A few days before taking second class students  to see the performance The Canterville Ghost, organized by Erasmus Theatre, working in pairs, I had them write a short story, which was supposed to be quite scary and disturbing, like the extraordinary one written by Wilde.

I gave them the starting situation and they wrote down the  rest of the story.

The purpose was also to make them use Past Continuous, a tense we had recently focused our attention on.

The students themselves chose the best story-, considering  the content, the characters and the way in which it was organized.

They gave it a score and the  best story was considered to be the one that got the most scores.

They were really enthusiastic on the day they chose the best story.

This is the starting point

One night a boy was going home after he left a pub. There wasn't anyone in the street and everything was quiet. While he was walking he suddenly stopped, because he was distracted by the sight of a deserted church. It was scary and mysterious, but the boy was curious and he wanted to come in, but in that moment he felt a hand on his shoulder, he turned around and he saw a woman dressed in white with blood on her mouth.

and here's the following story written by the students with the title : A passionate crime

she was a ghost and she was asking the boy to help her. The boy got scared and suddenly he fainted.When he woke up he was inside that church.The ghost stayed in front of him..He tried to run away but the doors of the church closed and he was trapped.

The woman started telling her story. In 1935 she was a happy and gorgeous girl, she had a boyfriend who asked her to marry him. She said yes.On the wedding day she wore a beautiful white dress and her magnificent veil, she was ready to marry the man of her dreams, but before going down the aisle, something terrible happened.

The butler of her family house was in love with her and he wanted her to stop the wedding and to go away with him.The woman told him the truth about her feelings, she didn't feel anything for him and she begged him to let her go.

The butler was disappointed and after he got furious and started beating the girl. It was a nightmare, she had no strength to react and at the end she died bleeding.

She never had any justice for that murder. The butler fled without leaving a trace and nobody could see him again. Vanished into thin air forever.

As soon as the ghost finished speaking, the boy stood up and started screaming at her. He didn't understand what he was supposed to do. The woman wanted to find the killer, who probably had got really old now, and kill him. In exchange she would give him the immortality after a deal with the devil....

the students said the story was supposed to be continued.......