The Daring Book for Girls

by Andrea J. Buchanan; Alexis Seabrook; Miriam Peskowitz

  Telling Ghost Stories

  SO: YOU’VE PITCHED YOUR TENT, set up your campfire, and toasted your s’mores. Or maybe you’ve made a sleep-over fort at your best friend’s house, played Truth or Dare and Bloody Mary, and gotten out the flashlights and sleeping bags. What next? Two words: Ghost stories.

  Everybody loves a scary story, especially late at night around a flickering campfire, or in the dark of an unfamiliar living room with a small flashlight illuminating your face. And you may have noticed, if you’ve been on a few camp-outs or sleepovers, that many of these stories have similar themes: a ghost out for revenge or literally haunted by grief; a lonely road or abandoned house; an element of shock or surprise; and just enough true-life details to make it all seem believable in the dead of night.

  Some stories involve real people and places—and supposedly real sightings—like the ghost of Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, who is said to haunt both the Tower of London, where she was imprisoned and beheaded in 1536, and the Hever Castle in Kent, her childhood home and the setting of her first encounter with the king who would later sentence her to death. Other stories are about more anonymous ghosts—regular people who lived in the not-too-distant past and had believably scary things happen to them. And don’t discount the shock value of a good old urban legend—supposedly real stories of supposedly real people who had scary things happen to them: the woman who died of spider bites after a spider nested in her hair; the man who picked up a hitchhiker only to discover that she was a ghost haunting the highway where she had been killed in a car wreck 40 years before; the girl who died when her shrink-to-fit jeans shrunk so much while she wore them that she was crushed by their constricting force.

  Whichever kind of story you choose to tell, here are some tips for making up good ones, and telling them right.

  ELEMENTS OF A GHOST STORY

  Mix and match these common elements to make your own ghost story.

  Common characters Common ghost features Common ghost motivations Common settings Common situations

  A young girl

  An old woman

  A camper

  A person driving alone

  Two friends who think they’re braver than they are

  A person from your city’s past

  A distant relative

  A hitchhiker Able to be sensed by animals and children

  Haunting the place where they died

  Appearing at night and vanishing by dawn

  Playful or prankish—playing music or moving things to scare people Ghost needs to find an object or person they left behind

  Ghost needs to warn the main character about something

  Ghost needs to deliver a comforting message to the main character

  Ghost is out for revenge Your house

  An abandoned mine

  A graveyard

  The woods

  Your local scary place (cranky neighbor’s house, the old creek, etc.)

  A long, empty hallway

  A castle

  Any isolated, spooky place Going out alone at night

  Being alone in a spooky place

  Getting trapped in a haunted house overnight

  Picking up a hitchhiker

  Disregarding a ghost’s warning or a local legend

  Triggering events that summon a ghost

  Don’t forget to use spooky ghost story words, like graveyard, curse, legend, bone-chilling, creepy, ominous, deadly, mysterious, eerie, grisly, gruesome, blood-curdling…anything that adds to the scary mood.

  Using realistic details can make your story even spookier—having the main character be a girl who used to go to your school years ago, or having the story take place in your town, or down the street from your house, lends the tale an air of believability that draws your listeners in. Sometimes it’s helpful to have a friend in on the story—so that when you end your story with something like, “The girl was never found” (said in a somber, dramatic voice, of course), your friend can scream out, “I’m here!!!!” and make everyone else shriek.

  TELLING IT RIGHT

  Make sure you prepare—practice ahead of time, and coordinate with a friend if you’re going to be using a buddy for maximum scaring. When you tell your story, speak slowly, in a serious voice, and look at everyone you’re speaking to. Make sure to take your audience into consideration: if there are little sisters or younger girls there, you might want to save the super-scary stuff for after they’re asleep. And even if your crowd is a bit older, seriously scary stories can make for some sleepless nights. It’s fun to make yourself a little scared, but if a listener finds your tale too frightening, it’s also okay to turn on the light and remind everyone that it’s just a story.

  Some famous ghost stories in classic literature:

  Edgar Allen Poe’s

  The Tell Tale Heart (1843)

  Washington Irving’s

  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820)

  W.W. Jacobs’

  The Monkey’s Paw (1902)

  Charles Dickens’

  A Christmas Carol (1843)

  Oscar Wilde’s

  The Canterville Ghost (1887)

  Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1602)

  OR IS IT??????

