Ghost stories from Georgia

The Ceramic Ward

My grandmother once told me that the old asylum on Marrow Point was a place where time itself had learned to weep. I never believed her until I found the...

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The Dry Season

Before I write this, you should know that my sister Alina and I share a peculiar family trait: we see the dead. Not just glimpses, but full-bodied apparitions, often with...

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The Copper Coin Cartel

The first time I saw the pennies bleed, I was eight years old, standing in the dusty aisle of the Quik-Pik convenience store on the edge of town. My mother...

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The Lingering Scent of Sour Smoke

Mara and I had been living in the old farmhouse for about six months. The previous tenants had left in a hurry, according to the landlord, but he wouldn’t say...

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The Lantern of Bone and Ash

My grandmother, Elara, was the heart of our family, a woman of the Salish tribe whose hands could coax life from the arid desert soil of our New Mexico homestead....

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The Lantern That Remembered

When I was nine, my family moved to a small town called Harrow Creek, nestled in a valley so deep that the sun set two hours earlier than anywhere else....

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The Hollow of the Cradle

At nine, I spent my afternoons in the quiet corner of St. Jude’s Rest Home, a place that smelled of lemon polish and sorrow. My mother worked the evening shift,...

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The Runner’s Error

At forty-two, Mara had learned to live with the static at the edges of her perception. It started when she was a girl, with a fear of the dark that...

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The Coating

My son, Milo, is three. I mention this because what I’m about to tell you might sound like the rambling of a madman, or worse, a negligent father. But I...

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The Gable Watcher

The house on Hemlock Lane had been a bargain, and my parents, always practical, couldn’t resist. They said the price was too good to pass up, even though the previous...

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The Hollow Knock

The Hollow Knock Mara sat in the worn armchair, gently rocking her daughter Cora, whose tiny fingers curled around a frayed blanket. The old farmhouse creaked and settled around them,...

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The Keeper of the Hollow

Grandpa Elias had a workshop at the edge of the woods, a place of rust and sawdust that smelled of old earth and machine oil. I spent every summer there,...

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The Grain in the Amber

The summer I turned nine, Uncle Edgar came to stay with us for the Fourth of July. He was a city man, all sharp elbows and the smell of subway...

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The Salt on the Windowsill

I’ve always prided myself on being level-headed. At thirty-eight, I run a small bookstore in the sleepy town of Havenridge, and I’ve handled everything from a flooded basement to a...

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The Ledger of Incomplete Sums

I have spent most of my life in the company of the unseen. As a child, I learned that the dead whisper when they want something, and the restless ones...

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The Feather of the Ferryman

My name is Elara, and I was four months pregnant with my first child. My partner, Marcus, and I had just learned we were having a daughter. We decided to...

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The Cinder Veil

The night air still reeked of smoke and damp plaster. Our three-bedroom trailer had become a cramped ark for twelve, and the walls seemed to sweat with the heat of...

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The Smell of Burnt Sage

The rusted husk of our double-wide sat at the end of a dirt road that turned to soup every time it rained. There were nine of us crammed into three...

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The Cinder Path

The kettle had just begun its low, insistent rumble when I felt the shift in the air. It wasn’t the usual draft that slipped through the old farmhouse’s warped window...

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The Oculus Window

My rental sits on the edge of a dried-up lakebed in Nevada, a circular structure of whitewashed stucco that looks like a mushroom cap dropped from an alien hand. The...

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The Ledger of Larkspur Manor

I’ve always been the skeptic in my group of friends. Numbers make sense to me; I’m a finance major at Meridian State, and this summer I landed a prestigious internship...

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The Wall at Dusk

Maya’s brother, Julian, had always been the one who felt everything too deeply. When their father, a beloved high school coach, died by suicide three years ago, Julian’s grief had...

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The Iron Choker

When I bought the old Plymouth from a closing-down dealer in the town of Blackwood, I thought I was getting a bargain. The price was right, and the car had...

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The Knocker of Orchard Lane

Two weeks ago, I was at my friend Mira’s house for a sleepover. Her parents were celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary at a fancy restaurant in the city, leaving us...

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