Ghost stories from Massachusetts

The Fan’s Lullaby

In the fall of 2019, my wife, Elise, and I purchased a charming but aging Victorian in the Hudson Valley, New York. The previous owners had been an elderly couple...

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The Marble Watcher

My girlfriend’s family farmhouse in the Appalachian foothills had always felt heavy, like the air itself was soaked in old memories. Her brothers and sister each had their own tales:...

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The Man Who Ate the Moon

It was a Tuesday night, and the air was thick with the smell of fried dough and cheap cologne from the county fair. My nephew, Derrick, and I had just...

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The Cold Corner of the Cellar

I was nine that winter, not ten, but the years have blurred the exact number. We lived in a house that had once been a funeral parlor, and my bedroom...

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The Grating of the Gears

I never believed in the supernatural. Not really. I thought ghosts were just a way for our minds to cope with grief or fear. Then I moved into the old...

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The Remnants of Lucia Vane

After my grandmother passed, my mother and I sorted through the house. The basement, always a place of dread for me, held a collection of forgotten boxes and dusty furniture....

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The Linen Closet

Marla had always thought the smell of lavender was grandmotherly, but after what happened, she couldn’t stand it. It was the day before the anniversary of her mother’s death, and...

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The Salt Lantern

I was eight when we moved from the sweltering coast of Oaxaca to the dry, flat expanse of West Texas. Dad had a job at the oil refinery, and our...

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The Unlit Hallway

I never believed in the supernatural, not until the winter of 2012, when I moved into a century-old farmhouse in rural Ohio. The place was charming enough during the day—creaky...

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The Night the Air Turned Solid

I was eight, not five, but that doesn’t change what I saw. It was the summer before the big move, and my parents had rented an old farmhouse on the...

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The Paper Kite

When I was nine, I had a friend no one else could see. His name was Toby, and he lived in the crawl space under our stairs. We’d play hide-and-seek...

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The Tremor in the Sunroom

Four years after we bought the old Hargrove place on Marrow Lane, I thought we had finally settled into a peaceful rhythm. The house was a sprawling Victorian with creaky...

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The Gardener’s Vigil

The day I signed the lease for the hillside cottage, the flowers in the front garden were just beginning to wilt. By the time the moving van drove away, they...

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The Man at Mile 14

The summer of 2001 in Portland, Oregon, was one of those rare ones where the rain never seemed to let up. The Willamette swelled, and every underpass turned into a...

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The Still Air

The alarm on my phone glowed 7:42 AM, but the morning light through the cheap motel curtains was wan and gray, as if the sun itself was hesitating. I’d just...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Debt

My name is Mara, and I’ve lived in the town of Greyhaven my whole life. It’s a place where the fog rolls in from the sea like a hungry thing,...

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The Hollow Whine

The autumn of 2009 had crept into our old farmhouse like a slow leak, painting the fields in rust and gold. I was a light sleeper, plagued by a recurring...

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The Marbled Eye

It was the summer of 1987, and my family and I were vacationing at the Beacon Grand, a once-grand hotel perched on the cliffs of a storm-bitten Maine coastline. I...

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The Pale Sentinel

It began as a dare, a craving for something beyond the mundane. My partner, Leo, and I, along with our friend, Dana, had grown tired of the usual Friday night...

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The Floorplan Shifter

In the fall of 1987, I was sixteen, and my father had just closed on a dilapidated Victorian house that had been relocated from a riverside town to our suburban...

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The Mulberry Hollow Visitor

I was nine when we moved to Mulberry Hollow, a sleepy town in Vermont where the autumns were so crisp you could almost taste the apples in the air. Our...

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The Keeper of the Loom

I spent my life in the dry, dusty world of logic, a museum curator with a fondness for evidence and a disdain for the supernatural. My father, a man of...

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The Plumber’s Apprentice

In the late autumn of 1997, I was twelve, staying over at my cousin’s farmhouse on the edge of the Blackwood Forest. My uncle, a man who could fix anything...

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The Collector of Last Words

I had always prided myself on my rationality. Ghosts, spirits, the supernatural—these were concepts for the gullible, the superstitious, or the deeply traumatized. I was none of those. So when...

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