The Ghosts who Raised Me

I have no memory of my mother leaving me by my grandfather's headstone when I was four days old.

I can only believe the stories they tell me – whispered glimmers of my history among the living.

I don't remember which of them it was who fed me and taught me to walk and talk.

My first memory is of a ghost named Hester, who became not only my friend, but also like a sister. She had nothing better to do. She was dead. We spent our days chasing each other through the gravestones in the cemetery where I lived and she eternally slept.

My name is Ghost Girl. At least, that's what the living people on the TV news call me. Before then, the ghosts who raised me called me Adaline. But a name is only a name – something carved on a headstone that will soon enough be covered in weeds and never, ever visited.

This is my story of what it was like to be raised by the dead…