Ghost stories from Netherlands

The Dust That Remembers

The old house on Bramblewick Lane had a way of keeping secrets. My family moved there when I was twelve, and from the start, I felt a presence—not menacing, but...

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The Cinderwood Thicket

I’m Nina, 22, born and raised in the outskirts of a small Dutch town called Den Burgh, famous for its windmills and cheese. My parents are from Indonesia, so I...

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The Hollow Steps

I grew up in Meerssen, a village tucked between rolling hills and the slow Meuse. There was a house on Kerkstraat that had stood empty since before I was born....

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The Red in the Corner

My name is Elias Voss, and I grew up in the flat, misty province of Friesland, in a town where the canals froze solid each winter and the church bells...

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The Hollow Tread of the North Hall

The move to the old farmhouse in the Swedish province of Dalarna was supposed to be a fresh start. My mother had remarried a man named Lars, and we left...

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The Salted Porcelain

The house on Vermeer Lane was a narrow brick shoebox from the 1820s, crammed between two newer blocks in the quiet Dutch town of Gouda. My husband, Pieter, and I...

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The Lantern Man’s Debt

The memory has frayed at the edges, like an old photograph left in the sun, but the core of it remains sharp as a shard of glass. I was six,...

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The Hollow in the Drain

I used to think the world was made of solid things. The gravel path behind our apartment in Utrecht, the rusted swing set in the courtyard, the concrete walls of...

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The Fourth Stair

I was six when we moved into the old farmhouse on Cedar Lane, a place my parents called ‘a fixer-upper with charm.’ I called it ‘the house that creaked,’ but...

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The Pinewood Vigil

The winter solstice had always felt like a held breath to Elara, a pause before the world turned again. But this year, the pause had stretched into a suffocating stillness....

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The Canal Keeper’s Ledger

It was the third week of November when I arrived in Venice, a city I’d always imagined as a labyrinth of water and stone. My father, a cartographer who had...

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Someone Is In My Friend’s Hotel

Hey everyone! I haven’t posted anything much in a long time! Quick update on me, I’ve learned to live with everything around me, I still do feel a presence around...

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The Changes In Me

A lot of you have read my pervious story/encounter with Gavin who I’ve come to the conclusion was either my Angel Guardian or a friendly spirit who came into my...

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Bike Accident

A month ago, I was riding my bike home after school and I was in a pretty bad mood because of school stuff. My mind was pre-occupied and I was...

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The Last Tenant’s Dog

I never believed in ghost stories, not really. I was a man of science, a structural engineer who trusted in load-bearing walls and the solidity of concrete. When we moved...

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The Graphite Scratch

I’ve spent my whole adult life cataloging the invisible, mapping the spaces between our world and whatever lies beyond it. Most of my encounters have been benign—a flicker of light,...

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The Patient Shape of Morning

In the summer of 1987, I was nine years old, living in a house that smelled of pine and old wood, on the edge of a town called Ash Creek....

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The Hinges of a Sunday

The house on Bellweather Lane had stood since the McKinley administration, its bones of timber and plaster settled into a permanent sigh. I had grown up in its crooked rooms,...

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The Fallen Petals

At fifteen, I lost Mrs. Okada, the woman who ran the tiny flower shop on Maple Street. She was my sanctuary, a quiet place where the scent of lilies and...

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The Sunflower Signal

The last time I saw Elara, she was sitting in her sunroom, wrapped in a quilt her grandmother had stitched. My daughter, Mira, who had just turned two, was on...

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The Hollow Hours

Lena had always been attuned to the spaces between things—the hum of a refrigerator too sharp, the way a curtain moved without wind. Growing up, her grandmother called it ‘the...

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The Mechanical Hymn

My weekends at Aunt Marlene and Uncle Bert’s place had become a routine, a necessary pilgrimage to the edge of the town where their modest duplex stood. It was a...

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The Watchers on the Landing

When I was six, my family moved to a house with a steep, narrow staircase that creaked like an old man’s knees. My room was at the top, a converted...

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The Breath Across the Room

In the summer of my sixteenth year, my family and I moved into a temporary apartment on the edge of town. It was a compact, sterile place, but it felt...

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