Ghost stories from New Jersey

The Knot of Hinges

The day we moved into the old farmhouse, the realtor said it had been standing since before the county was carved out of the wilderness. She called it ‘charming’ and...

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The Last Melody in Room 14

Almost everyone has a story about the old Kostas Hotel, but most of them are just ghost stories told by teenagers for a thrill. I used to roll my eyes...

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The Hollow Rhythm

The clock on the microwave blinked 2:00 AM, a green eye in the darkened kitchen. I sat on the worn floral sofa in our small apartment, nestled above a closed...

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The Hour Between

It was a Tuesday in late October, and I was curled up on my secondhand couch in the basement apartment I called home. The overhead light had burned out days...

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The Lantern in the Coffee Grove

The Lantern in the Coffee Grove My grandmother, Rosa, never spoke of the night the men came. We all knew the story, pieced together from whispered fragments and the silences...

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The Fourth Movement

The old Victorian house on Maple Street had always been a bit off, but I never paid it much mind. The previous owners had left behind a massive oak dining...

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The Lamp That Never Went Out

My name is Elena, and I haven’t spoken about this in over thirty years. But the memory is as vivid as if it happened last night. It was the autumn...

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The Iron Chime

I never believed in ghosts, not truly, not until the chimes began. My name is Mara, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve had a shadow that isn’t...

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The Last Light of August

It was the summer of 2019, and I was seventeen, working the late shift at a rundown gas station off a desolate stretch of highway. The town, if you could...

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The Ledger of Ashes

In the autumn of 1986, my family occupied the top floor of a weathered brownstone in the Ravenswood district of Chicago. The building had once been a grand residence, but...

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The Date on the Undertaker’s Ledger

I never believed in precognition, not until the night I watched my uncle drown in a puddle of moonlight. That sounds poetic, but it was anything but. It was March,...

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The Red Ledger

When my wife, Elena, and I bought the old Cunningham house, we knew it had a history. The listing said the original owners, the Cunninghams, had lived and died there,...

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The Inventory of Small Violations

The house at 14 Juniper Lane was a late-Victorian relic propped on the edge of a Minnesota cornfield, its gables like folded wings and its porch steps worn to soft...

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The Cartographer’s Last Shift

In the coastal town of Saltmere, the old municipal records building was a monument to bureaucracy and forgotten lives. Its archive room, a labyrinth of steel shelving and acid-free boxes,...

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The Man in the Lamp Light

The summer I turned twelve, I went to stay with my aunt and uncle in a small, dusty town in the Arizona desert. My cousins—three girls and a boy—lived in...

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The Lantern Keeper

I was twelve when my family moved into the old farmhouse on Baker’s Lane, a place that had been empty for years. The previous owner had died alone, and the...

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The Lantern Keeper

In the autumn of 2017, my husband Alex and I moved into a century-old farmhouse on the outskirts of a small town called Millbrook. The house came with a sprawling...

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The Stationmaster’s Whistle

Marta had always been fascinated by the old railway that ran past her grandmother’s village. The tracks had been abandoned for decades, but the station house remained, its paint peeling...

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The Static in the Walls

I never believed in ghosts. Not really. I was a sound engineer, a man of science who trusted only what he could measure and record. When I moved into the...

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The Wallpaper in Room 14

Before I begin, I need to explain how I ended up in this situation. I’ve always been drawn to old buildings, especially ones with a history. When I got a...

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The Undertow of July

Cass and I had just moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the salt marsh, three acres of wild grass and tidal mud that smelled like rot and...

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The Empty Station

It was the summer I turned seventeen, the summer after my father’s funeral, and I’d started driving at night just to feel something other than the cold knot in my...

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The Static Player

I was twelve the summer my family rented that cabin in the pine woods of northern Minnesota, a place with no neighbors and a porch that creaked in the wind....

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