It was getting dark again by the time all the fuss finally died down (hey when people round here partied they partied, after all usually the most exciting thing to happen all year was a toss up between a party, or an occasional two headed goat.) So it was decided the group would stay in the village for an additional night, and Mibbet and Rosalind had just started to relax for a nice nap when suddenly the peaceful night air disturbed by a terrifying scream from the fields.

Mibbet being Mibbet of course grabbed Choppy and dashed out to see what the fuss was about. Eventually encountering a terrified looking farmer surrounded by a large cluster of scarecrows (which had apparently somewhere down the line extended their job description to scarecrow, and scare farmer, though they were still getting stiffed on the pay front.)

“O- ol- old Palmer’s at it again,“ stuttered the terrified farmer Giles, gesturing at the remains of a rather decrepit farm on a nearby hill

“Old Palmer?” Mibbet enquired, while Rosalind seemed nervous at the sight of the terrifying tattie bogles.

“Farmer Palmer used to run the farm up on the hill, until one day after his wife passed away. He passed on not too long long afterwards, apparently a freak accident with a scythe , but ever since then he’s haunted the place, whole damned farm is cursed if you ask me.”

“How exactly do you do that?” Mibbet asked, something really didn’t add up here logistically speaking if nothing else.

Rosalind meanwhile was getting increasingly nervous as time went on. As a royal she had many former relatives in the spooky category, many of whom according to legend still hung around the place. Usually sans noggin. Often having being divested of said thinking apparatus by direct ancestors to herself, and as you can probably imagine sharing housing with people your great granny assassinated, defenestrated, or directly decapitated (Great grandma Hilda Von Harmsworth was very much a fan of overkill when it came to the retirement plans for potential political rivals. She was a firm believer that without overkill you got under-kill, and that leads to messy grudges.) Made for a lot of areas of the castle she did not go, as she had zero desire to have awkward conversations with the undead, who technically were of equal rank to her, and may have many many many reasons to dislike her family.

She had of course never seen a ghost herself (and she was happy to make scrupulous effort to keep it that way, it was hard to boss around the dead, and that thought, far more than the potential ghosts themselves, haunted her.)

This resulted in a rather big conflict of interest between Mibbet and Rosalind, in which Mibbet was interested in finding out what the hell was going on, and Rosalind was interested in getting as far away from here as physically possible as quickly as possible.

“How do you do that with a scythe anyway?” Asked Mibbet, trying to wrap her head around the logistics of it all.

“Well there was a rumour going round at the time his death may not have been an accident.”

“Well a scythe is hard to have an accident with I guess being on a long handle and all.”

“Yes that was the first clue.”

“Only the first?”

“Yeah the second may have being him being found strapped up like a scarecrow.”

“That’d definitely make me suspicious too.” Agreed Mibbet.

“Took us a while to realise too, his scarecrows were always realistic enough to be contest winners anyway.”

“So what you are saying, is his skill was outstanding in his field.”

Inside her head Rosalind facepalmed, and wished, not for the first time she could smack Mibbet upside the head. Ghosts or not there was no excuse for terrible punnage.

“Alright, I’m going up there to find out what the hell is going on, Errol, with me.”

Errol did not like the sound of that but he had long since realised there was no point arguing once the princess made up her mind.

He was unaware of course, of the fact Mibbet really was in two minds over this as she dragged Rosalind along kicking and screaming (metaphorically of course, her being somewhat intangible, and not exactly in the drivers seat at the moment.)

As you can probably figure out by now, frogs not usually being the spiritual sort, or the religious sort didn’t usually have much of a premise of an afterlife. Their deaths were usually obvious enough that other frogs didn’t exactly relish the idea of overthinking the prospect. Plus the distinct lack of deities dependent on them for offerings, dedication, or faith meant that no pantheon really had an amphibian department, (at least not until very very recently, and proper formation of said department was still a long way off.)

Because of this of course when it came to frogs the gods usually just recycled. (The new karma-tron 5000 ethereal essence extractor got a lot of use, erased all trace of former identities, and only rarely came back with an isekai ID10T error.) so frogs tended not to stick around much after passing, except in a purely physical form, usually as pallets.

This meant that despite Rosalind’s encouragement Mibbet wasn’t afraid of no ghost, an was instead curious as to what it looked like when a human who was already dead decided to stick around and bug the living.

They got to the farm fairly quickly, and the front door swung open in front of them, freaking the hell out of Rosalind in the process. The farm itself had of course seen better days, but seemed OK if you ignored the creepy laughter. Then as they stepped inside the door slammed shut behind them. (Oddly there was no creak as it did so though the slam was impressive.) They entered the living room, looking around as they were suddenly faced with the frightening phantasmal form of former farmer Palmer.