Ghost stories from Incubus

The Salt and the Stone

Greta had never been one for churches. She believed in the quiet balance of things, in the weight of good and bad deeds, but when she stood before the altar...

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The Last Floorboard

In the winter of 2019, after my husband’s funeral, I moved into a creaking Victorian house on the edge of a forgotten forest. The house had been in my family...

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The Cartographer’s Burden

I suppose there is a certain irony in the fact that I, who have spent my life mapping the invisible, should now be haunted by a map. For thirty years,...

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The Cinder Man

The first time I saw him, I was drowning in a lake of fire. The dream had the clarity of a wound—the heat, the smell of scorched pine, the way...

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The Hand That Mends

Marta had always been a light sleeper, but the night after she moved into the old farmhouse, she felt a pressure on her chest, gentle and warm, like a hand...

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The Static Lover

The winter of 2005 had settled into the small town of Ashford like a bone-deep chill that no heater could thaw. Clara had taken to waking at four in the...

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The Weight of Unblinking Eyes

Ever since I was a child, a persistent sensation of being watched had clung to me like a second skin. It wasn’t the casual glance of a stranger; it was...

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The Bedrock Tremor

It started as a faint vibration, like a distant train passing through the foundation of our lakeside cabin. My name is Dana, and I’ve been with my partner, Alex, for...

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The Crate of Celia Marsh

The old farmhouse on Fox Hollow Road had always been a place where the past lingered, but I never expected it to linger quite so literally. My name is Evelyn...

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The Gravity That Held Me Down

I moved to the Cascades for the quiet, for the way the fog rolled over the pines like a slow tide. My cabin was a mile from the nearest neighbor,...

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The Quilted Visitor

I’d only been in the town of Marshroot for three weeks when the thing in the attic started making itself known. The house was a Victorian relic, all peeling wallpaper...

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The Mannequin in the Air-Conditioned Room

The heat was a living thing, clinging to my skin like a second layer. Even with the air conditioner chugging in the window, the room in this small coastal town...

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The Last Photograph

I am a 47-year-old archivist, and I live alone in a converted lighthouse on the coast of Maine. My job is to preserve the fading memories of others—old letters, tintypes,...

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The Cellar of Unspent Years

Ten years ago, I was a sound engineer scraping by in the city of Bangalore, living in a crumbling colonial bungalow in the old Cantonment area. The building had been...

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The Hollow Below

The house on Maple Street was a find, or so I told myself as I helped the kids unpack boxes in the late summer of 2005. It was a two-story...

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The Hollow Bedroom Window

My name is Elias, and I’ve spent a good chunk of my life chasing the unexplained. But nothing prepared me for Rowan Falls, a decaying mill town where the fog...

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The Weight of Quiet Air

I’m twenty-three now, living in the same creaking farmhouse outside a town called Millbrook that my family has called home for three generations. My mother, father, and younger brother, along...

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The Offering Beneath the Baobab

My whole life, the veil between sleep and waking had been thin, threadbare. As a girl in the red-dust village of Nzara, I dreamed of cold hands and warm breath,...

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The Unmaking of Milo

Milo hadn’t felt peace like that in years. He sat alone in his cramped apartment, the city’s ceaseless hum muffled by walls thin as paper, and yet a profound stillness...

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The Pressure of the Dark

Marta had always been a light sleeper, but the night it happened, she fell into a depth she had never known. The farmhouse in the high desert of New Mexico...

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The Closet in St. Monica’s

Maya had always been a child of vivid mind. At twelve, she’d been diagnosed with ADHD, and her teachers often found her staring at the ceiling, lost in worlds they...

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The Looming Silence

At seventeen, Mara lived in the quiet coastal town of Dunmore, where the fog rolled in thicker than the tide. Her family had moved into an old lighthouse keeper’s cottage,...

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The Warmth That Moves

I’ve never been one to believe in the supernatural, not really. I’ve had my share of odd occurrences—a flickering light here, a cold spot there—but I always chalked them up...

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The Mineral Kiss

My new home was a crumbling Victorian in Harlow’s Hollow, a town that clung to the Appalachian foothills like a barnacle. The place was famous for its spring, a churning...

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