Ghost stories from Philippines

The Third Chair

The rain had been drumming against the windows of my small apartment for three days straight, a relentless rhythm that seemed to sync with the flickering of the fluorescent light...

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The Lantern’s Pale Gaze

The world outside the glass was a greasy smear of sodium orange, the kind that bleeds through rain and wraps everything in a sickly glow. Inside, the air was thick...

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The Fare Collector

In the autumn of 2021, I was returning from a late shift at the Raven’s Nest Museum, a converted manor house that had become a repository for oddities. The last...

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The Yellow Palm

It was a Tuesday night, and the rain drummed a monotonous rhythm against the tin roof of the old farmhouse. My phone was the only source of light in the...

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The Motion-Sensing Dark

November 1, 2020, 2:47 AM. The air in the cavernous call center was thick with the hum of dying fluorescent tubes and the occasional crackle from a far-off speaker. I...

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The Counter of Unfinished Things

The shop was a cramped, dusty place with wooden shelves that sagged under the weight of canned goods and sacks of rice. My mother sold small things there, thread and...

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The Pale Visitor at the Screen Door

The old schoolhouse had stood empty for a year after the private academy moved out. When our relatives—Grandma Lourdes, Auntie Rosa, Uncle Ben, and their families—announced they were moving in,...

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The Step That Breathed

The first time I noticed something was off was during the chaos of moving boxes. My older sister, Lena, had arrived a day early to receive the furniture. She was...

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The Last Lullaby

In the quiet town of Ashwood, where the old oak trees leaned over the cobblestone streets like weary guardians, my mother, Clara, carried a grief she never fully voiced. It...

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The Locked Cradle

The old mansion at the end of Cedar Lane had been in the family for generations, but it wasn’t until my parents agreed to move in with my aunt that...

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The Static Hour

The first time I noticed it, I blamed the old refrigerator. A low hum, familiar, the kind that settles into your bones after midnight. But this was different—a damp, rhythmic...

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The Bell at Dry Creek

I had been teaching at the same school for nearly a decade, but I had never been part of the senior camping trip until this year. The school board had...

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The Hum of the Second Floor

After three years in that cramped, murmuring apartment, I finally left. It wasn’t a dramatic exit – just a quiet packing, my brother had already gone, and I was left...

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The Empty Cots at Saint Magnus

I was twelve, in the eighth grade, when our school hauled us off to a three-day retreat at the old Saint Magnus retreat house, perched on a cliff overlooking a...

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The Weeping Gardener

It has been eleven months since we moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the marsh. I used to pride myself on my rationality, on my ability to...

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The White Crawler

In the autumn of 2013, I was a sophomore at a small college in upstate New York, living with my family in an old Victorian house that had more drafts...

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The Silhouettes on the Stairwell

I never thought much of it at first. Our rental was an old Victorian on Bramblewood Lane, with creaking floorboards and radiators that clanked like a skeleton’s laughter. I was...

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The Cellar’s Debt

I was born in a house that smelled of wet earth and old wood, nestled in a valley where the sun barely touched the ground. My mother died when I...

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The Peg Mound

My grandfather, Elias, had a peculiar ritual: every evening, after folding the day’s laundry, he would gather the wooden clothespins and arrange them into a neat pyramid on the foot...

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The Lantern Room

In the coastal town of Bracken Cove, the old Harborside Academy stood like a monument to damp and decay. It was a long, low building of weathered brick, with a...

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The Last Carriage

I was in my final year at the university, studying in a small town that felt more like a ghost town after sunset. My family lived in the countryside, a...

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The Keeper of Mold

The house on Mariposa Street had a smell that clung to everything—damp earth, old wood, and something faintly sweet, like rotting fruit. When Lumen and her husband, Elias, first stepped...

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The Hollow Between Walls

I never believed in the quiet. Not in the way people mean when they say a place has a good quiet, a peaceful hush that settles over you like a...

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The Sunday Mirror

The house on Mango Street in the old part of San Miguel was a leaning stack of rooms, each pressing against the next. We rented the top floor, a warren...

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