Ghost stories from Arizona

The Gilded Mannequin

The Atrium Hotel had seen better decades. Built in 1929 to rival the grand resorts of the coast, it now stood as a relic, its marble floors worn to a...

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The Cat Door Incident

In the fall of 2018, I was seeing a man named Julian, a quiet architect who lived in a converted warehouse in the industrial district of Portland. He was a...

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The Last Curve

It was the tail end of summer when my best friend Jules and I decided to drive from Denver to a small desert music festival in New Mexico. We had...

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The Membrane Visitor

We’d driven six hours to my mother’s farmhouse for the harvest festival, but by the time we arrived, the kids were cranky and my husband, Leo, was exhausted. The house...

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The Hollow Bend

The road they called the Hollow Bend wasn’t just a stretch of asphalt in the pine barrens; it was a wound in the earth that never healed. My friend, Lena,...

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The Third Floor Light

I’ve always had a knack for noticing things that others don’t. Not in a psychic, fortune-teller way, but a low hum of unease that prickles my skin when something is...

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The Light in the Attic Stairs

The first night in the old farmhouse was always going to be strange. My partner, Lena, and I had moved from the city to this remote corner of Maine, seeking...

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The Crayon in the Baseboard

My childhood was a patchwork of military housing and my grandmother’s cramped row house in Ashwood, a mill town outside of Pittsburgh. I was the seventh of ten, and my...

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The Couch and the Empty Patio

When I moved from Ohio to New Mexico, I thought the desert would cure my restlessness. Instead, it gave me a new form of insomnia. My apartment, a beige box...

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The Cat’s Tail

I was 16 and had just moved into my mom’s new place in the desert outskirts of Tucson, a cramped two-bedroom apartment that smelled of stale cigarettes and dust. My...

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The Mud-Caked Ledger

I have spent most of my years in the damp, pine-scented hills of western Oregon, but from 2007 to 2010, I lived with my uncle and his new wife in...

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The Last Ring

The night shift at the Meridian Data Center was always the same: humming servers, flickering fluorescents, and the low buzz of backup generators. I was a security guard, doing my...

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The Loom

I had never believed in ghosts, not really. The whole idea of spirits lingering in old buildings felt like a story we tell ourselves to make the mundane feel mysterious....

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The Hollow Steeple

The old church at the edge of Morrow Valley had been abandoned for decades, its steeple a crooked finger against the bruised sky. I’d moved there after my divorce, seeking...

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The Cracked Door

I never believed in ghosts. Not really. I figured if something was wrong with a house, it was pipes or drafts or my own tired eyes. So when I moved...

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The Desert’s Broken Lullaby

The motel’s wooden balcony creaked under every footstep, a sound that echoed through the thin walls like a warning. I was eleven that summer, and my father had dragged my...

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The Permanent Mark

My sister, Lena, came into our apartment one evening, her face pale under the harsh kitchen light. She rolled up the hem of her pajama shorts, revealing a patch of...

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The Hungry Light

The house on Tallow Lane was a relic, a sagging Victorian that my wife, Clara, and I had bought with grand hopes and a budget that didn’t match its bones....

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The Ceiling of Watchful Eyes

I have lived in the Ashford House since I was a child, and for as long as I can remember, it has carried a weight that goes beyond its creaking...

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The Cradle’s Keeper

I was born with a shadow that didn’t match my movements. My mother said I used to stare at empty corners and giggle at nothing. My first memory is of...

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The Visitor in the Static

I’ve always prided myself on being a sound sleeper. Ever since I moved into the converted lighthouse on the jagged coast of Maine, I’ve found the rhythmic pulse of the...

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The Iron Vein

The town of Redrock Canyon hung in the Arizona desert like a forgotten prayer, a cluster of sun-bleached buildings huddled against the base of the Mule Mountains. Once a thriving...

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The Saturated Room

The Palmer House had been a grand dame once, a wedding-cake of white clapboard and gingerbread trim perched on a bluff above the gray Atlantic. Now it was a faded...

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The Static Farmhouse

I’ve always prided myself on being a rational person. Science explains everything, or at least it will, eventually. So when my younger sister Lena started whispering about ‘the hum’ in...

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