While living in Quincy, IL we continued our late night drives. Sometimes we wandered into other towns, but often we stayed close to home and slipped through the wooded areas of Quincy’s parks. The darkness kept most people away, which gave us time to talk and unwind from the day. At the time we still lived in the apartment on Elm Street, where we were still dealing with the random paranormal outbursts that always returned once daylight faded.
On one of those summer nights, with the moon high above the river, we turned onto a road that cut through Parker Heights Park. At that time you could drive the full stretch from Bonansinga Drive to North Fifth Street. The route carried you past a side road that climbed the hill, or you could continue along the main road that ran beneath the Highway 24 bridge. As we entered the park, we glanced at the clock on the car’s radio and mentally noted the time. I do not remember the exact minute now, only that it was shortly after 10 PM. We talked about our day and kept watch for deer or anything else that might cross the road.

A drive through the park was always slow because of the lower speed limit, but even the longest route should have taken no more than seven to ten minutes. That would mean going down the winding road, up to the top of the hill, back down, and out the other side. Yet on this particular night, when we checked the clock again just after passing the turnoff to the hill we intended to bypass, more than twenty minutes had elapsed. Our phones confirmed it.
We were confused about how we had gotten to where we were and how the time had slipped away. We remembered entering the park and the first couple hundred feet of the drive into the trees, and then nothing. We could not explain how we had gone one fifth of a mile through tight turns and along the low stone walls that bordered the road, yet retained no memory of the drive itself. We became aware of our surroundings only moments before passing under the Highway 24 bridge. We were sober, alert, and not the least bit tired, yet somehow we had lost nearly thirty minutes of our lives. There was no sign that the vehicle had stopped and the fuel gauge showed no unusual drop.
We spent the rest of the night trying to make sense of it, but no matter how we approached it, the missing time refused to surface. Eventually we headed home, still unsure of what we had or had not experienced.

Over time our theories ranged widely. We considered the possibility of a time warp or an unseen entity. We wondered if we had stumbled onto an occult ritual and been forced to forget. We even questioned whether we had both zoned out at the exact same moment. Some explanations fit pieces of the puzzle, but none fit all of it.
Years later I shared the story with an online acquaintance who was a sensitive. After searching my memory, she told me that everything pointed toward an alien abduction. We had no marks or physical signs that usually accompany such claims, but the absence of marks does not eliminate the possibility. Perhaps there was more truth in her words than we wanted to consider. Unless those lost moments ever return, we may never know.

More than a decade has passed since that night. The road has been converted into a walking and biking trail, closed to vehicles and officially off limits from dusk until dawn. It still follows the same winding path we took. Perhaps the closure was simply for recreation. Or perhaps others have had experiences along that stretch, encounters of their own that never made it into the daylight.