Before the end of the term, Caroline asked Mrs. Walcott if she could interview her for a history
assignment her class was doing on the local neighborhood. She sat in the little old cottage with her
gentle new friend, sipping lemonade and eating cookies while she found out more than any of her
friends learned. She even got an A+ for the assignment.
At first her friends didn’t believe that she was friends with witch at Number 97 or that she’d vis-
ited the little old cottage and returned. Perhaps, they said, she was entranced and one day might be
captured forever. They seemed to want to hold on to their own beliefs that the old woman really was
a witch who stole children. One by one Caroline led them past the house and introduced them to
Mrs. Walcott. It wasn’t long before they, too, were all able to dispense with their fears. Stories about
the witch of Number 97 and disappearing children began to fade into distant memories.
STORY 22
FACING FEARS: A TEEN STORYTherapeutic Characteristics
Problems Addressed
■ Fear of what you do not know
■ False beliefs
■ Lack of reality testing
■ Thinking the worst of othersResources Developed
■ Learning to control thoughts
■ Developing positive thinking styles
■ Changing old beliefs
■ Changing through successive approximations
■ Being open to new experiencesOutcomes Offered
■ New skills for managing old fears
■ Positive thought patterns
■ Methods for reality testing
■ Willingness to experiment
Charlie had heard a story that he didn’t know whether to believe. It was just that all the other
trainees on the sailboat seemed to believe that the ship had its own ghost. Ghost stories are for kids,
thought Charlie, not teenagers.
For as long as Charlie could remember, he had enjoyed boats and the sea. He would look envi-
ously at sailboats cruising by on the ocean. He looked at them in magazines, read books about sail-
ing, and drew sailboats in the backs of his schoolbooks when he should have been concentrating in
class. He had joined the Sea Scouts (which was sort of like Boy Scouts with a special interest in boats
84 Healing Stories, Teaching Stories