Ghost stories from Philippines

The Marble Game

The night shift at Meridian Contact Solutions was always quiet after midnight. I worked on the fifth floor of a refurbished 1970s office block on the edge of Birmingham’s industrial...

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The Formalin-Stained Number

In the chill of a basement anatomy lab at Meridian University, far from the tropic heat above, our group of eight was assigned our first cadaver. It was an unclaimed...

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The Crooked Rib

The Crooked Rib Elara had always believed that the old farmhouse on the edge of Thornwood was a place of solace, a retreat from the noise of the city. It...

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The Painted Lady of the Attic

Mara’s life had settled into a manageable rhythm of sleepless nights and caffeine-fueled mornings. Her three-year-old son, Leo, was a whirlwind of energy, and their creaky Victorian house at the...

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The Mosaic Floor’s Whisper

In the autumn of 2012, I was eleven, living with my grandmother in the old farmhouse she’d inherited from her own mother. It was a place of creaking timbers and...

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The Timekeeper’s Call

I worked the night audit at the Meridian Grand, a once-grand hotel that had fallen into disrepair. The lobby’s chandelier was a web of dead bulbs, and the red velvet...

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The Portrait of the Empty Chair

It began with the chair in the hall. My brother, Theo, and I had grown up in Rosewood, a town where the old money built houses that leaned against the...

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The Drip on the Ceiling

In 2005, my partner, Lena, and I had just moved into a new apartment on the fourth floor of the old Ashford building, a converted warehouse that now housed a...

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The Lantern Tree

When I was a boy, we lived on a small, wind-scoured island called Kestrel’s Rest, where the sea gnawed at the cliffs and the fog rolled in like a second...

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The Hiss in the Pipes

Dinner at my sister’s place was a weekly ritual, a loud, chaotic affair that I usually welcomed. But that October evening, I was grateful for the noise, because it masked...

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The Weeping Wall

I never spoke about the thinness in our house, the way certain corners seemed to breathe. It wasn’t a gift; it was a curse, a constant low hum of awareness...

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The Red Balloon’s Message

In the quiet town of Cedar Hollow, nestled between fog-draped hills, the Ashcroft family had known sorrow. Their eldest, Marlene, had lost her daughter, Lily, in the cold February of...

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The Curtain at Noon

It had been eleven years since I’d moved into the top-floor unit of the Meridian Residences, a sprawling complex that promised modern comfort and, more importantly, a fresh start. The...

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The Wallpaper in the Master Bedroom

The day we moved into the house on Maple Street, the sun was a pale smear behind a sheet of grey clouds. The moving truck groaned under the weight of...

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The Last Light in Aisle Nine

My fourth semester of graduate school at Aldergate University had eaten away at my sense of time. I was in the library’s basement, the ‘crypt’ as we called it, because...

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The Mudslide Man

In the autumn of 1998, when I was sixteen, my family took a trip to the remote village of San Cipriano in the highlands of Central America. My father had...

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The Hollow Marker

The rain had stopped an hour ago, but the asphalt still gleamed under the pale moon like a ribbon of wet coal. Lola Remedios drove slowly, her knuckles white on...

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The Mirror’s Moth

Every morning at 5:45, Elara Perez knelt by her bed and whispered the same prayer her mother had taught her as a child. The words were worn smooth, like stones...

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Making His Presence Felt

It was the 31st of October, 2006. Out of boredom, I sent my friend an SMS asking if I can sleep over at her place. She agreed and off I...

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The Gravel Lot and the Girl with the Gardenia

I was twelve the summer we moved to my grandmother’s house in the middle of nowhere, a place where the nearest neighbor was a half-mile down a gravel road that...

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The Static Between Floors

The house on Laurel Street had a way of making you feel small. It wasn’t just the vaulted ceilings or the endless corridors that swallowed sound; it was the way...

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The Cold Glass Marble

The house on Orchard Lane was a relic of a bygone era, its Victorian bones groaning under decades of neglect. I had moved there for the cheap rent and the...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Toll

In the heart of the old garrison town of San Esteban, where the cobblestones still bore the stains of colonial blood, there stood a university that had claimed the ancient...

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The Marble Eyes of the Fern House

I have always trusted my senses. If I couldn’t touch it, taste it, or see it with my own two eyes, it didn’t exist. That was my creed, especially when...

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