Death, as in the grim reaper.

I used to ride my bike to school. My classmate/friend lived on my way there, so every day I would wait outside his house and then we would ride to school together. This was in a small town in the Netherlands, a cold winter morning around 7:45, so it was still pretty dark.

Some streets away from his house there was a little canal going between the homes with a little wood bridge going over it. The water in the canal had this fog hanging over it. Very picturesque. It was quiet and there was nobody outside.

We needed to pass over the bridge to get to school. So as we ride over the bridge we see a grim reaper, complete with a scythe, standing there at the edge of the canal with his feet in the water. He was moving around, and as we stood still on the bridge looking at him, he moved his head multiple times and looked at us. We couldn't see a face under the hood. We stared at it for a minute, kind of speechless. It didn't do anything, just kind of hang out there with his feet in the water and his scythe over his shoulder. We both said "what the fuck", and continued on our way.

This was one of those typical pop culture grim reapers with a black cloak and scythe, but his costume did not look like some cheap halloween thing. It looked, I don't know, believable?

Obviously most likely it was just some weirdo that liked to dress up as the grim reaper and stand in the cold water in the early morning dark. But I always asked my self "why?". If this was some guy with a weird hobby, why would he do it in the middle of a street where people easily could see him from the homes? But if he wanted people to see him, why would he do it in a quiet little street? A couple hundred meters away where the main road to the school was, it was much busier with cars and people on bikes.

We would ride our bikes over that bridge every day for a few more years, but we never saw him again.