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In the old, abandoned castle of Spookholm, no one has lived for a very long time. No one—except Otto, the little castle ghost. It’s a bit boring to be a ghost when there’s no one around to spook with a little ghostly fun. So, over time, Otto has become rather lazy and spends most of his days sleeping.
Every Saturday, however, Otto gets up early and looks through the job listings in the newspaper, hoping to find a new job. But apparently, no one is hiring a ghost. Maybe it’s also because Otto always reads the same old newspaper. And by now… that paper is almost 32 years old!
But one day, everything changes. The Fearless family moves into the castle. Otto is thrilled and rubs his hands together.
“Four people and a dog!” he says excitedly. “At last I can haunt like a real ghost again, just like in the good old days! I’ll start with the howling wolf routine,” he thinks.
He waits until it’s dark and then starts howling like a giant wolf.
Nothing happens. Only the dog, Fido, wakes up. Fido runs over to Otto and wants to play. Otto is terrified! He quickly flees to his room.
There stands his big ghost chest, stuffed with haunting tools. Otto decides to try the rattling chains trick.
“That always scared everyone stiff!” he tells himself while trying to pull the long chains from the chest.
But Otto is out of shape. The chains are much too heavy for him now! And you can’t really scare anyone with chains you can’t lift.
But a true ghost doesn’t give up so easily. Otto finds something even better in the chest—a big, nasty rubber spider!
He floats into the living room and dangles the spider from a string right in front of Mrs. Fearless’s nose.
But she’s not frightened at all—on the contrary! Otto can’t believe his eyes.
Mrs. Fearless is actually happy to see a spider.
“Spiders are very useful creatures,” she explains to the children. “They eat mosquitoes and flies.”
Otto flies away disappointed, spider in tow.
“I’ll try scaring one of the children,” he decides. He hides in the stair tower and practices his scariest faces while he waits. But when Nikolas finally comes around the corner, it’s Otto who gets a fright!
Nikolas is wearing a monster mask, and Otto has never seen anything that scary before! It takes him a while to recover.
Finally, Otto tries one last trick—one he’s sure will work.
One of his ancestors became famous for this very trick.
Using red paint, Otto creates a giant bloodstain on the carpet. It looks terrifying!
But no one notices it.
At dinner, the kids make even bigger stains with ketchup, and no one bats an eye.
Otto is heartbroken. What good is a ghost if it can’t scare anyone?
He decides to leave Spookholm forever.
But when the Fearless family sees Otto packing his things, they become terribly upset.
“We can’t possibly live without our castle ghost!”
“Hooray!” cheers Otto. “So I did manage to give you a proper scare after all!”
Otto feels proud again, and everyone in the family is overjoyed when he agrees to stay at Spookholm—and haunt it the best way he knows how!
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