theft, but soon moved on to crashing weddings just for the food and the chance to rub shoulders with humans. Once she boarded a commercial flight. She came on near the end, but not last (group 4), spotted an unoccupied seat in the rear, and took a random trip to Phoenix, AZ. She stepped onto a flight home using the same strategy but with a different airline, just to play it safe Just follow the distinguished man with the big blue bag through TSA! She considered paying a surprise visit to her son, but decided against it, as he might actually see her, and at this point she wasn’t sure she was ready for that. She attended concerts, theatrical events, movies, went to museums–all for free. She’d spot a Spectacular Presence, bring herself into their sphere, then simply walk thru while the Spectacular Presence occupied the ticket taker. It was sly fun and bonus! she saved a great deal of money.

But every superpower has a down-side. She briefly considered a second career as a spy, but no one ever returned her calls. Restaurants were a non-starter- she couldn’t get seated, and even though she rode the bus for free, seating could be challenging - a large man looking at his phone literally sat on her lap once, and stayed. In public restrooms, she waved and waved her hands in front of the soap dispenser, the water spigot, the dryer, the paper towel dispenser- all to no effect. It was enough to make one question one’s own existence. She cooled her hot flashes in the nude on her deck. Not a flicker from the neighbors. The dogs didn’t even bark.

But there was One who saw her.

III.        Harvest Moon

Emily continued her daily jogs, always pausing at the fence to ponder those beautiful, timeless, liquid eyes. Chatting lightly, telling the eyes and the warm muzzle with the green-sweet breath about Dougie, she shared her loneliness even as she bragged (modestly) about her newly discovered superpower of invisibility. One day she rolled under the electric fence and joined Moon in the paddock, touched her warmth, smelled her, scritched her withers, stroked her powerful, elegant neck. Emily had no prior experience with horses, save her own childhood dream of having a pony. This new relationship made her feel human again. With Moon, she was seen. With Moon she was never lonely.

One day in late October, as she turned away from the horse to return to her jog, she suddenly found herself flying through the air. The driver of the F150 never saw her, and with a crack she lay still, a crumpled, anonymous heap, skull smeared red where it hit the culvert. It was her last free flight. The driver stopped, thinking they had perhaps hit an animal? but finding nothing, and with only minimal damage to the bumper, put it down to the odd branch and drove on.

But there was one witness. Moon floated along the fence, pausing just above the culvert, and softly called.

Emily rose. Dusting off her confusion, she re-oriented herself, and after a long, considered moment, she shifted, moving towards the pale horse at the top of the ditch. The gray mare welcomed her. Together they turned to watch the brilliant red orange sunrise, burning through the morning mist, their silhouettes a mirage of shimmering silver.

IV.  Coconut Casper

The grooms noticed first, as grooms always do: the sweet aroma of hibiscus and coconut lingering in the back paddock. Blooming things could not account for it; they smelled it even in the deepest chill of winter nights. They liked it. The scent accompanied a kindly atmosphere that calmed the horses. But weird stuff happened, too. One early morning, a groom found one of the horses in a different stall. Jasper had a reputation as an escape artist, regularly getting himself out of his own stall. But who put him back in a different, empty stall, with gate closed and latched behind? That wasn’t the only thing. Lost horseshoes, fly masks, bell boots and other sundry pieces of horse attire mysteriously reappeared, carefully placed by the respective horse’s stall. One morning, the brooms, which had been in their usual disarray the night before, were discovered in a closet, carefully organized. But the legend was solidified when old Levi, a beloved Appaloosa gelding, suffered a hopeless bout of colic. After the vet packed up and left, the rendering company called, the barn manager gone home, Levi’s owner was left alone, sitting in stunned, devastated grief by the still warm body of her beloved horse. Later, she said she literally heard the four-beat walk of a horse coming down the dirt path, felt an arm wrap around her shoulder, and smelled hibiscus and coconut. She looked up, expecting to see a barn friend and a horse, but saw only a thick incoming fog swirling through the night chill, enveloping her in curious comfort. After that, they say that at That Barn, a life in hopeless pain finds peace when the scent of hibiscus and coconut wafts nearby, accompanied by the pale darkness of a heavy fog and invisible hoofbeats.

Epilogue

About a year later, the grooms noticed [as grooms always do] a smartly dressed, handsome young man walking the road adjacent to the back paddock. He found what he was looking for, hidden in the snarled congestion of cattails and weeds by the culvert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl8EGiZPq8o