Ghost stories from Nebraska

The Static Between Stations

The house on Meridian Lane had a way of holding its breath. Ever since the basement flood last spring, the air felt thick, like the walls were sweating secrets. But...

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The Salted Earth

The day we moved into the house on Juniper Lane, the sky was the color of a bruised peach. I was nine, small for my age, and my mother’s hand...

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The Ironwood Hollow

I’m writing this because I need to get it out, and you’re the only one who might understand without thinking I’ve lost my mind. Things have been… off, ever since...

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The Slanted Nursery

My family had moved a dozen times before I turned thirteen, but the house on Marrow Lane was different. Mom claimed she felt a pull toward it, a ‘calling,’ she...

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The Salt-Rimmed Window

My name is Elias, and I grew up in a family of watchers. Not the kind who sit on porches and gossip, but the kind whose blood hums with the...

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The Postman’s Last Delivery

My grandmother used to say that the women in our family are born with a loose thread to the other side. It frays and tangles, but it never breaks. I...

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The Tally of Sleep

My name is Cora, and I’ve always had a strange relationship with sleep. Every house I’ve ever lived in has been a conduit for the inexplicable, but for the past...

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The Prismatic Glass

After the movie ended, the chandelier in Lila’s living room spat out four of its five bulbs in a cascade of popping glass. The remaining bulb flickered, casting a sickly...

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The Ledger of Small Hours

My grandfather, Elias, was a man of quiet rituals. He kept a leather-bound ledger, its pages filled with observations about the weather, the habits of the birds in his garden,...

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The Frosted Bench

The parking lot behind the old mill was a dead zone of cracked asphalt and frozen weeds, bordered by a chain-link fence that rattled in the wind. I’d parked my...

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The Last Cigarette at Lot 9

The bunker at Lot 9 was a repurposed shipping container, painted a dull green to blend with the pines, and it smelled of stale coffee and burnt matches. Inside, a...

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The Filing Cabinet’s Guests

I never thought I’d miss the grind of patrol, the squeal of tires, the adrenaline spike of a hot call. But after the surgery, the department parked me behind a...

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The Cinder Man

Mara first noticed the Cinder Man when she was six, living in the old farmhouse on the edge of the Ashwood Forest. Her bedroom was at the top of a...

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The Bent Fence Post

The night air hung thick and damp, heavy with the scent of wet earth and diesel from the distant runway. I was a private in the National Guard, assigned to...

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The Porcelain Doll of Garnett Falls

I never thought much about the old Victorian on Maple Street until the day I found the doll in the attic. My name is Clara, and I’ve lived in Garnett...

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The Pinewood Wake

The summer after my sophomore year of college, I was invited to spend a few weeks at my aunt’s newly built cabin in the Cascade foothills. The place was a...

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The Thirteenth Frame

I remember the day we moved into the Creel House on Thornwood Lane. It was a sprawling Victorian with peeling paint and a sagging porch, but to my nine-year-old eyes,...

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The Pale Visitor at 3:47

Maya had always known her family was different. Her grandmother could converse with the dead, her older brother could see them, and her mother could command them to leave. But...

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The Unfinished Errand

I had been living with my grandmother since the sixth grade, in a house that smelled of cedar and old photographs. Her name was Elara, and though her body had...

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The Last Unplayed Track

The day they lowered Marcus into the ground, I stood at the edge of the crowd holding the silver armband I’d found in his desk drawer. It wasn’t the one...

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The Pattern in the Laminate

I’m a licensed architect, which means people expect me to be rational. They expect me to measure twice, cut once, and not believe in anything without a blueprint. My name...

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The Saltwater Séance

My second run-in with a spirit board didn’t happen in a dusty dorm room or a candlelit basement. It happened on a rickety fishing trawler named The Bent Nail, bobbing...

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The Copper Sink

The house stood at the end of a cul-de-sac in a town that had long since forgotten its name. I moved in because the rent was a steal, and the...

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The Clockwork Intruder

In the quiet outskirts of our small town, where the forest presses close against the back fence, I had always felt a sense of peace. My name is Clara, and...

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