Ghost stories from Florida

The Crooked Music Box

My name is Elena, and I am twenty-two. I’ve been seeing things since I was a child—shadows that don’t belong, whispers that only I hear—but nothing prepared me for the...

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The Third Corner

I’d always thought of my apartment as a place of stillness, a quiet haven on the fourth floor of an old building that creaked only when the wind blew hard....

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The Foot of the Bed

I never believed in ghosts, not really. Not until the summer of 2004, when I was twenty-six and staying at my Aunt Ruth’s farmhouse in the rolling hills of eastern...

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The Porcelain Visitor

Four years ago, I sat glued to the television, watching a documentary about a child who had vanished during a family camping trip in the dense woods of the Pacific...

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The Floorboard Cadence

In the autumn of 1978, my mother, Lena, was nine years old. We had just moved to a small, weathered farmhouse nestled in the outskirts of Pine Creek, a town...

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The Third Pupil

It started in late July, not long after I moved into the old farmhouse on Redemption Road. The house itself was a skeleton of its former self, its bones creaking...

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The Lantern of the Hollow

My childhood bedroom in the old farmhouse on Hemlock Lane was a prison of shadows after dusk. I was six when I first saw it: a soft, sickly-green light, no...

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The Cold Cup by the Window

When I was twelve, my uncle Dale asked me to help him stage a foreclosed house on Pine Hollow Lane. The place had been empty for months, and the air...

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The Cold Draft

The summer I turned sixteen, my parents gave me the old sunroom off the kitchen. It was a narrow, glass-walled box that faced the backyard, and it had been empty...

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The Midnight Disconnect

It was the night of my grandmother’s eightieth birthday, and the whole family had gathered at my aunt’s place for a party that stretched long into the evening. By the...

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The Cellar Light

It was the summer after our junior year, and I was staying with my cousin Lydia at her grandmother’s old house in the rural town of Ashford. The house had...

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The Closet of Forgotten Sins

The farmhouse on Mulberry Lane was supposed to be our fresh start. After Dad’s transfer, we packed our lives into cardboard boxes and moved to the middle of nowhere, where...

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Moving Day Surprises

After weeks of packing, the Thompson family finally moved into their new home. It was a large, old house with creaky floors and dusty corners that seemed to hold secrets....

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The Spoon in the Drainpipe

The summer I turned twelve, we moved into my great-aunt’s house in the hollows of West Virginia, a place she’d left to my mother in her will. It was a...

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The Boarded-Up Window on Briar Lane

I’ve lived in this old Victorian on Briar Lane my whole life. It was my grandmother’s before it was mine, and she passed away in the upstairs bedroom, the one...

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The Salt and the Static

For weeks, the hollow ache had settled in my chest like a stone. My best friend had betrayed me in the worst way, my mother’s words had cut deeper than...

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The Lantern in the Walls

I never believed in the stories my grandmother told me about the things that lived in the dark spaces of the world. She spoke of the ‘Lantern Bearers,’ creatures that...

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The Groundskeeper’s Ledger

My grandmother’s house had always smelled of lavender and dust. After Grandad passed, that scent clung to the curtains, the armchair, the pages of his books. I was twelve when...

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The Constant Hum

I never believed in ghosts, not really. I was the kind of person who needed proof, evidence, something I could hold in my hands. But the summer I turned sixteen,...

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The Unfinished Quilt

In the autumn of 2003, my mother’s eldest sister, Beatrice, passed away after a long illness. I was only seven, but I remember the cold, sterile smell of the hospital...

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The Ceiling Tiles

I moved into the old apartment above the all-night pharmacy on Thorne Street because the rent was a steal, and my roommate, Elara, and I were both desperate for a...

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The Turn of the Copper Key

The salt air clung to the porch of my small house on Captiva Island, a place where the Gulf whispered secrets to the mangroves. I had moved there to escape...

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The Petal Fall

I was thirteen when my grandmother passed away. The news came on a bitter January morning, but I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the Wisconsin frost....

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The Faint Groan of the Stairwell

In the humid twilight of a Virginia summer, my father’s old farmhouse sat like a forgotten tombstone at the end of a gravel road. He had inherited it from his...

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