Ghost stories from Australia

The Vent

The first sign that something was wrong was the smell. It wasn’t the usual musty odor of the old farmhouse; it was a sweet, cloying scent, like rotting flowers mixed...

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The Unfinished Game

It had been years since anything truly inexplicable had happened to me, and I had grown complacent, even a little disappointed. But on the last Sunday of that long July...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Bargain

Three autumns ago, my family traded the cramped rows of the city for a weather-beaten farmhouse on the edge of Cairn Hollow. The property stretched into wild, untamed fields where...

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The Static Veil

I’d never believed in anything I couldn’t touch. Faith had slipped from me the way sand falls through fingers—quietly, inevitably, until all that remained was a hollow ache where certainty...

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The Blanket’s Flight

The summer I turned twelve, I slept over at my friend’s house, a place I’d been to a hundred times before. His name was Kirra, and his family had lived...

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The Lantern’s Vigil

My name is Elena, and I need to write this down before I forget the details, or before I convince myself it was all a dream. This happened three weeks...

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The Pale Visitor at Crofton Crossing

Some of you may recall my earlier tales about the ghostly figure at the old railway bridge in Crofton, where the tracks cross the river at the edge of town....

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The Painted Door

The old farmhouse at the end of Cedar Lane had always felt like a character in our lives, not just a building. We’d moved in two years ago, seeking quiet...

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The Winter Mite

In the quiet outskirts of Hobart, Tasmania, I lived in a small cottage that had been in my family for generations. It was a Sunday evening in early July, the...

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The Moldy Manuscript

The rain had been falling for three days straight, turning the campground into a quagmire of mud and misery. I was nineteen, freshly disowned by my parents for dropping out...

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The Window Watcher

At nineteen, I shared a cramped studio apartment with a scrappy tabby named Gizmo. He wasn’t just a pet; he was my familiar, my shadow, a furry engine of purrs...

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The Static in the Walls

I’m twenty-three, and I live in a converted warehouse in the industrial district of Hobart. I moved here six months ago, drawn by the cheap rent and the promise of...

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The Silhouette in the Linoleum

The linoleum in my sister’s kitchen was a relic from the 1970s, a splatter of rust and avocado that had seen more arguments than meals. I’d sit on the cracked...

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The Weave of Midnight

Four years back, in the cramped attic room of my aunt’s farmhouse, I had an experience that still makes my skin crawl. The house was old, with crooked beams and...

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The Mystery of the Old House

In a quaint town, a young girl named Lily lived with her father, brother, and their grandmother in a charming old house. This house had once belonged to her great-grandfather,...

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The Copper Key

The old house on Cedar Lane had always been a part of our lives. My grandmother, Elsie, inherited it from her father, a clockmaker named Harold, who had a reputation...

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The Last Frame

I was sixteen when I learned that some photographs are not meant to be taken. My best friend, Leo, had just moved into a renovated farmhouse on the edge of...

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The Picture in the Old Garden

I went to a friend’s birthday gathering and brought my small camera to take pictures. After a while, I grew a little bored and started taking photos of anything I...

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The Linoleum Gap

The summer I turned six, my parents shipped me off to my great-aunt Edna’s farmhouse while they dealt with some ‘grown-up trouble’ back in the city. The house was a...

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The Reflection in Room 7

When I was seven, my family moved to a small town in the Canadian prairies, into a sprawling old house that had been converted into a bed-and-breakfast. My parents managed...

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The Atherton Oaks Vigil

I was sixteen when I went to stay at my grandmother’s house in the rural town of Atherton Oaks, a place where the roads are lined with gnarled oaks and...

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The Secrets of Old Houses

Have you ever found yourself wondering about the things that go bump in the night? Or perhaps you’ve misplaced something and just can’t figure out where it went? It’s easy...

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The Weight of Quiet Rooms

The first time I noticed the sideways rain, I was nine, standing at the kitchen window of the old farmhouse my family had rented for the summer. The glass rattled...

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The Last Set at the Rusty Nail

I was twenty-three, playing bass for a four-piece band called The Gravel Pit, grinding through the dive bars and roadhouses along the interstate. We were good enough to get paid,...

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