Bataan Girl
by Carlos
For a couple of years, I was stationed on a base in the New Orleans area. I became good friends with my supervisor and started going over to his residence which was on base. The first time I was over for a good duration, he told me about the little girl. Before I get to that, he had two kids and a wife. H, the daughter. T, the son. And N, the wife. I guess I will refer to my friend as M. Most of the time, the kids were gone and it was M, N and me at the residence. The house was really a two story townhouse style apartment. The entry was immediately met with a large closet and a right turn leads you to the living room.
After the right turn into the living room, to the left was a path to the dining area. Along that path and before the dining room area was a restroom was to the left and just after that, the stairs were to the right. In the living room they had their t.v. centered under the staircase and it faced the wall with the door in which you enter.
Back to the little girl. He told me that there was a ghost in the house. He said, “If you are watching t.v., you can see a head running up and down the stairs in your peripheral vision.” I had never seen a ghost and I always wanted to. I wanted to believe what he said, but I thought that after 26 years I would have seen something. Well, it didn’t take long before I started to see movement over the t.v. I couldn’t focus on it and it’s not like I could focus on the stairs and see it. I found it odd and it puzzled me, but I accepted it. Eventually, just like them, I just got used to her and the movement didn’t even draw my attention at times. We would talk about her when one or more of us would see her constantly in a day. We would wonder what caused all the activity that day because there were days in which no one would see her.
The stairs went up about eight steps before a turn and those were the steps we would see her traverse. As you go up the stairs, to your right is the wall behind the t.v. which climbs up with you and you can see the living room. At any step the wall is approximately three feet tall or a little higher.
August of 2006, the area was hit by Hurricane Katrina and I was part of the stay behind security team on base. There were multiple hurricane scares so many people would leave their pets behind, thinking they would be back in two or three days. My friend left his cat. Once word was out that Katrina was headed our way, I made a run to his residence and flushed all the toilets and left a pot of water. The cat liked to drink out of the toilets.
Also, I left it’s bag sideways and open on top of the couch because I did not know when I would be able to return in order to feed her. Two weeks after the Hurricane I was able to return and found the bag of cat food upright. The bag was left on its side with most of the food along the side so that the bag would not tip back over. I never really thought about that bag incident until now. I found the cat on their bed upstairs as if nothing had ever happened. The next day M returned from Tennessee and I left for a few days to TN. I returned four days later with food for his residence since all the food was no longer any good. We had K, a fellow patrolman as a room mate. K stayed in T’s room and I stayed in H’s. It didn’t take long before M found a dog at a residence and brought it home. The dog was often left it outside because it would get beat up by the cat and it was hyper. It would not leave us alone when we tried to do anything, especially sleep.
One night at exactly 330AM, I awoke and looked at my alarm clock. I heard the dog barking outside and this was odd because the dog never barked when we left it outside. I looked out of the window which looked out to the back yard and found that nothing was there. I went back to sleep. A few nights later, I was once again woken up at exactly 330AM to the dog barking. I figured that I should go downstairs this time and see what is going on. I went downstairs which had music playing and all the lights were off. I looked into the backyard and the dog quickly ran to the door. I kicked it away and closed the door. I then decided to use the downstairs bathroom to take a piss. While I urinating I got a wierd feeling and looked to my left towards the stairs and there I saw a little girl. It wasn’t as if I saw the girl standing in the dark. Everything except her was normal and she was like a photo negative image that stood still. Quickly, I turned away and repeatedly wished her away in my head. Five wishes later, I worked the nerve to look over and and she was gone. As I finished urinating and flushed I gained my thoughts and noticed that the music which was on earlier was skipping and stuck on a loop. I looked at the dark stairs and debated going up through the same path that she stood in to get to bed or stay downstairs on my own. I ran up the stairs and fell asleep.
