Ghost stories from United States

The Grin in the Static

The white noise of the TV filled the cramped apartment, a familiar hum that usually lulled me into a false sense of security. It was my twenty-third birthday, but the...

Read Story →

The Lantern Keeper’s Debt

The lighthouse at Cape Morrow had been abandoned for nearly a century, but the light still burned on certain nights. I was the new caretaker, hired to maintain the property...

Read Story →

The Resonant Banshee of Hollow Creek

I was crammed in the back of the auditorium, my pencil scratching against the final exam paper, when the sound hit me. It wasn’t loud, but it was sharp, a...

Read Story →

The Weeping Stains

I never thought much of the water stains on the ceiling of my rented flat in the old, drafty building on Kronecker Street. The landlord said they were from a...

Read Story →

The Pale Sentinel

It began as a dare, a craving for something beyond the mundane. My partner, Leo, and I, along with our friend, Dana, had grown tired of the usual Friday night...

Read Story →

The Hollow Tread

Every night at 3:15 AM, the floorboards in the hallway outside my bedroom begin their mournful song. I know the sound intimately—the way the third plank from the bathroom door...

Read Story →

The Ash Child

I was eleven that summer, not ten, and it wasn’t Easter. It was the tail end of August, the kind of heat that makes the air thick and syrupy, and...

Read Story →

The Lattice of Unfinished Things

The first thing I noticed about the house on Maple Hollow Road was the ivy. It had overtaken the entire western wall, crawling over the windows in thick, gnarled ropes,...

Read Story →

The Cross-Stitched Message

The antiseptic smell of St. Mary’s Hospice always clung to the back of my throat, a mix of bleach and something sweeter, like rotting lilies. My great-aunt Clara, a woman...

Read Story →

The Clockwork Moth

I am writing this on the back of a receipt I found in my coat pocket, because I need to leave a record for my best friend, who is sitting...

Read Story →

The Passenger Seat Reflection

My friend Leo told me a story that I can’t shake. It happened on a freezing November night in the small town of Raven’s Hollow, where the streets were lined...

Read Story →

The Last Call at the Rusty Nail

I’d been tending bar at the Rusty Nail for almost two years, and I’d learned the boss’s golden rule the hard way: never refuse a drink. It was a small,...

Read Story →

The Iron Staircase

The house on Thornwood Lane had a staircase that didn’t belong. It was wrought iron, black as tar, and it descended from the kitchen into a rectangle of darkness that...

Read Story →

The Porcelain Throne

I never believed in ghosts until the summer I turned twenty-one, when my fiancé, Marcus, and I spent a week at his grandmother’s remote farmhouse in the dry, dusty hills...

Read Story →

The Hollow Steps

The clock on the nightstand glowed 1:47 a.m. when I announced I needed to use the bathroom. My friends, sprawled across the sleeping bags in the backyard of my uncle’s...

Read Story →

The Visitor at 3:33

Marta had always been a light sleeper, but lately, sleep felt like a distant memory. The weight of her life pressed down on her chest like a concrete slab: her...

Read Story →

The Marigold Mat

The old farmhouse had settled into its bones by the time we moved in. Dust motes danced in the slanted afternoon light, and the floorboards complained with every step. My...

Read Story →

The Ceiling Light Flickers

I never used to believe in ghosts. Not really. I figured kids have wild imaginations, and that whole ‘imaginary friend’ thing was just a phase. But then my niece, Lily,...

Read Story →

The 1910 Class Portrait

The call came at 6:47 AM, a time when the hospital corridors were still quiet, save for the distant clatter of breakfast trays. I was in my office, reviewing charts,...

Read Story →

The Hollow Lane

It was a Tuesday in late October, 1994, and I was driving back to my apartment in the outskirts of Bloomington, Indiana, after a late shift at the campus library....

Read Story →

The Pale Dust Impressions

I was thirteen when my best friend, Marta, invited me to stay the night at her family’s farmhouse. It was a sprawling, ivy-choked place on the edge of a town...

Read Story →

The Ceiling’s Arithmetic

My cousin Lena and I were sprawled on the floor of my new apartment, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and the smell of old wood. It was the top floor of...

Read Story →

The Jar in the Attic

My family’s Victorian farmhouse sat at the edge of a sprawling, overgrown orchard, its paint peeling like dead skin and its windows staring out like hollow eyes. I was born...

Read Story →

The Third Tenant

The house on Maple Street was a tired old Victorian, its paint peeling like sunburned skin, its porch sagging with the weight of decades. My friend Dana had rented the...

Read Story →