KAT Chronicles

My name is Kaylee Alice Taylor, and I live in Ghosten Minnesota. Now you might think where the heck is Ghosten? I’ve never heard of it. Well that’s because up until a few years ago, Ghosten was a rundown town with two shops and a couple houses that’s recently been purchased and made into a community for all lovers Halloween. Turns out originally it was planned to be a regular place once they fixed it up but when the mayor heard the locals say that it was a Ghost Town he apparently heard Ghosten with their thick accents and saw a tourist trap forming in his mind and just ran with it. So now in northern white bread Minnesota where everyone sounds Canadian we’ve got essentially Salem Massachusetts on crack. I’m serious, the only “normal” store around here is on the town limits border and even that’s called Last Chance. Yeah last chance to not be in the cultish city where everyone and everything is all things October. Essentially it’s where you go to buy regular clothes and household necessities without ruining the aesthetic of the Ghoulish Ghosten. If it were up to me I’d ruin the whole thing and make it a normal place. I mean it’s not a bad town, people here are actually pretty cool, and get really in to the theme, but when the mayor imposes an area wide dress code to keep up the “image” I just can’t. The mayor had it right though, not going to lie. This “town” makes enough to pay everybody working in the shops above the federal minimum wage, turns out with LA on one side of the country and New York on the other, people in the middle also need just a little bit of weird to get through their day. So I have a decent enough savings for when I graduate and get the heck out of this town just working part-time at my uncle’s Witchery. The layout of the town is pretty simple. You’ve got your standard Ghosten K-12 (for all the families the mayor convinced to move here to help build things up); on the far reaches of the town, with a large fenced in area with a decent sledding hill surrounded by trees for the smaller grades and a football field for the bigger kids. Each grade only has like 5-38 kids so we can’t exactly justify having separate schools. But our football team has gotten enough attention these past years to warrant cheerleaders and out of state games. Our mascot is the same as the town’s; Gibly the Ghouly Ghost. Really it’s just a sheet with the eyes cut out that says “Boo” in bold black letters. I think it was the mayor’s Halloween costume back in the day. Main Street is where all the shops and the tourist traps are. Important stores of note are my uncle’s Witchery that sits on the west side of the fountain from Calypso’s Cattery the pet shop. Next to his shop is Garish Garments where you can purchase all things costume and Patty’s Pastries (my personal favorite) the bakery where you can purchase all sorts of hand made sweets. On the Cattery’s side has Shivery Scoops the ice cream parlor and Crystal’s Crystals home of the authentic curse your enemies, heal your friends, good vibration, energy feelers’, sparkly rocks. Of course there’s your standard town square B&B sitting at the end that overlooks the fountain and Main Street, hosting a gorgeous grove of snow apple trees in the back that the town gathers to pick for a huge festival in the fall. I swear the Apple festival gathers more tourists than anything else this town has to offer. Luckily for the mayor, with the surge of social media influencers, everyone who’s trying to be someone, comes to our little town bringing a steady stream of free advertising any time we have any sort of celebration which is how we grew from a ghost-town to Ghosten. All the homes are in a nice gated community, gated mostly to keep out the wild life, but also because the mayor thought we needed our privacy from tourists when shops closed for the day. (Total lies, really he just wanted an excuse to erect a spooky wrought iron fence to increase the mystery of our little town). My uncle’s house sits right next to the mayor’s house, second largest home in the area, complete with a reading tower. Apparently they planned this whole thing together but my uncle didn’t want any of the responsibilities of being mayor and just wanted to run a Witchery. I’m convinced I can find a passage way between his house and the mayor’s where they join up underground and scheme up more tourist attractions if I just push on the right wall.