13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days

The Ghost’s Boyfriend

Winston met a girl one night at the sock hop. (This story takes place in modern times. It was an ironic sock hop in the hipster part of town.) They danced under the stars. She got cold so he gave her his jacket. At the end of the night he drove her home. She kissed him good night, but it left him cold. He didn’t think much about this at the time, because he drove away before remembering to get his coat back. He figured that’s what was causing his plummeting body temperature.

The next day he returned to the girl’s house and knocked on the door. A sad old woman answered the door.

“She hasn’t lived here for 50 years,” the sad old woman said. “Go to 666 Dead Man’s Ave. That’s where she is.”

The 50 year thing was a little confusing, the girl looked barely older than him, but Winston really liked that coat — it was a leather bomber jacket, very in style and half price at Nordstrom Rack, but still very expensive — so he went over to Dead Man’s Ave., which was in the cemetery district in the bad part of town.

He found his jacket resting on a grave with a picture of the girl on it. She’d been dead for 50 years, but that’s not the scary part of this story. This had happened to Winston before. He’d been single for a while and spent a lot of time walking in the bad part of town and a decent proportion of the girls he danced with turned out to be dead the whole time.

He put the coat on and immediately felt warmer, despite the fact that its most recent wearer was a ghost. He turned to leave the cemetery but some supernatural force seemed to hold him in place. It was actually the roots of a sentient tree a few feet away from the girls grave, which had wrapped around hisankles.

“My friend wants to talk to you,” the tree said in a creepy tree voice. “Don’t even think about … leave-ing.”

Winston laughed at the pun, because he had a good sense of humor.

A glowing skeleton in a sailor hat materialized in front of the tree. He brandished a flaming sword in Winston’s direction.

“I heard you kissed my girlfriend,” the skeleton said.

“I didn’t know she had a skeleton boyfriend,” Winston said, with a sigh because the kissing strangers who he didn’t know had a boyfriend thing had lately been happening just as often as the kissing dead girls thing. “I didn’t even know she lived at the cemetery.”

“She lived somewhere else,” the tree said. “No one lives in a cemetery. We’re all dead.”

“Stay out of this Danny,” the skeleton said to the sentient tree. “I’m going to chop this dude in half with my skeleton sword.”

Winston put his hands up.

“I didn’t know man,” he said. “Your girl never said anything.”

The skeleton inched forward. His sword radiated with the volcanic heat of the underworld. Winston began to sweat.

“I’m going to cut you in half, bro,” the skeleton said.

Just then the air pressure dropped and a cold wind swept through the cemetery. The girl’s ghost rose from her grave like vapor.

“Leave him alone Sergeant Bone,” she said to the skeleton. “I don’t love you anymore.”

“Stay out of this Sharon,” the skeleton said. “I’m going to send this dude to hell.”

“It won’t make me love you again,” she said.

“Sharon…” the skeleton said, heartache somehow pouring through his dead, empty eye sockets. “I love you…”

Then his skull face twisted into a snarl. He screamed, and lunged toward the ghost girl with his sword.

Winston, who had lately been trying to be more chivalrous, freed himself from the tree roots and dove in front of the ghost girl, who had, of course, safely slipped back into her grave.

The sword passed through his heart with a whoosh. For a second he heard his ancestors scream out in pain. Then a searing heat. A bird pecking on his liver. Then icy cold. He closed his eyes. Blood dripping down his eyelids. Then darkness.

He awoke in bed screaming, bathed in a cold sweat. It was all a dream. He was still wearing the jacket, which still showed singe marks from the skeleton’s flaming sword. There was fresh cemetery dirt on his Nikes. But it was all just a dream.

Winston’s life was pretty normal from then on, except he suddenly found it impossible to fall in love and dogs stopped barking when he walked past. His life always felt strangely empty, but he figured that was a symptom of the time we all live in.

A few years later he went to the doctor for the routine physical he always put off.

“I don’t know how to say this,” the doctor said, before pulling out an x-ray with a large hole in the middle. “But it seems your soul was cleaved in half at some point by a demon’s sword. I’m afraid that after you die you will be doomed to roam the earth as one of the damned for all eternity.”

“Oh,” Winston said.

“Otherwise you’re pretty healthy though,” the doctor said, but this did not make Winston feel better.