Ghost stories from Voices

The Lingering Stop

Milo had always been a man of signs. When the fortune cookie at the Golden Dragon unfurled its cryptic message — ‘A long road lies ahead, yet you will arrive...

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The Polka-Dot Reflection

In the autumn of 2018, I was a lab monitor at Ridgemont Technical College, a sprawling campus of brutalist concrete and narrow corridors. My assigned post was the CAD Lab,...

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The Mothman’s Tailor

I’ve always prided myself on being a rational man. Ghosts, demons, cryptids—all of it was fodder for campfire tales and late-night talk radio. But life has a way of sewing...

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The Tin Fence

The December wind cut through my jacket as I left Clara’s house, her laughter still ringing in my ears. The streetlights cast long, skeletal shadows across the pavement, and the...

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The Vanishing at Västerås

The summer I turned sixteen, my family and I drove through the heart of Sweden to visit relatives. We stayed in a small cottage on the outskirts of Västerås, a...

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The Dress by the Gate

In the autumn of my tenth year, I walked the familiar path to Maplewood Elementary, my younger brother Leo trailing behind me, dragging his backpack and complaining about the cold....

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The Ragged Man on the Staircase

I was eleven, maybe twelve, when the house on Parchman Lane started to feel wrong. It wasn’t the peeling wallpaper or the draft that smelled of apples and rot. It...

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The Gilded Swan

The first time I noticed the lamp, I was six. It stood in the corner of our parlor in the old Creighton house, a monstrosity of tarnished brass and a...

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The Candle’s Hollow Flame

In the autumn of that year, I moved into the old Harlow house, a relic of a past century that clung to the hillside like a barnacle. The previous occupant,...

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The Clock at Half Past Seven

I was the first grandchild on both sides of my family, the center of a universe that revolved around me. My parents, busy with work, often left me in the...

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The Hollow Note

I have always prided myself on being a rational man. Numbers, patterns, logic—these are the languages I speak fluently. So when my wife, Clara, and our two kids left for...

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The Weight of the Watch

The shift at the canning factory had been brutal, the kind that left your ears ringing and your hands smelling of brine and metal. I got home to my basement...

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The Missing Page

It was a humid Sunday afternoon when Maya and I decided to grab a quick drink at the Rusty Anchor, a dimly lit bar near the university. We had just...

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The Hollow Man of Brine Hollow

I never believed in the old stories about Brine Hollow, not even when my grandmother warned me about the thing that lived in the woods. She said it wore a...

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The Static in the Walls

My grandmother’s farmhouse in rural Iowa had always creaked and groaned, but that night, every sound felt deliberate. I was there after my great-uncle Earl’s funeral, helping my mother sort...

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The Lantern in Her Palm

I never believed in the quiet sort of haunting until I stayed at my great-aunt Miriam’s farmhouse that autumn. The house was a relic of another century, with wide plank...

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The Hollow Ceiling

When little Toby started crying at 2 AM, I knew something was terribly wrong. He’d been a perfect sleeper since he was six months old – twelve hours straight, no...

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The Coal Man’s Visit

I was six when the knocking started. Not on the front door, but on the wall beside my bed, three slow thumps that never came at the same time of...

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The Hand That Held the Doll

When I was four, in the autumn of 1987, my family lived in a cramped apartment above a laundromat called Suds & Scents. My room was a converted pantry, its...

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A Late Night Visit

I was just reading, ” A sea of voices in the night” by Ant 1111. You know, that story brings back a memory of something that happened when I was...

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The Saltwood Ledger

Between the ages of five and nine, I sometimes felt a cold draft in my bedroom, even with the windows shut and the radiator hissing. A weight would settle at...

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The Third Invitation

Mara lived alone in a studio apartment on the fourth floor of an old building that smelled of dust and slow decay. The unit had one window, facing a brick...

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The Weeping Window

The first time I saw her was through the rain-streaked glass of our attic window, a pale smudge in the gray October light. My grandmother’s old telescope, a relic from...

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The Keeper of the Ledger

I was a night auditor for the Clearwater County Sheriff’s Office, pulling the graveyard shift in a town that rolled up its sidewalks after nine. My name is Deputy Mara...

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