The Canterville Ghost

The ghost remembered all of the great things he had donein the past. One of the servants had shot himself because he had seen the ghost's green hand at the window of one of the rooms. A beautiful woman, called Lady Stutfield, always had to wear something around her neck because the ghost had made a horrible burn on her throat, where his five fingers had marked her white skin. In the end the poor woman killed herself in the pond at the end of the garden.

Like any really good artist, the ghost was only interested in himself and the things that he had done. Now he thought of his very best performances, and smiled to himself, even though he was angry. He remembered some of the ghosts he had been - Red Reuben, or the Strangled Baby. He had pretended to be Gaunt Gibeon, the Blood-sucker of Bexley. And one lovely June evening he had made everyone very upset and excited, just because he was playing ninepins with his own bones on the grass tennis court.

And after the ghost had done all this, some horrible modern Americans had come and offered him oil for his chains, and had thrown pillows at his head! Nobody should do this to him. No ghost in history had ever had anything like that done to it. So the ghost decided that he would do something horrible to the family, because of what they had done to him. He stayed in his room until the morning, thinking about what he would do.