Ghost stories from Missouri

The Hat That Stayed

My name is Elias Thorne, and I’m thirteen now, but this memory is burned into me from when I was barely four. It was at my grandmother’s old farmhouse in...

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The Shadow in the Attic

My name is Leo Carson, and I’m 15 now. This story goes back to when I was about 4 years old, but it stays clear in my mind for some...

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The Stillness of Blackwood Creek

The old lodge at Blackwood Creek had stood for generations, a sprawling, timbered monument to a forgotten era, nestled deep within a valley that seemed to drink the sunlight. It...

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The Old Cabin by the Lake

My father and his wife live in a cabin built in the 1930s. It sits deep in a forest, near a wide, calm lake. One Saturday, I was visiting. My...

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The Wall That Remembers

When I was six, I saw a man made of smoke walk through the kitchen wall. My family called it a nightmare, but I knew better. It happened in the...

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The Flicker Stride

The campus of Aldermere University was a sprawling map of well-trodden paths, but the most vital artery was the North Terrace, a broad concrete ribbon that connected the undergraduate towers,...

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The Hollow Trails of Cedar House

Cedar House sat on a dead-end lane at the edge of town, its porch slumping like a tired jaw. My German shepherd, Ranger, never set a paw inside the kitchen....

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The Night the House Remembered

The old farmhouse sat at the end of a gravel road, hidden behind a curtain of overgrown pines. I had moved there with my father after the divorce, hoping the...

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The Weight of the Oak

My mother and I had been in the duplex for three weeks when the oak tree in the backyard started to lean. It was an old, gnarled thing, its roots...

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The Study of Sleep

The summer we moved into that house, the air in the basement felt like a held breath. I’m the kind of person who notices these things—the way a room’s atmosphere...

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The Whispering Hearth

I remember that autumn, when the world was painted in hues of rust and gold, and the air carried the scent of woodsmoke and damp earth. My best friend, Clara,...

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My First Vision

My friend and I were talking a walk around the square, which is like a place with a bunch of little boutiques and shops in it. We passed an old...

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The Last Lullaby of the Salt Marsh

Clara never knew her great-aunt Elowen as anything but ‘Mamie’, a name she could barely pronounce as a toddler but which became the only word that could calm her night...

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Spirit At Child Care Center

I used to work with this amazing woman who I called the baby whisperer. She had been working in early education since she was a teenager and had 60 plus...

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The Garden of Diesel and Roses

My father, Elias, had driven the same eighteen-wheeler for over four decades, a rust-streaked Peterbilt we called ‘Bertha.’ My grandmother, Nana Ruth, lived with us in the little house at...

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The Bell at Dusk

In the autumn of 2021, my daughter Elara and I moved to a sleepy village called Thornwick, nestled between the moors and a dense pine forest. We rented a creaky...

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The Lantern Code

The first time Lucas saw them, he chalked it up to a malfunction. His new infrared trail cams, set up along the fence line of his Aunt Marta’s sunflower farm...

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The Bureau of Unfinished Rooms

At thirteen, Elias Thorne had a library card that saw more use than his bike, and a head full of questions about the gaps in the world—the spaces between the...

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The Lamplight’s Shape

It has been three years since I last wrote about the things I saw in the old apartment. I’ve since moved into a small house on the edge of a...

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The Hollow Lantern

The last showing had ended, and the projector’s hum had finally died. Mara pulled the thick canvas of her jacket tight, the November chill biting through the fabric as she...

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The Salt Grip

In the summer of 2019, my partner Lena and I took a trip to the abandoned mining town of Garnet, Montana. We’d heard the old assay office was haunted—tourists often...

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The Ashen Perimeter

It was a humid September evening in the outskirts of Millbrook, a town bordered by a vast, dying forest. I had decided to take a walk to the all-night convenience...

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The Throat-Clearer on Maple Street

I moved into the old farmhouse on Maple Street in March of 2020, just as the world was shutting down. The place had been built in 1985, and the previous...

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The Gliding Passage

I never thought much about the old servant’s staircase in my Victorian on Maplewood Avenue, a relic of a bygone era when the house had bustled with domestic staff. It...

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