For some, terror comes in the form of the eldritch horrors imaged by H. P. Lovecraft or the most grotesque creatures dreamed up in Hollywood, while others may fear abduction by aliens and the unknowable body experiments they conduct.
For my two-year-old nephew, terror comes in the form of the Toast Ghost, the spirit of a piece of toast my nephew presumably ate at some point. Toast Ghost floats around my sister’s house at night, keeping my nephew awake with the horrible sounds of crunching bread. He says it sounds like “crunch, crunch, crunch.”
This fear of Toast Ghost has impacted the little guy’s eating habits. Toast, along with some fruit and milk, was a go-to breakfast for him. He now completely refuses any toast and will visibly panic whenever a toaster gets plugged in. While he was at my house last weekend, he became wide-eyed when he caught sight of the toaster on the kitchen table. I showed him I didn’t have any bread to toast to calm his sudden fears of Toast Ghost making an appearance.
My sister has tried curbing Ghost Toast’s influence over my nephew. She attempted to have her husky, Roscoe, sleep in his room for a night because Roscoe is amazingly fast at gobbling up any scrap of food thrown or dropped on the floor. Unfortunately, my nephew and Roscoe have a somewhat antagonistic relationship when food isn’t involved and Roscoe abandoned him to a night of Toast Ghost visitation after his tail was tugged on one too many times.
A second attempt involved the other family dog, Lucy. Lucy, a 10-year-old Australian Shepard, has been with my sister and her husband since the beginning and has proven to be as faithful a companion as a dog can be.
The night after Roscoe abandoned my nephew, Lucy was called in to protect him from the flying toasty apparition. All was well until Lucy’s dinner decided it didn’t agree with her. My nephew ended up shooing the dog out of his room, then crawled into bed with his parents.
Toast is one of the simplest delights a person can experience. A slice of warm, crispy bread with a square of melting butter spreading along its surface is perhaps one of the best culinary pleasures a person can experience. I’m sure this is a temporary fear, at least until he decides killer clowns or mutant tomatoes are something to be more concerned about.
In the mean time, I’m happy to keep the bag of bread out of sight.
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