Ghost stories from North Carolina

The Lantern’s Debt

I’d never put much stock in the stories my grandmother told about the old farmhouse, not until the summer I moved in to help my father after his surgery. The...

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The Carpet’s Stain

I never liked the dark, not after that night. The town of Ashford wasn’t much, a dust-blown stop on the highway, and my family’s house on Birch Lane was a...

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The Third Visit

The first time we admitted Abuela Rosa to St. Catherine’s, the air in her room felt thick enough to chew. It was her third bout with pneumonia in as many...

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The Stained-Glass Heirloom

My grandmother left me a mirror when she passed, a beautiful thing with stained glass around the edges and a maple frame. When my husband Daniel and I moved into...

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The Last Seat at Table Nine

I’ve been a night orderly at Cedar Haven Convalescent Home for six years, and I’ve learned that the old ones carry their histories in their spines. Some bend with grace,...

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The Salt Marsh Signal

Two years ago, I was living in a small coastal town in Oregon, working a dead-end job at a cannery. My only friend there was a guy named Marcus, a...

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The Static Between Songs

I was midway through a calculus problem, the scratch of my pencil a dull counterpoint to the synth-heavy track thrumming in my earbuds. My roommate, Leo, was on his bed,...

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The Sunlit Visitor

My name is Eva, and I’m twenty-seven. I grew up in a small town called Millbrook, nestled in the rolling hills of Vermont. I’ve never shared this with anyone outside...

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The Unraveling Room

My first real taste of fear came not from a ghost story told around a campfire, but from the quiet, unassuming house my grandmother bought in the foothills of the...

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The Blue Room of Sunday

My wife and I were not prepared for what happened that Sunday, two months ago, in the old Victorian house of her sister, Helena. Helena and her husband were at...

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The Receipt

I was alone in the house, a Tuesday afternoon in late autumn, the kind of day that feels like a held breath. My grandmother’s old Victrola sat in the corner...

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The Rusted Weathervane

I’m seventeen, and I live in a small farming town called Hollow Creek, nestled between cornfields and a slow, muddy river. My grandmother and I share a creaky farmhouse that’s...

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The Plaster Saint

In the autumn of my sixteenth year, my family moved into the old Harlow house, a sprawling Victorian relic that had sat empty for decades. The previous owners had left...

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The Uninvited Guest

In the autumn of 2018, my brother, Leo, had agreed to babysit for a colleague, Mrs. Hartley, who needed someone to watch her nine-year-old daughter, Emma, while she attended a...

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The Floor Plans of 7B

I’ve been lurking on this site for years, reading other people’s accounts of the strange and unexplainable. We all come here for the same reason, I suppose: to find validation...

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The Clock in Room 14

I’ve worked the night shift at Crestwood Manor for eleven years now. It’s a sprawling, old building, all creaking floorboards and flickering fluorescents, smelling of antiseptic and age. We don’t...

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The Second-Floor Mirror

I never believed in ghosts until the summer we moved into the glass house. It wasn’t made of glass, of course, but the architect had a passion for mirrors—every wall,...

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The Kitchen Timer

Marta had lived in the old farmhouse for three autumns, and the nightly footsteps above the living room had become as familiar as the creak of the stairs or the...

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The Third Floor Bell

The old house on Hemlock Lane had a peculiar feature: a servant’s bell in the kitchen that hadn’t worked in decades. The brass dome was tarnished, its spring corroded, but...

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The Gift of the Red Balloon

The first thing I noticed about the house on Orchard Lane was the way the windows seemed to stare back at me, dark and unblinking, even in the middle of...

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The Last Red Balloon

My grandfather, Bruno, wasn’t like other grandpas. He wasn’t a banker or a fisherman or a quiet man who whittled wood on the porch. No, Bruno was a mime. Not...

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The Black Mare’s Bargain

After years of scrolling through digital campfire tales, I finally decided to pen my own. I apologize if this first attempt feels bloated, but the truth demands its length. In...

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The Grandfather Clock’s Chime

In the autumn of 2018, I moved from Dublin to the American South, settling in a small town in Virginia, not far from the Blue Ridge Mountains. My name is...

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The Wardrobe’s Watch

My wife, Elena, has been haunted by a figure since she was a child – a tall, black silhouette with eyes like dying embers. He never appears in bright light...

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