Ghost stories from New York

The Coal Man’s Son

I was four when we moved into the old brick house on Sycamore Lane. My parents called it a fixer-upper, but to me it was a castle of creaking floorboards...

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The Keeper of the Porch Light

The house at the end of Cypress Lane had always been a quiet fixture in our neighborhood, its white picket fence and sun-faded shutters a familiar sight. The Martins, who...

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The Mahogany Clock

The day we hauled Aunt Hester’s old furniture into our house, the air in the living room turned thick, like the ceiling had pressed down a few inches. The pieces...

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The Cobalt Floor

In the autumn of 2004, I found myself pacing the linoleum corridors of St. Jude’s Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas. My brother, Daniel, was undergoing a risky spinal fusion, and...

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The Iron Tug

In the autumn of 2004, my family moved into the upper floor of an old duplex in Lowell, a town known for its eerie mill history. My brother, Sam, and...

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The Frozen Mother and the White Child

I was only eight, and my cousin Maya was nine. She lived in a neat little town outside of Wilmington, in a modest two-story condo that sat on a quiet...

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The Hollow Click

In the autumn of that year, I moved into a small apartment on the third floor of an old brick building, the kind with long, dim hallways and radiators that...

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The Amber Stains

The house on Birchwood Lane never felt like mine, not even after six years of paying its mortgage. It was a narrow, two-story colonial with peeling white paint and a...

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The Hollow Throne

I was 26, living alone in a cramped studio apartment above a closed-down laundromat. The building was old, with creaking pipes and a persistent smell of bleach that never quite...

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The Resonant Banshee of Hollow Creek

I was crammed in the back of the auditorium, my pencil scratching against the final exam paper, when the sound hit me. It wasn’t loud, but it was sharp, a...

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The Passenger Seat Reflection

My friend Leo told me a story that I can’t shake. It happened on a freezing November night in the small town of Raven’s Hollow, where the streets were lined...

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The Ceiling Light Flickers

I never used to believe in ghosts. Not really. I figured kids have wild imaginations, and that whole ‘imaginary friend’ thing was just a phase. But then my niece, Lily,...

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The Lantern Man

In the summer of 2009, my cousin Lila and I were inseparable. We spent our weekends at my grandmother’s old farmhouse, a place that always smelled of mothballs and damp...

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The Tug at the Loom

Our arrival in the coastal town of Greyhollow in the fall of 2015 was less a choice than a necessity. The job offer had come with a housing stipend that...

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The Modem’s Wake-Up Call

The house on Maple Street had a personality, or so I told myself. It was the kind of old Victorian that creaked and sighed like a tired old man, and...

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The Blue Marker Incident

I was thirteen when I first learned that the dead don’t always rest easy. It happened during a school trip to the state science museum, a three-hour ride in a...

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The Pulsing Static

In the autumn of 2007, my son, Leo, was just a few months old. We lived in a small, creaky house in the countryside, surrounded by fields that turned to...

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The Clockmaker’s Apprentice

It was late October in the town of Morrow’s Hollow, and the days had grown short and brittle, like the fallen leaves that skittered across the cracked pavement outside the...

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The Last Three Bars

The apartment on Arlington Street had thin walls, and the neighbor’s argument was bleeding through like a persistent stain. I lay in bed, the glow of the television painting the...

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The Weeping Lot

It was late October of 1998, and I’d just moved to the small town of Hollow Falls for a fresh start. I’m not particularly religious, but my abuela had always...

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The Saltwater Room

It was the first Saturday of May, the year the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage finally went on the market. My great-aunt Edna had passed the previous autumn, and her only...

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The Casket Room

I never believed in the supernatural, not really. But when my best friend, Mara, invited me to spend the weekend at her family’s estate, I couldn’t resist. The place had...

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The Tenant in 3B

In my early twenties, I considered myself a guardian against the unseen. I’d spent years studying theology and the occult, and I’d faced down more than a few unsettling phenomena....

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The Last Blue Bow

In the sweltering summer of 1983, in the sleepy town of Millbrook, I was a seven-year-old boy named Tommy. Our street was lined with neat brick houses, and next door...

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