It was February 1938, and a young man named Gerry walked along Sinnett Road one evening, on his way to play penny-ante poker with some friends. He was bundled against the cold; his boots crunching in the snow. It was a lonely sound, breaking the frosty silence.
Sinnett Road ran past a cemetery, and as Gerry came closer to it, he could see a man in the distance, approaching. "That must be Keller" he thought, expecting it to be a local fellow who wanted to join in the game. He called out a greeting.
The man showed no sign of hearing Gerry, but continued to walk towards him. Gerry must have thought his words were lost on the wind, and tried speaking to his friend again.
Again there was no reply.
When Gerry was directly in front of the cemetery, and the man he thought to be his friend was no more than twenty yards away, he called out to him one last time. "Hey Keller!" he shouted; but the words were barely past his lips before he knew he had made a mistake.
Not only was this not Mr. Keller, it was not any ordinary person.
As Gerry's words hung in the cold night air, the man who had been walking toward him transformed, unbelievably, into a huge fireball which flew up high, over the cemetery gate and telephone wires, then descended, still flaming, and disappeared among the tombstones.
Gerry still attended that night's poker game but, chances are, he didn't play. His friends reported that he walked in the door looking as white as the snow outside. He was shaking violently, and couldn't speak for quite some time.
Once Gerry did talk, however, this was the tale he told. Decades later, his story lives on as one of the legends of Sinnett Road.