Ghost stories

Photo from Amazon.com

I like to tell stories, and I was asked to do two sessions with ghost stories this week. The first was at a bar in Norwich (all adult audience), and I told a personal story about Maurice, the ghost we used to live with.  It was an interesting experience, because it took me into very personal, emotional territory. Not something I'm used to doing!

But last night I was storytelling outside, to families at a camp site in Swanton Morley.  The first story I told was of the ghostly US airman on the nearby airfield, but given an audience of children in fancy dress, and after singing ‘Old MacDonald had a Haunted Farm’, I decided that some more ad lib stories involving the kids would be better.

I asked what they wanted, and the small boy dressed as a mad professor wanted a monster story. So we told the story of Frankenstein and his monster, and the kids acted out some parts. I had a 10 year old ‘zombie’ do a pretty good impression of the monster - lying on a picnic table as we 'winched' him up the tower to the lightning. Oh, I also got Burke and Hare involved too – but no historians on hand to correct me so I got away with it.

The second story we told was about Dracula (the small boy dressed as a vampire actually dozed off), and the final story request was for one about a skeleton. With no immediate skeleton stories in my memory, the ‘Skeleton who couldn’t sleep’ was born. The kids joined in and the adults joined in (their costumes adding to the cast of characters) and there was even a running race to see who go to sleep in the king’s bed.

I really enjoy story telling and though last night’s event was very unplanned, I knew that if I had enough kids, it would work. And I’m pleased to day it did.