Ghost stories from Psychic

The Brand of the Unraveling

I’ve always been a patchwork of oddities. The dead have never been strangers to me; they’ve been as constant as my own heartbeat. From my first wobbly steps, I could...

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The Sunken Gallery

The algae-slick tiles of the Havenbrook Community Pool echoed with the shrieks of children long after the last kickboard had been stored. I wasn’t a lifeguard, but my sister, Dana,...

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The Alder House Visit

My grandmother used to tell me about the time she helped her sister, Aunt Clara, look at a house. It was back in the early ’70s, when Clara and her...

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The Salt-Rimmed Glass

I have always been a collector of last moments. Other people collect stamps, coins, or memories of birthdays; I collect the final seconds of strangers, plucked from the fog of...

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The Unfurling Bloom

The scent of petrichor clung to Elara like a second skin. She was nine, and the ancient oak at the edge of her family’s neglected orchard was her kingdom. Today,...

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The Empty Chair at Table Nine

At twenty-seven, Mara had learned to live with the flicker at the edge of her vision. It had been with her since childhood, a constant companion that never quite materialized....

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The Custodian of the Linen Closet

Marta had always been a creature of habit, her mornings a precise ballet of coffee, toast, and the nine-minute drive to the elementary school. But this Tuesday was different. Her...

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The Hollow Bend

In the autumn of 1987, the county paved a new stretch of road through the farmlands of central Ohio. It was a smooth, black ribbon cutting through fields of corn...

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The Static Between Floors

Last night, the elevator in our apartment building finally gave up. It had been stuttering for weeks, a metallic groan that echoed through the stairwell like a dying animal. I’d...

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The Rain-Glass Visitor

On the first of November, when the rain in our coastal town of Clover’s Bend turned the gravel roads to mud, I discovered that a person can share a room...

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The Gilded Sun Trap

The island of Serapis was a jewel of the Mediterranean, famed for its ancient temple to the sun god Helios, and its perpetual golden light. Winters barely brushed its shores,...

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The Wind That Smelled of Lemons

The November rain had turned the streets of Port Blaise into a slick, black mirror, reflecting the sickly orange glow of the sodium lamps. My father-in-law, Edmund, had been fading...

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The Ember Veil

It was the tail end of winter, and the small coastal town of Grayhaven was wrapped in a damp, clinging fog. My boyfriend, Marcus, and I had come for a...

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The Bloom Beneath the Bellies

The July sun beat down on my shoulders, a false promise of warmth. I’d been staring at the same four walls for three days, my usual companions scattered to distant...

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The Scars of the Unseen

Elias first realized his sight was… different… when he was seven. It wasn’t just the vividness of colors or the uncanny way he could perceive depth, as if the world...

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The Fading Veil

In the damp, moss-covered hills of the Scottish Highlands, where the mist clung to the earth like a second skin, I grew up in the shadow of my great-great-grandmother’s legacy....

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The Face at the Sink

The apartment I rented was a third-floor walkup in an old brick building that smelled of boiled cabbage and stale cigarettes. My unit faced a narrow air shaft, a claustrophobic...

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The Lantern Ledger

My mother had a habit of collecting stories the way other women collected teacups. She would sip them slowly, savoring the bitterness, and then set them on the shelf of...

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The Green Ribbon Protocol

The first time I noticed something was off with our son, Leo, was at the Harvest Festival in the town of Millbrook. He was four, almost five, and had always...

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The Comb and the Key

I’ve always had a strange magnetism to a certain district in this city, a pull so strong that even blindfolded and spun, I’d find my way to its heart. It...

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The Last Pour

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked past eleven, its hands crawling toward the new year. Outside, the city of Verona was a cacophony of premature celebration, rockets bursting in fountains...

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The Withering Room

I’ve always had a knack for finding the wrong places. Not haunted houses in the classic sense—no rattling chains or floating specters—but places that felt wrong, like a note played...

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The Coffin Maker’s Map

It was the summer of 1997, and I had just turned thirteen. My family had moved to the small town of Greywood, nestled in a valley that seemed to swallow...

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The Curtain That Walked Alone

The house on Hemlock Lane was a mistake from the start. The peeling white paint and the sagging porch made it look like a tired old man, and the moment...

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