Ghost stories from Australia

The Linen Man

My first memory is not of my mother’s face, but of a linen-wrapped thing that should not have been. It was the summer of 1984, and we had come to...

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The Glass Reflection

The first time I saw her, I was six, sitting cross-legged on the laminate floor of our new living room in Alice Springs. My mother had designed the house herself,...

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The Copper’s Jest

The night air clung to my skin like a damp shroud as I guided my trusty 1986 Holden Commodore along the winding coastal road. The engine hummed a steady, reassuring...

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The Marrow of the Walls

My name is Elara, and I’ve just turned eighteen. We live in a creaking, salt-eaten house on the edge of a town that smells of fish and rust. My mother,...

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The Rusted Offering

I turned seventeen in March, and two months later my father handed me the keys to his old ’78 Dodge Aspen station wagon, the one with wood paneling that had...

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The Window’s Lament

Two weeks after bringing home a sleek black tomcat named Onyx, my roommate Dana and I began to notice changes. It started with his food bowl—half full, then barely touched....

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The Mechanical Lung

The first time I heard it, I thought it was the old refrigerator in the basement of my aunt’s boarding house. It was a wheezing, rhythmic sound that seemed to...

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The Last Tenant of Ashgrove Cottage

I’ve always been a sucker for a good ghost story. I’d spend hours scrolling through forums, devouring tales of spectral hitchhikers and haunted asylums, always with a skeptical eye but...

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The Blue Marble

I drove three hours to Lena’s farmhouse, a sprawling old place nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Lena had taken in her sister’s four kids—two boys, two girls,...

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The Drowned Trail

In March, after the rains had finally paused, a group of us decided to take our dirt bikes out to the old logging trails near the edge of the Bitterroot...

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The Curtain Boy

I remember the day I first saw the Curtain Boy. It was a sweltering August afternoon, and I was watching my neighbor’s two kids, 4-year-old Milo and 6-month-old Daphne, in...

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The Ledger of Leftovers

When I turned twenty-seven, I inherited my grandmother’s cottage in the fog-choked village of Mirewood, a place where the sun rarely bothered to rise fully. I was a skeptic, a...

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The Bell Tower’s Afterimage

The house at 13 Ashwick Lane had been a school for orphans until 1952, when a fire gutted the upper floors and claimed the lives of seven children. The town...

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The Night the Stairs Remembered

Mara had never believed in ghosts, not really. She had read about them, watched films, even visited a reputed haunted mansion once on a school trip. But those were stories,...

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The Cobwebbed Hall

My childhood bedroom sat at the end of a long, narrow hallway that creaked with every step. As a kid, I learned to sprint that corridor at night, light switch...

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The Last Laugh of the Red Gum

The ranch sprawled across the sun-scorched plains of South Australia, a place where the horizon shimmered and the only sound was the relentless drone of cicadas. It was late November,...

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The Constant at the Foot of the Bed

The third time I woke at 3:03 AM, I knew it wasn’t coincidence. I was a light sleeper, but these awakenings were different—a sudden, electric jolt that snapped me upright,...

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The Last Cold Sunday

The gravel road unraveled like a frayed nerve through the brush, and Elian kept his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror, watching the dust plume swallow the town of Kittery...

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The Knocker at the Turn

For nineteen years, I have called the old Sandstone House my home. It’s a rambling Victorian with a wraparound porch, perched on a windswept hill in the Blue Mountains, a...

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The Coal Shed Cough

The house on Bowerbird Lane wasn’t what we expected when the moving truck groaned away. The listing photos had shown warm light and clean lines, but the moment we stepped...

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The Linen Closet

I am twenty-six now, and I’ve spent the last eight years trying to forget the house on Kestrel Lane. It wasn’t the house itself—a beige, single-story ranch in the middle...

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The Salt and the Static

I was thirteen that summer, old enough to know better but young enough to still believe in the hollow places of the world. My best friend, Danny, had begged to...

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The Relic of Wren Hollow

The night was unremarkable, a thick blanket of clouds muting the stars, and I’d settled into bed without a thought to the small iron box on my nightstand. Inside lay...

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The Pallid Ward

In the early 2000s, my mother’s partner, Keith, had moved into a refurbished apartment complex that had once been a sanatorium for children in the late 1800s. The building, called...

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