Ghost stories from Canada

The Cartographer’s Last Survey

I turned eighteen in the fall, the same week the first frost bit the reeds along the Ashburne Reservoir. My name is Mara, and I’ve always had a hunger for...

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The Attic of Incomplete Marches

I never believed in ghosts until I found the sheet music. That’s ironic, because I’d spent my whole life studying the unseen—not as a believer, but as a skeptic with...

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The Salt in the Walls

Mara first noticed the new sensitivity three weeks after moving into the old Cormier house. It was a sprawling, saltbox-style structure set back from a gravel road in the rural...

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The Salt Marsh Invitation

I have never been one for ghost stories or the supernatural. My name is Dana, and as a child, I was a rationalist before I knew the word, a firm...

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The Keeper of the Lantern

The summer of 2011 was the hottest on record in our little town, and the heat seemed to seep into everything, even our bones. I was twenty-three, my girlfriend Lena...

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The Pantry Door

It started with a creak, a sound so subtle I almost chalked it up to the house settling. My wife, Lena, and I had just closed on our first home—a...

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The Frayed Sleeve

I’ve never been one to believe in ghosts. I’ve always prided myself on being rational, on finding logical explanations for the weirdness life throws at you. But this… this is...

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The Moisture in the Walls

I never believed in ghosts until we moved into the basement apartment on Harlow Street. The place was cheap, too cheap, and the landlord had a nervous way of avoiding...

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The Lantern Keepers

My best friend, Marisol, died on a rain-slicked Tuesday in November of 2002. A delivery truck ran a red light, and she was gone before the ambulance arrived. I was...

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The Weeping Rowan

The fire had burned down to embers, casting a weak, orange glow on the faces of Marcus and me. We sat on a log, the chill of autumn creeping in...

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The Warmth in the Hall

Nights in the old farmhouse on Cedar Ridge were always still, the kind of stillness that pressed against the windows like a held breath. I was eight, small for my...

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The Lullaby of the Unwound Key

When my mother started seeing Mr. Ashworth, I thought we had finally landed somewhere good. Their home sat on the edge of a pine forest, with a lake that mirrored...

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The Frequency of Her Name

I’ve always prided myself on being a rational man. Numbers, logic, cause and effect—those were the things I trusted, the scaffolding I built my life upon. I worked as an...

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The Last Commute

Marta had always prided herself on her routine. The 5 a.m. alarm, the quiet exercise, the shower that woke her more than the coffee ever did, and the 6:30 departure...

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The Unopened Door

It was the summer before my senior year, and the town of Millbrook was being eaten alive by progress. The old textile mill had shut down years ago, and now...

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The Glass Migration

My name is Mara, and six months ago, my father and I inherited an old house from an aunt I’d never met. The place was a labyrinth of dusty rooms,...

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The Grain in the Corner

The old farmhouse outside of Carbondale had always been a place of strange creaks and drafts, but for the most part, it was quiet. My brother’s girlfriend, Maya, had moved...

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The Iron Gate of Willowmere

The summer I turned six, we moved into the old carriage house behind the crumbling Willowmere estate, a property my great-uncle had inherited and converted into a ramshackle five-unit dwelling....

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The Grease Trap

The boil-up happened every Sunday, but this one was different. We were all crammed into Eli’s cramped studio above his family’s failing diner, the place smelling of stale fryer oil...

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The Last Light on Mallard Lane

My grandmother’s family always had a knack for knowing things before they happened. Great-aunt Mildred could tell you when a storm was coming by the ache in her knees, and...

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The Hum of the Washing Machine

The summer of 2014 was the hottest on record in the small town of Ashford, and the old house we rented had no air conditioning. My father, a long-haul trucker,...

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The Cradle of the Drowned

Our house was a Victorian relic, a three-story toothache of peeling paint and crooked gables, nestled against the edge of a salt marsh. The town called it the Drowned House,...

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The Weight of the Third Floor

It was the summer I turned nineteen, the summer I stopped believing in anything I couldn’t see, touch, or explain with science. My grandmother’s house, a sprawling Victorian relic in...

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The Cold Signature

In the autumn of 2018, I found myself at my sister-in-law’s farmhouse in the rural outskirts of Nebraska, grieving the loss of her husband, Marcus, who had succumbed to a...

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