Ghosts have been part of my life for a long time. I'm one of those "sensitive one's", as they say. I was forty-five years old, and as I said sort of used to strange things that bump, things that move, leave and then come back again.

I was staying with my father and stepmother Lois, while she was recovering from an illness. The house is in the Mother Lode Gold country in California, old and very large. Lois' room was off the downstairs hall in the back. Dad's was across from hers and I was in the guest room next to the family room. The second story had been empty for years.

It was winter and I was sitting in the old dining room which is now called the family room. It was about 11:00 PM and I was watching television. Lois and my father were both asleep when I heard her trying to get something from her night table. Sounds echo through big old houses and I could hear very clearly the small bottles rattling, and the the unmistakable tink, tink, rattle, clink. I could imagine her leaning over her potty chair at her bedside, reaching for a Kleenex or water glass.

I'd gone in there quite a few times giving her this or that during the evenings before. The rattlings continued until I heard a loud clunk. I knew something was going to break or she was going to fall off the bed into the john.

I pulled myself out of my comfortable chair with a small bit of irritation and walked quickly down the long darkened hallway. In one stride I swumg her partially open door wide, stepped in leaned over the bed and said, "What's the matter Lois?"

Six rough looking men stood with their backs to a long heavy bar with glasses raised at the side of her bed. A huge gaudy gilded mirror hung behind the long dark bar reflecting a chandelier we didn't have. They looked like miners or drovers of some kind. They didn't make a sound but looked at me as wild eyed as I was looking at them.

Lois was on her side facing away from the men who stood beside her bed. Her water glass and viles on her night table blended with and faded among the dark clothing and long legs of the men. The men shifted their weight. One man raised both arms straight up still holding his shot glass as though he was at gunpoint. Another, a small stout fellow with a rather bushy moustashe grabbed his shirt front with both hands and dropped his drink.

Then suddenly, freeze frame, The entire scene stopped all movement. No sound came, nothing. They all continued to stand with their glasses raised, with surprised looks on their faces as I slowly began to turn around. My right hand still held the doorknob and I remember I pulled with all my might to stop the forward motion and go back! I realized that I was still moving toward them, drawing closer and closer to them in the dark.

I swung around scrambling wildly for the other side of the door with my other hand, caught the knob and like in a dream slowly turned, ever so slowly reached the doorway, and even slower yet went through it. I was pulling myself with every ounce of strength I had. My feet were leaden, my step began to stagger by the time I reached the lamplight. I slammed my back into the chair and listened. My heart was pounding and I was gasping for air so loudly it was hard to hear.

It was deathly quiet as I sat there listening for sounds from down the dark hallway. Soon the sounds came again. Small tinklings, rustlings and then the unmistakable clatter of a bar, like it was perhaps a few doors away. Bottles on glasses, clattering, clinking and the dull whack of a full bottle on a heavy old bar, the knock of a heavy shot glass. I could hear many muffled voices like a room full of people you hear through a closed door but you can't quite understand the conversation. There were more of them.

I didn't go back in Lois' room that night. The noises stopped a little while later and didn't return for quite a long while. When they did return they were more faint. I listened to them but I stayed in the chair. I didn't tell anyone because I wanted to think about every detail with no outside influence. Besides, I wasn't sure anyone else could hear them but me.

A few weeks later my sister came to visit, and on this particular night again came the clinking and clatering from Lois' room once more. I ignored it until my sister said, "Aren't you going in there ? She's going to upset the whole nightstand."

I said, "If you want to see something good, you go."

She looked a little puzzled but got up and went to Lois' room. She came right back out and said, "She's turned the other way, she wasn't doing anythng! I don't know what it was, what was I supposed to see?" she asked.

I was a little disappointed to say the least but at least someone else could hear them besides me. From the relatively calm look on her face I knew my sister hadn't seen the boys at the bar as I had, but then she added, "What in the world does Lois have that long heavy table in there for?"

I've heard the "Boys at the bar," many times since then but I left them alone and they didn't come out of the room, until one night six years later, but that's another story.

D. Bailey