Ghost stories from Florida

The Third Tenant

When I first moved into the basement apartment on Mulberry Lane, I thought the low rent was a steal. The landlord, an old man with rheumy eyes, warned me that...

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The Hollow Gaze

I’m 26 and I’ve been working at the Meridian County Museum for three years. I never believed in anything supernatural until I met the man with no reflection. It started...

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The Blue Haze Before Dawn

The afternoon sun slanted through the venetian blinds, painting stripes of gold across the worn linoleum of Uncle Harold’s kitchen. I sat with him there, two days before he passed,...

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The Weeping Stone

The day began like any other Saturday, with the kind of golden light that makes the world look forgiving. I pedaled alongside my son, Marcus, on the winding gravel path...

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The Palmetto Watcher

I’m sixteen, and this summer I’m staying at my great-aunt Mabel’s place in the low country of South Carolina. The house is a creaking, two-story Victorian from the 1890s, surrounded...

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The Last Keeper of the Lantern

In the autumn of 2018, the small town of Ashford was mourning the loss of Old Man Hemlock, the keeper of the lighthouse that had stood on the jagged cliffs...

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The Gardener’s Hour

The Palmetto Grand Hotel rose from the heat of Savannah like a monument to old money and older secrets. I was there for a regional librarians’ conference, a gathering of...

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The Cinder Mark

The day I moved into the old Armitage boarding house, the landlady, Mrs. Holloway, pressed a cold key into my palm and said, ‘Mind the stove in the basement. It...

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The Lantern at Thornewood

After a year of silence, I allowed myself to believe the house on Thornewood Lane had finally settled. The creaking floorboards, the cold drafts that wandered through rooms despite sealed...

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The Persistent Watcher

My name is Lena, and I’ve always been able to feel things others can’t. It’s not dramatic—no visions of the future or talking to the dead. I just get a...

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The Lace-Faced Waltz

I’ve learned to keep the details of my nights to myself. People smile, nod, and then find a reason to be elsewhere. They see the flicker in my eyes and...

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The Hollow in the Hill

It wasn’t that long ago that if you’d said the word ‘haunted’ to me, I’d have laughed and called you a fool. I grew up in a world of hard...

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The Porcelain Visitor

The night air was thick with the scent of rain as Mara sat cross-legged on the floor of her new apartment, surrounded by half-open cardboard boxes. The move had been...

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The Stained Locket

The old farmhouse on Pemberton Road had been in my family for three generations before I inherited it. I moved in last autumn, and Willow joined me in the spring....

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The Hollow in the Hill

The house at the end of Maple Hollow Road had always been mine, inherited from my grandmother, and before that, her mother. I was born in the upstairs bedroom with...

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The Last Hum

In the autumn of 2018, after my messy split with Marcus, I moved into a creaky Victorian house on the edge of town. It was cheap, and I needed space...

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The Lantern Keeper

The first time the light came to me, I was six, standing at the edge of Lake Marrow, where the water turned black as ink even at noon. My grandmother...

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The Cipher in the Cinders

My name is Lena, and I’ve spent the last two decades trying to convince myself that the things I’ve witnessed are just coincidences, or tricks of the light. But the...

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The Typewriter in the Attic

I’ve always been the kind of person who surrounds herself with memories. My house is a testament to that—every wall, every shelf, every tabletop is covered in framed photographs. My...

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The Last Visit

In the autumn of 2019, I was seeing a man named Leo. He was kind, attentive, and my daughter Lily adored him. We had been together for six months, and...

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The Ward of Missing Flowers

I never believed in ghosts. Not until the night I woke up in St. Agatha’s Recovery Center, my back fused with titanium rods and my mind wrapped in a fog...

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The Static in the Glass

In the autumn of 2004, I moved into a cramped apartment on the third floor of a building that had once been a textile mill. The walls were thin, the...

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The Static in the Walls

In the autumn of 2003, after my marriage ended, I moved my two kids into a weathered single-wide trailer at the edge of a dying town called Pemberton. The previous...

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The Fence Post

In the summer of 2004, after my marriage dissolved, I packed up my two children—Mara, aged nine, and Elliot, just two—and moved back to the quiet town of Cedar Creek,...

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