CMYK
SECTION
Sara Nickerson, St. Joseph Regional School, Batavia.
Delivering scares and suspense
Contest
marks 10
years
STUDENT STORYTELLERS: Entries
showcase work from 3 counties
By BEN BEAGLE
ben@batavianews.com
Ten years ago, The Daily News set out to
find the next Poe, Hawthorne or Irving. Per-
haps, we thought, a future suspense writer
was lurking somewhere in the Genesee Val-
ley.
We’ve found many such tellers of tales
in the decade since “Ghost Tales” made its
debut.
Today, the winning entries from the
“Ghost Tales” writing and art contest are
published in the Lifestyles/Extra section of
The Daily News.
This year, more than 20 writers and a
dozen artists – the art contest began in the
second year of “Ghost Tales” – contributed
to the annual witch’s brew of ghost hunters,
strange happenings, haunted houses and
mysterious cloaked figures.
Some writers submitted art that illustrated
their stories. Entries were judged by staff
from the editorial, advertising, art and circu-
lation departments of The Daily News and
a representative from the Genesee-Orleans
Regional Arts Council, the project’s long-
time collaborator.
Four winners were chosen in the writing
contest and five in the art contest. The win-
ners were recognized in age categories based
on the ages of the writer’s submissions.
Among writers, winners were named for ages
11, 12, 13 and 15.
Gianna Falleti, 11, of Batavia, a student
at St. Joseph Regional School, wrote in her
winning story, “The Field Trip,” about a class
outing to explore the historic Asylum. But the
See CONTEST B2
B
SATURDAY
OCTOBER 19, 2019
AGE 12
The Doll
and the
Chalkboard
By Annabelle Buckley
Grade 7, Perry Central School
O
nce there was a girl named Susie whose par-
ents gave her everything she wanted. If she
wanted a dress they would get it for her, if she
wanted a toy they got it for her, and if she wanted a
doll they got it for her, until one day when they were
all sold out of the one she wanted.
Instead they got her an old doll
at a garage sale. They said to the
person running the garage sale,
“Excuse me, sir, but how much
does this doll cost?”
“Nothing!” He exclaimed. “Go
ahead take it!”
“Oh thank you!” Susie’s
mother said.
“No thank you!” The man said. Annabelle
Buckley
As Susie’s parents were walk-
ing away the man said to his wife:
“Bless their souls.”
The next day Susie’s parents gave her the doll
and said, “Sorry, we couldn’t get you the one you
wanted, but we found this at a garage sale!”
“Ew a garage sale!” Susie said.
“This was not what I wanted at all! I hate you
both!”
Then, just like that she was throwing a fit and she
stormed off to her room with the doll. She slammed
the door hard and hurled the doll across the room.
Suddenly the doll made a noise and started talk-
ing.
Autumn Moy, age 18, Holley High School, Holley. “Hi my name’s Hannah do you want to be
See DOLL B2
 CMYK

B2 Saturday, October 19, 2019 THE DAILY NEWS

Contest
From B1

trip goes horrible wrong.

Twelve-year-old winner
Annabelle Buckley, 12, of
Perry, told the story of a young
girl haunted by a doll leaving
unnerving messages on a
chalkboard. The tension rises
as the doll grows increasingly
angry with the girl’s unwilling-
ness to play.
Winner Allionna Christie,
13, of Darien set her story,
“The Worst Birthday Present
Ever” at Rolling Hills Asylum,
reputedly Genesee County’s
most-haunted location. The
story is largely told through a
patient’s recently discovered
journal.
Cora Bennage, 15, of Holley
called her story “You’re not
very good at this game.”
The project is a collabora-
tion with the Genesee-Orleans
Regional Arts Council in Bata-
via. GO ART! helped distribute
information and collect en-
tries from area schools.
“Ghost Tales” is open to
children ages 11 to 18 years
old in Genesee, Orleans and
Wyoming counties. Stories
had a 1,000-word limit.
Artwork will be displayed
at GO ART!, 201 East Main St.,
Batavia.
Students from schools dis-
tricts in Genesee, Orleans and
Wyoming entered this year’s
Ghost Tales.
The entrants
n ALEXANDER: Allionna
Emma Spinner, 13, of Perry Junior High School, “The Monster Under the Bed.” Christie, “The Worst Birthday
Present Ever”; Katelyn Green,
“Darien Lake”; Angelina
Laker, “Daisy Roger”; William
AGE 13 Mardisin, “The Thing”; Isabella
Reeves, “The Girl With No Face”;

