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Ted Chaires, along with a group of other boys gathered around the campfire. They’d been camping the past three nights. The air was crisp and 2019 was coming to an end.
Mr. Cooper, a twenty-eight-year-old single dad, handed out marshmallows. Some of the other kids had chocolate and graham crackers to make s’mores, but Ted liked to roast his marshmallows by themselves.
“Okay, boys,” Mr. Cooper said. “I’m going to tell you a spooky story that’s true.”
“What’s it about?” Craig Stone asked.
“It’s a ghost story.”
Craig’s eyes widened. “I hope it’s not too scary.”
“Quit being a baby,” Craig’s older brother, Doyle, said. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
Ted wasn’t sure the boy was right. He’d always believed ghosts were real although he’d never actually seen one.
“It all started in my grandfather’s house,” Mr. Cooper began. “One evening during early spring in the nineteenth century, my grandfather, who was a farmer and had just finished working the crops. When he walked into the house, he heard an eerie sound, but when he went to investigate, he couldn’t find where the noise came from, so my grandpa chalked it up as the wind.
The next day he heard the same noise. He asked my grandma, Thelma, if she’d heard the sound. She told him it was the wind. He didn’t think so but couldn’t prove otherwise.
On the third day, he went to the basement. A ghostly figure emerged with an axe and chased grandpa through the house. Turns out the figure was his grandfather who was murdered with an axe.”
“What happened to the ghost?” Ted heard someone ask.
“He continues to chase anyone who enters the house.”
“And you’ve seen him?” Craig asked.
“No.”
“Then how can you believe the story?” Doyle asked.
Mr. Cooper stood, wielding an axe. “Because I am the ghost.”
Several kids screamed. Craig ran into the woods. Doyle chased after him.
Mr. Cooper laughed.
A moment later, Craig and Doyle returned.
“Is that story real?” Craig asked.
“Sure is,” Mr. Cooper said. “Except for the part about me being the ghost.”
Ted smiled. “Actually, none of it is real.”
Why did Ted think the story wasn’t real?
Hint: Nineteenth Century
Mr. Cooper said the story took place in the Spring of the nineteenth century. His grandfather wouldn’t have been born yet, because the nineteenth century was during the 1800s.