Spooky Classics for Children by Jim Weiss

Author:Jim Weiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Well-Trained Mind Press
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Canterville Ghost

(Lights Up. Narrator enters, stands Stage Left.)

NARRATOR: Everyone told Hiram Otis that he was making the mistake of his life when he decided to move his family to Canterville Chase. Even Lord Canterville tried to tell him about it.

(Lord Canterville and Mr. Otis enter, stand Center Stage.)

LORD CANTERVILLE: You see, it’s been some years since we Cantervilles have lived at the old place ourselves. We stuck it out for generations, centuries in fact, ever since the ghost of my ancestor, Sir Simon de Canterville, first appeared. What finally cut it for us was the evening my grand-aunt felt two skeletal hands on her shoulders as she was dressing for dinner!

MR. OTIS: We’ll take the place and everything in it, including the furniture and the servants. I don’t wish to sound rude, my lord, but I represent a modern nation. We don’t believe in any superstitious mumbo-jumbo we can’t understand, except maybe for Congress. We’ll take our chances with this ghost business.

(Lord Canterville exits, and the Otis family enters and stands Stage Right: Mrs. Otis, Virginia, Stars, Stripes, and Washington. If you don’t have enough actors for all of them and some actors have to play different members of the Otis family, they can come out one at a time and then run off stage and switch characters.)

MRS. OTIS: You found us a place that’s haunted? Hiram, how charming!

STARS and STRIPES: We’re going to live in a castle?

STARS, STRIPES, and WASHINGTON: (Enthusiastically) Hooray! Wooh! Yeah!

(Stars, Stripes, and Washington should all jump around and make lots of very excited noises. Then they all start walking across the stage towards the Narrator. While the Narrator talks they should walk all the way towards him or her and then turn around and walk back to Stage Right like they are going to Canterville Chase.)

NARRATOR: When the Otis family arrived at Canterville Chase they found the housekeeper, Mrs. Umney, waiting on the wide front steps.

(Mrs. Umney enters and stands Stage Right, waiting for the Otis family.)

MRS. UMNEY: I bid you welcome to your new home at Canterville Chase.

(Otis family follows Mrs. Umney to Center Stage and they all sit down. Mrs. Umney brings them teacups.)

NARRATOR: The Otises were soon seated in the wood-paneled library, sipping tea before a low fire. Mrs. Otis noticed a dull red stain on the floor by the fireplace.

MRS. OTIS: Mrs. Umney, it seems something has been spilled there. Would you be kind enough to see to it?

MRS. UMNEY: Oh madam, I’m afraid that what’s been spilt there cannot be removed so easily as all that. It’s blood. It was on this very spot that Sir Simon de Canterville murdered his wife, the Lady Eleanore, many centuries ago. He himself disappeared a few years later, and was never seen again. Or at least … he was never seen alive. His guilty spirit still haunts this estate. And as for the bloodstain, well, it’s been removed before, but it always returns.

WASHINGTON: Nonsense! Whoever dealt with this stain before didn’t have

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