Ghost stories from Mississippi

The Rusted Windmill

The farmhouse had been in our family for generations, but it wasn’t the kind of place you’d call cozy. It sat on a windswept plain, with a rusted windmill creaking...

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The Mirror in the Blue Room

In the autumn of 2016, my family and I were living in a coastal town in Maine, and we had decided to move to a quieter place, away from the...

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The Lantern Man’s Ledger

The last time I visited the old Gilchrist Cemetery, the groundskeeper told me a story. He said the swamp has a memory, a long one, and it doesn’t forget a...

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The Staircase That Counted

I was twelve the summer we moved into the old farmhouse on Hemlock Road. Nothing had ever felt wrong about the place until our collie, Rusty, was hit by a...

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The Weeping Field

I remember the summer I turned seventeen, the one where the heat pressed down on our small town like a wet blanket and boredom was a living thing that chewed...

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The Kite That Caught the Wind

I have told this story only a handful of times, and even now, the telling leaves a cold, damp feeling in my chest. It is the only time I have...

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The Listener in the Static

I never believed in the things that go bump in the night. I’m Dana, and I’ve always needed to see, touch, and test before I give any credence. My friend...

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The Honey Locust Grove

It was the last week of July, and the heat had settled over the Mississippi Delta like a wet blanket. I’d driven out to the old Chickasaw Bayou battlefield, not...

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The Latch in the Dark

I’d stayed over at Margo’s place a hundred times, but that Friday in late October felt different. Her new house—a cramped, two-bedroom ranch on the edge of a dying town—sat...

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The Mannequin in the Mirror

It’s been three months since I moved into the old Harbinger Apartments, and I’m starting to think the previous tenant left something behind. The place was cheap, too cheap for...

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The Kiln Testament

By the time the autumn rains began in earnest, I had already made my decision. For twenty-seven years, I had drawn lines in the dust of this county as a...

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The Gospel of Static

The lock-in at First Redeemer was my penance for agreeing to help with the nursery. As a college sophomore, I was too old for youth group, but too young to...

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The Ashwood Merchant

The house came with the fall of 1979, when my soon-to-be wife, Elaine, and I were still young enough to think that peeling paint and bowed floors were romantic. My...

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The Device in the Wall

The summer before I turned twenty-one, I spent most nights at my parents’ house in the rural outskirts of Harlow County. I was saving money for college, working as a...

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The Frozen Harbor

The first real sign that something was wrong came on a Sunday in late October, when the harbor was too still. I’d grown up in Port Blaine, a small fishing...

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The Fifth Passenger

As a child, I never feared the dark. The dark was simply the absence of light, and our apartment on Meridian Street was always dim, even at noon. Mom worked...

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The Cold Hearth

I inherited the old farmhouse from my grandmother, a sprawling Victorian relic with peeling wallpaper and a staircase that groaned like a dying beast. It sat on fifty acres of...

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The Unfinished Lesson

The old parish hall had been a one-room schoolhouse in the eighteen-fifties, and the chalkboard that still hung on the wall bore the faint, ghostly tracings of a lesson never...

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The Lantern in the Hall

The storm had been building all evening, a low growl that shook the windows of our cabin. I’d put my three nieces to bed early, tucking them into their sleeping...

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The Knocking in the Attic

I’ve always been obsessed with the paranormal. Ever since I was a kid, I devoured every ghost story, every documentary, every grainy YouTube video of supposed spirits. So when my...

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The Stitching Hour

The apartment on Hemlock Street was quiet, save for the hum of the old refrigerator and the occasional creak of the building settling. Martin and his girlfriend, Elena, had spent...

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The Salt Line

The trailer sat at the edge of the Bitterroot foothills, a rusted silver whale beached on a patch of scrub grass. My friend Caleb had moved there with his brother...

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The Ragged Effigy

I know you have no reason to trust me, but every word of this is true. If you’re wondering why I’m not with my parents, it’s because my father and...

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The House That Ate Names

The summer I turned eight, my father was somewhere in the desert, his letters smelling of heat and dust. We lived on Fort Huachuca, Arizona, a base that seemed to...

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