Sammie's slayers

Bixby Scareham was voted the least haunted town in England 2009, according to Ghost Monthly magazine. Up until year ago it, like every other town in England, was plagued with mischievous spooks responsible for all the unexplainable things in the world. They made toast always land jam side down, they made sure there were always teaspoons in the washing up bowl when you emptied it and they stole your socks so you ended up with a draw full of odd ones . Of course nobody knew that ghosts did all this. It was only when it was proved they exist that suddenly everyone started seeing them. They were all over the place. Every town in England is teeming with ghosts, except Bixby of course. That was all down to one boy, Sammie Strepplehorn. He was a local hero, even though he was only twelve years old. Everyone praised him wherever he went. He got free sweets from Mrs Pickle's candy store, the best seat in the cinema, the ice rink all to himself on Saturday afternoon, and a flavour of ice cream named after him called Scrumptious Sammie.

Sammie wasn't always a ghost hunter. He became one by accident. Two years ago he was in a car accident that left him blind in his right eye. The doctors said there was nothing they could to repair the damage. Sammie's father was crushed by the news, even more so than Sammie, who tried not to let it bother him. His bravery wasn't enough for his dad who set about inventing a false eye for Sammie. A year later Sammie had a new eye but it didn't work in the way he expected. It was actually much cooler. He couldn't see colours and shapes, what he saw was energy, floating through the air like puffs of clouds. Some of the puffs were dense whilst others were thin and wispy. At first Sammie had no idea what it was until he saw one with a hand that kept pressing buttons on his TV remote, changing the channels. The sight made him leap off his bed so high he hit his head on the ceiling light.

Once Sammie got used to seeing ghosts he decided to try and catch one, like they did in a movie he saw with his dad before his accident, but he needed some sort of trapping device. One weekend, when his dad was out Sammie raided his dad's workshop and constructed the Ghost Vac. It was a modified HandyVac that Sammie fitted with a thin nozzle on one end and a fitting at the other on which to screw a jamjar. And that 's how Sammie stored his ghosts, in jam jars on a shelf in his bedroom. He labelled each one with the date and time and location of each ghost caught and even gave them little pet names, like Samson, who he caught putting spiders in his dad's attic and Rufus, who he caught trying to block the bathroom sink with hair from Sammie's dog, Muttster. Soon word spread of Sammie's talent and his services were in demand across Bixby. He was so busy he needed a spare room to store all his jam jars. Sammie had cleaned up the town of all undesirable spooks, even catching a particularly difficult and troublesome ghost he called Horace. Horace haunted Bixby Castle. At night Horace rearranged the bricks of the castle so it looked completely different the next day. Once he even moved the entire castle one mile down the road. Sammie was particularly proud of that catch.

One day, however, when Sammie was at school, Muttster got into his jar room and with his broom-like tail he swept one of them off the bookcase. It smashed on the floor, setting loose the wispy vapour trapped inside. It twisted round Sammie's jar room before escaping through a gap beneath the door. The label on the jar read "Horace, Bixby Castle, 03/09/08, 12:43"

Horace was free. He whizzed round Sammie's house moving the furniture as he went. He put the beds in the lounge, the sofa in the kitchen, the dining chairs in the bath and next door's cat into Muttster's kennel, all the while giggling with glee at his fortune. But he wasn't completely content. He wanted revenge for being caught, so he sniffed out Sammie's energy trail and followed it. When it led him to Bixby Secondary School and he saw all the children running around the school yard, and the large red stone building he realised there was more fun to be had there than just seeking out Sammie.

As he flew through the corridors, halls and classrooms he began to plot, all the while careful not to cross paths with Sammie. He knew what would be in store for him if he wasn't on his guard.

The first sign Sammie got that something wasn't quite right with that day was when the combination to his locker didn't work. When he looked up and down the corridor he wasn't the only one having that problem. Everyone was looking at each other, baffled by why suddenly they couldn't open their lockers. And the strangeness continued throughout the day. At first the teachers thought a prankster was responsible for their blackboards being greased up so they couldn't write on them or for stretching cling film across all the toilets. But when the tricks became unbelievable, like the school orchestra's instruments losing their sound and all the bald teachers suddenly growing a thick head of hair whilst the ones with hair went bald, that's when Sammie switched from schoolboy to Ghost Hunter extraordinaire. When he went home that afternoon and saw the smashed bottle he realised who was responsible.

Day by day Sammie struggled to catch Horace. His energy cloud would dissolve instantly the moment Sammie got anywhere near him and reappear either at the other end of the room or in a completely different room. But the longer it took to catch him the more sinister Horace's mischief became. On Monday he turned all the taps on in the gymnasium one night and flooded the equipment room and the hall. On Tuesday he piled all the furniture from the classrooms into the assembly hall into a form of a giant wobbly wooden pyramid. On Wednesday he rearranged the rooms of the school so the science rooms were on the ground floor and the metalwork rooms were on the top floor. On Thursday he turned the school inside out so the yard was inside the building and all the classrooms were outside. By Friday, when he turned on all the gas Bunsen burners he got parents and the School Governor so worried the Governor had no choice but to close the school until further notice.

Sammie's reputation was starting to take a nose dive with every passing day that Horace was loose, to the point where people were wondering whether Sammie had any special power at all. That was the final straw. Sammie wasn't about to let one rascally ghost destroy his title of Ultimate Ghostttrapper!

On Saturday Sammie set to work in his dad's workshop. He bought as many HandyVacs from charity shops as he could lay his hands on, and emptied every jar in his parents' kitchen (whether they were full or not!). By Sunday evening Sammie had constructed twenty-five GhostVacs and had enlisted the help of twenty-five kids at his school who were more than eager to become amateur trappers.

On Monday morning Sammie and his friends marched into the school armed and ready. Given Sammie was the only one with a ghost-seeing eye it was he who directed the search. Room by room Sammie's army skulked through the classrooms and corridors on the prowl for Horace and eventually found him munching on crisps and sweets in the school canteen. Horace was too busy gorging and wallowing in smug self-satisfaction at the carnage he had left to notice he was being hunted. With a nod of Sammie's head Sammie directed his team to arm their devices. Horace heard the sound of the motors and spun round. His energy cloud shimmered and distorted as he moved.

"Now!" Sammie yelled and thrust the nozzle of his GhostVac towards Horace.
His army stabbed at the air with devices as though they were sparring with swords.
The collective power of the GhostVacs was too much for Horace. Even dispersing his energy didn't work. There were too many to avoid and so molecule by molecule Horace was sucked into twenty-five different jam jars.

When Sammie confirmed that Horace was trapped his army erupted with triumphant cheers. They punched the air with clenched fists and yelled "We got 'im, we got 'im".

The rest of the townsfolk were even more delighted with Sammie and his army. They collectively agreed that the 3rd of September be known as Sammie day and that any money donated to the town council be put towards the purchase of a monument.

Now, if you visit Bixby Scareham and happen to pass by the secondary school you'll see a giant bronze GhostVac monument outside the entrance to the school, in honour of Sammie and his Slayers.

Sammie, however, has his own monument: a glass cabinet in his spare room displaying the twenty -five jars containing the remnants of Horace. The cabinet remains locked and well out of reach of Muttster.