By Allionna Christie
The Worst Birthday Present Ever
Grade 8, Alexander Central School
Today is my 15th birthday.
July 14, 1968.
So far,
Maria had
me blow out
a candle on
top of my
muffin. I
wished to be
free. I am so
sick of being Allionna
in this tiny Christie
room, getting
beaten by the staff if I don’t
do things perfectly. The only
people I actually like here are
Maria, who is my counselor,
and Aubrey, the girl in the
walls.
Aubrey always tells me how
fun it is in the walls. She says
that if I follow the steps she
tells me to take, I will soon be
free. Everytime she gives me a
task, I get another step on how
to get out. So far she has given
me three hints.
First, she had me cut a
chunk of Shaunnah’s hair off
and slide it into the vent. In
return, Aubrey told me that
when my lunch is delivered,
snap the tray in half and hide
it under my bed. When the
lunch lady came in I told her
someone else already took it.
Second, Aubrey had me
draw all over the walls and say
it was Jackson. When I asked
why I was doing these things,
she told me it was how people
treated her when she was
here. She said she used to be
placed in my room.
As the next step, she had me
take the sharp end of the tray,
and start carving a square hole
in the drywall. Aubrey had me
do it near the floor and big
enough for me to fit through.
I did it behind my bed so it
couldn’t be seen unless my
bed was pulled out.
The third thing Aubrey had
me do was use the tray to cut
my arm open. I don’t under-
stand why she made me do
this. She said she wanted me
to feel what she went through.
As my hint, which I just did,
she had me wait to call the
maintenance man into my
room to ‘change the lightbulb’
and when he comes in to steal
a flashlight off his cart. Aubrey
said that she would give me
the next clue tomorrow.
So for now, Goodnight Di-
ary.
July 15, 1968.
For breakfast I had por-
ridge, pudding, and an apple.
I just heard Aubrey call my
name, I will tell you what she
says when she is done…
Whoa.
This task is going to be hard.
She wants me to hide in the
hall and try to break Mrs. Mar-
tha, the math teacher’s, leg
by secretly tripping her. I can
hear somebody walking down
the hall right now, it might be
her. I will go hide out there
just in case.
I did it. I don’t think it is
broken but I did trip her. I
quickly did it and then slipped
in the door while putting
a book on the floor, so she
thought she tripped on the
book.
“Nice job, Jacklynn,” said
Aubrey.
I feel so relieved that I didn’t
get caught. Everyone thinks
I am a nice kid. I always get
good grades, eat all of my
food, and I never talk back.
“Aubrey can I know the next
step now?” I asked her.
“Yes, take the flashlight and
go in the hole you made. Try
to find a path that leads to out-
side. but don’t do it till night-
time so you don’t get caught.”
“Okay, I’m going to take a
nap. I will talk to you when it
is time”.
“Okay. Bye, Jacklynn.”
It is now night time.
“Aubrey are you up?” I say.
“Yeah, are you ready?”
“Yes. Let me grab the flash-
light and push my bed out.”
Jacklynn pushes her bed
out and takes off the cut part
of the wall.
“All right. I’m in,” I call to
Aubrey.
“Good. Now try to find the
exit.”
“ It is really hot in here. I
can’t breathe. I think I am go-
ing to pass out.”
These are pages from Jack-
lynn Brown’s Journal. It was
found in the furnace of the
Rolling Hills Asylum 32 years
after Jacklynn wrote it. Next to
all of her bones in the furnace.
People complained of the
smell of a dead animal for
years whenever they slept in
her room.
Everyone always thought
Jacklynn just disappeared.
When someone in main-
tenance decided to check the
furnace out. He was startled.
Jack The Janitor didn’t
know that he had discovered
something big. He grabbed
the book and showed it to the
owner of the asylum. She said
Aubrey died years before Jack-
lynn was there. In the same
exact way.
The story of Jacklynn and
Aubrey will forever live on.
Dylan Saxman, “Undead Walk-
ing”;
n ELBA: Bing Zuber, “The
Dinosaur Costume”;
n HOLLEY: Cora Bennage,
“You’re Not Very Good at this
Game”; Nicole Bull, “The Haunt-
ed Room” (art); Autumn May,
“Morior” (art); Ruth Miller, “This
One Doesn’t Have a Happy End-
ing” (art)
n PERRY: Kayden Bradley,
“Psycho”; Annabelle Buckley,
“The Doll and the Chalkboard”;
Lauren Holderer, “The One
Who Lived”; Tess McLaugh-
lin, “Watch Out for Dancing
Wheels”; Emma Spinner, “The
Monster Under the Bed” (story
and accompanying art); Emily
Wagner, “The Teeth Snatcher”;
n ST. JOSEPH REGIONAL
SCHOOL: Lindsay Betters (art);
Emery Blum, “The Lighthouse”;
Gianna Falleti, “The Field Trip”
(story and art); Mirabella Falleti
(art); Zachery Houseknecht,
“The Night We All Forgot” (story
and art); Sarah Lumber, “The
Unexplored Haunted Castle”
(story and art); Clairissa Milli-
man (art); Landon Narburgh,
“Horror Land”; Sara Nickerson
(art); Mia Treleaven, “The
Woods”; Dominic White, “The
Masked Man”; and Lucia Zam-
bito (art).

