Ghost stories from United States

The Cold Draft in Room 14

The vacation house was a relic, a damp-bricked manor perched above a slate-grey loch. We had come for the summer, but the place felt like a tomb. I was fifteen,...

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The Chalk Dust in the Air

The autumn I turned thirteen, the world tilted. It started with a scavenger hunt in the city arboretum, a school trip that should have been a lark. I found something...

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The Ferryman’s Ledger

The summer I turned nineteen, I inherited the old Granite Point Lighthouse from my great-aunt Vera. It had been in the family for generations, but no one had lived there...

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The Hour of the Unraveled Thread

Mara stirred awake in her cramped attic bedroom, the low ceiling pressing down like a held breath. The digital clock on her nightstand glowed 5:17 AM. A faint, sickly light...

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The Mannequin’s Gaze

The first time I remember anything truly strange happening was during the winter I turned nine. We had just moved into a drafty old farmhouse at the edge of town,...

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The Iron Tug

In the autumn of 2004, my family moved into the upper floor of an old duplex in Lowell, a town known for its eerie mill history. My brother, Sam, and...

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The Barrens of Red Creek

The summer of ’09 was a furnace, the kind that cracked the earth and turned the air to glass. Our house sat at the edge of Red Creek, a dried-up...

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The Persistent Tenant

When I bought the old Hargrove place in the autumn of 2009, I knew it had a history. The realtor’s lips thinned as she mentioned the previous owner had passed...

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The Marigold Grave

I am forty-two, and my two sons, Elias and Julian, are seventeen. We had come to rural Vermont because my father, Harold, had suffered a stroke and lay in a...

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The Lantern That Watched

Mara had always prided herself on her rationality. A scientist by training, she sought natural explanations for everything. When she moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the...

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The Lantern in the Hills

It was late autumn in the town of Millbrook, and the air smelled of wet leaves and chimney smoke. I was seventeen, and my world revolved around the garage band...

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The Blue Room’s Morning Ritual

My ex-husband, Marcus, and I used to live with his father in the old mill house on Winding Creek Road. We were always told that this house was haunted. There...

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The Hum of the Mound

The house had a way of breathing that I never quite got used to. It stood on the highest ridge in Greer County, a lonely sentinel against the sky, as...

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The Left Ear’s Visitor

My mother, Elena, has always been a rock. She never flinched at spiders, never cried at funerals, and could stare down a drunk at a bar without blinking. So when...

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The Constant Draft

I’m not much of a writer, and I tend to ramble, so bear with me. I’m seventeen, and everything I’m about to tell you is true, as far as I...

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The Cobalt Room

The house on Leeward Lane was a two-story Victorian with a peeling white facade and a porch that sagged like a tired spine. My wife, Clara, and I bought it...

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The Hollow in the Hill

I never thought I’d tell this story, not even to my bandmates, who’ve heard every weird tour tale I have. But after that night with Marcus, the producer from the...

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The Hollow Thresher

The dust on the county road was thick enough to swallow footprints, and for Elian, it was just another Tuesday in the fall of 1932. The one-room schoolhouse at Clearwater...

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The Bed’s Invitation

Four years had passed since the loss of my grandfather, Elias, the man who taught me to carve wood and to find rhythm in the rain on the tin roof....

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The Ironwood Visitor

I’m a 34-year-old graphic designer, and my life is about as ordinary as they come. My brother, a marine biologist, had just left for a three-month research trip to the...

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The Cane’s Last Stroke

Old Man Hargrove had always been a man of routine. Every morning at six, he’d creak down the stairs of his two-story farmhouse, his knees complaining louder than the floorboards,...

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The Rafter’s Signature

A few years ago, I stumbled upon an old spirit board at an estate sale, its wood dark with age, the planchette shaped like a teardrop. The date burned into...

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The Hollow Frame

The map was a lie, or perhaps it was just old. We’d spent three days chasing the ghost of a town called Mirefield, a name that had been scraped off...

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The Hollow Hall

I’ve never been one to see ghosts or demons in every flickering shadow. I’ve chalked up most of my life’s oddities to tired eyes and an overactive imagination. But there...

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