3,000 years? That's bull. School ain't even that old. I don't know how long it was but it sure wasn't that long. Goes to show that even immortals have short memories. If they didn't then someone would know how long I'd really been down there. Well, I sure don't know. My name is Johnny Spirit, and I like to think I have a long memory. My memory goes all the way back to when monsters were still underground. Times then were bad, and if you had claws or fangs, then those normies would make you wish you'd never been born. A bit of a cruel irony for those of us who started out normie and ended up monster.

You'd think that with all those vampires ex-normies are a pretty common thing. We're not. Mostly we're just hard to kill, and when you can 'live' for thousands of years, and a new one pops up every half century or so, well it can get to seem like there's a lotta you around. Most barely even remember what it felt like when their heart beat and actual blood ran through their veins. Anymore I'm not even sure I remember. As far as ex-normies go there's pretty much 3 groups: vampires, zombies and ghosts; blood drinkers, brain eaters and drifters. And out of these sorry faces the zombies are by far the most common, it's whether or not they're functional that's another story. The sort you get at Monster High are the minority; most zombies are totally mindless blood thirsty, well, monsters. The zombies at Monster High all for some reason or another held onto just enough self-identity to be well, the slow, moaning, zombies we know and love. After them in regularity are the vampires. And there's really only so many of them cause they're a pain in the butt to kill and they live for pretty much forever. Most aren't under 200 years old. After that, we have the ghosts. Me. We're the rarest.

See ghosts, we're funny. Most ghosts don't stick around too long; they spend a day or two moping over their lost life and then they move on. Those who don't well… it depends. Hate to be so vague but it's never the same from one drifter to another. Some search endlessly for closure, and then some just plain decide to stay. Then some… some lose their minds. Become poltergeists. Needless to say there's not a lot of us. And while we're the best rememberers, most forget what it meant to be alive.

I didn't. Like I said I have a long memory, I remembered my life. It doesn't matter now what it was like, I know now it was nothing special. I played a little violin, hung out with the boys, danced with the girls and I liked it. Then it was gone. Just like that. I got myself in a mess too big for me and then bang! I was dead.

At first I felt nothing; I wasn't even fully formed, not yet. I was just a mind on the breeze, drifting. I saw my own funeral, but didn't really understand what was happening, like a dream. I watched them close the coffin lid and drop me six feet under. I saw people crying and saying things like 'ain't it a shame' and 'he was always such a good boy' and all the while I couldn't feel nothing. And the more and more I felt nothing the more and more I started to feel something. It's hard to explain but it was like a fire got in my heart and grew and spread all over me, filling in my fingers and toes. Then it wasn't a dream, it was real. I was real. And I was dead. Oh my God I was dead. I'd died. I'd died and I didn't pass on. I was stuck. I was confused and angry and I was still here, not there. And the more and more I thought about how stuck and angry and confused I was, the more and more I formed until suddenly I wasn't just a mind on the wind; I was fully formed. I was a ghost.

I didn't know what to do or where to go. I almost went home but didn't. I didn't wanna upset my Ma. I wound up drifting instead to those places where all us kids hung out. To be honest I don't remember where I finally found everyone, but I remember looking through clear window glass at them all. They was sitting around talking, laughing, crying some. All my boys and girls, just having a good time. Were they talking about me? I'd wondered, pressing my hands and face up against the windowpane. Were they talking about me? I leaned in closer. Closer. Just trying to hear what they were all saying; too much. I fell through the window and they saw me. They all saw me. I laughed, getting to my 'feet', and said hi, I waved just trying to be all natural like, they screamed.

"M-monster!"

What? Me?

"Get it away! Get it away!"

"Someone call for Van HellScream!"

"Ghost freak!"

They were talking about me! They- my friends, were scared of me! I tried to tell them it was me- it was Johnny, I'm Johnny, but it was like every time I said 'Johnny' all they heard was 'monster'. It was a monster, it was a monster. I'm a monster. But no… no... I'm no monster, I tried to say, I'm Johnny... I'm… I'm…

I'm a monster. That's what they saw. It must be true. I wasn't Johnny anymore. Not to them, maybe not even to me… I realized I couldn't remember last name anymore, if that wasn't a sign I wasn't human no more then what was? I drifted aimlessly through the town, hiding whenever Van HellScream's monster sighting alarm bells went off. The sightings were probably because of me, the monster. Scared and confused as I was, I knew what happened to monsters if they got caught by HellScream and his men. I'd seen it. That 'trick or treatment' was no joke, and I didn't want nothing to do with it. So I hid. I had no idea where monsters were supposed to go; I'd heard they lived underground in some sorta catacombs, but that sounded crazy. How could all that be under the town and no one accidently fell in it or something?

So I sat up on some church roof, in the rain, and felt sorry for myself. Pretty typical behavior for a guy who's up and died, at least that's what I told myself. I didn't have anywhere to go. Didn't know anybody to turn too. And I didn't have a name no more. So what'd that leave me with? A sour personality and an intangible actuality. So basically, nothing worth writing home about. Somehow it never occurred to me that night that I coulda found my last name out just by going through the cemetery and finding my tombstone, I mean, I was basically looking right at it. I was on the church roof. But I guess even I'm not that morbid at my worst. At some point I decided it was time to get off that roof and go and find some monsters.

I was a ghost now right? So I could just drift down underground and since I was already dead it's not like I could suffocate or anything, so, no loss for me if it turned out that there were no catacombs. So that's what I did. I drifted. I drifted down and down. At first there wasn't much more than dirt and I started feeling pretty foolish but then… then there was space. Ok more like no space cause it was an opening or whatever, the point is, I found them. I found the catacombs. I mean granted at first I thought I'd found the sewers or some shit like that but then I saw them. The monsters.