Boo! Okay, now that that's out of the way. I'm Gil Haverkamp, and I've driven a school bus in upstate New York for nineteen years. Every October, my route takes the third graders out to the pumpkin farm, forty minutes each way on back roads, and every October, somebody in the back yells "GIL, TELL A SCARY ONE!" And I do. By now I've got more than I can tell in one trip.

My son, who's away at college now, talked me into writing some of them down in 1997 and putting them on the computer, and since then I've heard from teachers all over the country who read them to their classes on Halloween, and from a Cub Scout den in Georgia that reads them around the fire every year. That tickles me more than I can tell you.

I add a new one every Friday in October. The first new one goes up Friday, October 1.

The Extra Stop
The one the kids ask for most. A foggy road, a stone wall, and a little girl who wasn't on my list. (Right below.)

The Lantern on Hemlock Hill
Two brothers, a dare, and a light on a hill where nobody lives.

Grandpa's Chair
A not-so-scary one, for the little ones. Also for me.

This happened on a Tuesday in late October, the year I started driving, on the way back from the pumpkin farm. You can believe it or not. The kids on that bus believed it, and so do I.

The fog came up out of the creek bottoms about three in the afternoon, the way it does in the fall around here. One minute you can see the hills, and the next minute you can't see your own hood ornament. I slowed down to about fifteen miles an hour and turned the headlights on, and the kids in the back quit singing and got quiet, because kids know when a grown-up is concentrating.

We were on Quarry Road, which goes along an old stone wall for about two miles. There aren't any houses on that stretch. There haven't been since before I was born. There's no stop on Quarry Road. I know every stop on my route, and there is no stop there.

So I was surprised to see the little girl.

She was standing right by the wall, on the right side of the road, where a stop would be if there was one. She was maybe seven or eight. She had on a long dark coat, too big for her, like it was somebody's old one, and a knitted hat, and she was holding one arm straight out, the way you'd flag down a bus.

Now, you don't pass a child on the side of the road in the fog. Not ever. I put on my flashers and stopped the bus and opened the door. The cold came in, and the fog came in with it, and everybody on the bus leaned over to look.

"Honey," I said, "are you lost? Do you need a ride somewhere?"

She didn't get on. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me, very serious, and then she took that arm she'd been holding out and pointed. Down the road. Into the fog. The way we were going.

And then she shook her head. Just once. No.

I looked where she was pointing. I couldn't see a thing. And when I looked back at the wall, she wasn't there.

I didn't see her walk away. Thirty-one kids on that bus, all of them looking out the right side, and not one of them saw her go. There was just the wall, and the fog, and a little pile of red maple leaves where she'd been standing.

I closed the door. I'll tell you the truth, my hands weren't steady. And I didn't drive on. I don't know why, exactly, except that she'd been so serious about it. I got out, and I told the kids to stay put, and I walked up the road ahead of the bus with my flashlight.

About a hundred yards on, around the bend, there was a tree down across the road. A big old oak, all the way across, both lanes, right at the height of a school bus windshield. It must have come down that afternoon. In that fog, at fifteen miles an hour, I'd have never seen it in time.

We waited for the highway department, and they cut it up, and I got everybody home an hour late. The parents were not happy about that until they heard why.

That weekend I asked around. Old Mr. Dutcher down at the feed mill, who was ninety if he was a day, told me there used to be a farm on Quarry Road, a long time ago, before the war. A family with a little girl who used to stand out by the stone wall every afternoon in her big brother's old coat, waiting for her daddy to come home in the milk truck, and waving at every car that went by so they'd slow down on the curve. The farm's long gone now. So is the family.

"She was always looking out for folks," Mr. Dutcher said. "Sounds like she still is."

I still drive Quarry Road. I still slow down by the wall. And every October, on the way back from the pumpkin farm, I stop the bus for just a second right about there, and open the door, and say "Thank you, honey," out loud to nobody.

The kids think I'm doing it for the story. That's fine. Let them think so.

~ THE END ~

1. Go slower than you think you should. Then go a little slower than that.
2. Get quieter when it gets scary, not louder. They'll lean in.
3. Make it happen somewhere they know. A road they drive on. The woods behind the school.
4. Right before the last line, stop. Count to three in your head. Then say it.
5. Always end so the little ones can sleep. A ghost who's looking out for somebody is scarier than you'd think, and a lot kinder than a monster.