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    The Ghosts who Raised Me
    The Ghosts who Raised Me
    The Ghosts who Raised Me
    Ebook127 pages1 hour

    The Ghosts who Raised Me

    By Erin Lee

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    About this ebook

    I have no memory of my mother leaving me by my grandfather's headstone when I was four days old.

    I can only believe the stories they tell me – whispered glimmers of my history among the living.

    I don't remember which of them it was who fed me and taught me to walk and talk.

    My first memory is of a ghost named Hester, who became not only my friend, but also like a sister. She had nothing better to do. She was dead. We spent our days chasing each other through the gravestones in the cemetery where I lived and she eternally slept.

    My name is Ghost Girl. At least, that's what the living people on the TV news call me. Before then, the ghosts who raised me called me Adaline. But a name is only a name – something carved on a headstone that will soon enough be covered in weeds and never, ever visited.

    This is my story of what it was like to be raised by the dead…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCrazy Ink
    Release dateJan 3, 2019
    ISBN9781719424530
    The Ghosts who Raised Me
    Author

    Erin Lee

    Erin Lee lives in Queensland, Australia and has been working with children for over 25 years. She has worked in both long day care and primary school settings and has a passion for inclusive education and helping all children find joy in learning. Erin has three children of her own and says they have helped contribute ideas and themes towards her quirky writing style. Her experience working in the classroom has motivated her to write books that bring joy to little readers, but also resource educators to help teach fundamental skills to children, such as being safe, respectful learners.

    Read more from Erin Lee

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      Book preview

      The Ghosts who Raised Me - Erin Lee

      International Bestselling Author

      Erin Lee

      ––––––––

      For Beans,

      who came up with the idea.

      Or stole it.

      Or something.

      I was afraid to ask.

      Chapter One

      I have no memory of my mother leaving me by my grandfather’s headstone when I was four days old. I can only say that it has been faded by the sun and reads Joseph Connors, father, brother, son. Date of death, January 12, 1999—the year I was born. It doesn’t even say these things on the front. Instead, these hints to my past are etched along the side, facing the rest of what will someday be my birth family’s plot. The ghosts who raised me say it’s a sign of shame. But they are skeptical of the limited-living, and who could blame them? I’m skeptical too. Of all of them.

      I can only believe the stories the ghosts tell me—whispered glimmers of my history among the living. That my birth mother and I had the same middle name and, overtaken by grief, she hadn’t quite known what she was doing when she left me by his grave. The idea that she wasn’t a bad person, exactly, just lost... I don’t know about that either.

      I don’t remember which ghosts fed me and taught me to walk and talk. My best guess is Eliza or Sybil, but it makes no difference either way. Somehow, and together, they rose from their graves and did what needed to be done. They did what Eliza would refer to as the proper thing.

      There are other things I remember and hope to never forget, no matter how many drugs the limited-living insist I need. My very first memory, one of my favorites, is of a ghost named Hester. She is the person who became not only my friend, but also like a sister. She had nothing better to do. She was dead. We spent our days chasing each other through the gravestones in the cemetery where I lived. and she eternally slept. I didn’t know any different and thought all living children played with invisible friends. Their status of dead or alive really was of no significance.

      My name is Ghost Girl. At least, that’s what the living people on the TV news call me. Before then, the ghosts who raised me called me Adaline Eliza Wright—after the gentle spirit who ultimately raised me literally from the grave. But a name is only a name—something carved on a crooked headstone that will soon enough be covered in weeds and never, ever visited. Grandpa Connors, I can tell you, would know that better than anyone. I spent years hoping he’d get a visit from my birth mother, but it never happened.

      My name is Adaline or Hannah or Ghost Girl, even Eliza, depending on who you ask. This is my story of what it was like to be raised by the dead and returned to the world of the living.

      ***

      Eliza Wright—no middle name but Adaline if she’d had a say in it—wife of Reverend Alfred Steven Wright, who died December 8, 1844 at the age of 26 and 22 days of the consumption complicated by childbirth. Hers is probably the only name that matters to me anymore. Eliza is the only mother I’ve ever really known. And when the men in the white coats come back to grill me, hers are the details I’ll be sure they get straight. Hers is the story that matters.

      They don’t have to believe me. They can call me crazy. It doesn’t matter. While the tiny details of how I got here haven’t stuck with me over my years growing up at Rolling Hills, what I know is that I was raised by ghosts in a cemetery. If it wasn’t for Eliza and the other ghost moms and sisters who took me in as their own, I wouldn’t be here today to tell the living, unimaginative reporters and shrinks anything.

      Again, this story isn’t about me. It’s about the ghosts who raised me. It’s about my first best friend, Hester, who died March 7, 1898 at the age of five years, fourteen days. It’s about Lainy Lynch, date of death 2017, age sixteen, who lost her life on prom night because her boyfriend was drinking and slid off the interstate.

      I’m not just the Ghost Girl people will read about in the headlines in tomorrow’s paper or the internet. I’m the keeper of the dead’s histories. The living don’t understand that. To them, my destiny means nothing. They say my real, living and legal name is Hannah Marie Connors, daughter of Patricia Marie—father unknown for certain, but presumed to be the same boy that is said to have given my grandfather heart trouble in the first place. Both parents—my presumed father anyway—still living. Now, with a story to tell, there are more important things people need to know about me. It doesn’t matter that the woman who abandoned me wants a reunion. I could care less that I’ve returned to the living like the man at the press conference preached. I have a purpose and very specific fate.

      It is my job to tell their stories—stories of the lives cut short and the people who raised me. The memories of my family and their long-forgotten legacies. But to get the livings’ attention and set the record straight, I’ll first have to start with how it all began and how they finally found me living in the long-gone cemetery keeper’s storage shed; the best place Eliza could suggest for me to stay out of the rain when the dead went back to lay in their graves.

      The best way to begin is to start with place. Apparently, it’s something the living have never seen before—a child growing up in a cemetery tucked away from the living and even the rolling landscape. Between the questions from authorities

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