When the sun sets and darkness creeps in, it is standard practice for our streets to be lit. Streetlights glow above us, headlights pierce through the darkness, and life continues as though the night has been conquered. We walk, drive, laugh, and make our way home believing that we are alone on those roads.
But have you ever wondered what else walks with us when darkness falls?
This happened on a Sunday evening.
I had just come from a successful hate watch session that ended with Arsenal once again failing to bring home a European trophy. The atmosphere at a popular tavern along Ngong Road was electric. Strangers had become brothers for a night, united by a common cause. Arsenal fans sat in silence, staring into their drinks as though trying to understand where it had all gone wrong. On the other side were the happy ones. Manchester United fans, Chelsea fans, Manchester City fans and even people who had no loyalty to any club whatsoever but simply enjoyed seeing Arsenal lose.
Naturally, I belonged to that second group.
The drinks flowed freely and so did the banter. Every table had become its own football analysis show. People were buying rounds for complete strangers. Some were singing. Some were arguing over decisions made by referees hundreds of kilometres away. It was one of those nights where everyone felt connected despite having met only hours earlier.
When I finally realized I had reached my limit, I decided to leave. I shook hands with a few people I had spent the evening celebrating with and even offered a few words of comfort to some devastated Arsenal supporters. It was the kind of interaction that only men understand. You do not need to know someone’s name. As long as there is a shared cause between you, conversation comes naturally.
I walked to the parking lot, got into my car and started the journey home.
I live in Lang’ata and under normal circumstances I would have used the main roads. However, the possibility of meeting an alcohol blow checkpoint crossed my mind. Although I wasn’t drunk enough to lose control, I had consumed enough alcohol to prefer avoiding unnecessary conversations with traffic officers. I therefore decided to use the inner routes.
Immediately after leaving the tavern, I made a U turn and joined Kibera Road.
The road was unusually quiet.
The excitement and noise from the tavern disappeared almost instantly behind me. Ahead lay long stretches of road illuminated only by scattered streetlights. The occasional vehicle passed in the opposite direction, but apart from that the night seemed unusually still.
A few hundred metres ahead, I noticed someone standing by the roadside.
A man.
He raised his hand, signaling for a lift.
Ordinarily I never stop for strangers, especially at night. Nairobi has taught all of us enough lessons to know better. Yet for reasons I still cannot explain, I slowed down.
Maybe it was the good mood from the football celebrations.
Maybe it was the alcohol.
Maybe it was something else entirely.
I lowered my window.
“Sema?” I asked.
“Poa sana,” he replied. “Unaweza ni drop hapo mbele?”
As the light from a nearby streetlamp fell across his face, I noticed he was wearing a Manchester United jersey. That immediately caught my attention. Without thinking much about it, I unlocked the doors.
The man climbed into the back seat and sat on the left side.
As I pulled away, I joked about Arsenal’s defeat.
“Leo wamepigwa vibaya sana.”
The man did not respond.
I assumed he had not heard me and continued driving.
For several minutes neither of us spoke.
The silence felt unusual. Most people who ask for lifts immediately begin talking. They ask where you are headed, where you are from, or at the very least discuss the football match that had just ended. This man simply stared through the window.
As we continued along Kibera Road, I began noticing something strange.
The interior of the car was becoming cold.
Not Nairobi-at-night cold.
Cold.
The kind of cold that creeps into your bones and makes you instinctively rub your hands together. I checked the dashboard. Everything was normal. The windows were closed and the air conditioning was off.
Still, the cold persisted.
I glanced at the rear-view mirror.
The man had not moved.
His eyes remained fixed on the darkness outside.
Trying to ease the awkwardness, I spoke again.
“Ulikuwa ukiwatch game pia?”
Several seconds passed before he answered.
“No.”
His voice sounded distant.
Almost hollow.
I frowned slightly but continued driving.
A few moments later he suddenly spoke.
“Do you have a family?”
The question caught me off guard.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Do they love you?”
I laughed.
“Hiyo ni swali gani sasa?”
He did not laugh with me.
Instead he continued staring ahead.
The silence that followed felt heavier than before.
Then came another question.
“Wangekumiss ukikufa leo?”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
I remember forcing a laugh and saying something about him asking strange questions, but the truth is his words unsettled me.
There was something wrong.
I could feel it.
I kept telling myself it was the alcohol playing tricks on my mind. Yet deep down I knew that wasn’t the case. As we approached Kabarnet Road, I looked into the rear-view mirror again. The seat was empty. Completely empty!
For a moment my heart stopped. I blinked. Looked again. Nothing.
The back seat was empty.
Panic surged through my body. I nearly slammed on the brakes. My mouth went dry and every hair on my arms stood upright.
Slowly, I turned around. Then suddenly again the man was there. Sitting exactly where he had been all along. Looking directly at me. A smile rested on his face. Not a friendly smile. Not an angry smile. Just a smile. The kind that leaves you unsure of what the person behind it is thinking. My heart pounded violently. I immediately turned my attention back to the road. Before I could gather my thoughts, he spoke.
“Bro…”
His voice sounded softer than before.
“You shouldn’t have picked me.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. I nearly swerved off the road. Every horrible possibility crossed my mind at once. Carjacking. Kidnapping. Murder. Before I could respond, he continued speaking…
“Most people pass me here every day. Nobody ever stops.”
