There was an old, rickety treehouse that stood at the edge of a dense, mysterious forest. The children in town had always been drawn to the treehouse, but nobody dared enter it, for it was said to be haunted. Legend told that a trickster ghost named Jasper lived inside it, and he played tricks on any that would dare enter.
Two years later, it was a bright sunny day. Two brave friends, Emma and Max, decided that it was time to be brave and conquer their hidden fears from the visits to the haunted treehouse. With a lot of fear but much more excitement in their hearts, both grabbed their torches and left.
The jungle grew darker around the treehouse as they approached, and the trees threw great, ghostly shadows. Max hesitated at the bottom of the wooden ladder, but his sister’s determination made him carry on up into the treehouse.
Inside, it was a dirty, dusty room full of cobwebs hanging from the corners. The air was musty, and all about, there were old, battered toys. With their flashlights, Emma and Max moved further inside the house, casting weird shadows on the walls. They both knew that the legend of Jasper was nothing more than a spooky story, but the place still gave them chills.
The whole treehouse creaked and groaned suddenly as they hit the center; it sounded as if the real walls of the treehouse were whispering secrets. Emma and Max looked at each other, and then they laughed, feeling relieved from the nervousness.
As they prepared to leave, the room filled with a soft, ghostly voice.
“Who dares enter my domain?”
said the voice, coming from all over and nowhere at once. The children felt stuck to the ground with fear, for the voice seemed to have come from nowhere and everywhere at once. It was Jasper, the prankish ghost.
Max stammered,
“W-We didn’t mean to disturb you, Mr. Jasper. We were just curious.”
Suddenly, there was a dim, soft figure that had appeared before them. Semi-transparently, his form was visible to them. His twinkling eye and grin from one side of his cheeks to another betrayed mischief.
“Well, I dare say curiosity is a very dangerous thing,”
he said as he drew nearer, floating towards them.
Emma, trying to be brave, asked, “What do you want, Mr. Jasper?”
Jasper’s eyes twinkled as he replied, “I’ve been alone in the treehouse for so long, and I wished that someone would just play with me. I’m not a mean ghost—just a little lonesome,” he said.
The children hesitated for a bit, still quaking in their fright. But then, when Jasper wasn’t so scared, he said,
“We could use a new friend, and we promise not to be so scared of you.”
Jasper smiled even broader. “And if you’re not scary, we can have fun! In a scary, scary, scary house! Whoo-hoo!” He clapped his transparent hands, and the treehouse immediately began moving by itself. Toys started moving by themselves, and in the moonlit world, they started some kind of magical dance.
The children laughed and played all the games that were inside and around the tree house. Something that seemed a scary and utterly horrible place before had, in the span of the last hours, turned into something more of the land of magic games. The children soon forgot about their fear.
So the hours passed, and the darkness of the night prevailed. When they felt it was the time to go, Emma and Max took leave of Jasper, who had promised that he was going to be visiting them in their dreams. So, down that ladder, both of them climbed with their hearts much lighter than they had ever expected them to be.
As soon as he hit the ground and turned around to face the treehouse, it lightened up and fell back into its menacing and abandoned appearance. But they knew that within its premises lived a friendly ghost, just looking for companionship.
Since that day, Emma, Max, and Jasper became the bestest of friends. They used to hang out in that treehouse often, whether it be with funny, exciting news or heaps of laughter. The children knew that not all the spooky stories are real and not all the ghosts are scary.
And so, the haunted treehouse of Willowville, the place for shivering into fear, had been converted into a place for laughs and friendship, where the greatest, most wondrous experiences took place from the things that were first most scary to them.
