Ghost Stories
A bit over two years ago, talk about scary monsters on the preschool playground was what led my then-three year-old to fight her fears by imagining a world where she had the ability to steal their powers as a beast-eating Monstervore. Following her lead I’ve helped her explore the corners of her imagination, watching her work to understand reality by building fantasies.
Now she’s just turned six, and as we left school yesterday she asked me, “Daddy, do you want to hear something REALLY scary? Did you know my school is HAUNTED?!?” It turns out that after one of her friends heard a strange noise in the bathroom, another told the tale of the Bluegirl Ghost:
A few years ago, a girl who was a student at the school accidentally got flushed down the toilet, and she died and turned blue. Now, when kids are sitting in the bathroom, the Bluegirl Ghost can reach up and steal your voice for an entire year!
That is scary, I said, as we drove home. So we talked about how people make up stories to explain things like that strange noise in the bathroom, and they make it scary things to help understand why they were afraid. You’ll still feel surprised and scared, but the stories give you some control over the situation, and some power over the monsters.
She was quiet in the backseat for a moment, then said: “”Like Monstervore?”
EXACTLY like your Monstervore stories, I said. Except that your Monstervore stories are better.
“Do I have any ghosts in Kabos?” she asked. Lots, I said. There’s the Isle of Ghostly out in the ocean, the storm boats that are crewed by the ghosts of fishperson pirates, the ghosts that come across from the Dreamlands, door ghosts, and even the Old Ghost, though you haven’t told me much about her.
“What did I tell you about the Old Ghost?” she asked, so at the next stoplight I pulled out my phone and did a quick search of my notes. You told me that she’s the ghost of an old, old woman who comes down from the icy mountains to gather ghosts from across the land and bring them back to the Purple City in the ghostlands. But that’s all I know. I don’t know why she’s so big, how old she is, or why she’s bringing all the ghosts back to her city.
“I will tell you,” she said, and she did:
Long ago during the time of the Kingsfight, when all the kings were fighting over who got to be in charge, there was a queen named Queen Korcra. She had the magic to make bones come to her like a magnet, and she could make them into weapons and clothes or she could stick them together to build things. She had lots of children, and whenever she defeated another king she would bring their family and children to her house so they wouldn’t be mad at her, and she used the bones of the defeated king to make them a new room on her house. Soon she had 88 children, and whenever she had a new child, the youngest had to become the Tooth Fairy. When the queen died the youngest daughter was named Rubia, and she’s still the Tooth Fairy now.
After the Queen died she haunted her castle as a ghost but all her children grew up and moved away except for the Tooth Fairy, and she still really wanted to be a mother. So she used all the rest of her bone magic to get really tall instead and went up to sleep in the icy mountains. She’s 2,324 years old now and whenever the sun touches her eyes they melt open and she wakes up to go and find ghosts who don’t have a house to haunt.
The Old Ghost is really tall so the ghosts and the people can see her walking around like a giant (even though she’s not really a giant.) She walks around for a month and sings a song to call out to ghosts who are lonely and need a home, and they come and sing along like in a round as they walk around:
Come home, come home
Come home to your new home
You will have a family
In your brand new home
I will be your mother
And we will all be family
In our home
Your forever home
But living people can’t hear the sound. They just hear spooky sounds that are kind of scary. And if anyone tries to mess with the ghosts while the Old Ghost is around she can use her ghost powers to make their bones fall asleep. Then all the ghosts go back together to the Purple City, and after the Old Ghost makes sure they have a house to sleep in she goes back and goes to sleep in the mountains until she wakes up again.
(“Why aren’t we going in the house?” she asked as we sat in the driveway. One second, I said, frantically thumbing notes on the story into my phone…)
Later that night as I tucked her into bed, she asked, “What if I think of the Bluegirl Ghost and get scared when I’m trying to sleep?” Well, I said, remember that it’s okay to be scared. Your brain can't understand everything, but it's always trying and always telling stories to try and make sense of things. But also remember that you are the one telling the story to yourself, and you can try to find something about it that’s not so scary. Like how the Old Ghost is a scary giant to living people but she’s actually walking around trying to find ghosts who need a home. She’s a monster, but she has love in her.
“I still don’t want the ghost to grab me when I’m in the bathroom,” she says. “I think that would be scary.”
Yeah, I said, but think how scared she’ll be when she finds out that she’s grabbed a monstervore!
I was sure she’d come out of her room at some point, needing a drink of water or maybe even a hug to get to sleep. But I checked on her a half hour later…and she was asleep. Whatever she was facing in Dreamland, my little monstervore was ready to face them.
#monstervore
