Ghost stories from North Carolina

The Knocks On The Wall

I had been sleeping in my siblings’ bedroom because we had been partying all night and were sharing childhood stories. There were 3 people there, including myself. We probably had...

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“we Don’t Need You.”

So, for the past couple months I have been hearing voices. But, it’s not what you think. I am not schizophrenic, and I don’t have hallucinations or anything like that....

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My Sleep Paralysis Episode

I was sleeping in my bedroom on my back, and the room was bright white. I could only see the blanket that was on top of me, which was a...

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The Cold Frame

I mounted the trail cam on a cedar post at the edge of our property, aiming it so it caught the entire clearing behind the house. My wife, Evelyn, had...

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The Clockmaker’s Daughter

My family moved to the old Millbrook house in the autumn of 1997, when I was nine. The house was a sprawling Victorian with a wrap-around porch and a turret...

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The Glass That Breathed

I spent every summer of my childhood at my aunt and uncle’s lake house in the Pacific Northwest, a sleek, modern structure of glass and cedar that hung over the...

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The Backward Frame

I remember the smell of the airport—stale coffee and recycled air—and the way my husband, Mark, juggled our bags while the kids, Lily and Emma, bounced with post-flight energy. We...

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The Ironwood Incident

In the brittle autumn of 1987, my family moved into a rambling colonial house on the edge of Ironwood, a town that prided itself on being ‘quiet’ in a way...

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The Static in the Walls

The last time I posted anything was five years ago, when I was sixteen and terrified of the scratches that appeared on my bedroom walls each night. I called them...

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The Pockmarked Amber

Three autumns ago, my grandmother, Etta, bought a peculiar ring from a curio shop in the port town of Greyhaven, a place known for its fog and faded maritime legends....

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The Gown at the Foot of the Bed

When I was a boy, from the age of six until I turned twelve, my family lived in a small, two–bedroom house on the grounds of the Blackwood Correctional Institute...

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The Wooden Box Under the Stairs

In the autumn of 2009, I was nineteen and drifting through the couches of friends’ houses, a ghost in my own life. I’d crash at Chloe’s place for a week,...

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The Lantern in the Parlor

The summer I turned sixteen, the heat clung to everything like a second skin, and the only refuge was the cold, chlorinated water of Elsie’s above-ground pool. Elsie was two...

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The Amber Window

The first time I saw the amber windowpane was the last time I ever visited Marisol’s house. We’d been friends for two years, swapping mix CDs and comic books in...

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The Salt on the Windowsill

It was late autumn, the kind of night when the fog rolled in from the river and clung to the streets like wet laundry. I was in our rented farmhouse,...

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The Grease Trap

The summer I turned thirteen, my father got deployed to Fort Bragg, and my mother decided my twin sister Mara, our little sister June, and I would spend the season...

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The Frosted Doorknob

The rain clawed at the window like a thing trying to get in, each gust of wind rattling the glass in its frame. I sat in the old lighthouse keeper’s...

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The Constant in the Static

My name is Margaret, and at forty-nine, I thought I understood the quiet rhythms of my old farmhouse. It was a place of creaking floorboards and drafty windows, but it...

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The Lantern in the Loft

I never knew a normal night until I was nine. Before that, home was a sprawl of rust-stained white siding and a sagging porch, huddled beside a derelict Victorian that...

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The Blonde at the Railing

I never knew what to call her, but I saw her again last night, standing at the end of the hall, her hand resting on the dark oak banister of...

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The Blue Light of Room 3

I was six, maybe seven, when the old house on Cedar Lane started to feel too big for me. My room was at the end of a long hallway, and...

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The Lantern’s Reach

I’ve held onto this memory for a while, and only recently have I felt safe enough to put it into words. It was the autumn before last, and I was...

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The Candy-Gum Cache

The first time it happened, I was six, maybe seven, sitting cross-legged in front of the family’s old console TV in our cramped apartment on Cedar Street. My mother, a...

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The Slate-Colored Door

It had been three years since I last wrote about anything strange, and honestly, I thought that part of my life was over. I’m Marcus Hale, 22, and I live...

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