Ghost stories from North Dakota

The Empty Classroom

The old high school in Millbrook had a reputation, but not for ghosts. It was just old, with creaky floors and drafty windows. I’d never believed in the rumors, not...

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The Cardboard Box in the Projection Booth

My third week at the Rialto, a sun-bleached movie palace that had been showing first-run features since the Carter administration. The owner, Mr. Albright, a man whose face seemed to...

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The Last Cruise Night

My father, Arthur, had been best friends with Marcus since high school. They shared everything: a love for classic cars, late-night poker games, and the kind of unspoken bond that...

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The Hollow Thresher

The dust on the county road was thick enough to swallow footprints, and for Elian, it was just another Tuesday in the fall of 1932. The one-room schoolhouse at Clearwater...

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The Blue Door in the Beech House

We’d just moved from the dusty Nebraska flatlands to this clapboard town in Maine, and I was a scrawny seven-year-old with a summer stretching out like an endless road. My...

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The Listener’s Debt

My name is Elias Thorne, and I’ve been a lighthouse keeper on the isolated Parnassus Rock for nearly a decade. The solitude is a comfort, the rhythm of the sea...

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The Hollow Door

The old farmhouse had a way of holding its breath. Every floorboard groaned with secrets, and the walls seemed to press in like they were listening. My room, at the...

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The Last Cold Morning

The wind off the North Sea had teeth that December, gnawing through the insulation of the base housing like it was paper. Corporal Maya Reyes had just returned from her...

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The Vanishing Signal

The August heat was thick and wet, pressing down on the marshland like a second skin. I was twelve, spending the summer with my grandmother in the isolated town of...

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The Fast Brushing Ritual

I moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the marsh on a damp October afternoon. The real estate agent, a man named Mr. Harlow, had a nervous twitch...

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The Last Frame

In the autumn of 2016, I moved into a small, isolated cabin in the mountains of New Hampshire, hoping to escape the noise of the city and finish my novel....

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The Third Stroke

I’ve spent my whole life with one foot in the unseen world. Growing up, my grandmother called it a gift, but it’s more like a curse you learn to carry....

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The Granite Lullaby

The first time I noticed the cold spot, I was standing in the nursery we’d just painted a soft sage green. The room faced the backyard, where the old granite...

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The Persimmon Tree’s Vigil

Ever since I turned thirteen, the invisible seams of the world have felt loose to me. I’ve grown used to a certain amount of static in the back of my...

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The Glass Moth

The house on Cinder Lane had always been a quiet one, nestled at the end of a cul-de-sac where the streetlights flickered at dusk like dying fireflies. When Elara moved...

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The Unplugged Lamp

It started, as these things often do, with a minor domestic disturbance. A Tuesday morning, unremarkable save for the drizzle that slicked the windows of my rented bungalow on Harbinger...

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The Gearbox Chime

The first time I heard the chime, I thought it was a faulty alarm on one of the forklifts. A thin, metallic ringing, like a spoon tapping a glass, but...

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The Hollow Grounds

I was a summer counselor at Camp Cedarwood, tucked in the rolling hills of Vermont. One drizzly staff weekend, after the campers had gone home, we sat around the fire...

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The Pale Lantern

It was the autumn I turned ten that my family drove the winding mountain roads to my aunt’s isolated farmhouse for the harvest gathering. The house, a rambling Victorian with...

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The Static Between Floors

The click was so faint I almost missed it, a soft metallic tick from the hallway that cut through the hum of the fridge. I was curled on the couch,...

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The Ten-Inch Knot

My therapist said I should write it down, get it out of my head, make it something I can hold. So here it is. I don’t expect you to believe...

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The Stalker in the Corn

My grandfather, Elias, was a man of few words and even fewer lies. At seventy-three, he had seen enough of life to know that the truth, no matter how strange,...

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The Cinder House on Ash Lane

The summer I turned nineteen, I lived in a cramped duplex with my boyfriend Marcus and our friend Eli. Eli’s girlfriend, Nora, was a medium, and she often stayed over,...

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The Third Night

Marta had always considered the old farmhouse a sanctuary, a place where the hum of the city was a distant memory. She lived there with her partner, Julian, and their...

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