The next day she woke up and went out of

Doll
From B1
friends?”
“Ugh it must of turned on when it hit the
ground.” Susie said. “No I don’t want to be
friends you dumb old doll!”
“Are you sure?” asked the doll.
“Wait a minute, did you just respond?”
Susie asked.
The room went silent for a moment.
“Never mind I must have imagined it,”
she thought.
Susie went to bed that night in a bad
mood. She woke up in the middle of the
night to a noise that sounded like someone
writing on a chalkboard. Then she remem-
bered there was one in the hallway outside
her room. She went out in the hallway to
check, on the chalkboard were the words,
“ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T WANT TO BE
FRIENDS?”
“Ha ha. Very funny, dad,” she thought. “It
must of been my dad, that’s the only thing
that makes since.”
She thought this because she knew her
dad had a sense of humor. In order to go
along with “her dad” she wrote down, “Nev-
er gonna happen” and went back to bed.
her room then took a peek at the chalkboard
to see if her dad had written something back.
The message was different, written across
the chalkboard in big, red, shaky letters it
said “BAD CHOICE”.
“My dad.” Susie thought as she shook her
head.
What she had not realized was the doll
was no longer where she had left it yesterday.
That night she woke up again, this time
to a thud. Thud, it crashed again. THUD,
THUD, THUD!
Susie went to see what was the racket and
saw her dads bowling balls falling out of the
attic.
“What the...” Susie thought. All of a sud-
den she heard the noise of chalk again she
turned around and saw a piece of chalk
floating and writing the words, “LETS PLAY
A GAME!”
Without thinking, Susie let out a loud,
high pitched scream “AAAAAAAAHH-
HHH!!!”
Her parents came running out of their
room.
“What’s the matter Susie?” her mom
asked.
Susie looked at her parents and pointed
at the chalkboard. “What? There’s nothing
there,” her mom said.
Susie turned around; the message was
gone. “What?! I could have sworn...? Oh
yeah, and your bowling balls, Dad! They fell
out of the attic!”
“What are you talking about? The attic
door is shut,” said her dad.
“But..but…”
“You must have had a nightmare,” said
Susie’s mom.
“Go back to bed Susie,” her dad said as he
and Susie’s mom headed back to their room.
“Yeah sure, as soon as I get to the bottom
of this,” Susie thought. She went to her room
and checked where she had thrown the doll
earlier, but it was gone.
“What where did it go?” Susie thought.
All of a sudden she heard the CREAK, of
her door opening and the SLAM, of it being
shut behind her. Susie turned around and
saw the doll standing there.
“You should respect all of your toys no
matter where they came from,” the doll said.
Susie’s screams echoed through the night.
The neighbors were woken up that night by
the screams. They heard multiple screams
that night some sounded like a child ,some
sounded like a man, and some sounded like
a woman.
After that night, Susie’s family was miss-
ing, and so was the doll, however no one
knew about the doll besides the people who
had given it to them. So nobody ever knew
what had happened to Susie and her family.
CONGENITALLY MISSING TEETH
When teeth are missing as a result of failing to develop at birth,
it is referred to as hypodontia. The most common congenitally
missing teeth are the wisdom teeth (25-35 percent), followed
by the permanent upper lateral incisors (two percent), and the
second premolars (three percent). The problem this condition
poses is that it removes a tooth from the dental arch that normally
keeps adjacent teeth in their proper places. For instance, when
the upper lateral incisors are missing, the canine (cuspid or
“eye”) teeth are apt to move toward the central incisors to fill
the gap. In order to identify and deal effectively with such dental
abnormalities, it is important to have regular dental checkups.
Don’t let dental abnormalities keep you from smiling, chewing,
talking, and just generally enjoying life. These are many strategies
available today to solve the problems caused by missing teeth.
BATAVIA FAMILY DENTAL will be happy to discuss which ones
would be best for your circumstances. Office hours are by
appointment at 6 Batavia City Centre. Call 585.343.4246.
P.S. Congenitally missing teeth is a condition that tends
to appear within families and also may be influenced by
environmental factors.
 CMYK

The DAILY News Saturday, October 19, 2019 B3

AGE 15 AGE 11

You’re Not Very Good at This Game The Field Trip

By Cora Bennage By Gianna Falleti Anna said,”I can hear cry-
Age 15, Holley Junior-Senior High School St.Joseph Regional School ing.” They listened more but it

