Week 1 Storytelling "holiday home"

Once upon a time there was a family of ghosts that lived in the busy city of Hollywood California. The family of three would frequently decided to take a weekend trip out to their old cabin in the woods. The family had bought the once ritzy little cabin back in 1924 when Jim, the father, had made his fortune in the stock market boom of the roaring 20's. Billy, the teenage son, had been slightly skeptical by the purchase of the house due to lack of friends he had living in the general area. As for the wife, Kim, she thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to decorate and design the interior. It also allowed her the chance to escape from all the gossip that constantly saturates Hollywood.  It was on a fateful visit to the cabin in 1928 that there happened to be an accident on the secret military test sight only a couple miles into the woods from the family's cabin. The testing of toxic gases mixed with the swamp gas and slowly enveloped the cabin with the sleeping family inside, ultimately asphyxiating them. Ever since that time they have continued to carry out their normal day to day activities and have befriended and created relationships with those things around them. On this most current visi

t the family started off their vacation like all others, a visit to the graveyard. Billy hated the pit stop at the graveyard but his parents insisted that they should insure their graves had been untouched and have at least three lucky spiders on each of their graves. He was never really a fan of spiders; they gave him the creeps even after his death. Billy was feeling a bit more anxious than usual on walking through the door of the cabin. The full realization that on his last visit he had promised to take the young witch that lived by the bog on a date was suddenly sinking in. It was on the last visit that Billy decided to skip out on the formal diner his parents had planed with the Von Erlaucht ghost family that lived in the castle and ended up running into the cutest witch he had ever seen. He had been curious as to what existed in the bog and had speculated some kind of slug monster or frog demon which sounded way more exciting than some pompous diner party. He was ultimately caught off guard when a black haired girl with cutting emerald eyes jumped out from behind a tree and yelled "BOO" just about scaring the life back into him. The two ended up spending the rest of the two day vacation together and ended with Billy promising her the most amazing haunted date on his return. As he pondered endlessly  he plopped down on the couch and continued to weigh his options; explore the temple of doom, pick poisonous  mushrooms, ding dong ditch the crazy hermit…what to do, what to do…

Henry Webber House, Aspen California

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen,_Colorado

Daniel Case

Bibliography: Tom Gauld map Tom Gauld

Author's Note: This story is based on the "holiday home" map that was illustrated by Tom Gauld. The above link will take you to the map's webpage. The map depicts a home in the middle of a forest  that harbors a verity of ghostly and scary things. This map reminded me of all the ghost adventures I shared with my friends when I was back in high school and that is why I chose the map. I also felt as though with the map I had more creative freedom to make a story. I picked the crazy hermit, poisonous mushrooms,temple of doom, the bog, castle, witch and graveyard all as motifs from the map. I chose the ding dong ditching of the hermit, picking poisonous mushrooms and exploring the temple of doom because I found these things to valid ghostly date ideas.