Ghost stories from Australia

The Tenant Behind the Mirror

My earliest memory is of a cold linoleum floor and the hum of a fluorescent light. I was maybe four, stumbling toward the bathroom in the dead of night, my...

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The cramped, dust-choked moving truck finally rumbled away, leaving Elias and his housemates, Chloe, Ben, and Maya, standing on the cracked asphalt driveway. They had relocated from the bustling metropolis...

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The Night the Static Spoke

Three nights ago, my partner, Mira, and I retired to our attic bedroom in the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage. The wind was howling off the sea, rattling the windows in...

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The Dry Bed

Two years ago, my friend Dana and I decided to spend a weekend at my great-uncle’s ranch, a sprawling, sun-bleached property called the Dry Bed, just outside of a sleepy...

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Secrets of the Old Barn

A few years ago, my friend Lucas and I chose to spend some time at my grandparents’ farm, which is nestled on the outskirts of a small town. The farm,...

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The Halo of Static

The clock on the mantelpiece read 11:07 PM, and Marisol was alone in the quiet hum of the living room. Her husband, Tomas, was out in the garage, tinkering with...

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The Candle Consensus

I’ve always prided myself on being the skeptic in our group, the one who rolls their eyes at ghost stories and laughs at the paranormal documentaries that claim to capture...

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The Cane of the Long Parlor

It was a Saturday night in late autumn, and the old farmhouse outside of Hudson, New York, creaked with the settling of cool air. I was fourteen then, and my...

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The Crawl-Space Incident

My name is Elle, and I grew up in a sprawling, moss-covered farmhouse on the outskirts of a town that had more boarded-up windows than lit ones. The house was...

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The White Gown at Crooked Creek

The morning Aunt Margaret died, the fog was thick as curdled milk, and the chickens refused to leave their coop. She had been failing for weeks, her breath rattling like...

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The Grey Boiler Suit

My first real job after the mess in Melbourne was at Whitmore’s, a sprawling emporium that had been swallowing customers since 1856. The building was a monument to another age,...

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The Constant Gardener

In the autumn of 2004, I was nineteen, fresh off a cross-country bus with a backpack full of idealism and a head full of half-remembered poetry. I found work at...

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The Hollow Scratch

The day my sister left the gate open, I was six, and the world was still made of soft colors and warm laps. Marble, our miniature poodle, was a whirlwind...

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The Persistent Visitor

When Mara moved into her great-aunt’s old farmhouse, she expected creaking floors and drafty windows, not a permanent guest. The house had been in her family for generations, a sprawling,...

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The Last Song on the Mix

In the crisp autumn of 2019, I packed my old station wagon with my twelve-year-old son, Eli, and our overstuffed duffel bags. We were driving from the foggy streets of...

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The Bell in the Root Cellar

In the autumn of 2019, I rented a rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of a dying town called Morrow’s Hollow. The place was a relic from the 1890s, with warped...

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The Shoe in the Dark

I had always been the believer, the one who felt a shiver before the lights flickered, who saw faces in the static of an old TV. My friend Marcus, however,...

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The Wet Floorboards

When I first moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of Katanning, Western Australia, I was six months pregnant with my son, and my younger brother, Ethan, had come...

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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 Rustling in the Cistern

For three years, a thing has trailed me through the dry hill country, where the only constant is the whisper of wind through scrub oak and the distant hum of...

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The Watcher in the Attic

When we moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of Mirewood, my wife Sarah and I were thrilled. The place had character, a wrap-around porch, a sprawling garden, and...

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The Pale Interior

The three of us had taken a cheap room at the edge of the tourist strip, where the neon faded and the ocean’s rumble felt closer. It was a motel,...

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The Gaze Behind the Glass

The first time I noticed the wrongness was when I was nine, in the dusty town of Meridian Flats, where the summer heat baked the streets into cracked mosaics. I...

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