A ghost story of a different flavor

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 g...