its almost just like that but the the switch that is at bottom of steps is the switch with the 3 romex lines in it

here lets see if I can explain this exactl . At bottom of stairs there is the 3 romex wires like in the picture. but the two sets come out the top of box and the single set comes from bottom of box. then at top of stairs the switch that has the 4 wires to the switch right under the light. If that helps at all. The top box has a red wire but the bottom has no red wire.

If one of your switches doesn't have the red it isn't 3 way. And, if stairs are involved it is not legal to not have a 3 way.

The top box has a red wire but the bottom has no red wire.

Then can we assume that the red wire goes to the light? Have you opened up the light box to see what's there?

As Vith said, this doesn't sound like it can be properly wired. I'm wondering if your hack electrician tried to set it up like this:

But instead of the 3-wire cable that is required (that I circled in the picture), he used two 14-2 cables and planned on using one of the wires from the second cable. Maybe he ran out of 14-3 cable?

But that obviously isn't allowed. I think you'll need to get a competent electrician in to take a look at everything the old electrician did and he may need to run new wiring.

i have a outside garage motion light 100watt bulb...it keeps intermittently not working.. it is brand new. there was a metal cross bracket alreay there, but i needed to also us the cross bracket from the new light. so there are 2 metal cross brackets mounted. i was wondering if that could be causing the issues. or i think maybe i did not have the ground wires hooked to the green screw correctally. after i did that (both ground wires clapped to green screw) it seems to be working correctally, but it have only been one or two days. LOL