Ghost stories from South Africa

The Salt in the Air

I never told anyone about my ability. Not even Mom. It started the night Dad died, when I found his cufflink on the floor of his study and I could...

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The Ninth Tap

I’ve lived in the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage on the edge of the marsh for six years now, sharing it with three residents who are anything but living. My grandmother,...

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The Tar-Pit Hound

My name is Elara, and for the last decade, a thing has walked beside me. It’s not a dog in any sense that brings comfort. It’s a charred husk, a...

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The Mud Man of Veldt Street

I live in a small town called Karoo’s End, tucked into the dry heart of South Africa. Our house is a squat, red-brick bungalow with a tin roof that creaks...

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The Bloom in the Shower

I’d known loss before, but nothing prepared me for the hollow ache that followed my divorce. A few months later, I met Marcus, and for the first time in years,...

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The Splintered Light

The house on Kestrel Lane had a face that only showed itself at dusk. When Lila and her family moved in, the previous owners had left a single thing behind:...

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The Prosthetic Bond

My father, Albert, was a carpenter, not a construction worker, but the result was the same: he was often absent, working on distant projects, yet when he was home, he...

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The Clockwork Canary

The year I turned eleven, my parents inherited my great-aunt Edna’s house in the fog-drenched town of Port Blossom, Maine. She had been a recluse, a clockmaker by trade, and...

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The Lantern Keeper

Mabel always said that Jasper, her aging Border Collie, had a nose for trouble. He’d been her faithful companion for thirteen years, ever since she moved into the creaking Victorian...

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The Curtain That Would Not Stay Still

I never believed in ghosts. Not until the summer after my brother passed. He was only seventeen, and his death was sudden, a car accident on a rainy night. I...

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The Constant at the Edge of Sight

I never gave much thought to the flicker in my periphery as a child. It was just there, a soft smudge of darkness that skittered at the edge of my...

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The Salted Path

It was the summer of 2009, and the small town of Marrow’s Bend had become the epicenter of my obsession with the unseen. My name is Elias, and for years...

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The Shadow in the Wardrobe

Six years ago, I was staying at my great-aunt’s house in the countryside, a sprawling old farmhouse with creaking floorboards and heavy oak doors. I’ve always been terrified of the...

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The Lantern at the Threshold

I was not yet two when the first visitation occurred, but I remember it with a clarity that defies the fog of early childhood. My crib stood in the corner...

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The Third Floor Landing

The winter of 2018 was a hard one, and my mother’s old brownstone in the city felt like a tomb. I’d come back from college for the holiday break, and...

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The Salt Garden

The salt air from the nearby cove was the first thing you noticed about Porthallow, a fishing village clinging to the Cornish coast. I’d moved there after my wife died,...

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The Cold Room Swap

In the autumn of 2019, I took a journalism internship in a small town in the Scottish Highlands, staying with a retired couple, the MacLeods, in their sprawling, drafty manor...

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The Cinder Room

In the autumn of 2005, I was house-sitting for an old colleague in a sleepy coastal town named Grayharbor. The house was a narrow Victorian perched on a cliff, with...

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The Salt Grief

After the autumn equinox, the coastal town of Port Meridian settled into its usual lull. I, a chronicler of the odd, had grown accustomed to the quiet. My journal, once...

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The Silent Orchard

In the autumn of 1995, when I was seven and my brother Theo was eight, our great-uncle August passed away. He had lived alone on a sprawling apple orchard, a...

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The Sixth Door

In the autumn of 1931, my grandfather told me a story that had been passed down to him from a friend. The place was the outskirts of Bloemfontein, a dusty...

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The December Visitor

In the autumn of 1994, I was a junior at Aldergate University, a small campus nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had a close-knit group of...

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The Painted Lady of Blackwood

My family moved to the town of Blackwood when I was eight, a place where the trees grew so thick they seemed to swallow the sky, and the only sign...

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The Cradle in the Cellar

I was eleven when we moved to the old farmhouse outside of Stillwater, Minnesota. My parents had inherited it from a great-uncle I’d never met, a man rumored to have...

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