Ghost stories from United States

The Swing Under the Sycamore

It started on a balmy summer night, a week before my fifteenth birthday. My cousin, Maya, my best friend, Leo, and my younger brother, Ethan, were all sprawled on the...

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The Unseen Visitor

The first time I noticed something was off about the old office building they’d converted into dorms was when the elevator music stopped. It was a tinny, warped version of...

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The Hollow Door

My father was a man of logic—a mechanic who believed every creak in a house had a structural explanation, every flicker of light a faulty wire. He had no time...

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Prank Gone Too Far

Girls. Sleepovers. They were meant for each other. Especially when it’s just you and a friend that act as if you were sisters. Spending the night at my friend Angela’s...

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The Weaver’s Room

The old farmhouse on Larkspur Lane had always been a quiet place, save for the wind that moaned through the eaves. My bedroom was at the end of the upstairs...

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The Hollow Static

The first time I heard them, I was halfway through a bag of stale pretzels, sprawled on the living room couch at 11:47 PM. The house—a creaking Victorian my aunt...

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The Moonlight Pact

In the small town of Ashgrove, nestled between the dark pines and the winding river, lived the Carr family in a creaky two-story house that had seen better decades. The...

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The Winter Tenant

The winter I turned eight, we spent Christmas at my great-aunt Mabel’s farmhouse, a rambling Victorian that had been in the family for generations. My parents, my older brother Ethan,...

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The Static in the Rig

The summer we moved to Kilgore, Idaho, was the summer the well ran dry. Not the town’s well—the one behind our rental, a rusted metal skeleton that groaned every time...

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The Thirteenth Candle

My thirteenth birthday fell on a Tuesday, the last day of October, and the air outside my window tasted of frost and fallen leaves. My name is Elena, and this...

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The Mudslide’s Gift

My grandfather built this house on the ridge, a sturdy A-frame with a wraparound porch, when I was just a kid. We moved here after my parents’ accident, and the...

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The Scent of Rain on Old Wood

I was nine, lying on the pull-out couch in the den of my Aunt Ruth’s farmhouse, the one that had belonged to her mother, my great-grandmother, who had died before...

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The Granary’s Debt

I was nine when my family moved to the old farmhouse on Hemlock Road in the fall of 1981. The place had been in the township’s records since before the...

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The Painted Vigil

The chain-link fence stood like a row of rusted teeth, biting into the overgrown lot where the old Meridian Textile Mill had collapsed into itself. My friend, Maya, pointed at...

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The Silvered Corridor

The ferry to the mainland was a rust-bitten workhorse named the Meridian Queen, and we boarded her with the easy confidence of tourists. I was with my cousin, Leo, and...

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The Gravity of Station 7

After my family relocated to the remote outpost of Perdition Point, I thought the strange occurrences were just nerves from the move. The facility, a former research station perched on...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Ledger

In the autumn of my twelfth year, our class took a field trip to the old Farrow Estate, a sprawling Victorian mansion perched on a hill above the fog-choked town...

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The Stained Linens of Hollow Creek

My grandfather, Elias, perished from a stroke that left his left side paralyzed and his mind trapped in a failing body. In his final year, he rotated between our home...

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The Tenant in the Static

My aunt Val had always been practical, a woman who trusted the visible world and took comfort in its solidity. After her husband Pete passed, she’d stayed with her mother...

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The Redcoat’s Loop

The summer I turned ten, my family moved to a trailer park on the edge of a town called Millbrook. Behind the rows of silver trailers stretched a thick patch...

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The Stairwell in Winter

It was the tail end of November when we pulled into the driveway of the house on Pointer Lane, a narrow dead-end street that branched off the main road through...

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The Salt of the Earth

I moved into the old mill house on the edge of the marsh about eight months ago. The rent was a steal, and the view of the reeds at sunset...

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The Night the Cupboard Sang

I work at Little Sprouts Daycare, tucked in the outskirts of Maplewood, a town so quiet it feels like it’s holding its breath. I’ve been there for three years, and...

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In the autumn of 1998, I was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student in Providence, Rhode Island, sharing a cramped two-bedroom apartment above a laundromat with my best friend, Marcus. The building...

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