The title of the story is A Shady Plot. The dictionary defines the words as:

Shady: adjective

a. Full of shade; shaded.

b. Casting shade: a shady grove.

c. Quiet, dark, or concealed; hidden.

d. Of dubious character or of questionable honesty.

plot: noun

a. i) a small piece of ground, generally used for a specific purpose: a garden plot.

ii) a measured area of land

b. a ground plan, as for a building; a diagram.

c. storyline- the plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play,

novel, or short story

d. a secret plan to accomplish a hostile or illegal purpose; a scheme.

Based on the definitions above can you predict what the story will be about?

Make a brief note of your prediction in your notebook.

Given below is a list of words related to ghosts and ghost stories with their jumbled-up meanings against them. Match the words/expressions with their correct meanings:

Apparition: a feeling of anticipation of or anxiety over a future event

Poltergeist: a reanimated corpse that is believed to rise from the grave at night to suck the blood of sleeping people

Clairvoyance: a conjurer who expels evil spirits by conjuration

Crystal Ball: a spelling board device intended to communicate with and through the spirit world, obtaining answers to questions

Eerie: beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation

Medium: any of a set of 22 playing cards bearing allegorical representations, used for fortune telling

Transmigration: a supernatural appearance of a person or thing, a ghost, spectre or phantom

Psychic: so mysterious, strange, or unexpected as to send a chill up the spine

Ouija Board: the supposed power to see objects or events that cannot be perceived by the senses

Exorcist: a person through whom the spirits of the dead are alleged to be able to contact the living

Premonition: a globe of quartz crystal in which images, believed to portend the future, are supposedly visible to fortune tellers.

Paranormal: to pass into another body after death: going from one state of existence or place to another

Tarot Card: capable of extraordinary mental processes, such as extrasensory perception and mental telepathy

Vampire: The German word, meaning "noisy ghost"-a troublesome spirit that announces its presence with unexplainable sounds and the creation of disorder

Read the story given below. Your teacher will use a variety of techniques for different parts of the story. For example:

● Silent reading

● One student reading aloud to the whole class

● Students reading in small groups

● Dramatised reading in small groups

Based on your reading of the story above, answer the following questions by ticking the correct options.

The narrator earns his living by ………………………….

Based on your reading of the story above, answer the following questions by ticking the correct options.

The writer was overconfident about his ability to write ghost stories because ……