Uncle Albert’s Ghostly Encounter
Through My Gran's Eyes
Calm smoothed over the landscape as quickly as the turbulent weather erupted.
I perched on my grandmother’s bedroom window and watched the sun’s rays battle the clouds for dominance. As it strained to break through, I struggled against the feeling of my lungs closing up.
The fresh, earthy smell of Gran’s backyard after the recent rain comforted me. It reminded me of my childhood, when I pretended to bake cakes with mud in used bottle caps while my grandmother harvested peas from her garden. After that, she would sit on the veranda floor with containers of the podded legumes and shell them. I helped, but the moment I saw a worm wriggling about, I dusted my hands and announced, “Ah done.”
With my lips in a firm line, I swung away from the ghost of memories and entered my grandma’s musty closet. There, I pulled the first fabric my hand touched from its hanger. It was a green and white frock with tiny buttons down the front. Gran had another, which was black instead of green, but it now rotted under the earth alongside her.
The thought of my grandmother’s cold, decaying body caused the hairs on my arm to stand on end. In spite of it being her, death and funerals unsettled me.
Being awkward around the dead was one thing, but a deep-seated phobia was a different monster altogether. Especially since I grew up surrounded by human remains and my Gran’s twisted sense of humor.
Yes, my home— that lime green wooden structure in Grand Brie where I spent my childhood and now packed my grandmother’s belongings— was once a cemetery. They ignored the unsettling aura of the graveyard and constructed an entire village.
So, I grew up in fear, with the constant reminder that death was all around me. It lurked in my front yard, where the remnants of a broken tombstone made the air thick with an ominous silence. It haunted me with the rustling noises that searched our garden at night, hungry for the flesh of the living and thirsty for the screams of the coward. Every animal’s scamper was a reaction to its presence, and every mournful cry was a fearful by-product.
Not everyone reacted to the dormant burial ground with skittishness. My gran found pleasure in using it to give others a good scare, and as much as it pains to admit it, I, her beloved granddaughter, was no exception. Once, she purchased a plastic skeletal hand and stuck it into the sticky mud at the bottom of the outside steps. Upon seeing it, my chest tightened, and I gasped for air, hyperventilated as I stared. It took her thirty minutes, but her soothing voice calmed me down again. Later, the neighbor mentioned my deep, raucous scream.
Gran was the scarer of the family, but for horror stories, my Uncle Albert was the expert. His best was tied to Grenada’s history, particularly to its independence in 1974 under the guidance of Sir Eric Matthew Gairy, whose controversial election win in 1976 generated accusations of fraud. In 1979, the New Jewel Movement, led by Maurice Bishop, launched an attack on Grenada’s first Prime Minister and overthrew him.
Gran used to say, “Bishop was de best ting to happen to Grenada.”
With the help of the Cubans, he made the country self-reliant by focusing on medical, technical, and academic development. If you asked an elder today, they would recall this as Grenada’s prosperous era.
Karma is a bitch, though.
Our beloved leader lost the country by the same means he received it— force. His deputy prime minister, Bernard Coard, betrayed him, placed him under house arrest, and allegedly took his life during what is known as the greatest Caribbean revolution.
By this time, unease had settled over U.S. President Ronald Reagan. He disapproved of the Marxists’ close relationship with the Grenadians and hated that a military building was being constructed in proximity to their 9000ft runway.
Bishop argued that the construction of this excessively long runway was to allow sizable commercial flights to enter the country. However, this did not convince Reagan that their intentions were peaceful. He believed the runway was for heavy military planes. So, on October 25th, 1983, under the guise of protecting American citizens from the coup, the United States sent troops to invade our tiny tri-island nation. With a strategic force, they swarmed Grenada and claimed control while the smell of gunpowder hung heavy in the air. They captured Coard and apprehended or killed his followers.
Among those shot was a group of Cubans who worked on constructing the airport that, in 1984, bustled with large international flights. That structure, filled with the echoes of their laughter, was their home. They bathed, slept, ate, and also lost their lives at the base of the control tower during the invasion. Thus, the shadows of the past gave birth to the haunting of this building.
On the day the airport opened, Uncle Albert stood with his chin high, the wind carrying the nation’s striking flag of red, green, and yellow. It wasn’t long before he recounted chilling accounts from his fellow security coworker, Edward Joseph, whose screams echoed the most from the ghosts’ terror.
