Ghost stories from Florida

The Moonlight Pact

In the small town of Ashgrove, nestled between the dark pines and the winding river, lived the Carr family in a creaky two-story house that had seen better decades. The...

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The Hollow Playground

In the autumn of 2011, thirteen-year-old Maya found herself trapped in the suffocating heat of her father’s apartment in the dusty outskirts of Amarillo, Texas. Her mother had flown to...

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The Paint on the Eighth-Floor Landing

In the autumn of 1984, I was a sophomore at Meridian State College, nestled in the rust-belt town of Ashford, Ohio. I lived in the old high-rise dormitory, Thornwood Hall,...

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The Weight of the Hollow

I’ve lived in the same brick apartment building on Meridian Street my whole life. My parents bought the ground-floor unit before I was born, and I’ve never known any other...

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The Weight of the Unseen

Maren had lived in the old Vermont farmhouse her entire life, all twenty-six years. It was a sprawling, drafty structure built in 1892, with walls that smelled of damp wood...

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The Still Water Pact

The summer of 2009 had been a scorcher, and the only relief was the community pool behind the old grain mill. I was there with my cousin Dax, his little...

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The Static Garden

My first supernatural encounter happened when I was twelve, in the autumn my parents sent me to live with my grandmother in the Vermont countryside. My father had lost his...

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The Keyhole Garden

The October wind carried the scent of wet leaves and woodsmoke as I stared at the old Harlow house. It had stood empty for years, its wraparound porch sagging like...

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The Porcelain Garden

My cousin Maya and I were supposed to have a sleepover at her friend’s place, a girl named Chloe. Chloe’s family had just moved into an old, sprawling farmhouse on...

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The Lantern Man’s Bargain

My name is Elara, and I’m seventeen. In a few weeks, I’ll be eighteen, and I’m writing this because I need to get it out before the anniversary swallows me...

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The Ledger of Salt and Ash

I’ve lived in this town for nearly six years now, ever since I inherited my grandmother’s old house on the edge of the marsh. It’s a Victorian relic, all peeling...

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The Interstitial

The rain had stopped, leaving the air thick and heavy with the smell of wet earth and rust. I stood in the middle of that field, the shotgun a familiar...

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The Lever That Kept Giving

It was a Tuesday in late October, and the air in the school hallways felt heavy, like the building was holding its breath. I was a seventh grader at Meridian...

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The Lantern That Watched

Mara had always prided herself on her rationality. A scientist by training, she sought natural explanations for everything. When she moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the...

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The Refrain of the Drowned Choir

The first time I heard it, I was in the shower at my aunt’s old farmhouse in the middle of Kansas. The water was scalding, the way I like it,...

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The Frosted Window

In 2008, my nephew, Toby, was five years old when our great-aunt, whom he had never met, passed away. We lived in the small town of Ashford, nestled between a...

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The Watcher at 221B Elm

Mara first noticed the man when she was eight, the summer her family moved to the cul-de-sac of Maple Grove. He stood beneath the old oak tree at the edge...

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The Last Night at Hollow Creek

The night before we left Hollow Creek, the air felt wrong. Not the usual Florida humidity that clung to your skin like a wet sheet, but something thinner, sharper, like...

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First Encounter With A Demon?

The year was 1999 it was late in July, my best friend invited me to go jet skiing in the Atlantic with his family. As always I accepted his invitation...

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The Will of the Weeping Tile

It was a sweltering July evening in 2006 when I found myself in my friend Marcus’s basement, the air thick with the smell of damp concrete and old wood. Marcus,...

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The Unplugged Radio

In December 2002, I was on stand-down from the military, so I took a security assignment to keep busy. As a captain with a private firm, I was sent to...

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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...

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The Static in the Floorboards

I moved into the Maplehurst Flats in late August, three weeks before my junior year at Northgate University. The building was a squat, two-story brick relic from the seventies, with...

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The Copper Ledger

The first coin arrived on a Tuesday, nestled in the fold of a linen napkin at a roadside diner in the arid sprawl of New Caelum. I was inventorying the...

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