October is one of the best months to be in school, 'cos our teacher, Miss LaSalle, makes everything so much fun! Like for homework when we had to make decorations for our class. Or this past week, when we had to see how many little words we could make out of the big word HALLOWEEN, (Kyle won a lollipop with 16 words!). And for our weekly vocabulary words, Miss LaSalle has been putting in some cool Halloween words like "cauldron" and "ghoul" and "Frankenstein". Outta site! She also got some groovy ghost story records to listen to instead of silent reading time! Too much! This past Wednesday, for our homework, we had to write our own ghost stories! Far out! So on Thursday, when we first sat at our desks, Miss LaSalle wrote on the chalkboard that our ghost stories were due.
After our Math lesson, Miss LaSalle asked us to take out our ghost stories and we were gonna read them out loud in front of the class. When she asked who wanted to go first I decided to go and get it over with.
My story was all about this girl who was lost in the woods and she went into the spooky old house to ask for directions, and she kept hearing these weird noises, and when she went into the dining room, she saw a human head inside a jar, and it started talking to her! She ran out of the house into the woods and was never heard from again. Some people say she was scared to death! All the kids thought it was a really good story and Miss LaSalle said it showed a lot of imagination.
Stephanie wrote a story about a witch who really wasn't a witch, but a witch in training, and she had to take a test for the counsel of witches. She had to stand in the middle of a graveyard and make a magic potion to raise all the ghosts from the dead, only her potion didn't work and she didn't pass the test. Her potion tasted like chicken soup, so she decided to sell it and became the world's richest witch! I really liked her story.
Kyle wrote about a zombie who had no where to go once he rose from the dead because his graveyard got turned into a shopping center, so he goes around the town scaring everybody because he's so mad he hasn't got a home. I wonder if the shopping center was haunted, too? Ghosts could have been hiding in the frozen food section! Ha Ha!
Susan wrote about a little boy who fell out of a window in his house when he was 7 years old. His parents were so sad that they moved and a little girl and her family moved into the house. She became friends with the boy, but no one else would believe he was real, until one day the little girl fell out of a boat on the lake while she was her parents. The little boy, remembering how awful it was to fall out the window and die, saved the little girl from drowning. Her parents knew that the ghost boy was real, and always loved him like he was their son. Wow! What a super story!
Danny wrote about this comic book artist who went blind so he got an eye transplant from a guy who wrote horror movies, and he could never draw his superheroes, but horrible, bloody monsters and creatures. He got fired, but got a better job making horror movies posters instead. Yep, that's a Danny story if I ever heard one.
Robyn's story was about these kids who had a party in an old run down house. They heard stories about an old lady who died in that house and it was haunted but they didn't believe it, But at the party, one by one they started disappearing. The old lady's ghost had locked them in the basement, and the last 2 kids who were left at the party found them. No one ever went back to that house again.
Bridget told us she wrote her story about something her grandma once told her. Her grandma's from Ireland and she said that once there was a captain a of ship who died at sea, named Morris Houlihan. A storm crashed his ship on some large jagged rocks and he died instantly. His ghost lived on in an old, broken down light house. Other ship captains and sailors told stories about how they could see Captain Houlihan's ghost in the fog late at night, and how they could see the light from the old light house leading them home, even though it hadn't worked in years. And once another captain told about how he had been lost at sea for a long time and was too tired to steer his ship and he passed out at the wheel. He never knew how but he made it back to port safely. Everyone told him it was Captain Houlihan. Gee....I wonder if any of that was true?
April's story was about a girl who was haunted by her twin sister who died in a car crash when both of the girls were 10 years old. The ghost twin was angry because she had died and her sister had lived and every chance she got she tried to kill her twin so they could be together again. One day the ghost twin pushed her sister off the curb into the street and she was hit by a car. She didn't die but she was in a coma in the hospital. The ghost twin kept trying to pull her sister's spirit away so she would die, but the sister wouldn't let her. After 6 months, the girl woke up, and the ghost twin never haunted her sister again. Oooh! That's kinda spooky. It almost makes me glad I don't have a sister!
Shante's story was about a man who had bought a used television set really cheap. He didn't know why the set was so cheap, until one night when he tried to watch a ball game. He turned on the set, and it started to scream! It kept screaming and shrieking until he turned it off. At first the man thought he was crazy, but the next night he tried it again. The T.V. screamed again until he shut if off. Finally he called a television repair man, and when the man opened up the back of the set, a ghost flew out. He was glad to be out of the television set because every time someone turned it on, it was too hot and it burned the ghost, which was why he screamed. It was a pretty funny story.
Miss LaSalle liked our stories so much, that our next assignment is to draw 2 pictures each for our stories and we were gonna make a book out of them to keep in our class library! Wow, then all of us could read the stories and look at the pictures whenever we had silent reading time. I think that's pretty cool!
I don't think I believe in ghosts, but ghost stories are kinda fun. I know that some of my friends like monster movies and stuff like that. I guess they're OK, as long as they don't have lotsa blood and guts and stuff. I bet people in the future are too smart to believe in ghosts, so maybe you don't have ghost stories anymore. But I think they're still fun to read, and even more fun to write about, 'cos we all know it's just pretend, don't we?
Until next time future readers,
Your friend,
Julie Newman
