“I was driving along a road in Essex County, Massachusetts where I’m from. A lot of spooky things happen around here because we live in such a close proximity to Salem and the area has been inhabited for such a long time. I was with my friend and her boyfriend, who is a firefighter in the area. As we were coming around a bend, he yelled, ‘PLEASE SLOW DOWN!’ We were confused because nothing was in our way and we were the only car on the road. He responded by saying, ‘just please go slow, I’ll tell you why when we clear the bend.’ After making it around safely, he went on to tell us that every so often, someone spins out of control and gets badly wounded in wrecks on that turn. After the first responders arrive, every victim emerges from the car asking the same question. ‘Is the child ok?’ or ‘What happened to the kid?’ As is turns out, back in the seventies someone was driving too quickly around that very turn and hit a young child, killing him. Since then, its ghost shows up sporadically, trying to make the trip across the street it was never able to complete.”

This story features some pretty classic elements of the ghost story. Spooky area, untimely death, and dead children. Another aspect of the story that Zan later communicated to me was that the driver who killed the child may have been drunk at the time, which adds an element of liminality to the story. An intoxicated person is not wholly conscious, but certainly not unconscious.