This encounter took place in the early nineties. I lived in a small town with a population of about 25,000 people in Northern California. I was in my early 20’s and spent most of my spare time with some friends I had met during my high school years.
One particular Saturday evening, 5 of us drove to a nearby college town about 10 miles away to party with some sorority girls. I was assigned designated driver duties since I had work the next morning and didn’t much feel like showing up for a 10 hour shift with a hangover.
The party was still going strong by midnight. At this point I would be lucky to get 5 hours of sleep after dropping everyone off at home. I began rounding up the boys and told them I was leaving soon and they were welcome to come with or keep partying. The choice was theirs.
Gradually, one by one, I was able to coax them away from their individual party festivities. They begrudgingly and drunkenly staggered to the car and we began the 20 minute ride back to our home town.
By this time, it was 12:30 am. I was focusing on the road and mentally mapping out the route which would most efficiently drop each of my drunken buddies off at home as quickly as possible. The sooner I got them home, the quicker I could get to bed. At this point, it was beginning to look more like I’d be getting around 4 hours of sleep before my alarm went off at 6.
It was mid November and I recall that it was cooler than average that evening, around 35 degrees. It had been unseasonably cool for Northern California that week and the car had taken longer than usual to warm up, but we all were wearing jackets, so complaints about the cold were minimal. A different kind of complaint began to grow from the back seat of heaped party goers, though: hunger
This was the absolute last thing I need to hear. The chorus of hungry complaints began to grow just as we crossed back into our home town. I tried to reason with my friends, explaining that they would all be home soon and they could feed their munchie monsters then.
Keep in mind: this was a small town. We didn’t get an “open all night” fast food restaurant until years after this event occurred. The only option we had was a late night diner which stayed open until 3 am, and I was in no mood to spend the next couple of hours at a greasy spoon watching my drunken buddies stuff themselves on cheap diner food only to pass out or puke at the dining room table, or worse, in my car.
My voice of reason and common sense was quicky drowned out by louder demands for food. I swear I felt like a Parent taking 4 school aged children on a road trip. The lights of the diner soon came into view and drunken cheers of joy erupted from the passenger and back seats of the car. I relented and headed towards the diner parking lot. “Ok fellas” I said, “but you owe me big time for this one.”
The place was packed, which was typical for this time on a Saturday night/early Sunday morning, swarming with rowdy teenagers and drunken “20 something” party revelers, their last stop before heading home to sleep it off. Despite the crowd, we were seated fairly quickly. I wasn’t quite as hungry as my friends were, so I opted only for a glass of water. My friends, of course, were famished, and decided to order way more than they could possible consume in one sitting, so I figured we’d be there for a while.
As we waited for the food to arrive, we began chatting about various situations that had taken place at the party, which soon turned into joking, laughing and random delirious liquor fueled banter. Then our attention turned to our fellow late night diners, some of whom became the targets of our private, mocking jokes, That’s when I saw “them”.
Seated at a table next to the gas fireplace was a party of 4. I tuned out the frenzied noise that surrounded me as my full focus and attention was directed at the unusual patrons.
The first thing that struck me as unusual about them was their attire. Keep in mind, this was the early nineties. Most people my age were wearing jeans with holes, Doc Marten boots and striped shirts. Even our Parents wore jeans and t shirts with the occasional blazer or pantsuit thrown in for special outings. But it was also unusually colder than normal this night, so most people were wearing jacket or sweaters.
The party of 4 near the fireplace were wearing nothing that even remotely resembled the clothing of the time. In fact, the clothing and hairstyles they wore seemed to be more fitting of the 1940’s or early 1950’s.
The coupes were seated male-female across from each other. There was an older couple seated at one side of the table. I’d say the looked to be in their mid 40’s. The couple seated across the table was younger, about my age, early 20’s.
The men had similar hairstyles and attire. White wall haircuts with long, brylcreem slicked hair on top and a downward pointed curl hanging in front. Kind of rockabilly style. Their clothing was more suited for spring weather, consisting of short sleeve plaid dress shirts with pearl buttons, light trousers and dress shoes.
The ladies were also wearing clothing suitable for warm weather. They both wore semi formal evening dresses, like something your Grandma or Great Grandma might have worn to a dance or ice cream social back in the day. The older woman had her hair in a bun and wore an old style semi formal hat which looked like it came from an antique store, and a pearl necklace, which looked equally antiquated.
The younger woman wore a similar style of dress with a floral pattern, no hat, but her hair was styled in an old fashioned jelly roll hairdo on top with shoulder length hair ending in curls. She also wore a pearl necklace, but a more modest one than the older woman’s. Again, no sweaters, no jackets.
Any or all of these things could be easily explained, I thought to myself. Maybe they just like to dress that way, And maybe their sweaters and jackets were left in their car. But those explanations evaporated from my thoughts when I looked at their faces.
First off, their faces, all four, were completely and unusually pale to the point of looking anemic. Nearly as white as the napkins at our table. Completely white, aside from one very noticeable feature: their cheeks. All four had red, rosy cheeks. Almost as if someone had applied rouge to their faces.
Then I noticed something even stranger. Their faces were completely expressionless with mouths slightly agape. No chatting, no smiling, no eating, no blinking, heads slightly tilted upward. They were completely motionless and staring beyond each other as if fixated on something beyond the walls of the diner itself. There were no menus, no glasses of water, no plates of food at their table, and no interactions between themselves or with any members of the wait staff.
I found this to be very strange and unnerving. I felt compelled to get a closer look and made a motion to excuse myself from the table. As I stood up to leave, one of my friends reached out and grabbed me by the elbow. “Hey man, where ya goin’? Don’t forget, you’re our ride home.”
This both startled me and redirected my focus back to my table of friends. As I looked back to them, the various sounds of the dining room banter and clanking of table ware reawakened my auditory senses and flooded back into my consciousness.
“Uh, ya. I know. Just going to the men’s room”, I stammered, as I went to leave the table a second time. I stood up and looked back at the table near the gas fireplace. They were gone! My eyes frantically darted around the dining room, desperately searching for the ghostly couples. Nothing. I then scanned the area near the exit. Still nothing. I quickly walked to the men’s room. Nothing but a couple of drunken teenagers relieving themselves. “How is this possible?”, I asked myself. “I only looked away for a second.”
I went back to my table and was quiet for the rest of the night, trying to wrap my mind around what I saw. My friends finished their meals and I drove them all home. I got zero sleep that night. I wasn’t freaked out or scared by what I saw, just couldn’t make sense of it all.
I ran through the list of rational explanations in my head. Was I sleep deprived? Was I hallucinating? Had I been drugged at the party? Did someone spike my water at the diner? All unlikely. Or, was it something paranormal?
I’m not the type to reach quickly for that conclusion, though given the other options, it seems to be equally plausible. Maybe I saw something that wasn’t really there. Maybe I was sleep deprived. Maybe I was drugged without my knowledge. Or maybe, just maybe, a vintage dressed foursome from a bygone era wanted one last double date night together at their favorite diner.