Ghost stories from Photographs

The Luminary Bloom

The old observatory, perched precariously on the edge of the barren moors, had been Silas’s sanctuary. Dust motes danced in the slivers of moonlight that pierced the grimy dome, illuminating...

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The Glint in the Snow Globe

The old house groaned around Elias like a dying beast. Snow plastered itself against the windows of the study, each flake a tiny, cold fist beating against the glass. He...

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The Vapor in the Leaves

On the last night of February, when the calendar held its breath for four years, I drove out to the Old Hollow Burial Ground. It wasn’t the oldest cemetery in...

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The Cold Static

The Hudsons’ house, a Victorian relic with peeling wallpaper and a staircase that groaned like an old ship, had always felt alien to me. My wife, Clara, and I had...

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The Intensifying Light

The year after my mother passed, I found myself drawn to her old farmhouse in the remote hills of Vermont. It had been empty for months, but I needed to...

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The Frozen Creekline

The snow had come down all day, a thick, silent blanket that hushed the world beyond our windows. My husband, Elias, and our daughter, Rowan, were out by the old...

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The Vanishing Reflection

The spring of 2008 brought us to a house that seemed perfect from the outside, but inside, it felt like the walls were breathing. I remember the first night, my...

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The Lantern Man

I never thought much about the photograph until the year I turned thirty, when my mother gave me the old box of slides from the house I grew up in....

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The Developed Bloom

The basement of my grandmother’s house always smelled of damp earth and old paper. She had passed the previous spring, and I had been tasked with clearing out her belongings....

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The Weathered Sign

Miriam had always felt a strange pull toward the old burial ground, a patch of land carved out of a sprawling soybean field, just off County Road 13. The church...

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The Marrow of the Field

The first time I heard it, I almost dropped the digital recorder. It was a whisper that crept through the static, riding the wind that cut across the graveyard like...

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The Mirror Room

Marla had always been uneasy about the house on Hemlock Lane. It was a sprawling Victorian from the 1890s, set on three overgrown acres, and it had been a boarding...

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The Porcelain Garden

The morning of my mother’s birthday, the fog rolled in from the river like a white curtain. I had planned a small celebration, just the two of us, with a...

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The Pictures at Kettleman’s Field

It was the last Saturday of summer, and the air at Kettleman’s Field had that crisp, dying light that made everything look golden and nostalgic. We were there for Marta’s...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Debt

I’m Daniel, an Australian exchange student in the city of Lijiang, in Yunnan Province. Last month, my aunt Clara flew in for a visit, and I decided to take her...

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It was Maren’s seventeenth birthday, and her father, a semi-retired photographer with a penchant for analog cameras, had insisted on documenting every moment. The party was held in their sprawling,...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Portrait

Marta and I had always been drawn to the forgotten corners of our small town, where history whispered through the cracks in old stones. Our latest obsession was the Hollow...

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The Static Between Songs

Lila had always prided herself on her skepticism. Growing up in the dusty town of Morrow, where the heat shimmered off the asphalt and the only mysteries were which crops...

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The Bone-Chime Manuscript

The December wind cut through the pines like a file, and the ground underfoot was a frozen carpet of dead needles. I was alone with the digital audio recorder, its...

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The Ghostly Call of the Bluebirds

Margaret had finally gotten used to the quiet. After thirty-two years of refereeing squabbles over the last slice of pizza and shuttling kids to soccer practice, the house now echoed...

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The Infinite Reflection

When I was six, I started blaming a girl named Mira for every missing sock and misplaced toy. It was a childish game, a convenient excuse, until the excuses stopped...

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The Cold Patch of Air

My name is Elias Vance, and I have always been able to see things that others cannot. It is a gift, or a curse, depending on the day. My mother...

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The Bonefire Pit

On the south edge of our town, where the old money lives behind wrought-iron gates and perfectly trimmed hedges, there is a house that has always seemed to watch the...

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The Static Between Panels

Maya had finally carved out a corner of the studio apartment she’d rented after the divorce. It wasn’t much—a folding table, a drawing tablet, and a stack of sketchbooks—but it...

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