Friendly Ghosts, a guest post by Richard Fairgray

With the second graphic novel in the Black Sand Beach series coming out and the fourth one being planned, I’ve been thinking a lot about why I like scary stories.

If you’ve read the first one (or the in between one that’s just straight up scary stories without pictures) then you’ll get it when I say that I think being scared can be fun.

There’s no better feeling than the thrill of being terrified followed by the relief that the thing you were afraid of is actually quite funny. There’s also nothing scarier than something funny or silly turning out to be the most dangerous thing in the room. The reason I keep writing scary stories like this is simple: I enjoy being afraid; I always have. I enjoy sitting alone in the dark and wondering if the howling coyotes are getting closer or if they’re just louder because they’ve caught someone.

I had a friend in high school (shocking, I know) who was terrible at telling stories. She’d get about halfway through the most interesting, gossip filled, thrilling recount of her weekend and everyone around her would be staring down at their Walkman and twirling their devil sticks just to have something to do. The story was great, this girl led an exceptionally interesting life, she just sucked at telling people about it. The worst part was that she knew it.

Then she found twenty dollars.

Let me be clear, she didn’t really find twenty dollars. I just told her she had. I gave her an out. Now, when peoples’ eyes began glazing over, before they could reach for their Chatter Rings or Pro-Yo II, she’d abruptly stop the story by saying, “And then I found twenty dollars.”

Immediately the story became interesting, short, relatable and had a payoff that was worth it.

You can do the same thing by having someone die.

Let me give another example. I’m not really suggesting you kill all your friends, just do it in your head.

When I was seven, I went on a field trip to a volcano. I was so excited to see all the lava and fire and duck out of the way of flying rocks that I never even considered this might be scheduled on a day when the volcano wasn’t erupting. So, my whole day was filled with identifying rocks and listening to a man in khaki shorts talk about temperatures and tectonic plates and everything was terrible.

The only saving grace was that the bus stopped at KFC on the way back to school. I was sitting at one of the greasier tables, enjoying my ribs and wings (for more advice on what’s best at KFC email me directly) when a boy I didn’t know joined me and offered to share his gravy. We became fast friends, taking turns to dip our fingers in the rapidly congealing goo and talking about Ninja Turtles. This boy was from a different school, his name was Naish (no idea on that spelling) and I would never see him again. But until that large gravy was entirely consumed (one finger dip at a time) we were friends.

Here’s the thing, Naish was dead the whole time. Turns out he’d been killed almost 400 years ago at that very same KFC, on that very same day, probably by a murderer or a wizard or something.

See how much more interesting that is?

Now, instead of me thinking back on some kid with a name I can’t spell talking about mutant reptiles for an hour I get to remember the time I hung out with a ghost. That’s categorically better.

In my life I have seen real ghosts three times. Once in a lighthouse, once in a post office that my friend lived in and once in my house in Hollywood right before I moved out. I’m 36 years old and that seems like nowhere near enough. The place I live now was built in the 80s and nobody has ever died here. My office is in a haunted complex, but the ghosts are all at the very back where I don’t have access. My chances to meet ghosts are disappointingly slim. My chances for meeting people I’ll never see again are much higher, and not just because I’m sort of a lot to deal with.

Now, anytime I am bored by a stranger I can just zone out and imagine how much more interesting their story would be if they’d been dead the whole time. I did this the other day and then I found twenty dollars!

Meet the author

Richard Fairgray is a writer, artist, and colorist, best known for his work in comic books such as Blastosaurus and Ghost Ghost, and picture books such as Gorillas In Our Midst, My Grandpa Is a Dinosaur, and If I Had an Elephant. As a child he firmly believed he would grow up and eat all the candy he wanted and stay up as late as he liked. By drawing pictures when he wasn’t meant to and reading all the things people told him not to, he has made his dream come true. Black Sand Beach is his first graphic novel series with Pixel+Ink. Richard splits his time between Los Angeles and Surrey, British Columbia, where he is able to work furiously, surrounded by plastic skeletons, dogs, friends, loved ones (and possibly the most comprehensive collection of Courtney Love bootlegs on the planet). 

About Black Sand Beach 2: Do You Remember the Summer Before?

A revelation about how Dash may or may not have spent the summer before raises the stakes even higher in this second installment of the eerie and enthralling Black Sand Beach series, perfect for fans of Gravity Falls, Rickety Stich, and Fake Blood.

Dash and his crew might have stumbled upon the source of the evil at Black Sand Beach when they stumbled into the abandoned and haunted lighthouse, but when Lily reveals that she found Dash’s journal there, the news is anything but comforting. The book is full of Dash’s reflections on his trip to Black Sand Beach the previous summer. 

Only Dash doesn’t recognize the journal or have any memory of being there. 

As the friends read the entries aloud, through flashbacks Dash’s unsettling encounter with two ghost girls, a truly terrifying monster, and a life changing event make one thing very clear: Black Sand Beach isn’t done with them yet.

Deliciously creepy and difficult to put down, Do You Remember the Summer Before? returns readers to a supernatural shore they’ll never forget.

ISBN-13: 9781645950035
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication date: 05/04/2021
Series: Black Sand Beach
Age Range: 8 – 12 Years

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