Ghost stories from Trinidad and Tobago

The Bone Bridge

The old maps call the island Isla de los Huesos, but no one uses that name anymore. We know it as Carcass Cay, a scrap of mangrove and limestone off...

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The Sugar Spiral

It began on a Tuesday afternoon in the cramped, fluorescent-lit office of Dr. Evelyn Marsh, my gynecologist. I’d gone in for a routine checkup, the kind you put off for...

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The Chasm of Unyielding Faith

I had never given much thought to the unseen architecture of the world until the night I saw the floor of the sanctuary dissolve. We were deep into the third...

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The Dancing Stilt and the Fire That Breathed

In the sweltering heat of a Caribbean night, on the island of Carriacou where the sea sings a low, mournful tune, I learned that the old stories are not just...

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The Gilded Frame

I was twelve when I first saw him in the antique mirror my grandmother left me. It was a heavy, ornate thing, its frame carved with fruit and flowers, the...

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The Copper Bell

I was sixteen when I first stepped into the basement of St. Aldric’s, a squat stone building that had been pressed into service as a makeshift classroom after a fire...

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The Ledger of Salt and Ash

I never thought I would miss the stale smell of Mrs. Gable’s boiled cabbage, but after moving to the city, I found myself nostalgic for the quiet desperation of our...

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The Rush of Iron and Dust

The air in the Port of Spain container yard always tasted of salt and diesel. I worked the night shift there, checking seals on shipping containers, a job that paid...

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At twenty-seven, Mara Venn was a cartographer of absences, tracing the contours of a life that felt perpetually, inexplicably haunted. She’d moved eleven times since turning eighteen, each relocation a...

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The Salt Man of Hollow Creek

My brother and I still argue about what we saw that night on County Road 9, two winters ago. We were driving back from our aunt’s house in the old...

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The Damp Room on Mulberry Lane

When we first moved into the split-level duplex on Mulberry Lane, my brother and I were given the back bedroom. It was a cramped space with a window that faced...

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The Lantern Man

When I was six, I saw the Lantern Man for the first time. My grandmother, Rosa, had passed in the winter of that year, and I was kept from her...

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The Brine of the Empty Rooms

The old house we rented for the winter holidays had been a fish cannery in its previous life, and even after conversion, the salt and the smell of low tide...

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Desperate Spirit

On March 25th 2010, I was lying on my bed, getting ready to sleep. As I close my eyes I notice a dark shadow pass over my face. This happened...

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The Salt in His Veins

The morning I scattered my father’s ashes into the harbor, the fog was thick as wool. He’d loved that fog, the way it swallowed sound and made the world new....

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