Ghost stories from Alabama

The Lantern’s Lament

I’ve only told this to a handful of people, and each time, they looked at me like I’d grown a second head. But what I saw that night was real,...

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The Hollow Call

I’m seventeen, and I know what I heard. It’s not hormones, it’s not my imagination, and it’s definitely not a prank. It started last October, during third period English. We...

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The Salt Wind and the Spinning Girl

I’m seventeen now, and I still don’t talk about it much. But the wind off the bay always brings it back, that thin, salt-scrubbed air that smells of rotting seaweed...

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The Floor Above the Stairs

My time at the Halloran house in rural Missouri was supposed to be a fresh start. After my divorce, I moved in with my partner, Dana, her mother, her sister,...

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The Hummingbird Visitor

When I was a kid, I swore I saw a man standing in the corner of my room, dressed in a coat that seemed too heavy for the summer. He...

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The Painted Veil

At fifteen, my cousin Lena and I were inseparable, but that summer, our family fractured. My aunt and uncle’s marriage collapsed, and their three kids—Jules, Mira, and little Theo—came to...

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The Carved Initial

I’m Marcus, and I’m sixteen. Before last October, I would have laughed at anyone who claimed to believe in ghosts. I was the skeptic, the one who mocked the kids...

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The Hollow Chorus

The old farmhouse sat at the end of a gravel road that seemed to swallow headlights. Six months we’d lived there, and I’d chalked up my wife’s unease to the...

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The Sap Tap

The old farmhouse we rented sat at the edge of a maple grove, its foundation cracked and its porch sagging like a tired spine. I was sixteen, spending a lonely...

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The Snow Walker’s Breath

I’ve spent my whole life in this two-story farmhouse on the edge of the Cranston bog, ever since I was a toddler. My name is Elias, and I’m now twenty-two....

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The Last Turnoff

It was close to midnight when my sister and I left our aunt’s farmhouse, the gravel crunching under the worn tires of my old sedan. The night was thick with...

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The Carter House Incident

The summer of ’94 was a haze of heat and boredom for Danny and his cousin, Marcus. They spent most of their days fishing off the old railroad trestle, their...

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The Cold Spot Over the Love Seat

I’ve had my share of strange encounters, but the one that still makes my skin crawl happened at my sister Mira’s place—a run-down double-wide nestled in the pines at the...

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The Chlorine Bloom

The summer I turned fifteen, my Uncle Nestor and Aunt Pearl came to stay with us, not long after my older siblings had scattered to their own lives. It was...

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The Constant Thrumming

The summer I turned thirteen, my best friend Maren lived in a house that seemed to sweat age. It was a two-story Victorian on the edge of our small Ohio...

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The Salt Line

The first time I felt it, I was five. My mother had just finished painting my bedroom walls a cheery yellow, and I remember standing in the doorway, watching the...

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The Magnet Door

I never believed in ghosts, not really. I was sixteen, and my world was made of concrete and streetlights, not specters and whispers. I lived with my mom, my younger...

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The Last Bloom of Itzel

When I was nine, my grandmother Itzel passed from a sickness that hollowed her out from the inside. Her death left a silence in our house that no one spoke...

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The Hollow Grove Vigil

I’ve always had a knack for seeing things that aren’t there, or rather, things most people can’t see. It’s a curse, a gift, and a burden all wrapped in one....

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The Weeping Dryad

It had been three weeks since the incident at the old mill, and I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me from the treeline. My friend Marcus...

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The Static in the Walls

My grandmother, Elara, never left our old farmhouse. Not truly. For years after her funeral, I’d catch glimpses of her in the dusty corners of my vision, a wisp of...

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The Inventory of Unfinished Things

The humming of the fluorescent lights was the only constant in the warehouse’s vast, dim expanse. I worked the second shift there, from three in the afternoon to half past...

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The Fading Silhouette

The clock on the nightstand glowed 5:32 AM, its red digits cutting through the dark like a wound. Elderly Harold had been awake for hours, his bones aching with the...

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The Empty Chair

Aunt Rosa’s farmhouse had always felt like a sanctuary, a place of warm pies and the smell of fresh hay. But that summer, the heat was oppressive, and the house...

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