Ghost stories from Ohio

The Machine’s Cough

It was the autumn of ’91, and I was staying over at Marcus’s place in the old farmhouse his family had rented since the foreclosure on their own home. His...

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The Linen Closet

I’ve told this to a few people, and most of them just nod and smile like I’m telling a ghost story around a campfire. They don’t get that it’s not...

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The Salt Marsh Toll

The summer of 2009 had been brutally dry, and by the time August bled into September, the salt marsh behind my aunt’s house in coastal Georgia had shrunk to a...

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The Constant Companion

My childhood was a locked room. I don’t mean that metaphorically. There was an actual room, in the basement of a house that smelled of mildew and stale beer. My...

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The Hollow Floor

My wife and I had just moved into a charming old house on the outskirts of a small town called Millbrook, nestled in the Appalachian foothills. The house had a...

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The Hollow Door

I was eleven when we moved to the old farmhouse outside of Cuyahoga Falls, and I hated every splintered step of it. The place had been in my stepfather’s family...

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The Penumbra Pact

I never believed in the sanctity of maps. To me, they were just lines and colors, a way to make the chaos of the world feel ordered. That was before...

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The Last Tenant

I first noticed it the night I moved into the old apartment on the edge of town, a place that had been vacant for months and rented at a suspiciously...

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The Crooked Hands in the Photograph

In the late summer of 2009, I got a call from my grandfather, not my grandmother. He told me that my aunt, who was like a second mother to me,...

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The Grain of the Wood

The beginning, for me, was the summer I turned nine. My older brother, Connor, came back from a youth group trip to a dusty mission town called Barrow Creek, carrying...

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The Mirror’s Tremor

At the age of eight, I thought we had moved to the edge of the world. Our new home was a two-story colonial at the end of a gravel road...

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The Last Bell

That summer, my father, my stepmother, and I were part of the Harbor House program, which offered shelter to four homeless families. We spent alternate weeks in a run-down motel...

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The Painted Door

My friend Callie and I had just stepped into my aunt’s farmhouse after a long evening at the county fair. My aunt was in the kitchen, wiping down the counters,...

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The Grey Folder

My name is Delia Marsh, and I’m new to this forum, though I’ve been a quiet observer for years. Now I finally have the courage to share what happened to...

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The Hollow Mannequin

I’m not going to tell you the name of the town, or the school, or even my real name. You can call me Danny. It doesn’t matter. What matters is...

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The Late Night Static

When I was four, we lived in a two-story farmhouse in the flatlands of central Nebraska. My room was at the top of the stairs, and my older sister, Beth,...

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The Linen Press

That summer, the heat clung to the red-brick walls of our row house like a second skin, and the air inside tasted of dust and old wood. My mother had...

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The Hollow in the Hall

When I moved into Marcus’s farmhouse in the autumn of 2011, I knew it was old, but I didn’t know it was hungry. The place had been in his family...

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The Lantern Man

The three of us were scraping by that autumn, helping Mrs. Kessler with her paper route along the old county road that wound through the farmlands and scattered houses of...

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The Vault of Painted Doors

The key was heavy, an old iron thing with a bow shaped like a clover, and it turned in the lock with a groan that echoed down the narrow stairs....

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The Accordion Door Ritual

I grew up in a two-story Victorian in the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My family had moved there when I was four, and by the time I was nine, the...

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The Static Hum

My twin sister, Elara, and I had just moved into the old Fenwick house on the edge of a town that no longer appears on newer maps. The place had...

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The Umber Cadence

In the autumn of 1987, Dale was driving his band’s beat-up van down Old Mill Road, a winding stretch of asphalt that hugged the outskirts of Harlow, a town known...

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The Clocks in the Frost

The first thing I noticed was the cold. I’ve lived in this house for eight years, ever since my wife left and took the dog, leaving me with a mortgage...

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