The Duplex Ghosts

To begin, I live in a city where paranormal activity seems to happen a lot... Or maybe it's just the hype of teenagers looking for a good scare. I grew up between two homes, one in my home town and one a town over. For as long as I can remember, I felt weird staying with my Mother in the town over. In her younger years, she was really into anything paranormal. She had friends that practically studied that stuff. I thought it was weird.

When I was ten and she had divorced her husband, my Mother moved into a duplex. By then I had two sisters, Jaycee and Darcy. They were both around the age of six. I stayed in a room with them both, but only shared a bed with Darcy. Jaycee slept by herself on the floor most of the time.

I only stayed at my Mother's house on Friday nights. I remember one in particular. It was about a year after we had moved into the house. I still felt strange and unwelcome there. My sisters and I were in the living room which was connected to a long hall that eventually ended with the kitchen. We were watching Finding Nemo and eating popcorn. My Mother was asleep in her bedroom which was near the kitchen. Her door was shut so she couldn't hear us making noises in the living room. Around the middle of the movie, I started to become tired. I checked the clock and it read somewhere between 1 and 2, a normal time for us all to be up. I asked my sisters if they were tired in which they replied with a yes. We gathered up all the covers and turned the tv on and made our way to the room. I actually stopped halfway and did a double take towards my Mother's door. "Darcy," I stopped her. "Wasn't Mother's door shut just a while ago?" "Yes," she replied. "But she may have gotten up while we were cleaning up the living room."

Naturally, I was scared for my Mother and I was hoping that she was okay. I made my way into the room and laid down beside Darcy. Jaycee made her usual pallet on the floor and they were asleep in no time.

I, for one, was not.

I was kept awake by the rain outside. It was heavy and almost rhythmic. I turned over to face the window, and at that moment my heart literally stopped. I was staring at the shadows of men after men all making their way back to the backyard it seemed. They were all the same height and wore circular hats. The rain sound started to make sense as it sounded like marching. I did not feel too scared or alarmed, but more at peace than anything. Quickly, I feel asleep.

The next morning I recalled the events of that night and came to the conclusions that the rain had gotten to me and made me see things that weren't really there. I was quick to run outside and play in the mud puddles. I got my boots on and opened the door and... The ground was completely dry. The rain couldn't of possibly dried that quickly! I didn't hesitate, and I ran in to tell my Mother. "Dani, some things have been happening I cannot explain. Please don't tell your sisters. They would not understand. The neighbors are coming over tonight."

The next weekend my Mother showed me some pictures. One was of a face on the wall in our bedroom. I don't know how to explain it, but it was there. The second was of a silhouette. It looked like a woman standing behind my Mother's open door. "She's only here to protect your mother," the neighbor said. "And the man in the wall is doing the same. The men you saw outside were just your imagination."

I'm almost seventeen now, and the thought of that week still scares me. I refuse to believe it was my imagination. Upon spending many months researching that house, I've come to find out that the part of the city we lived in was used as a camp in the Union War. I still can not explain the now lost pictures, but the images are still lodged in my mind.