Walking through the fog on a cold morning on Newport Beach, I found myself talking to a fellow beachwalker, college aged like me. Talkative, personable, carefree. She wore a gray hoodie, and had wide smile and long sandy blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. I definitely made an effort to talk to her.
"I'm Josh," I said.
"Jennifer," she said. Turned to me and shook my hand, pretending to be all formal. A firm handshake.
"I'm from Boulder. I'm only here a few days."
"Really! I should have you over at my house! Show you how us natives live!" She gave me her address.
"Hey, I have a frisbee," I said, "want to catch?" We threw it back and forth and she ran, kicking up sand, laughing, lunging for the frisbee. After a few tosses she did a bad throw and it went into the waves. We both looked after it, trying to see where it went, but it was gone.
"I just love this beach," she said. "I've lived here all my life, and I just never get tired of it. See these raised spots here?" She pointed out some hoofprints that were somehow raised above the rest of the beach. "Horses came through and compacted the sand. Later the surrounding sand blew away, leaving only these compacted hoofprints still standing. Seems spooky, huh!"
"Yeah. And all this fog."
"You know when I was a kid? My mom would make these apple pies. I loved those apple pies, I wanted to be a baker 'cuz my mom baked so good. So I went on the beach, and I made nice sand pies. And I tried to make my brother eat them? I like picked some of one up and tried to put it in his mouth? But he wouldn't, he went and told Dad. And Dad scolded me."
We walked and traded stories for an hour, then I had to go.
The next day I took her up on her offer for dinner though. Went to her address, knocked on the door. A man in his eighties answered.
"Uh, I'm looking for Jennifer? She said maybe I could come for dinner?"
The man looked and me, smirked to himself, then called back to his wife. "ANN! We've got COMPANY!" Then back to me. "I'm Don. You can come in," he said, "but you're too late. She's DEAD." He said it theatrically, "DAI-huhd".
"WHAT? Oh my god! What happened?"
"Well, we don't really know. Probably drowned. But, she died thirty-four YEARS ago. Son, you were talking to a GHOST."
"OK she's pulling my leg," said Josh.
He brought out a worn Missing Person flier from 1987. Jennifer Parsons. The picture was definitely her, same age, same wide smile, same ponytail, although she was wearing a plaid wool jacket in the flyer. But it was a picture from 1987, and this was 2021. And a group photo of them with Jennifer, but Ann and Don had aged greatly since then.
"She keeps busy," said Don. "Something like once a month someone comes by, saying she asked them over for dinner. She's been doing that since 1987. At first we thought she was still alive, then maybe it was a bad joke, then we thought it was creepy, but by now we're just used to it."
"But ... but ... why would she ... why would a ghost do that?" I asked.
"You KNOW why," said Don. "She's a flirt. She just loves the attention, and she loves that beach. And I think she tells stories, and invites people over to dinner so they can tell them back to us, to sort of send us post cards."
"What did she tell you?" asked Ann.
I related the story of the sand pies. Ann perked up, and went to the kitchen and brought me a slice of an apple pie she had just made. Jennifer had been right. Ann really did make good pies.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts.