Ghost stories from Children Who See Spirits

The Salt-Dried Room

I’m Elara, sixteen, and last December my extended family—twenty-three of us—booked a cluster of old fishermen’s cottages on the northern coast of Corsica, about a twenty-minute walk from the nearest...

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The Shelf Above the Door

My childhood bedroom was in the gable end of our old farmhouse, a low-ceilinged room with a single dormer window that looked out over the barley fields. The walls were...

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The Fourth Pane

The summer before Eliot turned four, a peculiar thing happened. I had bought a small plastic pool for the backyard, thinking he would enjoy splashing in the water on those...

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The Pattering of Tiny Feet

The house on Maple Street had a particular smell, like old books and dust, which I found comforting at first. My name is Leo, and when I was eleven, we...

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The Field of Tall Grass

In the summer of 2016, my family and I drove deep into the French countryside to stay at a converted farmhouse called Les Chaumes. The brochure promised rustic charm, and...

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The Laughing Linoleum

The first time I noticed the pattern, I was scrubbing a stubborn stain from the kitchen floor. It was a Tuesday, the week after we moved into the old farmhouse...

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The Lantern in the Orchard

In the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the autumn mist clung to the apple trees like a shroud, the Hollis family ran a small orchard that had been...

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The Tenant in the Basement

We moved into the old house on Hemlock Lane in the fall of 2019. It was a two-story Victorian with a creaky staircase and a basement that had been converted...

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The Painted Lady in the Attic

We moved to a sprawling Victorian fixer-upper in the dusty outskirts of a coastal town, where the air smelled of salt and rot. Our son, Leo, was a sprightly three-year-old...

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The Grinning Door

We moved into the top half of a converted warehouse in the industrial district of a city that never truly slept. The building was a relic of the 1920s, its...

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The Rag Doll in the Attic

Eight years ago, when our daughter Mira was just a baby, we lived in a cramped attic apartment in the old mill town of Bramblewick. The building was a converted...

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The Brass Key

When I was nine, we moved into my grandmother’s old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley, a sprawling, two-story structure with peeling paint and a cellar that always smelled of damp...

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The Pale Girl in the Attic Window

It started on a drizzly October afternoon when Marcus, a lanky teenager with a perpetual scowl, was trudging home from his part-time job at the local library. His route took...

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The Eucalyptus Coats

At twenty-five, I still wake in a cold sweat, my fingers clawing at the air for a softness that isn’t there. It’s the memory of that summer in the hill...

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The Corner of Unfinished Things

Six months after we tore down the load-bearing wall between the kitchen and the old parlor, the house still felt like a wound that wouldn’t close. Dust clung to every...

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The Weight in the Hallway

At thirteen, I’d have laughed at anyone who claimed the dead could linger. My name is Elias, and I thought the whole idea of ghosts was just a bedtime story...

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The Cartographer’s Debt

The first time I saw the map, I was seven. It was my grandmother’s, rolled up in a dusty tube in her attic, and I unrolled it out of boredom...

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The Constant Ember

My house in the arid hills of Southern Arizona was a relic of the 1930s, its adobe walls baking under the sun by day and radiating a strange warmth by...

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The Hollow Man in the Mirror

The October wind rattled the old farmhouse windows as Maya, now ten, clutched her tablet in the guest bedroom. Her grandmother’s house always felt too big at night, with its...

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The Room at the Top of the Stairs

My sister-in-law, Diane, had just inherited a house from a distant uncle she barely knew. The place was a fixer-upper, but the price was right—almost too right. Our family gathered...

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The Coal Bin’s Tenant

My wife, Elena, our two daughters, and I had settled into my in-laws’ old farmhouse just outside the small town of Morrow’s Hollow. It was a rambling, drafty place built...

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The Ceiling Song

My name is Elias, and when I was eight, I learned that our house in the dusty town of Morrow Flats was not empty, even when I was alone. It...

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The Man in the Empty Rooms

When we moved into the Crestwood Apartments, I told myself the weirdness was just the old building settling. The place had a musty smell, and the floorboards creaked in patterns...

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The Grinning Room

My daughter, Elara, was nine months old when she first looked past my shoulder with that delighted little smile. It started in the nursery of our new apartment, a place...

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