Ghost stories from Misc

The Weeping Cog

The room I use for writing is a cramped, windowless cell at the back of a renovated mill. The walls are exposed brick, and a single fluorescent tube hums overhead,...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Lament

The night air was thick with the scent of rain-soaked pine and damp earth as I lay in my narrow bed, the steady rhythm of my breath the only sound...

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The Dripping Tap

I had lived in the old farmhouse for eleven months, and except for the occasional creak of settling timber, it had been as quiet as a graveyard at noon. That...

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The Keeper of Unfinished Sleep

The old farmhouse on Hemlock Road had always been a place of quiet rhythms, but after our mother passed, those rhythms turned sour. My brother, Elias, was the first to...

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The Antique Wardrobe

On the last Saturday of July, my older sister, Maya, her boyfriend, and I drove out to a flea market in a village nestled between two hills. We’d seen it...

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The Static in the Rig

The summer we moved to Kilgore, Idaho, was the summer the well ran dry. Not the town’s well—the one behind our rental, a rusted metal skeleton that groaned every time...

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The Thirteenth Candle

My thirteenth birthday fell on a Tuesday, the last day of October, and the air outside my window tasted of frost and fallen leaves. My name is Elena, and this...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Bones

The summer we rented the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage on the remote island of Vrangr, off Norway’s jagged coast, we expected isolation, not terror. The cottage, a weathered structure of...

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The Carved Gift

When my mother, Claire, inherited the wooden box from her Aunt Margriet, she didn’t think much of it. Margriet had been a distant relative, a former nurse who had lived...

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The Salt of the Earth

I moved into the old mill house on the edge of the marsh about eight months ago. The rent was a steal, and the view of the reeds at sunset...

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The Saltwater Crossing

The July heat in Portharrow was a wet blanket that clung to every breath. My flat above the chandlery was a brick oven, and sleep was a distant memory. At...

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The Umbrellas of Goedverwacht

It was one of those impulsive Saturday afternoons when my husband, David, and I agreed to meet our friends, the Van Wyks, for a drive along the scenic route to...

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The Rocking Chair’s Vigil

Last autumn, my mother and I visited the old McKinnon House, a preserved colonial mansion perched on a windswept bluff overlooking the gray Atlantic. The place was known for its...

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The Warmth Tax

Mara had always been a collector of obscure books, her small apartment in the coastal town of Thornhaven lined with shelves of worn spines. On a particular evening, under the...

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The Glass Rooster

Marta often worked late at the county records office, and by the time she clocked out, the town of Willow Creek had already settled into its quiet, dusty routine. Willow...

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The Persistence of Knocking

I moved into the house at the edge of the salt flats three years ago, drawn by the impossibly low rent and the promise of absolute solitude. The landlord, a...

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The Latch in Wall Seven

You might think I’m spinning yarns, or that I’ve had one too many late-night coffees. But I swear on my mother’s grave, every word of this is true. It began...

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The Clockwork Hum

My name is Elara, and I’ve lived in this house all my fourteen years. It’s an old Victorian on the edge of a town that time forgot, with a wraparound...

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The Quarryman’s Ledger

It began with a dream, but it was unlike any dream I had ever known. I was not asleep, or so it felt; I was a ghost in a world...

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The Static Between Calls

When the text came through, I nearly dropped my phone. It was a chain letter, but not the kind that promised good luck or threatened bad luck if you didn’t...

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The Crossing at Larkspur Bridge

The summer before my brother Ethan turned sixteen, he spent every spare minute at the Larkspur Municipal Pool, training for the regional swim meet. His best friend, Marcus, was not...

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The Pale Afternoon

I was eleven, the summer before sixth grade, when the heat in our small desert town of Pinnacle Flats turned everything to a shimmering blur. We lived on the edge...

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The Bag on the Door

I was nine, not ten, when we moved into that house in the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona. It was a sprawling ranch-style place, all on one floor, but with long,...

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The Silent Turn

I never believed in haunted objects until the day my sister came screaming out of her room, clutching a mask that seemed to shift in her hands. It was a...

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