Given the exercise of writing a short  story about a ghost who got things wrong, most of us would still tend to think along the traditional lines of haunting but with chains that didn’t rattle or walls that were ghost resistant etc.,  however one member got the requirement spot-on and came-up with the following:

A GHOST OF A CHANCE  by Jacqui Mount.

                                      

          “Not you again – what went wrong this time?”

           The chief of the Ghastly Ghost Gang sounded very annoyed.

          “I – I'm so sorry your Ghostliness but the children just attacked my cobwebby corner of the crypt with water pistols and washed me right down through the iron grating,  I didn't get to utter one ghastly groan before it all happened”.

          “Were you nodding off again? That's the third haunting this month you've been caught out”.

          Our sorry young ghost wrapped his wet wispy ectoplasm closer around him. He averted his empty eye sockets away from his angry ghoulish master. He knew he was in dire straits as his last two hauntings had also been in cold, draughty dungeons similar to the dingy crypt of last night.  Each time he'd been attacked by the same group of mini-ghostbusters who had seen the eponymous films on their televisions and taken up the challenge with gusto.

          He'd been battered by baseball bats, scorched with fireworks and sprayed with weed-killer. He knew he hadn't nodded off because he was frightened of the dark and the damp corners where he was festooned in thick grey webs occupied by large hairy spiders that terrified him. So he spent the whole night rigid with fear.

          His mum wanted him to be a ghost writer when he grew up, but his dad insisted he started at the very bottom of the spectral ladder. Learning the ghostly arts of transparency, refraction, ectoplasm and apparition. He had finally to get an A*grade as a fully fledged phantom. That automatically led to a part in a Harry Potter film.

          His dad's plan was for him to reach this spectral height as soon as possible. Even when he was just a phantom pregnancy his dad had his future planned out. His mum had been a gentle phosphorous ghost glowing luminously as she flowed from room to room in a Walt Disney castle. Appearing and re-appearing at the turret windows throughout the film 'Hallow'en'. None of your naff pumpkins, witches or tatty skeletons rattling around.  She was sheer photocromic class with a capital 'C'. Unreal of course but so elegant with it.

          By now we realise that his dad is none other than the leader of the Ghastly Ghost Gang – His Ghostliness. He's been in every Harry Potter film in various ghostly forms but is due to retire next year when the final one reaches its climax. He looked to his son to follow him up to the apex of the Gang but alas, it was not to be.

          He looked at the last of the hauntings on his list. All of them involved crypts and dungeons, caves and caverns. He sighed. Then suddenly he noticed right at the bottom of the page, written with invisible ink was the ideal haunting for his nervous young ghostling. How could he have missed it?  He gave a hollow laugh and wrapped his see-through elegantly spun silver web - covered arm around his trembling son's damp, smelly shroud and hugged him.

              “Come, come, Gruesome my son, I've the ideal haunting for you, at the local fun-fair.   A permanent position riding the ghost train as their leading phantom, frightening all those little ghostbuster monsters that have been the bane of your non-life.  So a real Ghost of a chance for you at last.  PHANTASMAGORICAL!!"