The Summer We Pretended to Be Ghosts

It was the summer after eighth grade, the summer when the air itself felt heavy with things unsaid. Our town was quiet, not in the charming postcard way, but in the “no one really knows what to do with themselves” kind of way. The pool was closed for repairs, the fair was canceled after a fire in the concession stands, and half the parents seemed too busy working double shifts to drive us anywhere.

That left us—me, Jamie, and Lila—restless, sweaty, and looking for trouble in a town that didn’t offer much more than cracked sidewalks and abandoned houses.

One evening, while we sat on the curb with melting popsicles, Jamie squinted toward the old Whitaker place, the three-story house at the edge of town that had been empty since before any of us were born. The windows were boarded up, weeds taller than us guarded the front steps, and people whispered that Mr. Whitaker still roamed the halls even though he’d died in 1972.

“Bet no one would notice if we haunted the place,” Jamie said, his grin a little too mischievous for the sticky twilight.

And just like that, the idea was born.

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Becoming Ghosts

The first night, we draped ourselves in white sheets stolen from our laundry baskets and crept across the cracked front yard like we belonged there. The moonlight spilled silver over everything, making our shadows look longer, stranger.

Inside, the air smelled of mildew and forgotten time. The wallpaper curled at the edges like it was trying to escape. Every step we took made the floorboards groan, and every groan made us laugh harder.

“We’re ghosts now,” Lila whispered, her voice trembling between fear and excitement. “We have to make rules.”

Rule #1: Ghosts can’t be seen by adults.

Rule #2: Ghosts must always tell the truth—except about being alive.

Rule #3: Ghosts haunt what they miss most.

It was silly. It was perfect.

So, every night that summer, we returned. Sometimes we rattled pipes and scratched at the walls, trying to scare each other. Other times we just lay on the dusty floor, staring at the ceiling through moonlit cracks, talking about the kind of things you only admit when you’re pretending not to exist.

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The Things We Couldn’t Say Alive

Jamie confessed he hated the way his dad expected him to “man up” when all he wanted was to write music. Lila admitted she was terrified her mom would leave like her dad had years before. And me? I whispered that I didn’t know who I was supposed to be, that sometimes I felt invisible even when I was surrounded by people.

It felt easier, somehow, to say those things as ghosts. As if, stripped of being “real kids,” we had permission to speak the truth without worrying about what would happen in the morning.

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Haunting the Town

Word spread that the Whitaker place was haunted again. A group of kids swore they saw figures in the windows. Someone’s older brother swore he heard wailing on the wind.

We fed into the rumors, of course. We dragged chains from Jamie’s garage across the porch. We scribbled strange messages in chalk on the sidewalk: Leave us be. Still here. The summer never ends.

It was the only excitement our town had, and it felt like our secret magic—turning boredom into legend.

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The Summer That Wasn’t

But like all games, it didn’t last.

One night, a storm rolled in. The kind of storm that shakes the sky apart. We still went, sheets clinging to our skin as rain soaked us through. Inside, the wind howled through broken shutters, and thunder rattled the beams.

We sat in the dark living room, our ghost sheets heavy, and for the first time, none of us laughed. Lila was crying quietly, though she pretended it was the rain on her face. Jamie punched the floorboard until his hand bruised. I just stared at the shadows flickering across the walls and wondered if this was how ghosts really felt—trapped in a place they couldn’t leave, clinging to memories no one else wanted anymore.

When the storm passed, something had changed. We didn’t go back after that.

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Aftermath

School started again, and with it, the noise of schedules and tests and sports practices. We didn’t talk about our ghost rules, or the nights in the Whitaker place, or the secrets we had whispered under those sheets.

But every now and then, when I walked past the edge of town, I thought I saw movement in the windows. Not real ghosts—just the memory of three kids pretending to be what they already feared becoming: invisible.

The summer passed, but in a way, it never really began. It was a season of waiting, of haunting, of half-living. The summer we pretended to be ghosts.