Ghost stories from Indiana

The Unseen Gardener

The house at 14 Mockingbird Lane had been my home my entire life, which, at twelve years old, felt like a very long time. My dad swore by its peculiarities—the...

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The Ceaseless Receiver

I live in a house that has stood for over a century, its bones creaking with memories it refuses to share. The previous owners left behind a tangle of copper...

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The Curtain’s Wake

I was seven, my brother nine. We were staying with our grandmother in her isolated farmhouse, a place where the nearest neighbor was a half-hour’s walk down a gravel path...

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The Blue Lamp in the Window

I’d spent my whole life on Fernwood Row. Thirty-two years, to be exact, first in my parents’ two-story brick house, then, after my son Theo was born, across the street...

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The Storm Swing

I never liked visiting Aunt Margo’s farm. The place felt wrong, like the air itself was holding its breath. My cousin, Felix, was the only good part about those trips....

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The Mystery of the Singing Girl

Whenever I visit my aunt’s old farmhouse, my brother and I love to wander into the nearby meadow. One sunny afternoon, while we were playing tag, I heard a sweet...

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The Old Bar

When I was eight years old, my family bought this old bar. The man we bought it from sold it for about half the price it was worth. My family...

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The Yellowed Photographs

In the autumn of 2009, when I was forty-seven, my wife and I moved into a sprawling Victorian house on the outskirts of a mill town in northern England. It...

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The Harbor Light Sessions

My name is Elara, and I’m writing this from the cramped office of the Beacon Point Lighthouse, where my family and I have lived for nearly four years. My father...

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The Voice in the Old Well

I have never put much thought into the stories people tell about the unseen. I am a practical person, focused on the world I can touch and see. But what...

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The Pale Green Door

I’ve never been one for ghost stories, and I still don’t know if what we encountered was a spirit or something worse. But I can’t deny what happened that week...

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The Thawing

My brother and I had been left to mind the family’s remote fishing cabin for a week while our parents attended a conference in the city. The cabin sat on...

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The Blue Ball’s Wake

The morning after the storm, Alma found the old tomcat, Marmalade, yowling at the base of the stairs that led to the chapel. He was a ginger brute, usually indifferent...

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The Persistent Tracks

We moved to the old farmhouse in the fall, when the leaves were rotting and the sky hung low and gray. The land was a muddy, forgotten patch at the...

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The Linen Man

The house on Maple Hollow Road had been in our family for generations, a sprawling Victorian with a wrap-around porch and a history as tangled as the ivy that climbed...

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The Coil in the Crawlspace

The trouble began the summer we moved back into my mother’s farmhouse, a rambling Victorian that had seen better decades. My husband, Dale, had lost his job at the mill,...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Bargain

Marta had been clean for six months, an anniversary gift to herself for surviving twenty-five years of marriage to a man who snored like a chainsaw. She figured if she...

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The Last Ferry

I’ve never been good at explaining the things I see, the hums I hear, the cold spots that find me no matter the season. But I’ve learned to trust them,...

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The Static at the Threshold

The summer Rachel turned seventeen, her cousin Liam and his friends started hanging around the old Linwood house. It sat at the end of their cul-de-sac, a forgotten Victorian with...

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The Constant Hum of the Marsh

The first thing I noticed was the hum. It wasn’t a sound you heard so much as felt, a low vibration that settled in my teeth and made the fillings...

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The Dryer’s Open Door

After my husband walked out and the contractors hit yet another delay, my three-year-old daughter, Lily, and I moved into my grandmother’s old farmhouse. It was a sprawling, creaking structure...

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Secrets from the Past

Lila was a devoted mother to her curious daughter, Mia, who had just turned four. They had recently moved in with Lila’s elderly aunt while their new home was under...

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The Datura Bloom

At thirteen, I knew the old mill house was a mistake. My parents, ever the optimists, saw a fixer-upper with charm; I saw peeling wallpaper and a basement that smelled...

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A Night of Strange Sounds

When I was around 13, a peculiar night unfolded. My parents had gone out for dinner, leaving me in charge of my younger sister, Lily. The evening began normally, with...

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