Ghost stories from Medium

The Hollow Bell

My grandmother, Fiona, called it the ‘second sight,’ but that always felt too grand for what I experienced. It was more like a constant low hum of the world just...

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The Hour of the Censor

My name is Elias, and I’ve been carrying this weight since I was twelve. It’s not just the dream, though that’s the core of it. It’s everything that’s happened around...

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The Clockwork Mannequin

Mara had always been a creature of habit, and her Sunday routine was sacred. She would walk the three blocks to the St. Agatha flea market, a sprawling maze of...

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The Gilded Frame

I first met Colin during our freshman year at the university. He was a methodical thinker, the type who dissected every puzzle until its logical bones lay bare. Yet, beneath...

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The Constant Horn

The morning of September 14th, 2015, began as all my mornings did—with a long, tedious drive to the Silver Birch Business Park, a sprawling complex of glass and steel that...

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The Sage of Limehouse Lane

I was staying with my old college roommate, Mira, in her rented flat above a boarded-up fishmonger’s shop on Limehouse Lane, in the older part of Portsmouth. The building was...

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The Patchwork Gift

In the autumn of 2014, I was living in a rented cottage on the edge of Maplewood, a small town in upstate New York. The house was old, with creaking...

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The Salt Wound

The salt mines of Lyra Valley had a way of making a person feel like the earth itself was breathing—slow, heavy, and indifferent. I had come there as a hydrologist,...

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The Pale Aisle

My grandmother called it ‘the veil,’ a thin membrane between our world and the next. I always thought it was a metaphor until I turned thirteen and started seeing faces...

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The Vow of the Iron Temple

Last May, I traveled to Sri Lanka with my family. Though I was born there, I’d grown up in Toronto, and the island felt both familiar and alien. The heat...

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The Celluloid Gate

The flicker of the projector was a dying heartbeat. It had been that way since we’d entered the Orion Cinemas, a relic of seventies architecture tucked into a forgotten corner...

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The Hidden Hollow

The old house on Maple Street had always felt like it was holding its breath. I’d moved there with my husband, Daniel, and our daughter, Lily, in the spring of...

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The Ledger of Ash and Bone

I never set out to be a medium. It just happened, like inheriting a dead relative’s crooked nose or a tendency to talk in my sleep. But instead of snoring,...

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The Yellowed Photograph

My twin brother, Elias, and I grew up in a sprawling Victorian house on the outskirts of Birchwood, a town that seemed to have been forgotten by time. Our parents...

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The Iron Harvest

The call came at 3:47 AM, but for Lena, it felt like noon. She had been awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the city...

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The Root Cellar Child

The Hollis family lived at the end of Dead Man’s Curve, a gravel road that wound up into the piney woods of the Appalachian foothills. Their farm was a patchwork...

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The Last Ferry to Mercer Island

The summer of ’67, the year I turned eighteen, was thick with the smell of diesel and salt off the ferry docks. Mercer Island was our world, a speck of...

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The Hollow Uniform

I first saw him at the edge of the orchard, a thin figure in a faded gray coat, his face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat. I thought he was a...

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The Cartographer of Unmade Rooms

I never told anyone about the blueprints. Not my wife, not my doctor, not even Father Malloy when he came to bless the house after little Tommy next door started...

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The Stag’s Gaze

I’ve spent half my life trying to convince myself that the things I see aren’t real. I’ve picked apart every vision, every flicker of premonition, and every cold spot in...

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The Last Threshold

I never thought I’d fear my own kitchen, but that’s where the boundary between worlds has worn thin. My name is Elara, and I’ve been a medium for thirty years....

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The Third Call

The first time I saw the ambulance, I was thirteen, standing at the window of my aunt’s house in the town of Duskhollow. The town was a cluster of old...

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The Cinder Visitor

My grandmother, Elara, always said that the veil between worlds grows thin when the fire burns low. She claimed she saw her own mother, Agnes, step out of the glowing...

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The Blue Static on Channel 13

I never planned to tell anyone about the visions. They started, I think, with the radio in my grandpa’s barn—a battered old Philco that crackled with weather reports from thirty...

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