Ghost stories from Apparitions

The Pale Glow of the Fifth Stair

I had not slept in the upstairs bedroom for eight months, not since the night the pressure on my side had become so unbearable that I swore I saw the...

Read Story →

The Engine’s Lament

In the autumn of that year, my friends and I found ourselves in the grip of a peculiar boredom. We were in the small town of Ashford, where the most...

Read Story →

The Backyard of December

I was eight when we moved into the old carriage house behind the Cutler Funeral Home. It wasn’t a place for kids, not really. The building was three stories of...

Read Story →

The Eighth Hour Bell

In the autumn of my sophomore year, I lived with my grandmother in the small desert town of Pinnacle Flats, where the high school’s clock tower loomed over everything like...

Read Story →

The Hollow Man of Dead Man’s Drop

Last October, I decided to take a breather from the city and visit my cousin’s cabin on the edge of the Ponderosa Pines. The air was crisp with the scent...

Read Story →

The Croaking Hum

When I was eight, my family moved to a creaky old farmhouse on the edge of a town that seemed to have forgotten itself. My room was at the end...

Read Story →

The Velvet Rot

The house on Maple Hollow Lane had stood for seventy years, its bones settling into the earth like an old dog curling up to die. We moved in during the...

Read Story →

The Lantern at Mile 14

It was a Tuesday night, close to midnight, when I hit the last stretch of County Road 7. My car’s headlights carved a weak tunnel through the black, and the...

Read Story →

The Blue Coat at Fort Mercer

It had been exactly one year since my family’s trip to Fort Mercer, a reconstructed colonial outpost nestled in the pine forests of upstate New York. My father, an amateur...

Read Story →

The Painted Lady of the Attic

Mara’s life had settled into a manageable rhythm of sleepless nights and caffeine-fueled mornings. Her three-year-old son, Leo, was a whirlwind of energy, and their creaky Victorian house at the...

Read Story →

The Mosaic Floor’s Whisper

In the autumn of 2012, I was eleven, living with my grandmother in the old farmhouse she’d inherited from her own mother. It was a place of creaking timbers and...

Read Story →

The Curtain Between

It was a humid August night when my daughter, Lena, came back from her midnight stroll with friends. I was dozing on the sofa, the television mumbling to itself, when...

Read Story →

The Tallyman of Tallow Road

The house on Tallow Road had a history that clung to it like damp. My parents, Elara and Marcus, bought the old dower house after the previous owner, a reclusive...

Read Story →

The Awl in the Pine

The house on Hemlock Road wasn’t Victorian, but it was old, nearly a century, with a sagging porch and a square tower that looked like a mistake. We moved in...

Read Story →

The Knocking Code

I’ve known Marnie since I was three, when she first appeared at the foot of my crib, a small girl in a damp, gray dress, her hair a tangle of...

Read Story →

Marianne had spent years chasing ghosts, visiting crumbling asylums, ancient battlefields, and fog-draped cemeteries, always with a camera and a voice recorder. She’d whispered pleas into the dark, waited for...

Read Story →

The House on Marrow Lane

I woke to the sound of footsteps on the stairs. They were heavy, deliberate, like a man in work boots, not the light patter of children. My heart hammered against...

Read Story →

The Static in the Walls

My name is Lily, and I’m twelve. I know that’s the first thing you noticed, and maybe you’re already thinking, ‘Oh, just a kid with an overactive imagination.’ But I’m...

Read Story →

The Borrowed Room

In the autumn of 1995, my husband, Walter, and I had just moved into a sprawling Victorian house in the quiet town of Millbrook. The house was beautiful, with high...

Read Story →

The Swing Under the Sycamore

It started on a balmy summer night, a week before my fifteenth birthday. My cousin, Maya, my best friend, Leo, and my younger brother, Ethan, were all sprawled on the...

Read Story →

The Unseen Visitor

The first time I noticed something was off about the old office building they’d converted into dorms was when the elevator music stopped. It was a tinny, warped version of...

Read Story →

Prank Gone Too Far

Girls. Sleepovers. They were meant for each other. Especially when it’s just you and a friend that act as if you were sisters. Spending the night at my friend Angela’s...

Read Story →

The Weaver’s Room

The old farmhouse on Larkspur Lane had always been a quiet place, save for the wind that moaned through the eaves. My bedroom was at the end of the upstairs...

Read Story →

The Hollow Static

The first time I heard them, I was halfway through a bag of stale pretzels, sprawled on the living room couch at 11:47 PM. The house—a creaking Victorian my aunt...

Read Story →