Ghost stories from Philippines

The Unturned Page

The first time I noticed the books, I blamed the air conditioning. It was a damp heat that clung to the walls of 14B, the apartment I’d moved into three...

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The Wrong Side of the Bed

I never thought much about which side of the bed I slept on. It was just a habit, like checking the lock twice or leaving the lamp on. My side...

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The Static Garden

My name is Leila, and I’ve never told anyone this story. Even now, my fingers tremble as I type, and there’s a cold knot in my stomach that never quite...

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The Antique Radio

The summer of 2003 was meant to be a quiet one in my grandparents’ old house in the countryside. Every weekend, my family and I would drive out to their...

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The Hollow in the Attic

I was too young to remember the summer the sunlight turned wrong in our house, but the story has lived in my bones ever since. We were three children—my sister...

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The Ceramic Doll’s Lullaby

In the sweltering summer of 2014, I rented a room in a dilapidated mansion in the outskirts of Baguio, known for its chilling fog and pine-scented air. The house, once...

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The Last Photo

It was a Saturday afternoon in late October when my daughter, Elena, and I arrived at the old municipal field, a sprawling patch of overgrown grass bordered by crumbling stone...

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The Floating Gown of Ward 13

In the autumn of 2011, I was a sophomore at St. Aldwyn’s College, a small liberal arts institution nestled in a valley so thick with pines that the campus felt...

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The Chimney’s Breath

Three autumns have passed since the night the farmhouse exhaled. I still see the cobwebs in the corner of the bedroom, the way they swayed without a draft. We had...

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The Unfinished Page

Finals week had turned my apartment into a tomb of highlighters and energy drinks. I was a junior at Ridgemont University, and this particular Friday night, my literary criticism paper...

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The Lantern-Keeper’s Bargain

The year I turned eleven, my family moved to a dusty little town called San Isidro, where the dry season cracked the earth into puzzle pieces and the nights hummed...

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The Mannequin in Room Seven

We moved to the old mill town of Harrow Creek for my father’s new job managing the textile factory. The company provided us with a house on the hill, a...

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The Hollow Beneath the Stairs

We moved into the old farmhouse when I was twelve, drawn by the promise of acreage and the feeling that we were escaping the city’s noise. The house itself was...

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The Brass Bell That Refused to Ring

My father, a circuit preacher in the high desert, moved us from one parched town to another, but the last one was the worst. It was a converted train depot,...

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The Lantern in the Hollow

My grandmother used to say that every crossroads has a whisper, but she never told me that some doors are better left unopened. I had always been drawn to the...

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The Veiled Bride of Orchid Hill

I was eleven when I first saw her, though I didn’t know what she was then. My family had just moved to a small town nestled against a sprawling, misty...

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The Marker on the Mosaic

The old apartment complex, Cascara Court, had a way of holding onto its secrets like a miser clutches gold. I grew up there, in a unit on the third floor...

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The Hollow Fruit

The summer I turned twelve, my grandmother gave me a small, carved wooden box. Inside was a single, dried seed the color of a bruised plum. ‘Plant this under the...

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The Orchard of Unfinished Songs

In the autumn of that year, my friend Lena inherited her grandmother’s apple orchard and the crumbling farmhouse at its heart. She invited me to stay for a week, hoping...

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The Basement of Hollow Creek Mall

Four years ago, I was a junior apprentice at the Hollow Creek Mall’s community theater, a sprawling concrete complex on the outskirts of a town that had seen better days....

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The Last Lantern in Garth

My mother used to tell me about the winter I was born, when the rain never seemed to stop and the sun was a rumor we half-remembered. She called it...

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The Child in the Garden

My mother, Eleanor, was a practical woman until the autumn of 1982. That was the year we lived in a cramped duplex on Maple Street, in a town where the...

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The Blurred Intruder

In the autumn of 2017, I moved into a small attic room in an old Victorian house on the outskirts of a sleepy town. The house was owned by an...

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The Laugh That Frayed

My Aunt Clarisse could find humor in a funeral. She’d lean over and whisper something absurd about the deceased’s shiny shoes or the way the organist kept butchering a hymn,...

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