270. A Helpful Ghost (B1 Story)

This is the B1 story I'm going to read to you today and the vocabulary I'll look at:

A helpful ghost (B1)

Detective Sam Green liked to hang around any place where strange things happened. One autumn morning, he arrived in a small town surrounded by a beautiful landscape of snowy mountain peaks. 

The people there seemed friendly, but whenever Sam asked about the old castle on a nearby hill, they were silent. At night, lights could be seen in the windows, yet nobody had lived there for hundreds of years.

Sam had some knowledge of what people were like in this area, and knew the villagers were hiding something. 

‘It’s better to keep this secret,’ one old woman admitted to him. ‘We don’t want the tourists to get frightened and leave. We need them.’

However, Sam kept on thinking about this mystery, watching from a distance and taking notes.

One foggy evening, he saw a soft light in the window. Quietly, he climbed the hill and broke in through the locked door. In an upstairs room, a simple lightbulb was attached to a battery and a clock.

Sam smiled. ‘Well, would you believe it?’ he said. ‘There’s nothing like a ghost to attract the tourists. If you don’t have one, you’ve got to invent one. Mystery solved!’

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