Ghost stories from Australia

The Lint Trap

In the late autumn of 2023, my husband and I moved into a century-old farmhouse on the outskirts of a dying town called Hollow Creek. The previous owner, an elderly...

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The Dry Creek Crossing

My cousin Wade and his girlfriend Lena had picked up my fiancée, Nora, and me for a late-night drive through the back roads of Cinder Barrens, a stretch of abandoned...

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The Wallflower

We’d barely hauled the last box through the front door when I saw it first. A smudge of darkness at the edge of the living room, like a coat left...

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The Last March of Mr. Pickles

When I was six, we lived in a cramped flat above a derelict bakery on the edge of town. The stairs creaked with every step, and at night, the old...

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The Cardboard Box

In the autumn of 2003, I was twenty-two, living alone for the first time in a cramped studio apartment above a laundromat in a town that had seen better days....

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The House with the Hexagonal Window

When Marta and Elias first saw the old farmhouse on the edge of the marsh, they were charmed by its crooked porch and the way the morning light filtered through...

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The Hangman’s Fracture

It started with a smell—old copper and burnt cloves—that lingered in my studio no matter how many windows I cracked. My friend, Elena, a sculptor with steady hands, began complaining...

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The Ledger of Amber Hollow

The trouble began about three weeks after I moved into the old carriage house on the edge of Amber Hollow. I’d taken the place because it was cheap and quiet,...

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The Weight of the Last Candle

The house on Hemlock Lane had been in Mira’s family for three generations, but it had always felt more like a museum of grief than a home. When her parents...

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The Hat in the Hallway

The house on Maple Street was never just a house to me. It was a living, breathing thing, with bones of timber and lungs of cold drafts. My sister Clara...

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The Inheritance of Ivory Keys

My name is Mara, and I am 16 years old. I’ve always been drawn to old things, but this was different. It was April 2011, and I was staying at...

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The Last Lantern

It was the last night of our senior trip to the coastal town of Raven’s Hollow, a place known for its crumbling cliffs and the old lighthouse that had been...

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The Lantern by the Reeds

My aunt Mirela never spoke of the night she spent in the old mill house without a tremor in her voice. It was thirty years ago, in a small village...

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The Cartographer’s Last Survey

Eleanor had always been tethered to the old lighthouse, even in life. Now, as her astral form hovered above her sleeping body on the narrow cot, she felt the pull...

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The Hollow Ward

I never thought I’d end up in a place like Cedar Hills Psychiatric. I mean, I’d seen the movies—dark corridors, screaming patients, nurses with dead eyes. But the reality was...

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The Glass Visitor

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in late October when I agreed to watch my eight-year-old cousin, Ellie, while her parents attended a wedding across town. The sky was an...

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Ouija Board And Meditation

I have two stories: The first one happened a while back my sister and I were using a version of ouija board (psychic circle) and we were talking to a...

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The Rusted Compass

In the autumn of my twelfth year, we moved to a town called Ashford Hollow, a place where the trees grew so thick they swallowed the sun by midday. Our...

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The Lullaby of Aisle Seven

I clocked in at the usual ungodly hour, the fluorescent lights of Hartley’s Home Goods buzzing like trapped wasps. The store was a cavern of dust and recycled air, smelling...

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The Turn of the Wicker Chair

I’ve always been a rational person. I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits or any of that nonsense. But what happened to me over the past few months has shaken...

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The Millworker’s Folly

The mill had been dormant for decades, but the workers’ cottages still stood in a neat row along the canal, their brick faces darkened by soot and weather. My family...

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The Phantom Plumbing

In the autumn of 2012, I was thirteen and staying at my friend Devon’s house after school. We were in his basement, glued to an old console, when we heard...

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The Gap in the Wall

When I was eleven, my best friend Mira threw a small birthday sleepover. It was just five of us: Mira, me, Lena, Tara, and Priya. We were in her new...

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The Breathing Corner

At fifteen, I knew the floorboards in the old farmhouse better than the lines on my palms. Every creak, every draft, every stubborn stain on the ceiling mapped my childhood....

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