An evil grin spread across my gruesome, bony face as I thought about it. I scanned each of their faces, peering right into their eyes, searching for the perfect one to focus my attack on. I found her quickly. The blonde girl who was cowering between her two friends averted her eyes when I glanced at her. Bingo. A dead giveaway. Victim number one, come on down.

I opened my mouth and spewed out my patented ghoul laugh. It was a low, chilling, menacing sound that blended with the eerie organ music like some bizarre vocal accompaniment. The group of girls in the lead moved slowly forward as the girls following them slipped behind their dates.

I slowly raised my arms to chin level, still holding the ghost gingerly between my hands. The brunette girl in the lead stopped and pointed at it.

"Oh, look," she said in a playful, singsong voice. "He's got a little ghost."

Her blonde friend peeked out at it and then quickly looked away.

I released my fingers, flinging Maxwell away. But it didn't fall. It just stayed there, floating in mid air. I waved my hands around the side and over the top like a puppeteer manipulating invisible strings. The small ghostly shape began to float gently up and down as if in response.

"Dude, that's tight," one of the teenage boys said to his date.

"How's he doing it?" she said, looking back at him.

He didn't answer, and I only continued laughing in response. How indeed, I thought.

I waited for the blonde girl to look up. I knew that curiosity had to get the better of her sooner or later. Then I saw her peek timidly around the corner of her friend's shoulder.

At that very instant, Maxwell flew away from my invisible grip and shot forward, straight toward the blonde girl's face. She screamed and shrank away, pulling her friend's back against the wall with her. I reached out with my right hand and caught the ghost before it could touch her. But the melee had already begun. All seven of them ran around me in a stampede.

But they hadn't seen Amy lurking in her dark corner. She pulled back her hood and rushed forward on cue, screeching like a banshee. The three girls leading the charge stopped short and the brunette in front stumbled backwards, tripping over her screaming friend. The girl behind them, unable to stop her forward momentum fell over the other two. The three of them tumbled to the floor in a tangled pile.

The two couples hurried around them, trying to get away from Amy and me. But as they reached the safety of the next corridor, Joe sprang out like a jack in the box rattling his shaker can as he came. Startled, the boy in front leapt back causing his date to trip over the pile of girls on the floor. He tried to catch himself against the wall but failed.

I laughed even louder as hit the ground, right on the seat of his pants.

And the second couple? The boy, who was tall and muscular, screamed louder than his date at Joe's sudden appearance, and then he drew her defensively in front of him.

Five victims on the floor and a sixth turned to mush. It was a classic.

We stepped away as they untangled themselves and began climbing to their feet. They began to laugh one after the other. It's the strangest thing but it always happens. It's as if for one brief moment they let their imaginations run away with them, and once they realized what actually happened, it was their only response. Veteran fright filmmaker Roger Corman explained the phenomenon best. "When you go to see a horror film and you scream with the audience," he once said, "…you will very often smile or laugh afterwards because you know to a certain extent you've been had by the filmmaker (who) has manipulated the tools of his craft in order to get the right emotion form you."

We had certainly done that. I raised the floating ghost toward the still laughing group as they hurried down the corridor away from us.

"Monsters seven, victims zero," I cried at them in my best growly monster voice. "Dead guys rock!"

Joe started laughing once they were out of sight. He nearly doubled over.

"That was great," he said, barely able to speak.

"Did you see those girls falling all over each other?" Amy said, laughing just as hard.

"It was a little hard to miss. "

"How about that guy falling on his butt?"

"I liked the hero using his girlfriend as a shield," I said, laughing along with them.

"Awesome tag team scare," Joe said.

Amy raised her hand in the air. Joe and I did the same, and we did a three-way high five.

At that moment I knew how Boris Karloff and Robert Englund must have felt on the sets of their movies. Being a monster definitely has its moments.

But just as our victims learned when they saw the Floating Ghost, it's only magic if you believe.