Ghost stories from Misc

The Trunk of Pearls

The morning of my wedding to Anton was supposed to be the calmest day of my life, but the house on Juniper Lane had other plans. I had chosen to...

Read Story →

The Hollow March

Milo Reyes was seventeen, and the world was a simple place of dust, gossip, and the tinny wail of a transistor radio. That night, the barrio of San Cipriano was...

Read Story →

The Glass Trap

I left for the mill at 5:45 AM, the same routine I’ve kept for eight years. My dog, a wiry terrier named Gus, circled my legs as I laced my...

Read Story →

The Cobalt Wanderer

I was crammed in the backseat of my mother’s old sedan, the vinyl sticking to my thighs through my jeans. It was too hot to eat, but Mom had insisted...

Read Story →

The Panel’s Itch

The house on Maple Street never felt wrong to me. It was a 1970s split-level with fake wood paneling in every room and shag carpets that swallowed footsteps. I’d lived...

Read Story →

The Breathing in the Cold

In the autumn of 2009, at seventeen, I moved out of my mother’s house for the first time. My best friend, Dana, and I rented a tiny flat in the...

Read Story →

The Lantern in the Pines

The summer I turned ten, my parents rented a cabin nestled deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I remember the exact moment we arrived: the gravel crunching under the tires,...

Read Story →

The Salt and the Saint

The maintenance closet at St. Jude’s Academy smelled of bleach and old paper. It was the only place we could find during our free period to get away from the...

Read Story →

The Three A.M. Door

The house was old, older than my grandmother, older than the town itself. I’d moved in three years ago, after my divorce, and the silence of the place was a...

Read Story →

The Garrote of Pines

The letter I sent you last month was only half the truth. I said I was fine, that the red-faced man was just a trick of the light, and that...

Read Story →

The Crayon Circle

The house on Hemlock Lane was old, but it wasn’t haunted—at least, not until I started drawing circles. My name is Miles, and I’ve lived here my whole seventeen years....

Read Story →

The Third Bell

The old mill house sat at the end of a gravel road, its red paint flaking like dried blood. I’d moved there for the cheap rent and the quiet, hoping...

Read Story →

The afternoon commuter train rattled through the city’s underbelly, its fluorescent lights flickering a staccato rhythm against the grime-streaked windows. Maya had chosen a seat near the rear, away from...

Read Story →

The Phantom Arrival

Ever since we moved to the old farmhouse on Mirefield Lane, I’ve been hearing things that aren’t there. At first, I chalked it up to the creaks of an aging...

Read Story →

The Terminal Gong

The first time I heard it, I was four, tucked into a narrow bed in a rented cottage that smelled of salt and old wood. My brother, Elias, slept across...

Read Story →

The Cradle of Static

The house on Thornapple Lane was a fixer-upper, and we knew it when we bought it. The plaster was cracking, the floors sloped, and the basement smelled of damp earth...

Read Story →

The Hollow Leap

It was a Tuesday night in late October, and I was driving home from my shift at the diner in Millbrook, a town that barely counted as a town. I...

Read Story →

The Porcelain Garden

I was eight when I met Mr. and Mrs. Albright, though I didn’t know their names then. They simply appeared one afternoon in the overgrown garden behind my aunt’s Victorian...

Read Story →

The Mannequin in the Attic

I was nine, maybe ten, the summer my grandmother passed. My parents packed us up and drove from our tidy suburb in Ohio to her crumbling farmhouse in the rural...

Read Story →

The Unblinking Gate

The diner’s neon sign buzzed like a trapped wasp, casting a sickly yellow glow across the rain-slicked asphalt of the rest stop. I sat in my dented Chevy, engine idling...

Read Story →

The Loft Above the Mill

My name is Elara, and I’ve never known a quiet home. It’s not a choice; it’s a curse that follows me like a stray dog. Every place I’ve lived, from...

Read Story →

The Concrete Garden

Eight years ago, after my daughter was born, my husband and I were hunting for a larger place. A listing for a detached house on the edge of a busy...

Read Story →

The Chair at the Door

It had been nine months since the city’s sewage had surged through our home, and the lingering smell of damp decay still clung to the floorboards. My name is Leo,...

Read Story →

The Glass and the Warden

The first time Maisie saw the glass, she was five, sitting on the worn linoleum of her grandmother’s kitchen while the kettle hissed its steam into the grey afternoon. Gran—Eileen,...

Read Story →