  In this passage from Act I, Scene V, of the play Hamlet, we witness one of the spookiest scenes in all of Shakespeare: Hamlet is confronted by the ghost of his father, the former King of Denmark, who tries to tell Hamlet that he was murdered by his own brother.

  ACT I. SCENE V

  GHOST

  I am thy father’s spirit,

  Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,

  And for the day confined to fast in fires,

  Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

  Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid

  To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

  I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

  Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

  Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

  Thy knotted and combined locks to part

  And each particular hair to stand on end,

  Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

  But this eternal blazon must not be

  To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!

  If thou didst ever thy dear father love—

  HAMLET

  O God!

  GHOST

  Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

  HAMLET

  Murder!

  GHOST

  Murder most foul, as in the best it is;

  But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

  HAMLET

  Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift

  As meditation or the thoughts of love,

  May sweep to my revenge.

  GHOST

  I find thee apt;

  And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed

  That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,

  Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear:

  ‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark

  Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown.

  HAMLET

  O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

  GHOST

  Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,—

  O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power

  So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust

  The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen:

  O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!

  From me, whose love was of that dignity

  That it went hand in hand even with the vow

  I made to her in marriage, and to decline

  Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor

  To those of mine!

&
nbsp; But virtue, as it never will be moved,

  Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,

  So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,

  Will sate itself in a celestial bed,

  And prey on garbage.

  But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;

  Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,

  My custom always of the afternoon,

  Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,

  With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,

  And in the porches of my ears did pour

  The leperous distilment; whose effect

  Holds such an enmity with blood of man

  That swift as quicksilver it courses through

  The natural gates and alleys of the body,

  And with a sudden vigour doth posset

  And curd, like eager droppings into milk,

  The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;

  And a most instant tetter bark’d about,

  Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,

  All my smooth body.

  Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand

  Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d:

  Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

  Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,

  No reckoning made, but sent to my account

  With all my imperfections on my head:

  O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!

  If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;

  Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

  A couch for luxury and damned incest.

  But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,

  Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

  Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven

  And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,

  To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!

  The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,

  And ‘gins to pale his uneffectual fire:

  Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.

  How to Change a Tire

  CHANGING A TIRE is one of those life skills that never seem essential until the moment you need it. This is good thing to learn even if you are a ways off from having your driver’s license.

  1. The car should be parked on level ground, out of danger’s way, with the engine off and the parking brake on. Ask everyone to hop out of the car to make it lighter.

  2. Check to make sure you have all the necessary equipment: a functioning spare tire, a tire jack, and a cross wrench. If you are missing any of these you will unfortunately have to wait for the tow truck.

  3. If you have tire blocks, put them under the other tires to keep the car in place. Mediumsized rocks work too.

  4. Start to loosen the lug nuts; these are the nuts that keep the hubcap on. Not all cars have hubcaps, but look and you’ll see what needs to be loosened. Put the lug wrench on each lug nut. Remember “righty-tighty, lefty-loosey” to guide you which way to turn the lug wrench.

  If your car’s lug nuts were last tightened with a hydraulic lug nut tightener in a mechanic’s shop, they will be very tight. Jump on the cross wrench. Get everyone in your family to jump on the cross wrench and in any other way work the lug nuts free. Some very organized people keep a length of hollow pipe in their car, which can be attached to the cross wrench for extra leverage. If you have it, WD-40 also helps. Some people swear that in a pinch, pouring cola over the lug nuts will do the trick. Caution: don’t take the nuts all the way off, just loosen them.

  5. The jack will keep the car up and off the ground while the tire is changed. Each car has a slightly different way to do this, so consult the manual if it’s nearby. In general, there’s a solid metal plate on the car frame, in front of back tire frame and just behind the front tire. Once you’ve found this, the cool part begins, in which you raise the car.

  Put the jack right under the metal plate, and start pumping. The car will lift off the ground. From time to time make sure that the jack stays connected to the metal plate. Stop pumping when the car tire is 6-8 inches off the ground.

  6. Now you can remove the lug nuts entirely. Stash them somewhere safe. Grab the tire and pull it toward you. It will be dirty. You can clean up after.

  7. Pick up the spare tire and align its holes with the bolts. Push the spare onto the tire bolts until it absolutely stops. Replace the lug nuts and tighten, but not all the way.

  8. Carefully pump down the jack to lower the car, stopping when all four tires are back on the ground.

  9. Now tighten the lug nuts. Don’t tighten them around the circle; instead, tighten the first, then tighten the nut across from it, and continue on from there. You’re done.