Uncle joked that Edward’s Yankee ancestry was to blame for his terrors during rostered tower duties. Joseph often described hearing harrowing moans and dreadful shrieks that induced uncontrollable trembling. Sometimes, the faintest sounds of crying and whimpering stalked his dreams, transforming them into nightmares. It was no surprise that he submitted his resignation letter, handwritten, on the shift he was to work there.
Although he wasn’t present, my uncle’s animated storytelling painted vivid scenes that made me conjure a ghost at every turn. I created a poltergeist in every washroom, at the boarding gates, monitoring the weather, and guiding the planes. His stories, combined with my fear of the dead, created a terrifying concoction. As my eyelids fluttered shut, I imagined the haunting rhythm of heavy construction boots he described so often. Then, one night, while the dewdrops settled on the grass, he, for the first time, became the main character in his story.
The disturbance started as sporadic shuffling from overhead, chairs scraping across the floor, and files being shoved aside. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have been noteworthy. However, the airport was closed, and his predecessor informed him that the air traffic controllers had all gone home. It was him, the mosquitoes, and the large brown moths that fluttered dust throughout the entire building.
The tower’s ground floor housed the kitchen and bathroom, which had a forceful, acidic odor, along with the offices, equipment room, and security post. Above that, three flights of stairs led upwards, eventually reaching the control room, the hub of the noise.
“Look at ur, gettin’ scared by ah lil noise.”
Initially, he dismissed the commotion as unsecured equipment, but loud crashes pierced the night and caused Uncle Albert to glance upwards, in spite of trying to ignore it. He played ignorantly for a while and monitored the clock with a steady breath as the second hand ticked like a heartbeat. Or so he claimed.
At 3:36 am, the shuffling ceased, but then came the distinct thud of heavy footsteps. My uncle wiped his clammy hands on his khaki uniform, ignored the chirping and buzzing, and concentrated on the upstairs movements.
3:42 am was the last time he recorded. That was the final moment before whatever it was began its journey down the creaky iron stairs. The slow descent assaulted my uncle as he waited and calculated the seconds until the big reveal. Nonetheless, from his station, he kept his focus on the compound’s sliding gate, deaf to the sounds behind him. Until the inner door creaked open.
Unfocused energy surged through his limbs. So, he pushed himself away from his station and paced in front of the exit. Then, he remembered the passage was next to a window. A brisk breeze could have rattled it. Someone could have left it ajar, and caused it to screech and shift on its own.
“Ah worryin’ for nuttin’.”
He breathed more easily as the crushing weight on his chest lessened. However, his heightened awareness remained.
Uncle Albert’s heart gave a jolt when the door slammed shut with a loud bang. This motivated him to beeline for the entrance of the second one, the last barrier between him and the intruder.
As he stared through the glass pane, a chill ran down his spine. A shadowed silhouette stretched from the floor and danced across the wall. Yet, the actual person remained unseen, despite the outside floodlights spilling in.
My uncle stood there as his bulging eyes stared. The silence stretched into forever and emanated the frantic beat of his own heart.
“Meh skin burn as if someone eyeballing me. Den ah hear a click, like wen dem controllers use de pass to open dey.”
When the door pushed forward toward my uncle, a jittery feeling molded in his stomach. It crawled up his chest, toward his shoulder, and into his hand. Without processing what was happening, Uncle slammed it shut. Then he panted, as though he’d just finished a marathon, as the clock’s rhythmic tick grounded him in the present.
The seconds passed, and the silence became absolute, like the stillness of a grave. Neither the glass entry nor Uncle Albert made a sound. Nothing except for the urgency in his abdomen.
“Ah aint even tink wen ah feel it. Ah jus run to de toilet.”
As my uncle sat there, the prickling on the back of his neck became overshadowed by the rise in temperature underneath his skin. The longer he remained, the more his muscles eased, and the more he doubted what he saw.
“Ah cuss myself for lettin’ tha blasted modda ah mine get to me.”
With a spring in his step, he strolled back to his station with the moonlight guiding his path. However, as he stood before his desk, the familiar weight settled in his stomach.
“It was ah weird feeling, like anger stabbin’ me.”
Nevertheless, Uncle Albert attempted to brush it away. However, when he reached for his chair, it rolled from the wooden table as if someone had gotten up. His feet took control and moved backward as a chill expanded in his core. He tried to speak then, but the words didn’t get past the ball in his throat and came out as whimpers. All he did was cower as two footsteps led an unseen presence directly toward him. Then, without warning, a powerful fist struck his face.
After that, the world’s sounds disappeared into a silent hush.
Uncle Albert’s resignation letter landed on his manager’s desk the next day.
Editor: Shannon Hensley
