Ghost stories from Friends Visits

The Lantern’s Vigil

In the autumn of 1994, when I was nine, I experienced something that has clung to me like the damp chill of that old farmhouse. My great-uncle, whom we called...

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The Lantern’s Vigil

In the autumn of 2011, my grandmother, Marta, passed away. She was a woman of strict routines, and one of them was that she never allowed closed doors in her...

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The Porcelain Visitor

In the summer of my fourth year, my family moved into my grandmother’s old farmhouse, a sprawling, creaking structure that had stood for over a century. My parents were young...

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The Sketchbook of Maren

The old lighthouse keeper had been dead for thirty years when I found his sketchbook. I was house-sitting for my aunt in the coastal town of Port Blossom, a place...

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The Vanishing Marker and the Last File

On a damp Tuesday morning, my friend Amelia drove three hours to the Hollow Creek Cemetery to place fresh lilies on her mother’s grave. The iron gate creaked behind her,...

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The Last Mechanic

In the autumn of 2019, I received a call that Colin, my best friend’s husband, had been found in his workshop, an apparent suicide. Colin was a master mechanic, known...

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The Keeper of the Lantern

The summer of 2011 was the hottest on record in our little town, and the heat seemed to seep into everything, even our bones. I was twenty-three, my girlfriend Lena...

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The Last Broadcast

My name is Edwin, and I’ve been living with the remnants of a life that ended before mine began. The house my grandfather built in 1947 stands on a hill...

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The Ceiling Fan’s Last Spin

In the summer of 2012, I found myself standing on the creaking porch of my father’s cabin in the Cascade foothills of Oregon, the air thick with pine and the...

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The Static Wake

In the suffocating heat of a July night in the desert town of Murkwood, I lay sprawled on my bed, the glow of my laptop painting my face in pale...

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The Last Ferryman’s Log

October had always been a month of endings. The air turned brittle, the leaves abandoned their branches, and the lake, once a glittering expanse of summer laughter, grew dark and...

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The Postcard That Came Back

When I was nine, my father was a photograph on the mantle, a voice on a crackling phone line, and a promise that always arrived with a bakery cake on...

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The Lantern Keepers

My best friend, Marisol, died on a rain-slicked Tuesday in November of 2002. A delivery truck ran a red light, and she was gone before the ambulance arrived. I was...

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The Woman in the Blue Floral Dress

I was four, not three, and it was a Tuesday in late October, the kind of gray afternoon that makes the world feel like an old photograph. My family had...

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The Self-Opening Cabinet

It was a lazy Sunday in the autumn of 2012, and I was sprawled on the worn couch in our two-bedroom flat in the outskirts of a sleepy town, watching...

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The Warmth in the Hall

Nights in the old farmhouse on Cedar Ridge were always still, the kind of stillness that pressed against the windows like a held breath. I was eight, small for my...

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The Unplugged Requiem

At sixteen, I was convinced the old farmhouse was harmless. It creaked and groaned like any aging structure, and the fields beyond our porch were just monotonous gold, a sea...

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The Itching Veil

When I was nine, my great-aunt Marisol came to live with us in our cramped apartment complex in North Miami. She was ancient, with skin like crumpled parchment, and dark,...

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The Silence at 3:33

The last time I saw my brother alive was through the window of a Greyhound bus, his silhouette dissolving into the rainy haze of the Portland terminal. That was 1989....

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The Looms of Mulapadu

I always thought memories were like photographs: static, faded, and safely tucked away in albums we rarely open. But some memories are more like dormant spores, waiting for the right...

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The Ledger of Unfinished Business

I’ve never been one to shy away from the quiet hum of the unseen. Unlike my cousin, who jumped at every creak and shadow, I found a strange comfort in...

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The Blue Nova

I was eighteen when I saw the dead man in the passenger seat. My name is Elias, and back then I was living with my best friend, Mara, and her...

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The Hollow Cradle

In the autumn of 1998, when I was seven, my family and I drove from our small house in the outskirts of Salem, Oregon, to the sprawling city of Portland,...

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The Urn in the Attic

I never believed in ghosts until I moved into the old farmhouse on Hemlock Road. My father and stepmother had found it after a cross-country move, a sprawling Victorian relic...

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