Ghost stories from United States

The Clockwork Map

I was nine when I learned that some truths are too heavy for the living. My family had just moved to the old Beaumont house, a crooked Victorian at the...

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The Weeping Ash

In the salt-bitten town of Port Orford, Oregon, where the Pacific gnawed at cliffs and the rains fell like gray curtains, I grew up in a house that sagged on...

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The Static Guest

The summer of 2014 found me in a rented bungalow on the outskirts of a dried-up lake town in Nevada, where the heat shimmered off the cracked asphalt like a...

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The Rusted Gate

I was nine when we moved into the house behind the rusted gate. It wasn’t a gate that closed anything in, just a broken chain-link fence that leaned toward the...

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The Static-Faced Woman

We were in my friend Mira’s basement, huddled in a fort of old quilts and couch cushions. The summer heat above us was a weight, but down here it was...

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The Knocking

This was my first real experience with the paranormal, although as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with it, and read every book on the subject that...

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The Morning Line

The morning sun spilled over the ridge line like honey, catching the dew on the wild grass and turning the entire meadow into a field of scattered diamonds. I had...

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The Porch Light

The umber dusk of August 3rd settled over the pine woods of southern Alabama like a wet blanket. I sat on the porch swing of the house my wife and...

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The Cold Corner of the Cellar

I was nine that winter, not ten, but the years have blurred the exact number. We lived in a house that had once been a funeral parlor, and my bedroom...

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That Black Thing

This is my very first experience with the paranormal. Sorry if this is kind of short, but it was a rather quick happening. I was four years old when this...

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The Blue Door at The Rotunda

Dr. Elena Marsh had studied the architecture of sleep for two decades, but her own recurring nightmares defied all rational explanation. Night after night, she found herself at The Rotunda,...

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The Last Ferry

I never knew my great-uncle Elias well, but the way he left this world has stayed with me longer than any memory of his living self. He had been fading...

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The Creeper in the Garden

I had spent eleven years of my life in that house on Hemlock Lane, the one with the peeling paint and the porch that groaned underfoot like a tired animal....

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The Pane in the Rain

My best friend, Maya, and I had been inseparable since we were kids. We shared everything: secrets, snacks, and even a homemade Ouija board that we never dared to use....

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The Wall Between

It was a small, tidy house on the edge of town, its red brick facade worn smooth by years of rain. We moved in when our daughter, Lila, was two,...

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The Cellar of Unfinished Steps

In the autumn of 1983, I was fifteen, living with my aunt Doris and uncle Hal in their sprawling split-level house in rural Minnesota. The house was a maze of...

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The Sunroom’s Shadow

I was twenty-two, four months pregnant with our first child, and living in a converted Victorian on the edge of Meridian Creek, a town so small the postmistress knew everyone’s...

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The Linoleum Map

The house on Hemlock Lane had a linoleum floor in the kitchen that was peeling up in the corner, revealing a pattern of faded brown and ochre diamonds that looked...

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The Last Pencil

The first time I noticed the pencil was during Mr. Harlow’s third-period algebra class. It lay on the floor by the radiator, a plain yellow Number 2 with the eraser...

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The Blue Crayon

My name is Evelyn, and this begins in the winter of my junior year. I was obsessed with old parlor games, anything that promised a glimpse beyond the veil. My...

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The Hollow Chime

Before I could even speak, I learned to read the rhythm of our house. It was a creaking, groaning, breathing thing, an old farmhouse that had swallowed three generations of...

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The Brass Chain

The summer I turned nine, we left the cramped apartment in the city and moved into my grandfather’s old house in the foothills of the Appalachians. The house had been...

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The Last Spiral of the Kite

The night after the funeral, Mira found Karl’s old kite in the garage, its red tail snagged on a nail. She’d been avoiding the house since the service, but her...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Invitation

Three nights after the funeral, the dream came. I was standing in a vast, dimly lit hall, the kind you’d find in an old railway station, but the walls were...

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