Ghost stories from New Zealand

The Lantern in the Attic

I was nineteen when I found myself standing in the foyer of a decaying Victorian house on Hemlock Street, clutching a suitcase and a letter of acceptance to the city’s...

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The Hollow by the Ash

The thing about small towns is they hold their secrets close, close as the fog that hugs the river at dawn. I was passing through Millbrook, waiting for a contact...

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The Hollow Hour

At fourteen, Maya was a collector of other people’s endings. She read obituaries like love letters, memorized the dates and causes, and sketched tiny tombstones in the margins of her...

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The Lantern in the Hollow

I was fifteen when it happened, and no one believes me except for my cousin Marta, who was there. She doesn’t talk about it, but I know she remembers. We...

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The Third Hour

It was 3:17 AM when I woke with a start, my heart hammering against my ribs. The room was pitch black, but I could see my breath curling in the...

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The Painted Veil

The first time I saw the thin man, I was eight years old, sitting on the cracked linoleum floor of our kitchen in the old Victorian house on Hemlock Lane....

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The Watcher in the Half-Built Halls

I never thought much about retirement homes before I started working nights at the Willow Creek development. It was supposed to be a peaceful place, a quiet community for old...

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The Juice Pitcher’s Revenge

My partner Marcus and I had just moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of Birch Hollow, a place that felt like it was perpetually waiting for something to...

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Marianne had spent years chasing ghosts, visiting crumbling asylums, ancient battlefields, and fog-draped cemeteries, always with a camera and a voice recorder. She’d whispered pleas into the dark, waited for...

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The Stick and the Stare

We arrived at Uncle Theo’s place in the middle of a heatwave, the gravel crunching under our tires like bones. The house was modern, all pale wood and glass, but...

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The Weight That Smelled of Rain

The weight of the day pressed down on Mara’s shoulders as she trudged up the creaking stairs of the old farmhouse. Her parents had bought the place cheap, lured by...

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The Weight on a School Night

The day had been long and difficult, filled with challenges that left me feeling small. After eating, I hoped a warm shower would calm my thoughts, but the worry about...

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The Weight of the Unseen

The stale air of the attic study always clung to me, a thick, cloying scent of old paper and dust that mirrored the anxiety coiling in my gut. Another brutal...

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The Cinder Man

The rain had been drumming against the windows of our rented flat for three days straight, a monotonous rhythm that matched the dread coiling in my stomach. My name is...

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The Salt-Stained Window

I never believed in ghosts, not really. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old country, about spirits that lingered in the walls of ancient homes, but our...

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The Key in the Lock

I never believed in the lingering past until the day the keys began to turn on their own. Our home, a sprawling Victorian fixer-upper on a quiet cul-de-sac in Maplewood,...

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The Chant Under the Colossus

I woke up drenched in sweat, the sheets twisted around my legs like grave bindings. The dream had been so vivid, so horribly real. I was walking through the old...

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The Unseen Congregation

It began as a dare from a friend who didn’t believe in anything. He left the old wooden board in my apartment, a joke gift from a thrift store, with...

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The Gable Room

I was eleven when my family moved into the old Gable House. It wasn’t the first time we’d lived in a place with history, but at that age, I thought...

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The Final Smoke

It was three years since Jacob had left the reservation, chasing a job in the city. The call came at 2 a.m., a voice he hadn’t heard in months, his...

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The Tally Keeper’s Ledger

I never knew silence could be so loud. Most people think of silence as a gentle absence, but in my world, it’s the hum of a room full of unseen...

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The Bed’s Hymn

I was eleven when I learned that the dark has a voice, and that it sings only to those who listen. My room was a converted root cellar beneath the...

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The Hollow Hour

The summer of 2009 was the last time I ever set foot in my grandmother’s house. She had passed in the spring, and the place was left to my mother,...

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The Tin Fingers

March of 2004, I enlisted in the Navy and was sent to Great Lakes for boot camp. The barracks complex was a maze of identical brick buildings, each housing dozens...

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