Ghost stories from Friends Visits

The Cradle of Painted Flowers

My name is Evan, and until the summer of 2011, I had never believed in ghosts. Not really. I was a man of reason, a quiet agnostic who saw the...

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The Last Casket Nail

I never thought I would be writing this down, but after all these years, the memory still clings to me like a wet shroud. It happened at my Aunt Cora’s...

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The Lantern Man’s Hand

Mrs. Albright was only six months into her pregnancy when she first saw the figure. It was a cold, wet October night, and the wind rattled the old farmhouse’s loose...

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The Cabinet of Unfinished Things

The summer after Lena’s mother died, the world turned sepia. Every sunset bled into a photograph of a life that no longer existed, and every creak in the old farmhouse...

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The Salt Rite of San Telmo

I’ve often wondered whether the things that claw their way out of the deep hours are truly born of the sleeping mind, or if they are something else entirely—something that...

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The Scent of December

The old farmhouse kitchen had always smelled of dust and woodsmoke, but on that Tuesday afternoon in late October, it smelled of boiling vinegar strong enough to peel paint. I...

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The Frizzy-Haired Child at the Moonlit Waterhole

It was the dry season of 1987 when my family made the long journey to our ancestral lands in the heart of the desert. I was nine, the eldest of...

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The Last Lamplight

In the autumn of 2008, I was seventeen, living in a small town called Harrowbridge. My great-aunt, Elsie, had raised me after my parents died, and she lived just a...

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The Thirteenth Chime

The house on Mallow Lane had always been too quiet for a family of five, but when the Callahan family moved in, the silence felt like a held breath. My...

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The Last Cast at Gull Lake

The morning of September 3rd started with a text that would change everything. It was from Mara, my sister-in-spirit, and it read simply: ‘I found his journal. You need to...

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The One-Armed Visitor

The antiseptic smell of the delivery room clung to my nostrils like a persistent ghost. I lay on the thin, crinkly sheet, tracing the patterns of the ceiling tiles with...

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The Iron Gate and the Burnt Offering

I’ve always known they linger closer when my nerves fray, like moths drawn to a flickering bulb. This past October, during the long weekend of the 12th to the 14th,...

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The Last Visitor’s Pass

The first time I saw my uncle was at my mother’s funeral, a man cut from a different cloth than the rest of our family. He arrived in handcuffs, escorted...

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The Eighth Window

Ever since I turned six, I’ve been counting the windows in my bedroom like other kids count sheep. There are eight, all of them looking out onto the deep, pine-choked...

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The Bell In The Attic

It began with a box of old letters, tied with a faded ribbon, found in my grandmother’s attic after she passed. My cousin, Lila, and I had volunteered to clear...

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The Man in the Rain-Soaked Coat

I was twelve when the rains came and didn’t stop for nine days. Our town, Millbrook, was nestled in a valley that turned into a muddy swamp, and the creek...

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The Last Broadcast of the Drowned Station

It was October 2014, and my partner, Mira, and I were killing time before our flight to Iceland, sipping overpriced cappuccinos in the fluorescent glow of the terminal. We had...

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The Quarry’s Keep

The first time I saw the quarry, it was a wound in the woods, a ragged gash of granite and dark water that swallowed the afternoon light. We’d moved to...

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The Latch in the Attic

My earliest memory is of the attic. I must have been four or five, and I remember its smell—dust, dry wood, and something metallic, like old pennies. We lived in...

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The Unseen Visitor

I had been a skeptic, not in the loud, obnoxious way, but in the quiet way of someone who has never had a reason to believe. My wife, Lena, however,...

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The Blue Apron

It was a damp Thursday afternoon in the coastal town of Dunmore, and the salt air had crept into every corner of the small cottage that Liam now called home....

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The Headboard of Oak Hollow

At fourteen, I was still learning to live with the silence that followed my grandfather’s death. He had been a man of few words, but his absence felt like a...

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The Lull of the Far North

Maya had grown up with the hum of the old house, a creaking Victorian relic her grandmother had insisted on keeping. It was in the wallpaper’s faded roses, the scent...

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The Last Delivery

At the edge of the lumber town of Pine Hollow, where the forest pressed close like a held breath, stood the workshop of my grandfather, Elias Vane. I, Calla, was...

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