👻 “Gus the Ghost and the Terrifying Tenants” 🏚️
A spooky, silly tale about a scaredy-phantasm.

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Deep in the quiet countryside, tucked between crooked trees and fields that whispered in the wind, stood a creaky, lopsided old house. This house was not empty. Oh no. It had a resident—a ghost named Gus.

Gus wasn’t your typical ghost. He didn’t whooo through the halls or rattle chains dramatically. He preferred knitting, reading romance novels, and keeping the cobwebs symmetrical. He’d been haunting—er, living—there peacefully for decades, and the only thing he feared was…

Humans.

Loud, unpredictable, smelly snack-leaving, flashlight-wielding humans.

So when, one fine moonless evening, he heard the sound of tires crunching gravel, Gus peeked through the attic wall with trembling ectoplasm.

“Oh no,” he gasped. “They’ve found me.”

Out stepped a family. A cheerful mom, a dad with a mustache that screamed “DIY projects,” and two kids carrying boxes and a tablet playing dance music. The horror!

Gus did the only thing he could. He hid—inside a dusty wardrobe next to a moth colony he’d been mentoring.

But the humans wouldn’t go away. They moved in. They repainted the walls. They put up string lights. Gus was traumatized.

He tried all the standard ghostly tactics to scare them away, but he wasn’t very good at it:

• When he moaned “BOOOO!” in the hallway, the little girl yelled, “Alexa, play spooky sounds,” and danced to it.
• When he floated through the walls at night, the dad just blamed “the draft.”
• He even spelled out GET OUT on the bathroom mirror… only to hear the mom say, “Aw, someone left a love message! How cute!”

Gus was losing his ghostly grip.

But one day, something strange happened. The boy dropped his phone under the bed and reached for it—only to see Gus hiding under there, quivering like a haunted pudding.

They both screamed.

And then stared.

And then screamed again.

But instead of running, the boy blinked and said, “Wait… are you scared of us?”

“…Maybe,” Gus muttered, embarrassed.

The boy introduced himself as Theo, and he promised not to tell anyone—on one condition: Gus had to tell him ghost stories at night.

Soon, Gus had a full-time gig as the unofficial bedtime storyteller. The girl started leaving snacks (he couldn’t eat, but he appreciated the gesture), and the mom unknowingly praised his curtain-fluttering technique as “a lovely breeze.” Gus even got a custom nameplate on the attic door: “Gus’ Ghostquarters”.

And though he still jumped at the sound of the vacuum cleaner, Gus finally found something more powerful than fear—friendship. Even with humans.

Sometimes the scariest thing… is making a new friend. 👻

Note:
Thank you for reading “Gus the Ghost and the Terrifying Tenants”! This is a story in a series created for avid readers and English learners who want to enjoy captivating tales while practicing their language skills. Stay tuned for more stories and language tips to enhance your journey!

Explore more short stories in English and Spanish by visiting the section:
Short Stories / Cuentos Cortos

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When the world feels dull, your mind restless, or your heart heavy, let a story be your escape. Just one page, one sentence, one word—and suddenly, you’re somewhere new, where imagination breathes life into the ordinary and turns the simplest moments into magic.

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