Ghost stories from Philippines

The Lantern Maker’s Bargain

Ever since I was a child, I’ve seen things that others couldn’t. My grandmother called it a gift, but I’ve always thought of it as a curse. My family’s roots...

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The Bone Chapel

The boarding house stood on Bellweather Street, wedged between a pawnshop and a 24-hour laundromat. The brick facade was the color of dried blood, and the windows were like empty...

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The Intercom’s Last Ring

In the humid outskirts of Antipolo, I grew up under my grandparents’ stern love in a house that could have been mistaken for a forgotten Spanish garrison. The walls were...

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The Salt Ring and the Unborn

I was sixteen when I first understood the true weight of the night. My cousin Lita, who was more like an older sister, was eight months pregnant, her belly a...

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The Hollow Chime

In the autumn of my junior year at Meridian State College, I had a routine that was as fixed as the campus clock tower’s chimes. Every weekday, I would arrive...

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The Thirteenth Floor

I landed in Bangkok on the third of June, not for holiday, but for a data migration contract that promised to be as tedious as it was profitable. The company...

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The Kakanin Box

In the summer of 2015, I led a group of college students from a technical institute in Bicol on a three-day outreach to a remote village nestled in the foothills...

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The Static Between Stations

My name is Elias. I’m an audio engineer from Portland, and I’d come to the small town of Graywood, Maine, to stay with my girlfriend, Nora, at her late grandmother’s...

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The Sigil of Hollow Creek

In the autumn of 2012, I led a group of college students to the remote village of Hollow Creek for our annual community immersion. The village was nestled in a...

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The Pale Passenger of Tranquility Park

My earliest memories are tangled with the murmur of things that shouldn’t exist—a flicker in the corner of my eye, a chill that had no source. But the incident that...

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The Lantern’s Hunger

Elara lived in the mountain town of Sombra, a place where the mist clung to the cobblestones and the townsfolk spoke in hushed tones of the ‘Hungry Ones’ that dwelled...

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The Stain on the Curtain

The house sat at the edge of the coconut grove, a relic of a past century. Its wooden walls, once painted a deep green, had faded to a patchwork of...

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The Mannequin in the Attic

We moved into the old Meriwether house in the fall of 2018, a sprawling Victorian with a wraparound porch and a peeling white picket fence. It was cheap, much cheaper...

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The Locked Door

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in late September, and the small apartment on the third floor of an old brick building felt like an oven. I had drawn the...

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The Third Floor Break

In 2012, I was working the night shift at a data processing firm in the old port district of Baltimore. The building was a converted warehouse, all exposed brick and...

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The Key to Room 14

I’ve always been drawn to old buildings, the kind that feel like they’re holding their breath. So when I transferred to St. Edmund’s College, a place that had stood since...

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The Halo Man

Mira had always known her boyfriend’s family was different. They could see things that others couldn’t, things that lurked in the corners of rooms and whispered in the shadows. She...

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The Weeping Roots

The house on Linden Street had a peculiar history, but we only learned of it after the accident. It was a two-story Victorian that had stood empty for six years,...

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The Crabapple Pact

The oak’s gnarled arms beckoned us from behind the peeling white fence, its crown a shaggy green halo against the summer haze. The Forrester house had been empty since old...

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The Formulary at 0300

I was fresh out of nursing school when I landed a night position at St. Jude’s Convalescent, a sprawling hospital perched on the outskirts of a city that never quite...

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The Porcelain Bird

I was six when the dream came to me. In it, my Uncle Ramon, who had died the winter before, stood at the foot of my bed. His face was...

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The Last Carol

The night air was thick with the scent of wet earth and burning wood, carrying the distant bark of a solitary dog. Our group of thirteen, including our teacher, Mr....

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The Lantern Festival of the Hollow

My name is Mara, and I grew up in the port city of Valdez, where the fog rolled in off the bay like a damp blanket and the old salt...

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The Salted Threshold

The summer I turned sixteen, my family and I drove from our cramped apartment in Manila to the coastal town of Hinagdanan for my great-uncle’s funeral. He was a man...

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