Ghost stories from Lights

The Lamplight on Ash Lane

I was staying at my sister’s house on the edge of a small, dying town called Morrow’s Rest. The house was old, with creaking floors and windows that rattled in...

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The Lantern in the Lake

It was the fifteenth anniversary of my mother’s disappearance, not that I kept count. I was twenty-nine now, and the number felt like a stone in my pocket, worn smooth...

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The Cold They Left Behind

I never believed in ghosts. Not really. Even after the funerals, I told myself that grief was just a chemical stew in my brain, and that seeing their faces in...

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The Lantern Bloom

It started on a Tuesday, three months into my stay at the converted sawmill on the edge of the marsh. The place was a rental, cheap because the landlord warned...

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The Pale Intruder

It was a week ago when I first noticed the light. I had just finished posting a status update on my social media page, the glow of the screen illuminating...

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The Sixth Frame

At 3:12 AM on a Tuesday, Mabel Hargrove was yanked from a dreamless sleep by a weight pressing on her chest, as if a boulder had been laid upon her...

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The Hollow Frame

I was six when the Millers came to stay with us. They had lost their house to a fire, and my father, ever the Good Samaritan, offered them our spare...

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The Crossbeam’s Complaint

Mara had lived in the old farmhouse on Stillwater Road for nearly four decades. The house, built in the 1960s by a reclusive carpenter, creaked and groaned with age, but...

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The Furnace of the Last Winter

Four winters ago, I moved into a drafty farmhouse at the edge of a town called Hollow Creek with my fiancé, Marcus. I was twenty-six then, now I’m thirty. The...

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The Crimson Geometry

Mila woke with a start, her heart hammering against her ribs. The room was pitch black, the kind of darkness that felt heavy and alive. She didn’t know what had...

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The Still-Faced Clock

It was the last night of the mountain retreat, and Cora’s legs ached from the dance-off that had ended just after midnight. She’d placed fourth, which was fine—she wasn’t there...

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The Pale Visitor

I’ve been staying at my great-aunt’s cottage in the Highlands since April, and ever since I arrived, I’ve been seeing things out of the corner of my eye. Mostly it’s...

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The Rectangle of Cobalt

I woke with a start, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The remnants of a night terror clung to me—a vague, oppressive sense of wrongness, and...

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The Lantern in the Bog

I live in a cottage at the edge of Bittermead Fen, a stretch of marshland that no one visits after dusk. The nearest neighbor is two miles down a dirt...

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The Bell Jar of Seaford

Seaford was a town of red brick and rusted iron, huddled on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay. It had survived the Revolution, the Civil War, and the Great Fire...

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I’ve always prided myself on my skepticism. Ghost stories, spectral apparitions, the eerie tales my friends swore were true—I dismissed them all as products of overactive imaginations. But there exists...

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The Cedar Line

Three years ago, I moved into a rambling Victorian house on the edge of a small town in the Pacific Northwest, a place where the woods pressed close and the...

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The Stationmaster’s Vigil

The night shift at the Meridian Junction had always been a solitary affair, but that night felt different. I was the only one on duty, and the radio had just...

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The Persistent Brushstroke

The nursery always smelled of lavender and baby powder, a scent that clung to the walls like a promise of peace. Clara spent her evenings there, shuffling through the endless...

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The Lantern of Hollow Creek

My name is Elara, and I’ve always seen things others can’t. Since childhood, the dead have walked beside me—some wispy, some solid as you or me. I learned to hide...

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The Amethyst Lantern

My grandfather’s farmhouse sat at the end of a gravel road that wound through acres of corn, a place where the only sounds at night were the wind and the...

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The Mannequin in the Attic

I have been afraid of mannequins since I was nine, ever since the summer we stayed at my grandmother’s abandoned department store in rural Oregon. She had died the previous...

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The Lens and the Lingering Face

Mara had always been obsessed with capturing moments. When her Uncle Theo handed her a vintage 35mm camera for her thirteenth birthday, she felt a thrill that surpassed any digital...

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The Clockwork Owl

Last autumn, I traveled with my family to my grandmother’s farmhouse in the Hudson Valley for her annual harvest gathering. I was assigned to sleep in the attic, which my...

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