Ghost stories from Germany

The Rain-Slicked Balcony

I’ve always had a peculiar relationship with the unseen. Growing up in the fog-drenched hills of Northern California, I’d often catch flickers of movement in the periphery of my vision,...

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The Sound of a Thousand Marbles

I’m probably not the best person to be writing this, but I need to get it down before I lose my mind. My name is Elara, and I live with...

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The Gable Watcher

The last night of our trip to the Bavarian Alps, we stopped in the village of Obernried, where my cousin Anke lived with her husband and two boys. The village...

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The Ledger of Ashes

My father and I had planned our trip to Visegrád, Hungary, for months. We were both history buffs, and the medieval citadel overlooking the Danube seemed like the perfect Easter...

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The Hollow Table

I’ve always prided myself on logic. In my world, every creak in an old house has a structural explanation, every flicker of light a faulty wire. My friends called me...

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The Concreted Spring

I am a rational woman. I have to be, in my line of work—I’m a structural engineer, and I need to trust measurements, calculations, and physics. So when I tell...

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The Hollow Wing

The old high school in Millbrook had always felt like a maze, a patchwork of buildings stitched together over decades. I was a junior now, and I still got lost...

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The Cuckoo Hour

The day we arrived in the small Bavarian village of Grünwald, the sky was the color of a bruise, and a persistent drizzle slicked the cobblestones. Our rental apartment was...

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The Gilded Cradle

In the town of Ashenford, where the cobblestones still remember the fires of three centuries ago, stood the Meridian Academy. The building was a modern monstrosity of glass and steel,...

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The Broken Wristwatch

The old farmhouse in Crowsfield had been our home for eight months when the incident occurred. It was late September 2016, and my partner, Lena, had already turned in, exhausted...

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The Last Operator

The call came at 11:47 PM, just as the rain began to streak the windows of my attic room. I was sixteen, but I felt a hundred, weighed down by...

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The Tenant in the Walls

My name is Lena, and I’m fifteen. My parents split when I was nine, and since then, I’ve spent one weekend a month at my dad’s place. He lives with...

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The Hollow Man in the Hall

At nineteen, I was already a widow of sorts. My husband, Julian, had died three years before, leaving me with a son and a farm that was slowly swallowing itself....

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The Iron Cross in the Attic

The house on Weaver Street had always been a drafty old thing, but the attic was its heart of shadows. I’d bought the place for its high ceilings and the...

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The Constant at the Window

I have lived with my partner, Elara, for four years now. She is the center of my world, and we have shared laughter, tears, and everything in between. But lately,...

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