Ghost stories from Nevada

The Umber Valley Road

The dust hadn’t settled on the gravel path leading to the old farmhouse when I first saw her. She stood at the edge of the field, a girl of about...

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The Gatekeeper of the Root Cellar

After my mother passed, my husband and I moved back into the old family farmhouse, a creaking Victorian with a root cellar that had been sealed for decades. My son,...

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That Black Thing

This is my very first experience with the paranormal. Sorry if this is kind of short, but it was a rather quick happening. I was four years old when this...

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The Sunroom’s Shadow

I was twenty-two, four months pregnant with our first child, and living in a converted Victorian on the edge of Meridian Creek, a town so small the postmistress knew everyone’s...

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The Hollow Chime

Before I could even speak, I learned to read the rhythm of our house. It was a creaking, groaning, breathing thing, an old farmhouse that had swallowed three generations of...

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The Midnight Ascension

I was seventeen when it happened, living in a cramped apartment above my uncle’s failing laundromat. The semester finals had drained me, and I fell into bed that night as...

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The Yellow Door

I was six when I learned that some doors should never be opened. Our school, a sprawling collection of prefab huts connected by covered walkways, sat on the edge of...

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The Offering Man and the Dresser Child

I’ve never been quite sure if what I saw were ghosts or something else entirely, but they left marks on me that never faded. The first time was when I...

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The Painted Room

My friend Lena had inherited her grandmother’s Victorian mansion in the sleepy town of Ravensworth, tucked away from the city’s noise. The house was a labyrinth of creaking floors and...

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The Lantern of Hollow Creek

The call came at 6:47 AM, wrenching me from a groggy sleep on my cousin’s couch in Sacramento. I remember the disjointed fragments: my aunt’s voice, cracked and raw, saying...

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The Dark Corners of Cedar Hollow

I was five when we moved to Cedar Hollow, a house that seemed to sag under its own history, its peeling white paint and crooked shutters giving it a face...

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The Static Garden

I always thought the dead were quiet, that if I couldn’t see or hear them, they weren’t there. My girlfriend Mira, her son Theo, and I were visiting the Hillcrest...

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The Keeper of the Quiet Room

At seventeen, I often felt older than my years, weighed down by a seriousness that my peers mistook for aloofness. It was a shield, I suppose, hardened by the news...

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The Clockmaker’s Debt

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days, and the old farmhouse creaked like a ship at sea. I’d gathered my cousins and friends for a weekend of board games and...

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The Weeping Mannequin

In the sweltering summer of 2006, I had just graduated from high school and moved into a sprawling, forgotten department store on the outskirts of Albuquerque, New Mexico. My cousin,...

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The Waking Pattern

I didn’t think much of the old farmhouse when we moved in. It was cheap, and the landlord was desperate. The previous tenants had left in a hurry, according to...

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The Wall in the Yellow Room

I never thought much about the house on Bellhaven Lane. It was just the place where I grew up, with its peeling wallpaper and the smell of old wood. But...

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The Filing Clerk’s Sunday

I took a part-time job at a law firm on the outskirts of town, a gleaming glass-and-steel structure that felt too clean, too new. My grandmother worked there as a...

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The Ninth Floor Archive

I never believed in ghosts. Not really. Not until I started working the night shift at the Meridian Trust Building, a sleek glass tower in the financial district that had...

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The Lantern’s Vigil

It started with a single, violet bloom. Mira, a woman who found solace in the quiet hours, had taken to walking the forgotten paths behind the old mill. One night,...

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The Constant Weight

Ever since the séance in the old farmhouse, I’ve carried a weight that isn’t mine. It started as a knot in my stomach whenever I walked past the cellar door,...

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The Latch of the Fourth Door

The first time I noticed the wrongness was in the bathroom of our basement apartment. I was scrubbing paint off my hands, the smell of turpentine stinging my nose, when...

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The Chandelier’s Cradle

The night we learned of Lena’s passing, the air in my Aunt Marisela’s Victorian home turned thick as grave dirt. Lena, my cousin’s stepdaughter, had been found in her cramped...

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The Locked Shed

I was nine, not eight, the summer we moved to the old farmhouse on Parson’s Lane. My mom, Clara, was a nurse who worked nights at the county hospital, and...

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