Fourth Attempt Wins

On December 3rd I was invited to read a ghost story at the second Ghost Stories LIVE! event (I read one at the October 29th Halloween edition of Ghost Stories LIVE!). I agreed. (I am a member of the cast.) So, the next day, after thinking about it overnight, I wrote about an angry ghost in the attic of a house under renovation and restoration where a mother with a young daughter is alone while her husband is away on business. The ghost drives them out of the house in the middle of the night. Not quite what I wanted. So...a few days later I wrote A Christmas Séance during which the ghost of a murdered young man materializes at a séance and not one, but three different people have MURDERER written upon their foreheads. On two of them the word dissipates, but on the third it remains indelibly written. Nope- too long. Late last week attempt three was started with an elderly man, a hoarder, preparing for bed with his faithful dog at his heels. The dog wakes him by barking to alert him to a fire in the kitchen. The man is led to the front door by the dog through the maze of stuff that he's hoarded since his wife died years ago. He collapses on the sidewalk and it taken to the hospital where his daughter arrives- and thinks he's delirious from smoke inhalation when he talks about the dog. He goes to a rehab facility. When she comes to visit he's talking to the dog- only the dog died three years ago of old age. He's been the old man's companion even after death. Again, too long to read at this event.
So...this past Saturday I wrote The Little Gray Ghost which is more along the line of a classic ghost story that would have been told in the Victorian age. It's set in a cemetery with darkness approaching as the caretaker sets out to dig the grave for a society funeral the next day. He's late starting because he had to dig up the grave of a recently deceased young woman after her beau discovers what is interpreted as a disturbance in the soil. With grave robbing rampant he's had to dig up the grave and open the coffin to confirm that the young woman is still in her grave. Now he's alone, it's beginning to snow and grow darker. He digs the grave and catches fleeting glimpses of a child-like figure playing among the gravestones-and then standing at the end of the grave he's digging watching him. Yeah-she's a ghost. No surprise there- it's a ghost story! It's shorter, atmospheric and a little creepy. I'll be reading The Little Gray Ghost, story #4 and the winner because I don't think I have time to write another at this point!
But you never know- maybe there's a fifth ghost lurking within my brain waiting to leap out and shout, "Boo! Write my story!"
We'll have to wait and see (that's my husband's whole attitude toward everything...whereas I'm more a let's get it done type person, but sometimes, with stories, I have to be patient.)