Y I
ou crouched behind a t was a rainy Halloween went away.
large, jagged boulder. morning. Anna woke up There were old beds made
You clasped your dirt and excited for school. Today, of straw and broken mirrors.
blood covered hand over your her class was going on a field Glass was on the floor and old
mouth and nostrils to try and trip to the Asylum. She won- clothes, too.
mask the sound of your heavy Annna could hear the cry-
dered what they would see.
breathing. You leaned your ing again but this time
Anna got ready. She
coming from a closet.
tired body against the rock, got to school and met
Then she walked away
jolting away up with her friends.
from the group and
when you felt “Anna, do you slowly peeked in.
a chain move think we will see any “SQUEAK” a big
against you. ghosts?” her friend black bat came fly-
You had Kayla asked. “I’m ing out over her head.
managed to scared, I don’t know.” She screamed and Mr.
find a second The bus came to Gianna Falleti Bones came rushing
of refuge pick the class up and back in to get here.
against Dev- they drove to the Asylum. The Then, they went out to look
il’s Rock. Cora Bennage sky was dark,but all the lights at the yard. Anna said,”its
You couldn’t remember were on. weird there are all these bumps
The teacher there lead- on the ground.”
how you had run so far from
ing the tour was weird. He K yla said, “Maybe just be-
your original starting place. had white hair. no teeth, was cause it is really old.”
The dark silhouettes of the very skinny and had all white
trees in the forest had all While Mr. Bones was tell-
clothes. His name was Mr. ing us about the poor, home-
looked the same with their Bones and he was very very old. less, and sick people who had
looming branches reaching Anna and her class were to farm there Kayla yelled. A
out to scrape and tear away at brought in the cafeteria. hand reached out of one of the
your clothing and flesh as you Mr Bones said, “Class, many bumps in the grass.
darted away from your preda- years ago in the 1800s people “AGH it is grabbing my legs
tor. lived here. They were the poor help!”
You curled your knees up and homeless. Some were The arms grabbed her and
to your chest, your spine now sick and could not take care of the rest of the class but not
pressing against the surface themselves. No one wanted Anna. They pulled and pulled
and your hand still pressed these people.” from the graves until they took
against your face. A thin line Just then the light went on their bodies under ground.
of blood ran from your knee and off when he was talking The only two left were Anna
from when you had tripped about the people who lived and Mr. Bones.
over a surfaced tree root deter- there. She yelled, “HELP THEM!”
mined to make your escape as A bolt of lightning hit out- Mr. Bones said, “Anna I am
difficult as possible, and you side the window. Everyone here for you and you will be
regretted wearing ripped jeans screamed! mine forever!”
in the first place. Then the tour began. The He grabbed around her
Damp, heavy breathing was class walked up the dark hall- and she disappeared into the
ways and into a bedroom first. ground.
all your ears trained into as the
Anna said to her friend The whole class was now in
demon ripped through the last graves. They became ghosts of
Kayla,”Do you hear that?”
part of the dense forest. Kayla said,”NO.” the Asylum.
You knew the building in
front of you would be of no use
since it was shut for the night
long ago. The last dim rays
of the blood red sunset were
slipping under the horizon, HAPPY
suffocated by the thick, dark Real Estate Services HALLOWEEN
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EY B CK GU

Nicole Bull, 12th grade, Holley Junior-Senior High School, “The Haunted Room.”
A

570 East Main Street • Batavia, NY 14020

You could hear the teasing Cell: 585.314.7982
pout in the demon’s voice as Office: 585.409.2115 • Fax: 585.343.8502

‘
they walked through the grass, nancycrocker@howardhanna.com
autumn leaves crumbling be- The demon’s face HowardHanna.com

neath their claws. appeared in front

Your hand no longer was
needed against your face. Your of you and upside
breath had been stolen, ripped
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their blood orange
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The demon’s face appeared 570 East Main Street • Batavia, NY 14020

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doreengraham@howardhanna.com
their fangs, and their blood or-
ange eyes emitted light against stench of death stung HowardHanna.com

their grimy scales. The rotting

stench of death stung your
eyes, and you suddenly real-
ized it wasn’t just you and the
your eyes....
’ Ruth Miller, 12th grade, Holley Junior-Senior High School, “This
One Doesn’t Have a Happy Ending.”
half human half lion beast. leaves onto the ground from HAPPY
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your spine. The chain rattled michelledills@howardhanna.com
once more, and suddenly the trapped inside of your lungs. HowardHanna.com
Devil appeared next to you; his Your eyes stung from the
hands still tied back against stench coming from the
the weathered rock. beast’s breath, and the Devil
The spirits now moved laughed once more, this time
closer and closer and closer shaking the ground.
and the Devil laughed whole- “You ready to play for real
heartedly, shaking the dead now, deary?”

HAPPY

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