Ghost stories from Misc

The Last Clock in Room 14

The rain had been falling since Tuesday, a steady, drowning rhythm that blurred the lines between the sky and the gutter. I lay in a hospital bed in the North...

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The Constant at Calder Mill

The mill had been silent for thirty years, but the waterwheel still turned, groaning against the rust that had settled into its joints like arthritis. I came to Calder Mill...

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The Last Compass

The fog rolled in off the harbor like a gray shroud, muffling the cries of gulls and the clang of buoys. I’d always been sensitive to the currents of emotion...

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The Static in the Pines

The first time I noticed him, I was in the shed behind my cabin, sorting through boxes of my late uncle’s junk. It was late October, and the pines outside...

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The Hovering Veil

In the autumn of 2005, I was staying at my aunt’s farmhouse in the remote Cotswolds, helping her sort through my late uncle’s belongings. The house, a rambling stone structure...

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The Cedar Motel Rule

The Cedar Motel sat on the outskirts of a town that didn’t even have its own stoplight, a two-story horseshoe of weathered timber and flickering neon that buzzed like a...

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The Cartographer’s Last Line

In the summer of 2019, I found myself standing in the dusty back room of an antique shop in a small town outside of Tucson, Arizona. The owner, an elderly...

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The Flicker in the Fuse Box

Maya first noticed the pattern in the autumn of 2019, right after she and her partner, Leo, moved into a renovated Victorian in the historic district of Asheville, North Carolina....

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The Lizard’s Lament

Three months into my first semester at the Nilgiri Hills Institute, I shared a drafty cottage with two others: my cousin Mira, a nervous sophomore, and our senior, Professor Anika,...

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The Hollow Draft

Mara had always been sensitive to the moods of her apartment. It was an old building, converted from a textile mill, with high ceilings and iron pipes that creaked with...

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The Hollow Harvest

The old cranberry bog had been in our family for three generations, a sprawling, muddy expanse that turned crimson every autumn. My father, a taciturn man with calloused hands, oversaw...

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The Glass Hummingbird

The summer I turned nineteen, I was stuck at my grandfather’s farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, housesitting while he recovered from hip surgery in the city. The place was...

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The Weight Above

I was on a video call with my best friend, Maya, when her younger sister, Lily, wandered into frame. Her face was pale, and she spoke in a hushed, urgent...

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The Tides of Winding Creek

I never thought much about the sea until I started working at the Sandpiper Salon in the fog-blanketed town of Winding Creek, a place that smelled of salt and decay....

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The Granite Clock

In the autumn of 2019, my grandfather, whom we called Abuelo, was living with us in our small apartment in León. He had been a stonecutter, and his hands were...

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The Unfastened Lobe

I’ve always been a creature of habit, especially when it comes to my body. Every night, before sleep, I’d run my fingers over the cool metal of my tunnels, ensuring...

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The Last Train to Orison Hollow

I was never what you’d call brave. As a child, I hid behind my mother’s skirts when strangers came to the door, and I flinched at the snap of a...

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The Saltwater Idol

Our first anniversary fell in the monsoon’s tail, and we’d chosen a fishing village called Vellar, on the Malabar coast, for its temple to the sea god Vahana. My husband,...

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The Levitating Mat

In 2019, I was house-sitting for my aunt while she was in the hospital recovering from a bad fall. She lived in an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere,...

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The Combustion of Ashford Lane

The evening began like any other in the small, closely-knit town of Millbrook, where the oldest houses leaned against each other like gossiping old women. On the corner of Ashford...

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The Ceiling’s Warmth

In the sweltering August of 1974, my family moved to the outskirts of a small town in the Mojave Desert. My mother had inherited the house from a distant relative,...

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The Bone Orchard

The first time I told my mother about the funeral, I was four years old, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, arranging her collection of smooth, white pebbles into a...

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The Lavender Scent

I first noticed it on a Tuesday afternoon, three days into our visit. My aunt had insisted we stay at her old farmhouse in the French countryside, and though it...

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The Queen of Hearts

The last time I saw Elara, she was shuffling a deck of cards with a smile that could have charmed a snake. Her fingers, gnarled by eighty-seven years, moved with...

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