CHAPTER ONE

    Cori struggled to set up the huge red umbrella.

    "Great!" Cori mumbled aloud. "I finally get a day to sunbathe and the wind blows like a hurricane! Oh, no!" Cori exclaimed as her blanket took off like a tumbleweed, rolling down the Malibu beach.

     Just then, her cell phone beeped. It was a message from Marta: Check your email.

     "Terrific," thought Cori. "Now I have an excuse to give up the fight with this umbrella!"

     Cori opened her computer and pulled up the email from Marta:

     Cori,
     Hope you’re getting to spend some time on the beach.

     Me? I’ve been reading some cool things on the Internet! Want to hear? (Of course you do!)

     In the 1800s, doctors didn’t like to get close enough to dead people – s like listening to their hearts or anything — to figure out if they were dead. Probably afraid of getting the same disease that killed the person. So, they just buried them. But the people weren’t always really dead! Sometimes they were in comas. They would wake up during the funeral! People totally freaked when the "dead" person would sit up and climb out of the coffin! People became afraid of being buried alive. So, loved ones of the deceased would drill a small hole in the lid of the coffin. They would wrap a string around the dead person’s finger. Then, run the string through the hole, tying it to a bell outside the coffin. That way, if the person woke up after the coffin was sealed, they could ring the bell and let people know they were really alive inside!

     Marta,
     Virtual Sidekick of the Ghost Hunter

     Cori smiled at the email from her best friend.

     "Where does she find this stuff!" Cori muttered shaking her head. But she did like getting messages from Marta. It was just like having Marta right there with her, instead of more than a thousand miles away. Cori began to type a letter back.

     Email
     From Cori
     To Marta

     That’s cool! I think I’ll be buried with my cell phone — just in case. Mom’s off getting us lunch right now. She’s been working on a bunch of South American Indian artifacts. They found lots of stuff at a dig and shipped it here to the university. Mom’s helping them sort out what they’ve got.

     And — yes — I’m on the beach!

     Cori stopped typing to look up at the ocean. She expected to see just another dude breaking a wave on another neon lime green surfboard. But this wasn’t just another dude! She started typing to Marta again as fast as she could.

     Hope you’re still at your computer! Get ready to download some images. Call me on my cell phone as soon as you’re ready. Make it fast!

     The Ghost Hunter

     Cori clicked the send button for the email. Then, she hunted through her backpack for her Pink Diamond Girls baseball cap. She clipped the camera to the bill of the cap. Just when she finished popping the cell phone’s earpiece into her ear, it rang.

     "Cori, here. That you?"

     "Yep," answered Marta.

     "Wait until you see this!" Cori said excitedly.

     "It’s just now loading. Give me a sec," Marta told her friend.

     "It’s so cool!" Cori continued. "And, it’s riding the surf right toward me!"

     "Got it!" Marta shouted as the image came up on her computer screen. "Whoa!"

To see the image the Cori and Marta saw, click here.

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Read CHAPTER 2