Just a few days for Halloween and in order to get ready for the "scariest" day of the year, here I bring you a ghost story to read. Before that, some tips for reading that you may find useful when dealing with an English text. When reading in English, you should remember that:
- You do not need to understand every single word
- Guess the meaning of unknown words by the context. In order to do this, you should:
- Guess what kind of word the unknown term is: is it a verb, a noun, an adjective, an adverb...?
- Think about the intention of the word in the text. Is it a word with positive or negative meaning?
- Try to substitute that word by a word that you may think that can mean the same and check if the sentence makes sense
- Understand the story as a whole and not try to understand every single word.
The story is an adaptation from a very popular ghost story from the American folklore called: "Screaming Jenny". There you go, I hope you like it...
Screaming Jenny"The old storage sheds (1) along the tracks were abandoned shortly after the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was built, and it wasn't long before the poor people of the area moved in. The sheds provided shelter (2) - of a sort - although the winter wind still pierced through every crevice (3), and the small fireplaces that the poor constructed did little to keep the cold at bay.
A gentle, kindly woman named Jenny lived alone in one of the smaller sheds. She had fallen on hard times, and with no family to protect her, she was forced to find work where she could and take whatever shelter was available to someone with little money. Jenny never had enough to eat and in winter her tiny fire barely kept her alive during the cold months. Still, she kept her spirits up (4) and tried to help other people when they took sick or needed food, sometimes going without herself so that another could eat.
One cold evening in late autumn, Jenny sat shivering over her fire, drinking broth (5) out of a wooden bowl, when a spark flew from the fire and lit her skirts on fire. Intent on filling her aching stomach, Jenny did not notice her flaming clothes until the fire had burnt through the heavy wool of her skirt and began to scorch (6) her skin. Leaping up in terror, Jenny threw her broth over the licking flames but the fluid did nothing to douse (7) the fire. In terror, Jenny fled from the shack (8) and ran along the tracks, screaming for help as the flames engulfed her body.
The station was not far away, and instinctively Jenny made for it, hoping to find someone to help her. Within moments, her body was a glowing inferno and Jenny was overwhelmed by pain. Her screams grew more horrible as her steps slowed. She staggered (9) blindly onto the tracks just west of the station, a ball of fire that barely looked human. In her agony, she did not see the glowing headlight of the train rounding the curve, or hear the screech of the breaks as the engineer spotted her fire-eaten figure and tried to stop. A moment later, her terrible screams broke off as the train mowed her down (10).
Alerted by the whistle, the crew from the station came running as the engineer stopped the train and ran back down the tracks toward poor dead Jenny, who was still burning. The men doused the fire and carried her body back to the station. She was given a pauper's funeral and buried in an unmarked grave in the local churchyard. Within a few days, another poverty-stricken family had moved into her shack, and Jenny was forgotten.
Forgotten that is, until a month later when a train rounding the bend west of the station was confronted by a screaming ball of fire. Too late to stop, the engineer plowed over(11) the glowing figure before he could bring the train to a screeching halt. Leaping from the engine, he ran back down the tracks to search for a mangled, burning body, but there was nothing there. Shaken, he brought his train into the station and reported the incident to the stationmaster. After hearing his tale, the stationmaster remembered poor, dead Jenny and realized that her ghost had returned to haunt (12) the tracks where she had died.
To this day, the phantom of Screaming Jenny still appears on the tracks on the anniversary of the day she died. Many an engineer has rounded the curve just west of the station and found himself face to face with the burning ghost of Screaming Jenny, as once more she makes her deadly run towards the Harpers Ferry station, seeking in vain for someone to save her"
Glossary:
- Shed (n): small house used for storage
- Shelter (n,v): refuge(n), to protect (v)
- Crevice (n): crack, fissure
- To keep spirits up (v): keep happy
- Broth (n): kind of soup made with boiled meat
- Scorch (v): burn badly
- Douse (v): get something wet, to put out a fire
- Shack (v): crude building, home.
- Stagger (v): walk unsteadily.
- Mow down (v): to knock someone over, to hit someone and throw him/her to the floor
- Plow over (v): hit
- Haunt(v): appear (generally a ghost)
Finally, and since we are just a few days away from Halloween, I am introducing you to some other vocabulary / expressions that you may find interesting:
- Creepy (adj): scary. The house where she lives is a very creepy house. All of its windows are tinted.
- Spooky (adj): scary, sinister. The sight of a little girl standing on the middle of the road at night is a spooky vision for any driver.
- To freak out (v): To get angry, scared. When he kneeled down, took out a ring from his pocket and proposed I freaked out.
- Give (somebody) the creeps (v expr, slang): To frighten someone or to make someone anxious (creeps) 1. Everytime the neighbour comes to complain about something, she gives me the creeps!
- Give (somebody) the shivers / the chill. To frighten someone or to make someone nervous. Your sister is always stressed. Everytime she comes into the room, she gives me the shivers.
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