When I was four my mother and I lived with my grandfather. At that time my mother wasn't married and she was also very young so we stayed with grandpop until we got a place of our own. I remember very little from back then unless it had some sort of impact on me at the time. This next story I'm about to tell you I do remember, and I remember it clearly, as if it just happened yesterday for the very first time.
Mother, grandpop and I were not the only ones living in the house at that time. My mother's brother and sister lived there as well. My aunt and uncle. They were just teenagers. Since there were many of us living in the house, mom and I shared a bedroom. The middle bedroom.
If you were to walk up the stairs to get to the second floor of the house you would walk right into the back bedroom, that is, if you were to keep walking. This was my grandfathers room. The bathroom was off of his room to the right, then came my and my mothers room, followed by the front bedroom which was my aunts. My uncle had the basement fixed up and this is where he slept.
From my bed in the middle room I could easily look out into the hall and see the steps. This is where I would see the ghosts. Every night like clockwork, or so it seemed, they would come. Their music could be heard first, then came all four men marching up the stairs. I remember it so clearly. It was very frightening for me. Like I said, I was only four at the time.
Mom was always the first one to fall asleep leaving me to lie awake in fear waiting for our nightly visitors. The music, well the drumming is what I should really say, always came first. It would start off very low and then gradually get louder as the men got closer to the top of the stairs. This is how I seen it. It wasn't till the drumming reached it's peak that the men could be seen. Marching up the stairs in a single file line.
This is how I remember seeing the events. All of the marching men wore a uniform of some sort. As I recall their jackets were a dark blue color. They wore white pants that ended right below the knee and high socks. Now I remember red. Either they had red on their jackets and/or the red was the color of the material on the straps that went around their necks to hold the drum in place. I really remember the red material being in some sort of criss-cross fashion across the back and front of the chest. At least, this is how I remember it all.
The main thing I can recall about these men is that they seemed to be lit up by some sort of light. They actually had a glow to them. They would do the same thing every night. Just march and drum. They never looked to their left or right, just straight ahead with expressionless faces. Beating on the single drum that they each carried.
I would just lay there stiff as a board from fear with the blankets pulled up to just below my eyes. Where I lay in my room it was easy for me to see the steps. I just couldn't see the landing. As they reached the top of the steps, the landing, the music would stop. Even though I watched them march up the steps, I never did see them up in the hall. They would just disappear!
The very first time this happened I tried to wake my mother up. I remember shaking her and at the same time wondering why no one else in the house had heard the drums being beat so loudly. Obviously my mother didn't, or anyone else in the house for that fact, or they would have awaken to further investigate. They never did.
As I shook my mother to wake her, she would just end up rolling over, telling me to go back to sleep before she once again did the same. Yeah Right! Easy for her to say! I don't even think she heard what I was telling her.
Since I never did actually see these men in the upstairs hallway I began to wonder where they were going once they reached the top of the stairs. There could only be two places for them to go. One would be my grandpops room (back bedroom), the other would be the bathroom which was between grandpops room and ours. They just had to be in one of the two rooms I thought. They couldn't have been in my aunts front bedroom because they would have had to pass my bedroom to get to hers and that, they never did.
One time, after these events took place, I decided to go and investigate on my own and find out just where they were going once they reached the landing. I don't know what came over me that would make me brave enough to actually leave the safety of my room, but it must have been something. What? I don't know. All I know is I just did it!
Maybe it was because I seen these men almost every night and not once did they ever come in and harm me or anyone else in the family. I must have thought that it was safe. Just maybe I wasn't as afraid of them as I thought I was.
I got up and headed for the bathroom first. I was sure I would catch a glimpse of them in there. Upon my arrival at the bathroom door, I found no one inside. I then decided to head to my grandpops room. I went inside his room only to find it empty with the exception of grandpop fast asleep in bed.
I was freaked out at this point. Where had they gone? They couldn't have gone no place else. They didn't even go back downstairs because I was in the hallway investigating the bathroom and grandpops room. I would have seen them if that was the case. They just vanished! There was no other explanation. I then went back to my bed to wait for the men to show themselves again. After their ritual they would never return until the following night. Sometimes longer.
I was troubled by this for a long time. I've tried to come up with an explanation for this all my life and I never have one. I never did sleep well in that house until mom and I got a place of our own. Even then it took me a long time to go to sleep at night. I would wait up every night expecting to see the marching men I was all too familiar with. They never came. Finally I could get some sleep.
My mom, grandpop, aunt and uncle all claim that nothing like that ever happened to them in that house. I have brought it up in the past and they say that they have no recollection of these events. My own mother once told me a long while back that she just thought it was my imagination and that's why she would just tell me to go back to sleep. Thank God it wasn't someone that broke into the house is what I think. Would she have told me to go to sleep then?
I have always thought about the events that took place in that house. Like why was I the only one that seen this? Why was I the only one that heard their powerful drumming? Why were they there? Who were they? I still don't have the answers to these questions and I am now twenty-five. I wish I did.
My grandfather hasn't lived in that house for many, many years. I sometimes wonder if another little girl lives there now and if she too can see and hear the ghosts that I once did so long ago.