お化け

 Title (obake) means ghost.

I've always wondered why parents throughout American generations have brought their small children to meet Santa and gotten a kick out of how truly, deeply terrified their child was, and even snapped pictures and cackled over them later

That is, until I was given the opportunity to scare children, and let me tell you it is probably the funnest thing I've done all summer.


Now don't get me wrong, I'm not evil I'm actually just a Horcrux shy from Voldemort but I think half of the fun is knowing that the kids aren't screaming because of any real danger; they're only afraid of a big, dumb costume. Now, if I had released a gorilla into the preschool, that wouldn't have been as fun no comment.


So as you know (or maybe you don't, I have this habit of assuming that I've told everyone everything) every day for the Summer Program there is a different "main activity" as well as all the normal daily stuff like playing outside in the pool, etc. The activity for Tuesday was お化け. As the kids were having morning English time, the rest of the teachers slowly transformed the preschool into a haunted house. Oh, my babies...bless them for being blissfully ignorant and really thinking that the activity was limited to making ghosts out of newspaper...

So anyway, long story short (breakfast awaits) the kids were ushered into a room whilst I slunk away and put on my お化け costume. It's one of those things that is literally so comical that it actually it is a little scary:

Okay...maybe more scary than comical. Is it...drooling?! With the souls of children??

It actually has a (giant) face-hole near the hat, but I just put my braids in my face, so my hair ended up blending in with the hat and some kids didn't realize that it was me (although by process of elimination, I was the only teacher not there / my legs awkwardly stuck out of the bottom)

So in pairs, the teachers lured the kids from the sitting room into the dark hallway, where I was waiting for them. And the first reaction was ALWAYS priceless. They would do a double take then try and run away, only to have the teacher laugh (their ass off) and grab them by the waist and force them to come closer. To make matters worse, that morning Nogami-sensei asked me if I had heard of "The Ring", then informed me that they had bought the soundtrack. LOL, so that was also playing in the background.

I made really stupid "Ooo0o0-o0o0o0o0o!!!" noises, thought that over, and then just went for the evil cackle or the drawn out "Konnichiwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!! heehehhehehheheee". what the kids also didn't know was that when they got past me, that I was going to chase them throughout the house. Staff had put balloons in strategic places so I could pop them as I was chasing them, and the path led to the tatami room where English is usually held, except there were dark streamers and rattling cans and just...lol. I'm pretty sure they all cried.


Mind you, the costume got unbearably hot after a while, and some of the older kids just raised an eyebrow and were like "HI HOLLY-SENSEI!!!!!!!" but, yeah. That shit was just a little too fun. I eventually had to stop, take off the costume and show them that they really had nothing to be afraid of, all coos and soothing and "It's just me, guys!!"ing, but a lot of them just had very, very angry tear-streaked faces and one kid just walked up to me, tugged on my skirt and was like "ホリー先生、すご怖かった" (Holly-sensei, I was really scared/that was really scary) in the most deadpan voice that I had ever heard, and then I got a little uncomfortable and wondered whether they would ever love me again (spoiler alert; of course they do.)

BREAKFAST TIME.

ホリー先生