Haunted Houses by Robert D San Souci

Author:Robert D San Souci [Souci, Robert D San]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780805087505
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Many

“I found it in the attic,” said Raymond, pulling a brown paper bag with something long and flat inside from his backpack. “It was with my grandmother’s junk.” He and his friends—Troy, Jerry, Sarah, and Mikal—were sitting in the sunlit backyard of Troy’s house. The others crowded around as he unwrapped a bright-colored box.

“It’s a game,” Troy said, sounding disappointed.

“No way,” Raymond insisted. “It’s a Ouija board.” He pronounced the word “wee-jah” and opened the box to reveal a folded board that did look like a game board. But when he unfolded it, they saw just a bunch of numbers, letters, and a few circled words scattered around. From the box he took a little piece of wood, shaped like a triangle, with small, stubby legs at each of the three corners. A circle of green felt was stuck to the bottom of each leg.

His friends peered closer.

“But what is it?” asked Mikal, whose voice always sounded whiny. “What does it do?” As he leaned closer, his glasses slid down his perpetually oily nose so he had to push them back into place.

“Don’t you watch any scary movies?” Jerry asked. “A Ouija board lets you talk to ghosts and stuff.”

“Like a cell phone?”

“You are so dense,” Jerry said, “I can’t believe it.”

Before he could say anything more, Sarah said, “You put your fingers on the little pointy wooden thing—”

“A planchette,” Raymond read off the box lid. He pronounced it “plan-shet.”

“Uh-huh,” Sarah said impatiently, “and then the spirits move it around the board to answer questions, yes or no, here”—she tapped the words, which were in circles in the upper corners of the board—“or it spells out answers in these letters or numbers.” She pointed at the double row of letters—the whole alphabet—and the single row of numbers, from one to nine, then zero, below. There were also the words hello and good-bye in circles at the lower corners of the board.

“How do you know so much about it?” challenged Troy.

“I watched a show about real-life ghostbusters last year,” Sarah explained. “It showed how these things work. These guys in this old house tried to get in touch with a ghost using one.”

“Did they talk to a ghost?” wondered Mikal.

“I don’t know. My mom made me shut the TV off and go to bed.”

“Let’s try it,” Jerry said.

Sarah rolled her eyes at him. “You need to be in the right place. Someplace where there are ghosts. Your house isn’t haunted, is it, Troy? Anyone die here?”

Troy shook his head fiercely. “No way. My folks wouldn’t buy a haunted house.”

“Raymond, your grandma died last year. Do you think her ghost is hanging around your house?” asked Sarah.

The boy made a face. “She died in the hospital. Anyway, she was too nice to haunt anybody.”

“My hamster, Loopy, died last month,” Sarah said. “Some people think that animals can come back as ghosts. Alicia Downey said her white rat came back as a little ball of white light that used to run around her bedroom.

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