Lost A Bet & found a Ghost Bestie

 

Gosh! I lost the bet in the battle of truth or dare & my friends told me to visit the haunted place located at the end of our street. With my breath held so tight I could feel my ribs complaining, I stood up and began moving… toward that crooked, dark house everyone swore was cursed.

The streetlamp at the corner flickered like it was having a seizure. Wind chimes on the porch were ringing even though there was no breeze. Every step made the gravel crunch louder than my heartbeat. I kept telling myself: “Just five minutes inside, take a selfie with something spooky, and run.”

I pushed the half-open door. It groaned like an old man waking up from a nap. Inside smelled of wet wood, old books, and… oddly… vanilla cupcakes? Weird.

Creepy things started happening right away: a shadow slid across the wall too fast to be mine, floorboards creaked in the room above me even though I was alone, and somewhere a clock ticked backward.

I was doing okay—mostly—until I turned the corner into what must’ve been the dining room.

“BO!!”

“Ahhhhhhh!!”

I screamed so loud my voice cracked. A figure was standing right in front of me holding a torch (the old-school flashlight kind), beam pointed straight at my face.

Not gonna lie… he wasn’t scary.

Kinda cute, actually.

Messy white-blond hair floating like he was underwater, big round eyes, and a sheepish half-smile. The classic bedsheet ghost look, but the sheet was slightly too short, showing striped socks and sneakers underneath.

I clutched my chest, gasping. “You… you almost killed me!”

He lowered the torch awkwardly. “Sorry… force of habit. New people don’t usually come in screaming first.”

I finally remembered how lungs work and sucked in air. “What’s… what’s your name?”

He looked down at his own glowing sneakers like they were suddenly the most interesting thing in the universe. “Casper,” he mumbled.

I blinked. “Wait. Like… *the* Casper?”

He sighed. “Yeah. That one. Don’t start with the friendly ghost jokes, I’ve heard them all since 1939.”

I bit my lip to stop grinning. He drifted over to a broken dining table covered in floating papers, old ledgers, fountain pens scribbling by themselves. He looked exhausted.

I took one careful step closer. “You okay? You look… kinda long-faced.”

He gave a tiny, sad laugh. “That’s just ghost physics. But yeah. I’ve got work to finish. Always work. Eternity sounded cool until I realized it comes with deadlines.”

I stared. “You’re telling me even ghosts have to-do lists?”

“Worse,” he said, waving at the floating paperwork. “I’m the unpaid accountant for every spirit in a ten-kilometer radius. Someone has to keep track of who’s haunting who, unfinished business quotas, who still owes moonlight rent… it never ends.”

I couldn’t help it. I snorted.

He glanced up, surprised.

“Sorry,” I said quickly, “it’s just… here I thought only us mortals were cursed with adulting forever.”

A tiny smirk appeared. “Welcome to the club.”

And then—because I’m an idiot when I’m nervous—I started cracking the dumbest jokes I knew.

“Why don’t ghosts like rain?”  

“…Why?”  

“It dampens their spirits.”

He groaned. But the corner of his mouth twitched.

“What kind of music do ghosts like?”  

He sighed dramatically. “Don’t—”  

“Sheet music!”

He actually laughed. A soft, surprised sound that made the floating papers wobble like they were giggling too.

I kept going. Terrible puns. Ghost puns. Accountant puns. (“Why did the ghost get promoted? He was outstanding in his field… of ectoplasm.”)

After maybe the tenth one he finally cracked a real smile—small, shy, but real. The room felt suddenly less cold.

We talked until the moon had moved across the broken window. I didn’t even notice the time.

Eventually I glanced at my phone. 1:47 a.m.  

“Crap. My parents are gonna kill me worse than any ghost ever could.”

Casper drifted closer. “You… should go.”

I nodded, suddenly feeling weirdly sad about leaving a haunted house.

“Hey,” I said at the doorway. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Promise. I still owe you like… fifty more terrible jokes.”

He floated there quietly for a second.

Then, quick as a flicker, he said, “Yes!”

And for the first time that night, he sounded genuinely excited.

I grinned. “It’s a date, Casper.”

He ducked his head again, cheeks faintly glowing. “It’s… not a date. Ghosts don’t date.”

“Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that, Mr. Friendly Accountant.”

I slipped out into the night, heart racing for a completely different reason than when I’d arrived.

Behind me, very softly, I heard him whisper to the empty house:

“…Tomorrow then.”

And somewhere in the darkness, a single floating pen wrote something on a ledger and underlined it twice.

I smiled all the way home.

The end… or maybe just the beginning. 😏👻