Ghost stories from United Kingdom

The Lantern in the Canopy

My name is Ethan, and I’m seventeen now, but the event I’m about to describe happened when I was thirteen, in the autumn of 2019. I lived in a small...

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The Lantern in the Static

It began with a flicker in the bathroom mirror, a glint of gold that wasn’t the reflection of the hallway light. I was braiding my hair for bed, and there...

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The Candle’s Revenge

Marina had always felt that the old farmhouse on Mulberry Lane was watching her. It was a sprawling Victorian relic, half-swallowed by ivy, with a wraparound porch that groaned underfoot...

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The Cinder Man’s Pact

The first time I understood that the walls of my grandmother’s house in the dusty outskirts of Enugu had teeth was the summer I turned nine. My father and I...

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The Folded Bench

In the heart of the city, there stands a building called the Marlowe, a senior living residence that from the outside looks like a grand old hotel. Inside, it’s a...

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The Marmalade Cat’s Vigil

My pregnancy had been a trial of fire. Not the searing, visible kind, but the dull, persistent ache that settled deep in my right side, a constant companion through the...

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The Carved Gift

When my mother, Claire, inherited the wooden box from her Aunt Margriet, she didn’t think much of it. Margriet had been a distant relative, a former nurse who had lived...

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The Candle Procession

We moved to the old farmhouse when I was five, and I grew up there with my brother, Liam, who was three years older. Despite having my own room, Liam...

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The Vermilion Corridor

The first time I saw Blackwood Manor, I was ten years old, on a school trip to the Yorkshire moors. The building loomed against a bruised sky, its grey stone...

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The Linen Press

When my Aunt Jess died, we inherited her farmhouse at the edge of the marsh. She’d been gone six days, and my mother was the first to face the task...

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The Stairwell Lamp

The night was thick with the hum of the old refrigerator, a sound I’d known since childhood. My own house, a modest bungalow on the outskirts of Maplewood, usually felt...

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The Pale Visitor on Barlow Lane

I’ve always been drawn to old things. At seventeen, I spent more time in the archives of the local library than with people my age, tracing the history of our...

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The Wallpaper Bloom

In the spring of 2011, I moved into my grandmother’s old house in a town that time forgot. The house was a cramped Victorian with peeling floral wallpaper and a...

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The Blue Lantern at Mirror Lake

Every summer, my grandmother Mable and I would drive to her cabin on Mirror Lake. The lake was a perfect circle of black water ringed by pines, and the cabin...

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The Hollow Click

The kettle had just clicked off, and the steam curled like a ghost rising from the spout, when I heard it. A soft, rhythmic tap-tap-tap, coming from the pantry door...

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The Price of the Hollow

My name is Cora, and I’ve believed in the unseen since I was three, when I’d feel a cold breath on my neck in the warmest room of our flat...

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The Last Passenger

My father died on a Tuesday, three days before Thanksgiving. The coroner said it was a massive coronary, a blood clot that traveled from his leg to his heart. He...

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The Floorboard’s Debt

I never believed in ghosts. Not really. But when my best friend, Danny, told me about what happened to him in that old house on Mulberry Lane, I couldn’t shake...

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The Latch in Wall Seven

You might think I’m spinning yarns, or that I’ve had one too many late-night coffees. But I swear on my mother’s grave, every word of this is true. It began...

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The Burlap Smile

I was twelve when I first stayed over at my friend Eliza’s house, and thirteen when I finally told someone what I saw. The house itself was a weather-beaten Victorian...

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The Hollow Blueprints

I’ve lived in the same brick rambler for eleven years, long enough to know every creak in its floorboards and the exact pitch of the storm drain’s gurgle. The house...

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The Attic’s Arithmetic

Elena and I bought the old farmhouse with the red door and the leaning oak tree, out on the edge of the marshland. Our two daughters, Mia and Lila, loved...

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The Scent of Rain and Ashes

The hospital was a sterile cathedral of beeping monitors and hushed footsteps, where the air tasted of antiseptic and despair. I sat with my father, my sister, and my aunt...

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The Paper Circle

I was nine the summer my parents sent me to stay with my aunt and uncle in the hills above the old mill town. Their house, a sprawling Victorian with...

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