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Being a Ghostly Ghoul
This article was originally screamed at me in reverse by my own reflection in a dream.
 Hello and boo, my name is Scary Larry and I’m a big ghost. Any doctor is required to tell you that, when you die, you spend a long time trapped between the peaceful world of the living and the dark, dark world of the dark, dark dead. What I thought would be an eternity of moving dolls ever-so-slightly and hiding inside of old paintings turned out to be a lot of those things but also much more. Here are eleven things no one will tell you about becoming a freaky ghost.


Photographic proof of a ghost. ©Ghouly Images.
1. You can eat as much cereal as you want, and all of it is FREE.This might be more of a death hack than a thing all ghosts do. I was really good at hacking in life, so this makes sense. Once I put a boat motor on my longboard to make it go faster in the water and it worked great until I died. Here’s a quiz: what do you do when you are a ghost? Bingo: you haunt houses. Here is another quiz: what is literally in literally every house? Bango: cereal. You can use your ability to walk through walls (newsflash: this hurts a lot) to walk through locked cupboards and fridges and the like to find cereal, milk and blueberries. You can also use milk to write the word WILLIS* on the kitchen floor.

*I am haunting my friend Willis.
2. When you become a ghost, you don’t automatically have chains.A lot of people believe that dead-heads (ghosts) like to rattle their ghostly chains at you. This is not true at all. When you wake up as a ghost, you are completely naked and so cold. You’re gonna want to grab anything you can grab and wrap them around your colorless body to keep warm. Sometimes that means chains. I was talking to another ghost at school (you have to go to ghost school for ten months) and she said she LITERALLY died wearing a bunch of chains, but when she woke up as a ghost? No chains! How crazy is that? I wonder how she is doing. Anyway, once you find good chains, you can use them to break into cupboards and get free cereal.
3. You can pick what kind of ghost you want to be.When you graduate from ghost school, they let you pick between Ghost or Skeleton. They also ask if you want to go back in time to watch your own death. THIS IS A TRICK. What they do NOT tell you is that you can literally go back to any time in history and watch whatever you want. They just want you to learn from your mistakes or some big bunk. If I knew this was a trick, I would have went back to 1981 and watched my dad take my mom on their first date.
4. Everyone can see and hear you and it’s just like being alive.One thing I definitely used to believe was that, when you become a ghouly-boy (ghost), it’s harder for you to go hang out with your buddies who aren’t big ghosts. Not true AT ALL. I woke up as a cold, naked ghost in the longboard unit of Long Island Jewish Hospital and immediately ran to Willis’s house to start haunting his cereal. When Willis answered the door he was surprised for, like, a hot minute and then we just hung out like old times before I had to go to school.
5. Ghosts love to watch cooking shows.Sometimes I have trouble figuring out if something is a ghost thing or if I’m just pulling from the zeitgeist, ya know? Anyway, cooking shows rock. I want to be a chef.
6. Sometimes ghosts will replace the word “you” with “boo.”Spooky-Daddies and Haunty-Mommas (ghosts) will sometimes say things like “nice to meet boo” and “what do boo think of my chains?” or “ice to meet boo” (this one ghost died in some ice, I guess?) I tried to do this at first but it’s exhausting and I need my energy if I’m gonna stay up all night to scream and eat cereal and solve my own murder (I think I was murdered.)
7. You can’t pet your dog.This one is no bueno and just sad.
8. You can still go on the computer.A fun part of being murdered is that you can go on all of your social medias and whatnot and read all of the nice things people are saying about you. This kid I haven’t spoken to in a million years who I kind of thought was a jag wrote “nice dude RIP” on my wall which was pretty nice considering he could have done nothing at all. Solid dude.
9. You don’t have to go to work.Another thing no one tells boo about dying is that you can straight-up stop going to work. I tried to go back to RedBox HQ, where I used to repair busted RedBoxes, but Carlo told me to not even bother and to stop rattling my chains at people. Real low blow, Carlo. Better keep an eye on your cereal.
10. You can come back to life whenever you want.Probably the most important thing I learned about being a body-chucker (ghost) is that, if you ever feel like you’re done being a ghost, you can come back to life. I guess everyone just loves being a ghost because of the free cereal and no work. Also, when you are a ghost you can break into the police station at night and tamper with evidence regarding your own murder case, and who would give that up? Also, you can fly.
11. Two words: Monster. Mash.
If you think you “get” the song Monster Mash you are dead wrong, hombre. I listened to it in the car this morning (ghosts can drive cars) and it fucking hit me like a murder weapon to my head. That song is so on the money. If you want to feel what it’s like to be dead but you still want to pay for cereal, do yourself a big favor and rent the song Monster Mash. It won’t take you all the way but it’ll give you an idea.
I hope boo enjoyed this list of ghostly facts. Have a happy Halloween, which we call Christmas. See you in hell!




- “Scary” Larry Ghoulihan
Thank You Writing
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