The Humming Ghost

As an adult, do you ever wonder what you were thinking when you were a kid? This thought increasingly crosses my mind now that I have a kid of my own.

Coincidentally, someone in my third and fourth grade class came across a compilation of stories from our class and posted them along with our class picture on the internet. I thought I’d post it for kicks and giggles.

I honestly don’t remember writing this, but it’s fun to see the interworkings of an 10-year-old’s mind:

Disclaimer: Similarities to names and characters portrayed in this story which have been written by a 4th grader might be purely coincidental. Names, spelling, grammar and formatting have been preserved in order to portray my 10-year-old thought process.

 

The Humming Ghost by Dan Graham

When Mr. Johnson was walking to the mailbox, he heard a low hum. He turned around. It stopped. He kept walking, and he heard it again. This time when he turned around, something hit him on the head with super-natural force. Then he was either unconscious or dead. He didn’t know. When he awoke, he was back in his bed. He thought it was a nightmare. When he got to the breakfast table, no one was there, so he waited for 2 hours. His family came in in black and white clothes. Everybody was crying. “Poor Johnny,” said his wife (that’s what she called Mr. Johnson). “I wonder what killed him,” she said. Everybody was there: Aunt Beth, Uncle Henry, his cousins, his brothers. He thought to himself, “I must be dead.” Just then he fell right through his chair and started to sink through the floor.

When he finished falling, he was in a room of spirits and ghosts. He could tell they were ghosts because they had their heads in their legs. Then he heard that humming noise he had heard the other day. This time when he turned around, he was in the presence of a tall, transparent, skinny man. “Hello,” he said.

“Welcome to the gang.”

“What hit me?”

“What hit you?”

“It must have been my dog, Rex.”

Just then a dog with a patch on his eye and one leg missing appeared. Ruff. Grrrrr. “What are you?” asked Mr. Johnson.

“I’m a spirit just like you, except you can become human by finding your body in the next 24 hours.”

Then Mr. Johnson disappeared and reappeared in his house. He sat at the table and listened to his family talk. Maybe they’d say something. “Poor Johnny. First, he was here. Now he’s at Oakland Cemetery.”

(I think this is the part where I hit my word limit for the assignment so I wrapped up the story as quickly as possible.)

Unfortunately, it was fifty miles away, but he could travel at light speed with his spirit powers. He arrived in an instant. He looked around until he saw his name on a stone. Then he sank into the ground where his body was. Then he awoke to find himself surrounded by cement. He pushed and pushed until it gave way. Then a whole bunch of dirt fell on him. He walked home and lived happily ever after.

It deserves a Pulitzer. I know.

One of the other founders of BuildASign just happened to have been in this class and wrote a story too. It featured a lot more action and chapters. I tried to find some underlying theme between the two that said we were destined to work together but I came up empty handed. It goes to show that different people bring different contributions to the table when facilitating the success of a company. You can see the original transcript along with my Hyde Park 3rd grade class pictured below.