His eyes remained fixed on me through the mirror.
“Some even try to run me over.”
My throat felt dry.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The smile disappeared from his face.
“I died on this road last week.”
The world around me seemed to freeze. The road. The streetlights. The hum of the engine. Everything seemed to have come to a standstill. I almost lost cognitive of myself.
He continued speaking as though discussing the weather.
“A speeding car hit me at the junction where you picked me. The driver never stopped.”
I could barely breathe.
“I landed inside a drainage tunnel.”
His voice grew quieter.
“Nobody found me,” He said.
I felt a cold wave washing over my body. Every instinct screamed at me to stop the car and run. Yet somehow I couldn’t. I simply listened.
The man explained how his family had searched for him for days. How nobody knew where he was. How his body remained hidden inside the tunnel beneath leaves and debris.
Then he looked directly at me.
“You are different.”
I swallowed hard.
“Please help me.”
My voice barely worked I asked…
“How?”
He pointed behind us and said…
“Go back.”
I stared at him.
“Go back to where you picked me.” He then described a tree standing beside the road.
“When you reach it, break off a small twig and place it over the drainage tunnel.”
He paused.
“That’s where I am.”
The words hung heavily in the air. For several seconds neither of us spoke. Then the man smiled.
For the first time it seemed peaceful.
“Thank you.”
I looked back at the road.
Only for a second. When I checked the mirror again, the seat was empty. The man was gone. No doors had opened. The vehicle had never stopped. He had simply vanished.
I do not know where I found the courage, but I turned around. I drove back. I found the tree exactly where he had described it. I broke off a twig and placed it over the drainage tunnel. The moment I did, an overwhelming sense of calm washed over me.
I returned to my car and drove home. I told nobody. Who would believe such a story anyway? I barely believed it myself.
The following morning, everything changed. The trending news on the various media were quite interesting. The news carried a story about the discovery of a missing man’s body inside a drainage tunnel along Kibera Road. It was a remarkable coincidence that, on the very day the body was discovered, Nairobi County workers had been clearing drainage channels in the area. According to reports, the workers made the discovery after noticing unusual twigs and branches covering part of a tunnel. Their curiosity prompted a closer inspection, which led to the body being found.
For days, the family had endured a painful and exhausting search, desperately trying to find any trace of their missing loved one. They visited hospitals, made countless inquiries, and combed through funeral homes across the city, hoping for answers but finding none. With each passing day, uncertainty weighed more heavily on their hearts, leaving them trapped between hope and fear.
The agonizing search finally came to an end when the discovery was made. Although the news brought immense sorrow, it also provided something the family had been longing for throughout their ordeal: answers. The painful uncertainty that had haunted them for days was finally replaced by the truth, allowing them to begin mourning properly and prepare to give their loved one a dignified farewell.
As if the discovery of the body was not shocking enough, investigators soon revealed another breakthrough. CCTV footage from roads surrounding the area had helped them identify the vehicle responsible for the fatal hit-and-run, and within days, the driver was traced and arrested.
I sat frozen in front of the television as the report unfolded. The pieces were finally coming together, or so I thought. Then something caught my attention: the CCTV footage.
A chill crept down my spine as I replayed the details in my mind. According to my memory, everything that had happened that night took place between 11:31 PM and 12:48 AM. I remembered the exact stretch of road, the moment I stopped, the stranger standing there, and the conversation we shared. Every detail remained as vivid as if it had happened the previous evening.
But the footage told a completely different story.
Investigators displayed recordings from multiple cameras along the route, and I watched carefully as my car appeared on screen. There it was, the same vehicle, on the same road, on the same night. Yet something was terribly wrong. At no point did my car pull over. At no point did anyone approach it. There was no passenger entering the vehicle, no passenger getting out, no stop by the roadside, no detour, and no return journey. Nothing remotely unusual occurred. The car simply drove through the area and continued on its way like any other vehicle on the road that night.
I watched the footage repeatedly, hoping I had missed something. Each viewing only deepened the mystery. The man I had spoken to for what felt like nearly an hour did not exist anywhere on those recordings. The encounter that had felt so real, so vivid, and so impossible to forget had left no trace whatsoever. There was no witness, no evidence, and no explanation.
For a long time afterward, I questioned my own memory. Had I imagined everything? Had exhaustion somehow created an entire conversation that never happened? Yet that explanation never sat right with me. There were simply too many details and too many things I remembered with absolute clarity. Most importantly, there was the body, discovered exactly where the stranger had directed me. A body belonging to a man whose family had spent days desperately searching for him.
To this day, I cannot explain what happened that night. I have driven along that road countless times since then, sometimes during the day and sometimes long after midnight. I have searched the same shadows, passed the same trees, and glanced at the same roadside where I first saw him standing. Yet I have never seen the man again.
Perhaps some mysteries are not meant to be solved. Maybe there are spirits that wander the darkness seeking revenge against those who wronged them. Maybe there are others searching for justice long after death has silenced their voices. Or perhaps there are simply lost souls trapped between worlds, hoping to find one person willing to listen.
Whatever the truth may be, one thing remains certain. If someone were to ask whether that experience made me swear never to stop for a stranger again, my answer would probably surprise them. Yes, I would stop, because on one unforgettable night, stopping for a stranger may have helped a grieving family finally find the answers they had been desperately searching for.
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