  Make Your Own Quill Pen

  THE MAIN INGREDIENT in a quill pen is, of course, the quill. As not all of us live in close proximity to turkeys, crows, or geese, it may be necessary to ask your local poultry farmer for a spare feather. In a pinch, you can try an art supply store or a calligraphy studio. Wherever you find your feather, it’s best to get more than one, just in case. The other tools you’ll need are a sharp knife or razor, a cutting board, and a pencil.

  MAKING THE QUILL

  Hold the tip of the quill in boiling water for a minute or two to soften it up so that it can be cut without splitting or breaking off. (It should become soft and somewhat pliable, like your fingernails after a hot bath.) You may also strip some of the feathers off to make room for your hand to hold the quill.

  For this you will need adult supervision. Use the knife to slice horizontally across the end of the quill. This angled cut should begin about an inch from the end of the shaft on the underside of the quill.

  Make a second cut at a steeper angle, about a half-inch from the end, to shape the nib (the “point” of the pen). Clean out the hollow part, scraping out any fluff of fuzz from inside the quill.

  Use the knife to make a slit in the middle of the nib.

  Use your pencil to open the slit slightly by pressing up gently from underneath. Lay the nib on a cutting board and slice the tip off so that it is square. At this point you may refine the nib by further cutting down the angled sides or using fine sandpaper to gently smooth out rough edges.

  USING YOUR QUILL PEN

  It’s a good idea to practice on newsprint or water-color paper before moving on to fancier papers. You may want to pencil in some lines or margins as guides before you begin, but this is not required. Dip your quill into the ink you’ve bought, and then begin to write on your paper. Try not to drench your quill with the ink—the nib should be saturated just enough to write a few letters at a time. Otherwise you’ll get blots, drips, and splats. Writing with a quill pen is a leisurely task; the ink takes a while to dry, and the nib will need re-dipping every word or so. Depending on the angle of your nib and the way you hold your pen, your quill will make thin lines as well as thick lines, so feel free to experiment. Practice by writing your favorite sentence—a famous quote or favorite saying—over and over until you can write it without any blots or errors.

  Hiking

  IN THE 1920s, work began to create and protect a system of National Scenic Trails in the United States. As a result, the 3,100-mile Continental Divide Trail runs from Canada to Mexico, with stops at Yellowstone and National Glacier Parks. The Appalachian Trail can be hiked from Georgia all the way to Maine. And the glorious Pacific Crest Trail winds through the top of the Sierra Nevada range and hits over 13,000 feet above sea level. These are the prized wilderness trails that hikers dream of.

  The wilderness is the ideal locale for pulling yourself across outcroppings of bedrock, trudging through leaves, or nimbly hopping over a stream. There are glorious discoveries to be made on smaller and more ordinary trails closer to home. All you need are your sneakers, some water, a map, a compass, and a sense of adventure.

  1. Head to a Trail Head

  Most trail heads—that’s the beginning of the trail—have a posted map to view w
hat the hike entails. The map describes clues, like colorful marks on trees, signs, and places where other trails cut in, that will help you keep track of your location.

  Topo (topography) lines—the mysterious squiggly lines on the map—show elevation. Trace your finger along each line, look at the lines alongside, and you’ll start to see peaks and troughs. Each continuous topo line is the same elevation. Lines that lay close together indicate a steeply rising terrain. Lines spread farther apart signal a lighter slope. If your trail line crosses many topo lines, you’re in for a steep walk. A trail that follows the curve of topo lines is taking a single altitude, and the walking is relatively flat.

  Getting lost and finding your way home is part of the journey and a compass should help you figure out how to get back on the path. Match the dial on the compass so it reads north wherever the needle points, and turn the map, too, to line up with the compass’ north. Start early in the day and bring a whistle along if you’re worried.

  2. What to Do

  In one sense, hiking is just walking on a footpath that often angles up, but in the wilderness. If you look closely at the trees you should be able to see how they are different from one another. With a good guide to identification you will be able to figure out the various trees by leaves, bark, and fruit. You can also see life at its smallest by turning over rocks and digging into streams. You may want to try to figure out which animals have passed by the trail by identifying their tracks and scat (droppings).

  3. What to Look Out For

  Once upon a time, mythology has it that children were given shovels and machetes, sent out after breakfast, and told to clear their own trails and not come home for dinner until six o’clock. While clearing a trail makes an inspiring metaphor, we can’t advise it for two reasons. First, most wilderness is now protected, and we hikers are asked to stay on the trail and leave the homes of animals and plants untrodden.