Happy Halloween - A Ghost Special

Happy Halloween! Here are two ghost themed pieces for you! To see the art and read the text of the story, visit https://www.juliarios.com/happy-halloween-a-ghost-special/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the OMG Julia Podcast,where we discuss creative lives and processes.
I'm your host, Julia Rios,and today is Halloween Tuesday, October thirty
first, twenty twenty three. HappyHalloween everyone. I hope you've been enjoying
spooky season. To celebrate today,I have two ghost pieces for you.

(00:25):
Both of these come from the Octobertwenty twenty three issue of Worlds of Possibility.
There is a piece of art byVeronica w and a flash fiction story
by Julia LaFond called Garage Ghost.You can see the full text and the

(00:45):
picture over at Juliareos dot com,and if you're a paid subscriber, you
can go and download the full issuein ebook format. If you aren't a
paid subscriber and you just want anindividual issue of World's Possibility, you can
also buy that over on my Patreon. There are links to all of these
things in your show notes, sowhichever podcatcher you're using, check out the

(01:10):
show notes and click on through.A quick content note before we get started.
Garage Ghost by Julia LaFond contains referencesto death by car accident, including
some blood and gore. It's notsuper graphic. But just so you know
what you're getting into. If youdon't want to hear about any of those

(01:30):
things, even in a reference,you can stop now, All right,
are you ready? Let's get intoghost time. Ghost de Dries Flowers via

(01:53):
Veronica w. Veronica do W isa fourth grader living in Portland, Oregon,
who likes to do gymnastics, sing, play with her friends, read
and draw. She likes making upstories about friendly ghosts and other creatures.
I saw Veronica double You's art GhostyDrys Flowers on my social media feeds,

(02:19):
and I knew it felt perfect forthis issue of Worlds of Possibility, where
we're doing a deep dive into feelingslike fear and sadness and grief, and
also still looking at ways that wecan be resilient, that we can find
hope, and that we can examinethese things and ways that ultimately end up

(02:40):
helping us. So Ghosty Drys Flowersis a digital painting that Veronica double You
did. I'm going to read toyou her artist's statement, but first I'm
going to describe it to you,and you can go and look at it
over at Julia Rios dot com ifyou would like to. It is a
picture of a ghost in a meadowwith some wild flowers growing, and the

(03:05):
ghost is holding a little pair oftongs, and in it is a flower
that the ghost is holding over alittle campfire. The night is starlet and
it's all very pretty, but theghost looks a little sad. The caption
up in the upper left corner inhandwriting says, Ghosty is lonely. Please

(03:30):
be his friend. He is dryingflowers all alone. He had a hard
time making the fire. If thatdoesn't make you just want to lay everything
down and go help Ghosty and behis friend, don't. I don't know
what to tell you. Ghosty isadorable. I love Ghosty. Here is

(03:53):
what Veronica W. Has to sayabout her illustration. Ghosty is a character
I developed during an October art challengeby Jen Reese called Autumn Hearth. Here,
Ghosty is sitting at a fire drawingdandelions with wooden tongs. He is
always trying to make friends. Hedoesn't always get friends, but he is

(04:15):
very friendly. Ghosty lives in apumpkin house in a pumpkin patch and likes
booberry pie. Booberry pie is ablueberry pie and when you cut it ghosts
come out of it. When hecuts it, the ghosts come out and
he plays with them for a while, then they go on to another pie.

(04:36):
During the month of October, hewill make friends with a fluffy puppy
named Marshmallow and a pine cone catnamed pine Kitty. I love everything about
Ghosty's world. I love everything thatVeronica w Has created here, and I
hope that she keeps going with this. I love this imaginative ghost world.

(04:58):
I hope that Ghosty Dry's flowers makesyou think about happy little ghosts. All
right, now we're going to gointo something a little bit more spooky.
This is a classic little chiller Halloweentale. Garage Ghost by Julia LaFond I

(05:19):
had a bad feeling about this year'sHaunted House. For one thing. Having
it in the abandoned parking garage,a glorified memorial to a way of life
that nearly fried the planet was tacky. Theming it around the accident was downright

(05:40):
tasteless. Not that I believed inthe garage ghost, but re enacting his
tragic death for cheap thrills sounded likethe setup for a horror movie where a
vengeful spirit picks off students. Oneby one. It was only after I
got volunteered to set up the laserdisplays that I realized what I should have

(06:02):
been worried about getting lost. Theconcrete walls were featureless even before my flashlight
died on me. My feet achedand my heels were starting to blister,
but there was no sign of thestairwell. I was going in circles,

(06:23):
slumping against the wall. My thoughtsalso went in circles. Maybe I'd never
find my way out. Maybe nobodyelse would find me either, dooming me
to be the next garage ghost.That's when I broke down, crying,
are you okay? Gasping. Ilooked up to find one of the accident

(06:47):
victims already in costume, not thatI could tell who it was beneath all
that fake blood. It would havebeen embarrassing if I weren't so relieved that
someone came looking for me. OnceI explained, he led me back to
the stairwell, cheering me up withatrocious puns. When we got back to
the group, they all stared backat me in confusion, and I did

(07:10):
a double take. They were allhere and nobody was in costume, So
who behind me? The stairwell wasempty about the author. Julia LaFond got

(07:36):
her Masters in geoscience from Penn StateUniversity. She's recently had Flashback published via
The Martian magazine, White Cat Publications, and thirteen podcast. In her spare
time, Julia enjoys reading and gaming. Her website is https colin slash line

(08:00):
h jklafondwriter dot WordPress dot com.And if you go over to the page
for this on Julia Rios dot comthat is linked in your show notes,
that will have a live link toher website if you would like to go
check out more of her work.That just seem like a neat, little
perfect Halloween ghost story, a chillingghost, but the ghost is actually friendly.

(08:24):
And I think that's actually one ofthe themes that we see a lot
in this issue of World's Possibility isthings looking scary, but maybe there's a
story behind them, or maybe theyaren't as scary as they look. It's
a very different vibe to the otherproject that I'm currently working on, which
is called why Didn't You Just Leave. I'm deep in the middle of editing

(08:46):
that with my co editor Nadia Bulkin, and that project is all about things
that look scary, and absolutely arescary and you're not gonna come out better
for them. It's like the polaropposite of worlds of possibility, But in
world's possibility, we try to actuallyfocus on things like hope, comfort,
soothing. So this issue does actuallykind of go into some darker places than

(09:09):
we often go into, and thereare things about, for instance, grief
and grieving loss of loved ones,but we still kind of look at it
with a way of comfort, ofsoothingness, of hope, of the idea
that yes, we all do experiencethese deep dark emotions sometimes, but that

(09:35):
experiencing them can actually be helpful andhealing and is not necessarily just about trauma.
Okay, so happy Halloween. Hopeyou enjoyed this. If you did,
good news, We're going to comeback later this week for a nice
little Dia de Martos special, solook for that in a couple of days.

(10:00):
All right, I will catch younext time. Thanks for listening.