Ghost stories from Children Who See Spirits

The Sunroom’s Last Bloom

I never believed in the weight of houses—how some places press down on you slowly, like a held breath, until you forget you ever breathed freely. My first house was...

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The Cinder Man

Mara was three years old, her cheeks still round with baby fat, but her eyes had an oldness that unsettled me. We lived in a converted lighthouse on the Oregon...

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The Cold Spots of Willow Creek

My grandmother always said that kids and animals see things we can’t. I used to think it was just old-fashioned talk, until I spent a summer at my aunt’s farmhouse...

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The Kitchen Light Hums in G Major

The first thing I noticed about the house on Hemlock Road was the kitchen light. It hummed, not the usual electric buzz, but a clear, resonant hum, like a single...

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The Silent Sentinel of the Old Farmhouse

Elena had always felt uneasy in her parents’ farmhouse, but it was a familiar discomfort, like the creak of the stairs or the draft from the attic. She grew up...

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The Painted Eyes of Marrow Lane

When I was reassigned to the coastal town of Dunmore, I thought the change of scenery would do me good. The rental I found was a compact bungalow on Marrow...

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The Man Who Bites

The first time I saw him, I was seven, standing at the edge of my grandmother’s garden. He stood by the old oak tree, his form a smudge of darkness...

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The Floating Visitor

In the autumn of 2004, my seven-year-old son, Oliver, was playing with his toy dinosaurs on the cracked concrete of our apartment building’s courtyard. The afternoon sun cast long, distorted...

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The Watcher in the Window

We never told anyone our real names, not even the neighbors. We’d moved to this quiet coastal town after my husband’s heart attack, hoping for peace and a slower pace....

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The Paper-Mill Children

I’ve never told anyone outside my immediate family about this. It’s too strange, too implausible, and frankly, I’m not sure I believe it myself, even after everything that happened. But...

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The Chimney Claws

Our farmhouse sat at the edge of the Ralston Flats, a stretch of land so flat and empty that the horizon seemed to swallow sound. My daughter Lily turned three...

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The Man in Black

When we moved into the old house on Hemlock Lane, we knew it had history. Built in 1938, it had stood through decades of change, its walls soaked in the...

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The Grease Stain

My wife, Carla, and I bought the old Dombrowski house for a steal, and we knew why when we moved in. The place smelled like a deep fryer that had...

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The Damp Wall

I never thought I’d be afraid of a wall, but that’s what it came down to. When I agreed to housesit for my aunt Delia and her new husband, Roger,...

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The Top-Floor Tapping

My sister Clara and her family—her husband Dan, and their six-year-old niece Zoe—moved into the top floor of an old Victorian house on Maple Street, just over two years ago....

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The Mulch Pile

The October air had a bite to it, the kind that made you pull your jacket tight and wish for a fire. I was hauling a bag of compost to...

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The Tally in the Static

The first time I saw the girl with the hollow eyes, I was six, sitting on the linoleum floor of a rented duplex in Shreveport, Louisiana. My mother had dragged...

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The Lantern Tree

I remember the house as a hulking silhouette against the Oregon mist, its gables like crooked fingers. We’d moved from a cramped apartment in Portland to this relic of a...

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The Wall Between

In the quiet town of Ashford, nestled among pine forests and gray skies, stood the old Whitmore house. It had been in my wife’s family for generations, and after her...

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The Cistern’s Keeper

My earliest memory is not of my mother’s face, but of the cold tile floor of the upstairs bathroom in the old farmhouse we rented when I was four. My...

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The Empty Cradle

When we bought the old farmhouse on Cedar Lane, we thought we had found our forever home. The sprawling yard, the wraparound porch, the ancient oak that shaded the whole...

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The Lantern in the Bog

I never considered myself a superstitious man. My upbringing in the hardscrabble town of Millbrook, where the mist clung to the lowlands like a shroud, taught me to trust in...

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The Hollow in the Floor

The house on Marlowe Street had a smell my mother called ‘old cake,’ but I knew it was the scent of something forgotten. I was five, maybe younger, when we...

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The Stitcher’s Visit

My mother drowned when I was four, a boating accident on Lake Merrow that the police called a freak wave. I have two daughters now, and I’ve never spoken of...

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