Ghost stories from Touches

The Curtain Between

It was a humid August night when my daughter, Lena, came back from her midnight stroll with friends. I was dozing on the sofa, the television mumbling to itself, when...

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The Tallyman of Tallow Road

The house on Tallow Road had a history that clung to it like damp. My parents, Elara and Marcus, bought the old dower house after the previous owner, a reclusive...

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The Awl in the Pine

The house on Hemlock Road wasn’t Victorian, but it was old, nearly a century, with a sagging porch and a square tower that looked like a mistake. We moved in...

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The Knocking Code

I’ve known Marnie since I was three, when she first appeared at the foot of my crib, a small girl in a damp, gray dress, her hair a tangle of...

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Marianne had spent years chasing ghosts, visiting crumbling asylums, ancient battlefields, and fog-draped cemeteries, always with a camera and a voice recorder. She’d whispered pleas into the dark, waited for...

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The House on Marrow Lane

I woke to the sound of footsteps on the stairs. They were heavy, deliberate, like a man in work boots, not the light patter of children. My heart hammered against...

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The Static in the Walls

My name is Lily, and I’m twelve. I know that’s the first thing you noticed, and maybe you’re already thinking, ‘Oh, just a kid with an overactive imagination.’ But I’m...

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The Borrowed Room

In the autumn of 1995, my husband, Walter, and I had just moved into a sprawling Victorian house in the quiet town of Millbrook. The house was beautiful, with high...

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The Swing Under the Sycamore

It started on a balmy summer night, a week before my fifteenth birthday. My cousin, Maya, my best friend, Leo, and my younger brother, Ethan, were all sprawled on the...

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The Unseen Visitor

The first time I noticed something was off about the old office building they’d converted into dorms was when the elevator music stopped. It was a tinny, warped version of...

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Prank Gone Too Far

Girls. Sleepovers. They were meant for each other. Especially when it’s just you and a friend that act as if you were sisters. Spending the night at my friend Angela’s...

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The Weaver’s Room

The old farmhouse on Larkspur Lane had always been a quiet place, save for the wind that moaned through the eaves. My bedroom was at the end of the upstairs...

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The Hollow Static

The first time I heard them, I was halfway through a bag of stale pretzels, sprawled on the living room couch at 11:47 PM. The house—a creaking Victorian my aunt...

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The Winter Tenant

The winter I turned eight, we spent Christmas at my great-aunt Mabel’s farmhouse, a rambling Victorian that had been in the family for generations. My parents, my older brother Ethan,...

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The Night of the Woven Voices

Every August, I flew from New York to Romania to stay with my grandparents in their village house in the Carpathian foothills. The house was built in 1965, and my...

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The Timekeeper’s Call

I worked the night audit at the Meridian Grand, a once-grand hotel that had fallen into disrepair. The lobby’s chandelier was a web of dead bulbs, and the red velvet...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Ledger

In the autumn of my twelfth year, our class took a field trip to the old Farrow Estate, a sprawling Victorian mansion perched on a hill above the fog-choked town...

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The Tenant in the Static

My aunt Val had always been practical, a woman who trusted the visible world and took comfort in its solidity. After her husband Pete passed, she’d stayed with her mother...

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The Last Harvest

My old college roommate, Arjun, had a habit of collecting things that most people would consider junk—or worse. When he invited me to his family’s farmhouse for a long weekend,...

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The Redcoat’s Loop

The summer I turned ten, my family moved to a trailer park on the edge of a town called Millbrook. Behind the rows of silver trailers stretched a thick patch...

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The Static Between Channels

Mara moved into the old broadcast tower apartment on the edge of the city, a place where the rent was cheap because the signal interfered with every device. She didn’t...

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The Candle Procession

We moved to the old farmhouse when I was five, and I grew up there with my brother, Liam, who was three years older. Despite having my own room, Liam...

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The Photograph in the Static

My grandmother, Elena, was the heart of our family, a woman whose laughter could fill a room and whose cooking could draw us from miles away. After her diagnosis, we...

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