Ghost stories from Australia

The Flicker of the Yellow Lamp

Before I existed, my father’s younger sister, Celia, had swallowed a bottle of her mother’s sleeping pills in the attic of the old farmhouse where my family now lives. The...

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The Vanishing Room

In the autumn of 2022, my health had been deteriorating for years, a slow leak of vitality that doctors couldn’t explain. After a battery of tests, including an electrocardiogram and...

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The Copper Ridge Tenant

The lease said nothing about the water stains that bloomed across the ceiling like bruises. I signed anyway, charmed by the pressed-tin panels and the oak banister worn smooth by...

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The Cone Keeper’s Vigil

The new year had slithered in like a frost-bitten serpent, and here I was again, wrapped in a hi-vis jacket that smelled of stale coffee and regret, stationed at a...

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The Unsettled Tenant

The flat on Weaver’s Lane was a final, desperate gamble. After the eviction notice from my old place and three weeks of fruitless searching, I was ready to accept almost...

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The Last Bell at Kookaburra Creek

Marla had been a traffic controller for eleven years, and she thought she’d seen every kind of road, every kind of driver, and every kind of weirdness that came with...

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The Painted Gate

I was working a stretch of highway near the old mill town of Derryfield, where the road cuts through a hollow of scrubby pines and the only company is the...

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The Blue Room at Rosen’s

I never expected to find my great-grandmother’s funeral in a converted Victorian mansion on the outskirts of a city I barely knew. The place was called Rosen’s Funeral Home, and...

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The Last Thread

I was eleven when Aunt Clara pressed a small velvet box into my hands. She was my father’s sister, a retired stage actress who smelled of mothballs and rosewater. ‘For...

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The Rug Surfer

The day the radiators stopped ticking, I knew something was wrong. It was the first of May, and the house had gone quiet in a way that had nothing to...

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The Ashtray on the Windowsill

The house on Cedar Lane had always been a quiet one, nestled at the end of a cul-de-sac where the trees leaned in like curious neighbors. My stepmother, Claire, inherited...

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The Lantern in the Dry Grass

In the late autumn of 1987, my family moved into a house on a dead-end road in a town that used to be called Greenhollow, now just a suburb on...

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The Fence That Hums

I landed a decent job as a boundary rider on a cattle station deep in the Tanami Desert, a place so remote that the nearest town is a two-day drive...

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The Correct Name

Marla had always been skeptical of the paranormal apps that flooded her phone’s app store. When her friend Chloe dared her to try the ‘Spectral Communicator’ for a YouTube challenge,...

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The Lantern’s Vigil

It was a Tuesday, the kind that folds into itself like a well-worn map, when my husband, Elias, and I settled into our usual rhythm in the quiet outskirts of...

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The Bell That Didn’t Ring

The year was 1978, and I was nine years old, living in the dusty farming town of Merridale. My best friend was Sam, whose family owned a sprawling wheat property...

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The Fungus Line

In the late autumn of 1987, when the maple leaves had turned to brittle amber and the air carried the first bite of frost, my friend Danny and I decided...

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The Archangel’s Last Run

The rain had not stopped for three days, and the river, swollen beyond its banks, had finally broken through the levee. Now, the town of Kettleman’s Bend was a murky,...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Ledger

The lockdown had lifted just in time for the autumn equinox, and the city felt reborn. My wife, Ella, had been holding onto a voucher for a posh lunch at...

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The Last Logging Road

It was the third day of the government’s ‘stay at home’ order, and Cass was already clawing at the walls of her tiny apartment. The rain had been drumming a...

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The Glass Eye of the Lighthouse

When my grandmother, Nana June, passed away, I inherited her lighthouse on the jagged coast of Port Blossom. The lighthouse had been in our family for generations, but Nana was...

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The Last Oven Light

The O’Connells had been our neighbors for over fifteen years. They were a quiet, devoted couple in their seventies, together for nearly five decades. Margaret was the heart of their...

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The Hollow Seat

The old chair had been sitting in the corner of the living room for three weeks, ever since my mother, Evelyn, had accepted it from her aunt. It was a...

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The Snowman’s Grin

I’ve always been reluctant to talk about the strange occurrences that have punctuated my life, but I suppose it’s time to share the one that has haunted me since childhood....

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