How I Found a Ghost (from 1990)

While scanning old documents and getting into Evernote, I found two pages of a story that I wrote in third grade. It's about my class finding a ghost and going to Chicago. I was saying that I wanted to be a baseball player when I grew up, but clearly my career path had already been forged. It's missing a couple of pages in the middle, but I remember enough to summarize.


HOW I FOUND A GHOST
by Adam Selzer


There are many ways to prove you saw something. But many people think it's very hard to prove something. 16 kids and their core* teacher have proved it. Let me tell you about it.
*********
It was getting late in the school year and everybody was ready for it to end. At 10:30, Mr. Summers, their teacher, stood up and said "since everyone is ready to have some fun, I've arranged a field trip to glendale cemetery tonight. That should be fun."  The class couldn't calm for for half an hour. At the end of cass, we arranged for being at Mr. Summers' house at nine.
Sure enough, at 9pm we were there and ready with flash cameras. We hopped in the car and we were off!
"Mr. Summers, what if we see a ghost?" said Joe.
"That's what I want to know!" said Justin.
"I'm carsick," said somebody else who was likely to be Sol.
"Hold it," said Mr. Summers. "We're not going to see a ghost."
Then he winked.
When we got there we started reading graves. Some were funny like the ones that said "I told you I was sick," and "be sure to turn off the oven."
Then we heard a strange noise. We looked around and saw a ghost! Not one of those ghosts that looks like someone with a sheet over their head. One of those ones that look like a clear white person. We only got 2 pictures - one of the ghost, one of the grave. It was shouting "Kill the Americans! Kill them!'  We hopped in the car and as fast as we would. We were terrified!


( At the bottom of page 2, I can see that I erased the line "Sol was killed. Everyone clapped." I was having a fight with Sol the week I wrote this; I'm pretty sure I died in his story, too. We had made up by the end of the week.  I don't remember what we were fighting about, but I remember trying to tell him we'd laugh about it some day (as I'd learned to do from Full House). A few hours later he came up and said "You know what man?" in a mean voice. "What?" I said. "We probably will laugh."  That's when I erased the line. Honestly, if anyone felt sick and terrified to be anywhere near a cemetery at night, it would have been me. 
Pages 3 and 4 are missing, but it turns out to be Hitler's ghost. What he was doing buried in Iowa goes unexplained, like the mystery of how we crammed 16 people into Mr. Summers' car. From what I remember, no one believes our story, but we take the picture to scientist. "I believe," he said, "that you did see Hitler's ghost." When we return from the lab, the phone is "ringing off the hook," and it was Oprah asking us to come to her show in Chicago). We resume on page 5:

"Me too,"said Amanda.
Finally we got there. We found that that the station is next door to Wrigely Field. But they (the cubs) were off that day. We went in and were greeted by Oprah. She told us to sit down on the chairs on the stage. So we did and they got started. The first question was "when did you see it?"
Everyone knew that. "May 31!" we all said.
There were about 90 more questions and it was over. They still didn't believe us. We'd have to go back to the cemetery and catch it.
So we bought a huge clear box and went back to the cemtery and put the box over the spot where Hitler was buried. Eventually, he came up right in the glass box! We quickly put the lid on the box and he was caught.
Mr. Summers have have made a mistake taking us to the graveyard that night, but he he didn't. We called a press conferense at the capitol. We had a black sheet over the clear box that held Hitler's ghost.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Dudes and dudettes!** You are about to be one of the second witnesses of Hitler's ghost!"
Oohs and ahhhs filled the crowd. And there was wild applause as we lifted the black sheet and revealed the ghost.
The next day there was plenty of headlines in the paper wich made us famous!


* "core" was this thing where we'd break into smaller groups for math and language arts.
** Ladies and gentlemen, 1990!