Ghost stories from Canada

The Autopsy of a Ringtone

The phone in the foyer was an antique, a black rotary from a bygone era, still tethered to the wall like a fossil of a previous life. It had a...

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The Hollower’s Pact

At sixteen, I thought I understood fear—the cold sweat before a math exam, the prickling shame of being laughed at in the hallway, the hollow ache of a mother who...

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The Clock in the Hall

Three years ago, I moved from the coastal town of Bexhill to a small, inland city called Harlow, and I am almost certain that my flat is haunted. Many strange...

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The Clock’s Blue Face

Fifteen years ago, when I was twelve, I shared a cramped attic bedroom with my younger brother, Ezra. The house was an old Victorian that leaned slightly to one side,...

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The Locked Sunroom

The morning I first saw the house on Maplewood Avenue, I thought it looked like a museum piece someone had forgotten to dust. The brick was the color of dried...

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The Hollow Wards of Whitefall

In the autumn of 1987, when I was eight, my Cub Scout pack was granted a night’s stay at Whitefall, an imposing brick edifice that had once served as a...

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The Call from the Empty House

I never believed in ghosts. Not really. I thought they were just stories to scare kids around campfires. But what happened with my friend Marta changed everything. It happened about...

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The Ceiling of Painted Eyes

Linette was nine, and the world was still a place of comforting rules: bedtime at eight, vegetables before dessert, and grown-ups always knowing what to do. But the summer she...

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The Salted Pretzel Shift

The sign outside promised ‘Grab & Go’, but the only thing anyone ever grabbed was a creeping sense of unease that clung to the air like the grease from the...

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The Wooden Bone

The story begins in the village of Grey Hollow, nestled in a valley where the fog rarely lifts. Locals will tell you the name comes from the gray stones that...

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The Iron Oven’s Hum

Marla had always prided herself on her rationality. As the opening manager at The Rusty Spoke, a sprawling roadside diner nestled at the junction of two forgotten highways, she approached...

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The Man in the Green Coat

I was eleven when I saw him, not ten, and I wasn’t in Ontario. I was in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, in a house that has since...

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The Fixed Point

The house on Meridian Lane came with a peculiar history, but I’d never been one to believe in real estate folklore. I bought it in late autumn, when the leaves...

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The Ledger of Unfinished Rooms

The house at 14 Marrow Lane was a mistake from the first rain-slicked afternoon we moved in. I was five, and the walls felt like they were breathing—slow, patient inhales...

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The Cold Arithmetic of Granite

The house in Yellowknife sat at the edge of a frozen lake, its gray clapboards weathered by decades of wind and ice. I’d rented it sight unseen, drawn by the...

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The Fourth Floor Visitor

Three nights ago, I invited two coworkers over for a late dinner in my new apartment on the fourth floor of the Ridgewood building. The place had a weird vibe,...

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The Night the Floorboards Remembered

I still hesitate before submitting this story. I am not sure whether it was a haunting, or even anything paranormal, but it’s definitely one of the weirdest things that has...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Debt

Mara first saw him at her grandmother’s funeral. She was seven, clutching her mother’s hand, when a man in an old-fashioned railway uniform stood at the edge of the graveside,...

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The Silent Trolley

I was twelve when my family moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the Cranston orchard. It was a sprawling, drafty place with a wrap-around porch and a...

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The Lantern in the Orchard

My mother-in-law, Eleanor, had been a quiet constant in our lives, a woman of small rituals and softer words. When she passed, it was a mercy, a sudden end to...

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The Pillar of Night

I’m an eighteen-year-old guy from the Yukon, and I consider myself pretty down-to-earth, though I’ve always had a restless imagination. My story starts in a place called the Alder Creek...

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The Carbon Copy

The carbon copy arrived the same week we did, folded neatly into the bottom of a moving box labeled ‘MISC’. I remember pulling it out, thinking it was a strange...

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The Mulberry Gate

I have lived in the city for thirty years now, but my mind still drifts back to the small town of Ashford, where I spent my first ten years. I...

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The Hollow Frame

The autumn sun was a pale coin through the haze over the new development of Cedar Ridge, a cluster of half-finished houses clawing at the edge of the Ponderosa Pines....

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