Ghost stories from New Hampshire

The Scent of Jasmine

In the autumn of 2003, my family moved into a sprawling Victorian house on the outskirts of Maple Hollow, Oregon. The place had been vacant for years, but the realtor...

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The Fourth Morning

The old farmhouse on Gable Road had stood empty for a decade before we moved in, and the realtor warned us it was drafty, that the floors creaked, and that...

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The Hollow Creek Crossing

In the damp autumn of 2011, my friend Jesse drove us to the old mill bridge, a half-mile from my house, to meet his older acquaintance, Marcus. We spent a...

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The Persistent Tag

Elara had always been a creature of habit. Every night, at precisely 11:47 PM, she would lace up her worn sneakers and step out into the cool, damp air of...

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The Gardener’s Vigil

I never believed in ghosts, not really. I thought they were just stories people told to make sense of the dark. But that was before I spent the summer at...

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The Phonograph in the Ceiling

The Pinewood Lodge sat at the edge of Lake Marrow, a body of water so still it seemed to hold its breath. My family had rented the entire second floor...

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The Paper Mill Incident

My family moved to the outskirts of a town that was too proud of its history to tear down its old mill, but too eager for progress to keep it...

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The Damp Imprint

The house on Thornwood Lane had been vacant for nearly a decade, its wooden floors warped by years of neglect. My sister Lena and I had come with our mother...

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The Rusted Relic

The afternoon sun filtered through the canopy of the old-growth forest, dappling the forest floor in shifting patterns of light and shadow. My friend Mira and I had wandered further...

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The Last Slow Dance

The gymnasium was a cavern of crepe paper and colored lights, the annual Autumn Formal reduced to a buzzing blur of teenagers pretending to be adults. I was leaning against...

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The Pale Woman of the Painted Window

I was born in a house that leaned against the hills like a tired old man. My family had lived there for generations, in a valley that the mapmakers forgot...

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The Brine That Breathes

My mother and I lived in the Cormorant, a sprawling apartment block that rose from the fog of the New England coast like a concrete whale. It was a place...

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The Basement of the Old Cartwright Mill

I grew up in the shadow of the Cartwright Mill, a sprawling, rusted hulk on the banks of the Merrimack River in Lowell, Massachusetts. My family had lived in the...

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The Weight of Habit

I moved into the old farmhouse with my grandmother last autumn, after my parents split. The place had been in the family for generations, but it had stood empty for...

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The Long-Distance Static

When I was twelve, my mother remarried and we moved from our cramped apartment in the city to a sprawling, drafty house in the countryside of Havenbrook. The house was...

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The Typewriter’s Laugh Track

The rusted chassis of our double-wide groaned every time the wind shifted, a sound my late husband used to call ‘the house clearing its throat.’ After he passed, I thought...

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The Gilded Visitor

The first time I saw the Gilded Visitor, I was five years old and sitting cross-legged on the floor of my aunt’s farmhouse. He was tall, impossibly tall, with skin...

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The Lantern Keeper

In the fall of 2012, I had been documenting strange light anomalies in and around my rural property, a converted schoolhouse on the edge of Blackwood Marsh. My camera had...

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