Gerry Anderson has a lot to answer for if you ask me...
I was walking home from the pub in the early hours, in a heavy mist/light rain It was unnaturally quiet, as if the weather were a soft blanket that had been thrown over the town, muffling every sound.
Behind me, clear as day, I heard the approach of a low-register diesel engine; low revs, double de-clutch, obviously heavily laden. I looked around. A short-wheelbase tanker came over the rise of the hump-backed railway bridge and stopped at the roundabout. There was no other traffic. The glistening windscreen was opaque under the halogen streetlight, making the cab look empty.
I was suddenly seized by the terrible knowledge that the reason I couldn't see the driver was because there was no driver. My scalp tightened with fear. The solo windscreen wiper made a single pass, like the lazy blink of an eye. I almost turned an ran, but the tanker suddenly veered off to the right and disappeared from view.
I didn't run home, you understand, it was just stepping out smartly.
At the end of my road I stopped. Again I knew, with absolute certainty, that the tanker was waiting for me - it had looped around and come in from the far end. When I turned the corner the headlights would come on, blinding me, and the heavy engine would burst into life...
I stood there maybe two, three minutes, which is an eternity of terror, until a pedestrian came out of the mist heading the other way and I knew just standing there made me look weird.
I turned the corner.
Nothing happened.
Ah, the blessing of an imagination!