Ghost stories from Poltergeists

The Air Disturbance

Maya had worked the graveyard shift at the all-night diner for six years. The rhythm of the late hours, the fluorescent hum, the endless coffee—it was her life. She lived...

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The Flicker at the Landing

At twelve, my greatest triumph was being the sole occupant of our house for an evening. My sister had sleepover commitments, and my parents were out at a dinner party...

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The Late Show at Hollow Creek

I’d been in Oregon for barely a month, renting a ramshackle farmhouse outside the town of Hollow Creek. The place was a relic from the 1800s, with creaking floorboards and...

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The Last Ferry at Dusk

I never thought much of the old wharf, the one that jutted out into the gray, restless water like a broken finger. I’d grown up in the small coastal town...

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The Apron Strings

The first week in our new house felt like settling into a frozen ribcage. The duplex in the old mining town of Dominion, Nova Scotia, was a relic of a...

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The Knocking in the Kitchen Ceiling

At 1:00 PM, the house on Maple Street was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of old wood. I sat at the kitchen table,...

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The Tug at the Loom

Our arrival in the coastal town of Greyhollow in the fall of 2015 was less a choice than a necessity. The job offer had come with a housing stipend that...

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The Man in the Paisley Coat

The summer I turned seven, we moved to a small town called Ashford, into a house that had stood empty for years. My parents were thrilled about the space and...

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The Concrete Hollow

My best friend Anya and I were thirteen the summer I finally told her about the house on Mallow Lane. Not the new house, the rental my parents had dragged...

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Urban Legend Or Prank?

Warning: You may want to read this in the morning, but whatever, it’s up to you, because this may be supernatural or may not be… Have you guys heard of...

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The Humming Wire

I’ve never been one to chase ghosts or consult mediums. If you asked me last spring, I would have said that the supernatural was a hobby for the lonely or...

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The 3 A.M. Appraisal

I remember the summer I turned eleven, when my cousin Darius and I were shipped off to our grandmother’s crumbling Victorian mansion in the middle of nowhere. The house was...

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The Pale Visitor

My name is Elena, and I’m seventeen. We moved to a small town in upstate New York when I was fifteen, into an old farmhouse that had been on the...

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The Fifth Key

We moved into the old farmhouse when I was five, a sprawling ruin of a place with a barn that leaned like a tired old man. My father, a man...

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The Tangerine Peel Incident

The last week we spent in the old farmhouse, I started to notice things that made the hairs on my arms stand up. It wasn’t the creaking floors or the...

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The Seventh Step

I was seven when we moved into the thin house on Maple Street. It wasn’t our choice; my father’s job transfer landed us there, a narrow, three-story Victorian with a...

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The Vent

The first sign that something was wrong was the smell. It wasn’t the usual musty odor of the old farmhouse; it was a sweet, cloying scent, like rotting flowers mixed...

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The Click of the Cedar Chest

I was fourteen when my mother got a job in Argentina, and I was sent to live with my aunt in her drafty Victorian house at the edge of the...

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The Unfinished Game

It had been years since anything truly inexplicable had happened to me, and I had grown complacent, even a little disappointed. But on the last Sunday of that long July...

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The Blind Spot

I had been away for six weeks, staying with my mother in her quiet desert town. When I returned to my brother’s place in the outskirts of Albuquerque, the November...

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The Yarn That Unraveled

I never put much stock in the idea that a house could hold a grudge. But then again, I never thought a hallway could hum. I moved into the old...

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The Salt-Worn Porch

The old house on Pender Street had a way of holding onto things. My grandmother, Elara, used to say it was the salt in the air from the nearby cove—it...

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The Morning Caller

I work for a small mental health clinic in the outskirts of Mérida, where we provide therapy for children with autism. The building we occupy is an old, converted house,...

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The Hanging Glass

The summer I turned nine, my mother sent me to live with my father in the hills above the old quarry town of Marrow. The house was called ‘Aerie’ because...

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