A Cocktail Party for Ghosts

     I’m the youngest child in my family, by quite a bit. I have two sisters, who were 7 and 9 years old when I was born. My eldest sister’s bedroom was in the basement, and my other sister’s room was right next to mine. My parents’ room was at the end of the hall — ​which was really only about 6 feet from my bedroom door. 
     Everyone in my family has memories of waking up in the middle of the night to see this “ghost” standing at the side of their bed, because when I was little I used to put my baby blanket over my head if I needed to leave my room alone for some reason. I would wake up in the middle of the night, scared I guess, and feel the need to go sleep in someone else’s bed with them, for safety. But in order to get to another room, obviously I would have to walk through the dark house. I didn’t put my blanket over my head so that I wouldn’t see whatever scary things were lurking in the dark; I did it so the ghosts that supposedly filled our house at night would just think I was one of them. 
     I can understand why I would brave the few feet to my parents’ or my closer sister’s room, but I can’t figure out, anymore, why I would find it necessary to go down into the freaking basement to my other sister’s room. I do remember, though, that I thought the ghosts congregated down there. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized the “vision” I had of them was that they were having a cocktail party. In my mind, they were all standing around talking in twos and threes. Just kind of milling about, conversing. By making myself look like one of them, I wouldn’t alert them to my presence and cause them to either flee or decide to terrorize me. It didn’t occur to me, in my child brain, that my feet were still sticking out underneath the blanket and that I would be the only ghost in the group with feet. I guess I’m also lucky that no one ever stopped me to talk. “Oh heyyyy! I haven’t seen you in forever. How have you been??” That would have been pretty awkward.