Ghost stories from New York

The Weight of the Upstairs Room

The summer I turned twelve, my cousin Paul and I spent most of our weekends at my great-aunt Mabel’s farmhouse in the rural town of Stillwater, Kansas. The place had...

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The Dripping Staircase

The old house on Maple Street had always been a bit strange, but last night was something else. I came home from a late shift at the diner, the rain...

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The Last Gasp of the Whistle

Nell had always considered herself a solitary soul, and her cottage at the edge of the Thornwood Marsh suited her perfectly. The only company she kept was her cat, Bramble,...

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The Apron of Saint Agnes

The heat of that summer was unlike any I’d felt before. Our small town of Morrow’s Landing, nestled between the pine barrens and the salt marshes, was celebrating its bicentennial,...

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The Keeper of the Candle

Four years ago, my best friend, Elias, died in a car accident on a rain-slicked highway. I remember the call, the silence, the shattered glass of my own world. In...

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The Blue Willow Pattern

The house on Meridian Lane was a Queen Anne Victorian, all gingerbread trim and peeling paint, erected in 1904 by the same mason who built the neighboring Federal-style brick home....

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The Cinder-Born

My husband Liam and I bought the old Barlow house after years of renting. It was a sprawling Victorian with peeling wallpaper and a porch that groaned underfoot. The realtor...

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The Hollow Birthday

My great-aunt Mildred had a peculiar tradition: every October, she threw a grand birthday party for her youngest grandchild, even though the child’s actual birthday was in March. This year,...

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The Sticky Button

On the third night after my sister Mara’s funeral, I finally spoke to her. Not in a whisper, not in a prayer, but in a low, matter-of-fact tone as I...

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The Looming Lattice

The summer I turned fifteen, my family moved to a small town in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The house was a relic from the 1970s, all shag carpet...

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The Blue Room at Bellweather Flats

Some say that truth is stranger than fiction, but the truth I found in Bellweather Flats was stranger than any nightmare. In our mid-twenties, my best friend Derek and I...

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The Stairwell’s Silent Guest

I never used to fear the cellar. It was just a cool, dusty place where the boiler hummed and the old freezer sat like a patient animal. But after the...

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The Cinder Man of Ash Row

The tour guide, a gaunt woman named Ms. Albright, led our group through the narrow, twisting streets of Meridian, a city I’d only ever known through postcards and rumor. We...

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The Dangling Thread

On the eve of my thirty-fourth birthday, my partner, Mira, and I were driving to a remote cabin in the Appalachian Mountains. We arrived just before sunset, the sky a...

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The Lantern’s Vigil

I’ve always been a collector of moments, the way other people collect stamps or coins. My particular obsession is with the spaces between things—the gasp before a sob, the hush...

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The Mannequin in the Window

In the sweltering August of 2017, my mother and I drove from our cramped apartment in Jersey City to the quiet town of Northport, Maine. We’d moved to the States...

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The Second Note

I’ve always found comfort in the familiar hum of our old upright piano, a fixture in our sunroom that overlooks the backyard. My mother, a retired music teacher, insisted on...

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The December Sequence

The old farmhouse had been in our family for generations, and I had grown accustomed to its quirks—the way the floorboards groaned in the summer heat, the occasional draft that...

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The Rusted Key

It was a humid Tuesday night when my friend Ray and I decided to ditch our usual gaming session for a bit of urban exploration. We’d heard about an old...

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The Constant Hum of the Blue Line

Before I explain what happened, I need you to understand the state I was in. In 2017, at seventeen, I collapsed during a mock trial competition. I was the prosecution’s...

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The Wingless Visitor

I was eleven the summer we moved to the outskirts of Cinder Falls, a town that clung to the edge of a dried-up reservoir. Our new house was a two-story...

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The Uniform in the Window

I’ve worked in the garment district for over a decade, but it’s the view from my desk that’s always unsettled me. There’s a window directly across the alley, straight in...

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The Hollow Stairwell

In the three years we’d lived in the old Harrow House, I’d grown used to its creaks and groans, the way the floorboards sighed underfoot, the way the radiators clanked...

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The Face Between the Crates

The first time I noticed the dead floor was during the Tuesday morning budget review, when I should have been scrutinizing the quarterly projections but instead found my gaze drifting...

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