Ghost stories from Misc

The Locket of Amber

Every morning for a month, Lena woke with the same image burning behind her eyes: a small child, no more than two, sitting on a threadbare rug, clutching a strand...

Read Story →

The Unwelcome Playmate

It was a crisp October evening in 2019 when my mother, Elaine, and I were driving through the winding roads of the Shenandoah Valley. The leaves had turned to fiery...

Read Story →

The Chronology of Small Losses

I never believed in the supernatural. Ghosts, spirits, poltergeists—they were all fodder for campfire tales and B-movies, not the fabric of my orderly, pragmatic life. That was until I turned...

Read Story →

The Static in the Stairwell

The old paper mill had been silent for decades, but the town of Millbrook still felt its presence. It loomed over the river like a skeletal giant, its broken windows...

Read Story →

The Copper Coil

The morning of April 12th, 2023, began with a low-hanging mist that clung to the blacktop of the old Fairhaven rest stop. I’d driven there to fix the short in...

Read Story →

The Oven’s Memory

The house at 14 Crawley Lane was a greedy thing, built over a vein of coal that had been picked clean decades before my family arrived. The land had settled...

Read Story →

The Brake Van of Remembrance

Marta’s husband, Erik, had flown to Oslo to be with his ailing mother, leaving her alone in their ground-floor apartment in the converted railway station of Blackwood Junction. Her younger...

Read Story →

Tapping Sounds

I am 57 and retired, living in the south GA town of Douglas. For months, I have heard tapping coming from my closet. Being retired, and sometimes having back pain,...

Read Story →

The Stairwell at Midnight

I was thirteen, maybe, when my family moved into that old apartment building on the edge of town—the one with the crumbling brick and the rusted fire escape that sang...

Read Story →

The Copper Omen

The last time I saw my grandfather alive, he was sitting in his worn leather chair, staring out the window at the pine forest that bordered our property. He didn’t...

Read Story →

The Humming Wardrobe

Mara had always been a light sleeper, but the pattern was precise: she’d wake at 2:47 AM, 3:12 AM, 3:48 AM, 4:23 AM, and finally at 5:01 AM, just before...

Read Story →

The Window in the Wall

I was twelve when my grandmother, Elsie, moved into our house. She had been living alone for years, but after the diagnosis, my parents decided she needed care. The disease...

Read Story →

The Self-Dialed Call

My name is Arjun, and I am in the eighth grade. Every weekday, after school, I come home to an empty apartment. My mother, Meera, works as a junior architect...

Read Story →

The Hollow Stair

In the sweltering July of 1987, my father, Marcus, was just seventeen. He and his three friends—Leo, Desmond, and quiet Paul—had pitched their tents near the base of the Rocky...

Read Story →

The Thirteenth Floor of the Ashford Hotel

My sister, Elena, and I shared a room in the old Ashford Hotel, where our parents had taken the position of night managers. The hotel was a grand, decaying relic...

Read Story →

The Man in the Wine Cellar

The September heat was unseasonable, pressing down on the valley like a damp hand. The old farmhouse, with its peeling white paint and creaking bones, sat alone on the ridge,...

Read Story →

The Room With the Painted Doors

We moved into the Bramblewood Arms in late autumn, a squat, red-brick building that had once been a coaching inn before the railway swallowed the road it stood on. The...

Read Story →

The Cartographer’s Ceiling

All my life, the edges of the world have been soft. Not in the way of a foggy morning or a half-remembered dream, but in the way of a map...

Read Story →

The Dust of Unfinished Farewells

My husband, Elias, carries a strange burden: he sees the lingering threads of the dead. It is not a gift he cherishes; it is a constant, unwelcome weight. He has...

Read Story →

My sister-in-law, Lena, and her boyfriend, Marcus, moved in with us about two years ago, bringing their three kids: six-year-old Ivy, three-year-old Oliver, and two-year-old Sophie. At first, it was...

Read Story →

The Couch Potato’s Visitor

I was house-sitting for my aunt in her old Victorian apartment, a place I’d always found charmingly creepy with its creaky floorboards and drafty windows. It was a Tuesday night,...

Read Story →

The Keyhole Portrait

My name is Elena, and I’m writing this down because I need someone to know what happened to me and my cousin, Marta, during our summer trip to the small...

Read Story →

The Hollow Grove Incident

The wind had teeth that night, gnawing through my jacket as I tromped across the frozen meadow behind the old mill. My border collie, Pip, was a black blur against...

Read Story →

The Calendar on the Carton

In the spring of 2011, I moved into the Grove Street Commons, a refurbished textile mill turned student housing. The building smelled of fresh paint and old timber, and the...

Read Story →