Ghost stories from Sleep Paralysis

The Static Between Floors

Our new apartment on Maple Street had a strange hum, a low-frequency thrum that vibrated through the floorboards like a forgotten appliance. My brother, Leo, and I noticed it the...

Read Story →

The Stillness in Room 14

I have always prided myself on being a rational person, someone who trusts in the tangible and the explicable. Even after my father’s strange tales of the old lighthouse, I...

Read Story →

The Inverted Slumber

I’m Leo, and I’m fourteen. About three months ago, I decided to switch ends of my bed, just for a change. Normally, my head faced the window, but that night...

Read Story →

The Visitor at 4:30

I leave for work at 4:30 AM, when the house is still and dark, and my husband and daughter are tucked into their beds. We live in a cramped two-bedroom...

Read Story →

The Uninvited Guest

I woke up on a Tuesday with the heavy, suffocating feeling that comes from sleeping too long. The clock on my nightstand glowed 3:47 AM. I should have been exhausted,...

Read Story →

The Latch of the Root Cellar

I never thought much about the old farmhouse until the summer I turned sixteen, when Mom decided I needed to spend a week with Great-Uncle Elias. He was a taciturn...

Read Story →

The Long Night Shift

The first time I heard the sobbing, I thought my partner, Marcus, was having a breakdown. We worked the overnight shift at the Weatherford County 911 Dispatch Center, a squat,...

Read Story →

The Unburdening of Elias Thorne

The old farmhouse had settled into its nightly creaks and groans, a symphony Elias Thorne had grown accustomed to. Tonight, however, the familiar symphony was overlaid with a silence that...

Read Story →

The Stillness Before Dawn

I had read about the phenomenon in a magazine, so when it happened to me, I recognized it at once. It was not the terror I had imagined, but a...

Read Story →

The Floorboards Remember

Mara had always been a light sleeper, but the house she inherited from her grandmother seemed to amplify every creak and groan. It was a sprawling Victorian relic, wrapped in...

Read Story →

The Laughing Jester of Marrow Lane

My name is Elara Finch, and for as long as I can remember, a figure has haunted my dreams. It began when I was seven, in the rambling Victorian house...

Read Story →

The Hollow Mannequin

The night had the quality of something waiting, the way the air thickens before a storm. We’d spent the evening at my cousin’s secluded cabin, nestled in a valley where...

Read Story →

The Woven Hollow

My grandmother called it ‘The Crow’s Bargain,’ but that was just her way of giving a name to a thing that should have no name. I’m Mira, and for as...

Read Story →

The Night the Mirrors Sweated

It was almost 3 AM when we finally turned off the movie, the blue glow of the screen dissolving into the dark of the living room. My boyfriend, Marcus, and...

Read Story →

The Hearthbound

My earliest memory of the thing in our house is tied to the smell of burnt toast and the hum of the old refrigerator. I was five, maybe six, and...

Read Story →

The Cadence of the Clockwork Men

I never believed in the supernatural, not until the summer of ’89 when my mother and her new husband, Carl, moved us into the dilapidated Victorian that once belonged to...

Read Story →

The Secrets of the Old House

When Henry moved into the old cottage with his aunt and her partner, he felt a mix of excitement and unease. The house, with its creaking floorboards and dusty corners,...

Read Story →

The Constant Drone

My grandmother’s house sat at the edge of a town that time had forgotten, a place called Harrow Creek. It was a sprawling, white Victorian with peeling paint and a...

Read Story →

The Third Hour

My name is Arjun, and this is the story of my friend, Vikram, and the night we spent at the Old Bellows House, a place with a history so grim...

Read Story →

My Sleep Paralysis Episode

I was sleeping in my bedroom on my back, and the room was bright white. I could only see the blanket that was on top of me, which was a...

Read Story →

The Last Morning Shift

In 2018, I was sent to Kochi for a week-long logistics conference. My company, based in Pune, booked me into the newly-built Meridian Bay Hotel, a glass-and-steel tower on Marine...

Read Story →

The Clockwork Ward

It started the week I took the night shift at St. Agatha’s Convalescent Home, a crumbling Victorian pile on the edge of a town that had forgotten it was there....

Read Story →

Hypnagogic Hallucinations?

I have had many different types of “visitations” from my point of view. From dark figures in my bedroom doorway that I couldn’t really see no matter how hard I...

Read Story →

The Green Glass Lamp

I never believed in ghosts, not really. Growing up in a bustling port city, I had seen enough of life’s harshness to know that the dead stayed dead. But when...

Read Story →