The Lantern’s Last Gasp

The three of us—my sister Mira, her daughter Leila, and my own girl, Tess—had booked a long weekend at the Crooked Steeple, a crooked-beamed inn that had been serving ale and secrets for nigh on two centuries. The village of Halverton was the sort of place that time forgot: thatched roofs, a village green, and a church whose gravestones leaned like gossiping old women. On our second evening, after a dinner of lamb and boiled potatoes, we found a notice pinned to the inn’s oak door. It advertised a ghost walk, promising ‘a lantern-led tour through Halverton’s darker past.’ We laughed, picturing a jolly man in a top hat and a plastic chain. It would be a bit of fun, we agreed.

At the appointed hour, we gathered at the lychgate of St. Aethelred’s, the old churchyard that had been closed to new burials since the cholera years. The sky was a bruised purple, and the air smelled of damp earth and fallen leaves. But no one else was there. No guide, no tourists. Only a bent old woman, perhaps a local, who shuffled past with a basket of mushrooms. Mira asked her if she knew where the ghost walk had gone. The woman squinted at us with rheumy eyes. ‘Oh, that’s only on Fridays, my dears. Tonight’s Saturday. You’ve missed it, unless you fancy a stroll among the dead on your own.’

Deflated but too stubborn to return to the inn for another night of draughts and bad television, we decided to have a couple of drinks at a tavern called the Silent Hare to fortify ourselves. Tess and Leila, teenagers, rolled their eyes but came along. The drinks were strong—a local cider that tasted of apples and rust. Buoyed by the alcohol, we marched back to the graveyard, our shoes crunching on the gravel path.

The gate creaked open. Inside, it was not at all scary. The tombstones were worn, some leaning, and a lone yew tree cast a long, still shadow. The air was cool but not cold. Mira, ever the photographer, began snapping pictures with her phone. The flash lit the stone faces of angels and skulls, and when she showed us, they looked eerie—figures seemed to cavort between the graves, and the shadows were too long. But we shrugged it off. ‘It’s just the light,’ Tess said. ‘And that cider,’ Leila added.

We wandered deeper, past a crumbling mausoleum with a rusted iron door. Mira wandered off on her own, camera held high, capturing the moss on the statues. We could see her silhouette against the pale wall, her voice humming an old hymn. Then she disappeared behind the mausoleum. Tess called out, ‘Mom?’ There was a pause, then the sound of a stone scraping. We went after her.

Behind the mausoleum, there was a small, hidden enclosure we hadn’t noticed before. In the center stood a stone obelisk, and at its base lay a single, old-fashioned lantern—the kind with glass panes and a candle inside. Its flame flickered, though no one had lit it. Mira was staring at it, her phone held limply at her side. ‘It was on the ground when I came round,’ she said, her voice hushed. ‘The candle just… lit itself.’

Leila stepped forward, curious. ‘Maybe it’s a trick. A sensor or something.’ She reached out to touch the glass, but the flame jumped, casting her face in a ghastly white. The lantern seemed to hum, a low vibration we felt in our chests. Then it began to move—slowly at first, sliding across the grass, then rising to waist height. It hovered in front of Mira’s face, as if inspecting her. Tess screamed. I grabbed her arm, pulling her back.

The lantern turned, its light spilling across the graves, and suddenly the shadows between the stones solidified. They took the forms of people—not transparent ghosts, but solid shapes, like shimmering black cutouts. They had no faces, only voids where eyes should be. They moved toward us, their footsteps making no sound but pressing the grass flat. The lantern floated ahead of them, a master leading its hounds.

We ran. We vaulted over a low stone wall, stumbled through a thicket of brambles, and burst out onto a narrow lane. We didn’t stop until we reached the warm, bright window of the Crooked Steeple. Inside, we collapsed at a wooden table, our hearts pounding. The innkeeper, a stout man with a beard like moss, saw our pale faces. ‘You didn’t go to the old churchyard, did you?’ he asked, wiping a glass. ‘I’d have warned you if I’d known. That lantern’s been there since the fire of ’87. It belonged to the sexton, a fellow who went mad and burned his family in the crypt. They say his spirit still walks, looking for his lost lantern.’

We looked at each other. Mira reached into her coat pocket, and her hand trembled as she pulled something out. It was the lantern. It must have followed her, tucked under her arm in the panic. The candle had gone out, but the glass was warm, and there was a faint smell of smoke and incense. She placed it on the table, and the innkeeper’s face went white. ‘You should return that,’ he said, backing away. ‘Or he’ll come for you.’

That night, we locked ourselves in our rooms. The lantern sat on the dresser in Mira’s room, its glass dark. At some point in the dead hours, a low moan began to ripple through the walls, and the floorboards creaked with the weight of unseen feet. Tess and I huddled in bed, listening. Leila later said she saw a shadow pass under her door—a shadow that stopped, lingered, and then moved on.

At dawn, we left the village without breakfast. We threw the lantern into a pond on the outskirts, watching it sink beneath murky water. As we drove away, Mira kept staring out the back window. She said she saw a figure standing at the pond’s edge, holding a light. And when she looked down at her phone, she found a new photo—one she didn’t remember taking. It showed the three of us, asleep in our beds, and in the corner of the frame, a tall dark man with eyes like empty sockets, holding the lantern. The photo was timestamped at 3:33 AM.

We haven’t gone back to Halverton since. But sometimes, at night, we hear a faint clicking sound, like a glass pane being tapped. And over our shoulders, just at the edge of sight, there is a glow—a warm, golden light, swinging as if carried by someone walking just out of step with us. The lantern never left us. It only changed hands.