Ghost stories from Apparitions

The Lantern Boy

I’ve always been one to notice things others might dismiss—a chill in a warm room, a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision, a feeling of being watched when I’m...

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The Hollow Between Heartbeats

Mara had always been a light sleeper, but since the baby came, she’d learned to function on fumes. Tonight was no different. She’d clocked out of the diner at 11:47,...

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The Porcelain Hum

The cottage my grandmother left me sat at the edge of the marsh, a half-collapsed relic of her stubbornness. I’d moved there after the divorce, grateful for the cheap rent...

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The Salt Harvest

In the coastal town of Ashgrove, the salt marshes stretch for miles, their silvered pools reflecting a sky that never seems to clear. My name is Mara, and I’ve spent...

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The Looming in the Linen Closet

The Old Mill house sat at the edge of the cranberry bogs, its windows like black eyes staring out over the marsh. I was seven when we moved there, my...

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The Porch Tape

My cousin Maren and I were staying the week at Aunt Cora’s old farmhouse, a place with weather-worn cedar siding and a wraparound porch that creaked in the wind like...

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The Peek

Milo and I moved to the outskirts of Redwood Creek with our five kids—two from his first marriage, two from mine, and our own little surprise. The house was a...

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The Clockwork Pestle

The autumn of 1995 pressed against the windows of the old Harbinger House, a sagging Victorian that had been carved into a boarding house for six university students. Each room...

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The Knocking in the Walls

Maya had always been sensitive to the creaks and groans of old houses, but this was different. For the past two nights, a rhythmic pounding had sounded from the floor...

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The Hummingbird Motel

I was at my cousin’s cabin, deep in the pine woods, watching a muted hockey game with him. His wife and kids were at her mother’s. Around midnight, his sister-in-law,...

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The Mirror in the Static

The old farmhouse sat at the end of a winding gravel road, miles from the nearest neighbor. Its white paint had long since peeled, revealing gray wood beneath, and the...

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The Glass Reflection

I hadn’t been sleeping well since we moved into the old farmhouse, but that night was worse. It was the week before Christmas, and a rare snowstorm had rolled in,...

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The Fridge Light

I was twelve when we moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the marsh. My parents thought it was charming, with its peeling paint and crooked porch, but...

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The Vermilion Veil

I was eleven the summer my family moved to the old farmhouse outside of Ellsworth, Kansas. The place had stood empty for nearly a decade, and the realtor had been...

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The Face in the Static

My name is Leo, and for the past three years, since I was thirteen, I’ve had this persistent feeling of being watched. It started with small things—the creak of a...

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The Man in the Rain-Soaked Trench Coat

I’ve never been one to dismiss the inexplicable, not after what happened the year I turned sixteen, in the autumn we moved to the old farmhouse on the edge of...

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The Cobalt Afterimage

In the autumn of that year, my brother Leo and I were in the den of our rented farmhouse, watching an old VHS tape of a forgotten horror film. The...

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The Static Between Stations

I was eleven that summer, the year my mother sent me to stay with my aunt in the old mining town of Grayhaven. My aunt lived in a crumbling Victorian...

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The Trembling Slab

The family plot lay in a bowl of hills, a place where the fog pooled like cold milk and the trees leaned in as if listening. It was divided into...

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The Quiet Corner

The day we moved into the house on Maple Street, I felt a wrongness in the air, like a note played off-key that you can’t quite place. The previous owners...

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The Concrete Orchard

The day we moved into the old farmhouse on Marrow Lane, the moving truck had barely shuddered to a halt before I felt it. I was nine, and my brother...

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The Weeping Wall

When I was fourteen, my father and I finally stopped running. After years of cramped apartments and drafty rentals, he’d saved enough for a real house—a two-story Victorian in the...

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The Whistling Cistern

We called it the Whistling Cistern, not because of any musical sound, but because of the long, thin, high-pitched noise that seemed to seep from its metal skin when the...

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The Hollow Floor Above

In 1987, when I was nine, I lived with my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Paul in their creaky Victorian house in Gladewater, Texas. My room was in the basement, and...

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