Ghost stories from Family

The Crossroads Broadcast

In the autumn of 1997, I was a graduate student in audio forensics, living in a small apartment above a shuttered cinema in the town of Pemberton. My father, a...

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Dream Ghost

My father passed away in 1988. In 1990 I had a very vivid dream about him. In the dream he was talking about my brother. The scene changed to a...

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The Static in the Walls

In the autumn of 2006, at twelve, I moved with my mother and grandmother into my great-grandmother’s peeling Victorian house at the edge of a dying orchard. Great-Grandma Elsie was...

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The Last Coal

I was twelve when my grandfather, Elias, finally gave up the ghost. He was a man of few words, but those words were heavy as the coal he’d hauled from...

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The Morning Line

The morning sun spilled over the ridge line like honey, catching the dew on the wild grass and turning the entire meadow into a field of scattered diamonds. I had...

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The Last Ferry

I never knew my great-uncle Elias well, but the way he left this world has stayed with me longer than any memory of his living self. He had been fading...

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The Brass Chain

The summer I turned nine, we left the cramped apartment in the city and moved into my grandfather’s old house in the foothills of the Appalachians. The house had been...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Invitation

Three nights after the funeral, the dream came. I was standing in a vast, dimly lit hall, the kind you’d find in an old railway station, but the walls were...

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The Clockwork Canary

Marta had lived in the old farmhouse for ten years, and in all that time, the grandfather clock in the hallway had never once chimed. It was a monstrous thing...

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The Hollow Aisle of August

On the last Friday of August in 1997, I walked into the cavernous superstore on the outskirts of a town called Millbrook, a place that seemed to exist only for...

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The Keeper of Order

When I moved into the house on Mulberry Lane, I thought I was escaping the weight of grief. My husband, Arthur, had passed in the spring, and the old Victorian...

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The Last Lantern in the Mangroves

Kai was twenty-two, an only child from the Torres Strait Islands, living in Cairns. His mother had died of a sudden aneurysm when he was nine, and his father, a...

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The Empty Seat

The whir of the fluorescent light was the only sound in the sterile white room. I sat at a metal table, two chairs, no windows, just a door. I knew...

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The Blue Lamp

Elena had always been the skeptic in her husband’s large, boisterous family. When her father-in-law, Tomas, passed away just months before her daughter was due, the stories began: Aunt Rosa...

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The Stairway Watcher

When I was six, we lived in a creaking old farmhouse at the edge of a maple wood. My mother, pregnant with my little brother, was heavy and slow, and...

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The Lavender Room

In 2007, I was a seventeen-year-old boy named Caleb, lying on my bed in our cramped apartment above my mother’s bakery, listening to a burned mix CD on my Discman....

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The Clockwork Dog’s Howl

The rust-tinged smell of the old farmhouse clung to my clothes as I stepped through the back door, the screen slamming shut behind me. My fiancé, Marcus, was already in...

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The Charred Lace

The December light bled through the tall windows of the old rectory, casting long, cold shadows across the Persian rug where Elara played with her wooden train set. Her grandmother,...

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The Keychain’s Last Rattle

The television’s blue glow painted the living room of our rented lake house in ghostly hues. My sisters, Clara and Bea, were giggling at a cartoon, their laughter a bright,...

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The Salad Bar Specter

I remember the night it all started with a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. My friend Jenna had invited me over for a sleepover, and...

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The Cinder-Faced Visitor

The summer I turned twelve, my father’s job transferred us to a dusty little town called Barrow Creek, out where the highways fray into gravel and the sky presses down...

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The Last Ring

In the autumn of 1974, the small farming town of Bellhaven was gripped by an unseasonable chill. My mother, Elena, was eight months pregnant with my older brother, and we...

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The Day the House Went Cold

In the autumn of 2011, I was living with my father in the old farmhouse that had been in our family for generations. The house was nestled in a valley...

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The Harvest Portrait

The autumn of my sixth year, my grandmother, Nana Rose, held her annual harvest gathering. Our farmhouse, nestled in the amber fields of Nebraska, was the heart of these celebrations....

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