Thread: Ghost stories as cautionary tales

Tweet

A cautionary tale is a story that teaches a lesson. Usually it tells of a person who commits some kind of act, such as playing with matches, the brutal or grizzly end, such as getting burned, and a moral, such as don't play with matches. Most ghost stories in this way deal with graverobbery. Someone covets something, or is searching for food, steals it, and the ghost or creature comes for it. Some stories that I know are, "The Liver," "The Golden Arm," "The Big Toe," "Clinkety Clink," from the Scary Dtories series by Alvin Schwartz, "The Ghost's Cap," from the Short and Shivery series by Robert D. San Souci, "Tailypo," and, "Cemetery Soup," in which a lady takes a bone from a cemetery for a soup bone. http://www.soupsong.com/steenyti.html

Ps, these stories were created, most likely, when people were buried with their valuables, and graverobbing was a big issue.

Not necessarily a ghost story, but my grandma used to warn us if we played too near a storm drain opening, we'd fall inside and get eaten by the giant monster crocodile who lived in the sewer. She had a whole back story, about another kid who got the animal as a pet, but it turned out to be evil wouldn't stop growing. So he released it into the sewer where it lives to this day, feeding on kids who try and retrieve their baseballs and frisbees. The funny thing was, we lived in Colorado with absolutely no chance of such a thing being true. But we sure stayed away from the storm drains!

Youshould check out my Soap Sally thread.