How to Tell Good Ghost Stories

How to Tell Good Ghost Stories

Whether it is on Halloween night or simply sitting around a campfire with your closest friends, telling ghost stories is a popular American tradition that goes way back. The idea of course is to tell a story that terrifies the listeners in a frightening yet entertaining way. Typically, these short stories center on a supernatural being or occurrence such as haunted house, vampires, white gliding ghosts, monsters and psychotic humans. While most stories are fictional or urban legends, many listeners still believe some of these as they hear them from a lot of sources. Telling scary stories is a fun thing to especially if you're already good at it as your young relatives and friends will ask you to tell them your ghost stories over and over again. To be good at telling ghost stories you have to keep three things in mind.

Preparation

Before you start looking for good ghost stories to tell, you should be aware of who your audience is first. Knowing who you're going to tell the story to is crucial because people have different opinions and takes on topics. If you're planning to tell a story with gruesome images, telling it to teenagers and young adults would be a safe bet, but not to children as imagining horrible and repugnant scenes may be too much for their innocent little brains. That said, always remember to match the level of horror your story has to the level of tolerance your audience has. Now, there are plenty of urban legends out there that you can use. These include the "Mothman" in West Virginia, or the "Hunted Railroad Tracks" in San Antonio, Texas, or the local "Big Foot" sightings, which always works well with the kids. There are far more short stories that can be found in the internet. Just visit your favorite search engine and type the kind of story you have in mind.

Choose the right venue and have props ready

To be honest, setting the ambience is more important than the story itself. If you told a really scary story during breakfast, none of your listeners would get scared. In fact, laughter would probably be the more appropriate reaction than getting scared. The point is you have to set the right mood in order to tell a scary story effectively. You will need a dark room or dark outdoors, candles, firewood (if applicable), flashlights, atonal music, and a really low voice. The more props the better. Getting a partner to help you out in delivering the story is even better as he can help you with the effects. For instance, you can have your partner turn a fan on the room briefly so the candles would flicker, or have him slam a door during suspenseful point in the story. Be creative.

Practice makes perfect

Once you're done with the setting and props, it's now time to practice telling the story. Ideally, you should practice in front of a mirror with all the props present so that actually telling the story will be automatic. This also helps you identify the right voice tonalities on the parts of the story that matter. Most importantly, learn the story by heart. Believe it, or at least make your audience believe you believe it. GP

Benedict Smythe is an article writer for Costume Finder. Costume Finder is one of the UK's leading suppliers of Fancy Dress Costumes [http://www.costumefinder.co.uk/] such as Vampire and Skeleton Costumes [http://www.costumefinder.co.uk/ShopList.asp?cat=1731&MainCat=1725]

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