Ghost stories from Massachusetts

The Lantern’s Last Light

I’ve always been a magnet for the other side. They drift to me like moths to a porch light, their whispers and cold touches as familiar as my own heartbeat....

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My grandmother collected Victorian-era oddities, and the centerpiece of her study was a portrait of a stern-faced man in a high-collared coat, holding a leather-bound ledger. The painting hung above...

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The Lattice of the Basement Window

For the past three mornings, I have found my work boots stacked one on top of the other, soles aligned, toes pointing toward the basement door. It’s a small, almost...

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The Pale Static

Ever since I moved into my late uncle’s old radio repair shop, I’ve grown used to the humming. It’s a low, electric thrum that vibrates through the floorboards, a constant...

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The Throat-Clearing Man

Marta had always felt a presence in her apartment, but it was the kind of presence you rationalize away: the creak of old pipes, the whisper of wind through the...

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The Weight of the Walls

I moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the Thornewood back in early spring, drawn by the low rent and the promise of solitude. The place had a...

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The Celluloid Eye

My cousin Marlene and I spent every August at our great-aunt’s farmhouse, a place that leaned into the hills like it was trying to hide. The house was older than...

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The Static Garden

My great-aunt Marnie left me her old house in her will, a crooked Victorian buried in the middle of a sprawling, overgrown garden that hadn’t been tended in decades. I...

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The Scent of November’s End

Elena had always loved autumn in her small mountain town of Ashford, but this November felt different. The air was heavier, and the leaves seemed to cling to the branches...

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The Loop of St. Agatha’s

I was eleven that autumn, living with my father in the gray tract house on Willow Lane, two towns over from anything that mattered. The divorce had finalized three years...

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The Last Trapper’s Ledger

The ice had barely surrendered to the spring thaw when Marcus and I decided to break out the canoes. We’d been aching for the water all winter, and the early...

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The Mariner’s Ledger

In the summer of 2019, my ex-wife and I decided to take a trip to the historic port town of Gravesend, England. I had always been fascinated by its maritime...

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The Blanket Shaker of Point Reyes

It was a moon-blanched night on the windswept stretch of Point Reyes beach, where the Pacific gnawed at the shore with a hunger older than memory. My father, a man...

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The Cartographer’s Knuckle

It was a Tuesday, or maybe a Wednesday, when the knocking started. I’d just moved into the attic apartment of a crumbling Victorian on the edge of the city, a...

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The Papered Window

I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m just telling you what happened. I was twenty, sharing a cramped second-floor flat with my cousin Mira, trying to scrape through university...

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