Ghost stories from North Carolina

The Metal Pipe in the Hall

My name is Elena, and I live in a third-floor walk-up in a brick building that smells of boiled cabbage and old perfume. It’s the kind of place where the...

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The Glass Door

It was a raw, gray afternoon in March when I found myself sprawled on the couch at my friend Elara’s place, watching her practice back handsprings on the front lawn....

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The Static in the Walls

My name is Elara, and I’ve lived in this creaking Victorian on Hemlock Lane for seven years, ever since I was nine. At first, the house was just old, with...

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The Dove’s Lament

Six months after we moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the marsh, I started feeling it. Not a draft, not a creak—something else. A presence, like a...

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The Man in the Porkpie Hat

It happened two autumns ago in a rented cottage on the fog-blunted coast of Maine. I was there with my cousin, Leo, and our aunt, Margaret. The cottage was a...

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The Stain That Would Not Fade

I’d never believed in ghosts, not really. My sister did, with a fervor that bordered on religious, and she’d dragged me to every supposedly haunted site within a hundred miles...

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The Stilted Hand

The night the levee broke, the water came to our street like a dark, oily snake, and the power died with a gasp. I was nine, and my mother, Della,...

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The Carousel at Foster’s Point

I worked the summer of ’86 at Foster’s Point, a faded seaside amusement park that had seen better decades. My job was to keep an eye on the old carousel,...

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The Final Toll of the Sycamore

In the autumn of 2009, my family moved into a rundown farmhouse on the edge of a town called Hollow Creek. The house itself was a relic, its paint peeling...

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The Bend in Willow Creek

The summer my mother finished school, a boy named Leo died near his home. He was young, just seventeen, and the accident happened only a month after their final ceremony....

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The Pinch at 5:16

The first time it happened, I blamed the space heater. The old farmhouse we rented had drafty windows and a furnace that groaned like a dying animal, so we kept...

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The Switchback

I never believed in ghosts until I moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of Harlan County. My great-aunt Ethel had just passed, and the place was left to...

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The Crooked Stitch

The old mill had stood silent for thirty years, its red brick walls crumbling and its windows like empty eye sockets. I lived in the row of company houses that...

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The Fourth Wall

Elena had always been a practical woman, a civil engineer who believed in load-bearing walls and solid foundations. When her son, Marco, started complaining about the strange noises in his...

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The Static in the Wires

The first time I heard it, I was alone in my attic apartment, the one with the sloped ceiling and the one window that looked out onto a brick wall....

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The Button Almanac

When the Larkin family moved into their new house in the quiet town of Millbrook, they were thrilled by the sprawling lawn and the giant oak tree in the backyard....

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The Missing Oak

When Marisol first stepped into the old house on Juniper Street, she felt a chill that had nothing to do with the autumn breeze. The place was a relic, a...

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The Mysterious Voice from the Speaker

It began on a quiet evening when I found myself home alone, enjoying the sounds of my favorite pop songs. The volume was high, and I was lost in the...

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The Keeper of the Third Floor

In the autumn of 1972, I was twenty-two and had just moved to the small coastal town of Port Blaire to work as a live-in assistant for the elderly Mrs....

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The Last Passenger of Car 7

I never expected to see him again, not after the way he vanished last winter. My name is Elias, and I’ve spent the past three years as the night caretaker...

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The Phantom of Sunset Crossing

Two bridges cross the river at Harrow’s Pass, one modern and one forgotten. The old Sunset Crossing has been closed for years. Long ago, a traveler’s wagon broke down on...

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The Knot of Reeds

The old Harlow Crossing had been a lifeline once, a ribbed iron spine thrown across the Quinsigamond River where it slowed into dark, tea-colored pools. That was before the new...

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The Late Shift at Marlowe House

My brother and I had a small cleaning business in the old mill town of Ashford. We took any job that came our way, but our most regular client was...

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A Shadow in the Hallway

I was staying at my grandfather’s house. He had passed away almost a year ago. One evening, I was reading a book in the front room when a cool draft...

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