Ghost stories from Philippines

The Cradle in the Walls

The day we moved into the old farmhouse on Hemlock Lane, I remember the air inside was so thick with cold that my breath fogged in front of me. My...

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The Hollow Aria of Greenhaven

I was sixteen when my father’s work dragged us to the town of Greenhaven, a place that felt like a forgotten postcard. The houses were old, with peeling paint and...

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The Mannequin in the Attic

The old Criterion Theatre, now converted into a high school, was a place of grand facades and hidden decay. Its auditorium, with its dusty velvet seats and sweeping balconies, still...

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The Fifth Bell

I never believed in ghosts. Not until my junior year at St. Agatha’s Academy for Girls, a sprawling convent school perched on a lonely cliff overlooking the Atlantic in Maine....

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The Falling Fruit

The night air was thick with the scent of pine and old wood, and the Jasper Mountain Club’s billiard room hummed with the low buzz of a half-finished game. Dr....

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The Painted Door

My cousin Lena and I were sprawled on the faded floral rug in Grandma’s old apartment, our legs tangled as we giggled, watching the new baby, Mia, kick her chubby...

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The Clockwork Man

The summer I turned seventeen, the world tilted on its axis. My best friend, Marcus, and I were inseparable, a two-man wrecking crew of the basketball court and the back...

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The Last Meal at Number 12

I’ve called Gray Harbor home since I was three. It’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone, and we looked out for each other. When I was in high...

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The Locked Wardrobe

The old farmhouse on Cedar Lane had always been a place of quiet unease, but after the incident with the basement door, it became a living thing with its own...

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The 11th Floor

In 2003, I worked for a data processing firm crammed into the upper floors of a decaying office block on the edge of the old warehouse district, where the city’s...

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The Pale Visitor at the Lighthouse Window

The last ferry of the season had left the mainland hours ago, and I, Maren, was alone on Gull Rock. My job was simple: tend the automated light, log the...

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The Lantern in the Rain

When I was nine, my cousins and I used to cut through the marsh behind my grandmother’s farm to reach the old oak grove. We knew every hummock and ditch,...

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The Loom of Unfinished Threads

During my sophomore year at Claymore University, a small Jesuit institution tucked into the rolling hills of western Massachusetts, I lived in Stonebridge Hall, a converted textile mill that had...

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The Third-Floor Light

My brother Theo and I had an eleven-year gap. When I was fourteen and he was only three, he was just learning to master the rickety wooden staircase of our...

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The Sixth Bed

In the summer of 2013, Carl returned to his grandmother’s sprawling estate in the rural outskirts of Cusco, Peru, after a decade abroad. The old hacienda, with its thick adobe...

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The Carpet’s Cold Seam

I’ve worked the night shift at a customer support center for three years now, handling calls for a tech company on the other side of the globe. Our breaks are...

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The Ghost of the Night Shift

The news hit us like a sudden chill in the air. Milo, our team lead, got the call during the afternoon stand-up, and his voice cracked when he told us...

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The Mannequin in the Air-Conditioned Room

The heat was a living thing, clinging to my skin like a second layer. Even with the air conditioner chugging in the window, the room in this small coastal town...

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The Saltwater Hum

I started sleeping in my cousin Edwin’s house when my sister’s kids turned our home into a daytime circus. My own house, a modest two-story on Mangrove Street, had become...

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The Pale Hitchhiker of Route 17

It was a humid August night in 1987 when my family and I took the newly paved Route 17, a shortcut that cut through miles of unlit marshland and tall,...

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The White Gown of Hollow Creek

My twin sister Mira and I grew up in a house that creaked like an old ship, on the edge of a town that smelled of wet earth and pine....

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The Lantern Man of Sampaguita Lane

At fourteen, I knew every inch of our village, nestled in the hills of Batangas, where retired colonels and generals tended their orchids and swapped war stories over San Miguel....

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The Lantern That Folded the Sky

It was the summer I turned four, and my mother’s cousin, Lola Ising, had passed in the night. We left the city in our battered pickup truck, my father driving,...

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The Night the Sea Gave Back

My father, Elias, was a man of iron faith. He believed in the Gospel, in the resurrection, and in the power of prayer. Ghosts, spirits, apparitions—these were the fables of...

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