Ghost stories from Oklahoma

The Last Bus Stop on Mulberry Lane

My name is Ellie, and I’ve never been one to believe in premonitions. But when I was nine, I had a dream that our house on Juniper Street was sinking...

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The Painted Window

We moved to the edge of the Arkansas woods when I was ten, into a house my mother had inherited from a great-aunt she never spoke of. The place was...

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The Clothesline of the Forgotten

Three weeks ago, I moved with my family into a sprawling farmhouse on the edge of the Crow Valley, a place so isolated that our nearest neighbor was a retired...

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The Sunday Note

In the autumn of last year, I lived with my mother, Clara, and her husband, Gerald, in a small town called Millbrook, nestled near the edge of a dark forest....

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The Clothesline of Thorns

The day we moved into the old farmhouse, the realtor had said, ‘It’s a fixer-upper, but the bones are good.’ I should have listened to the hesitation in her voice,...

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The Keepsake Cabinet

When we first walked through the heavy oak door of the Harlow House, I felt an unexpected warmth, a sense of welcome that seemed to seep from the aged plaster...

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The Hat Man of Pine Grove

It was the autumn after my divorce, and I was still adjusting to life in the small mountain town of Pine Grove. My sister, Lena, and her friend, Marcus, had...

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The Weeping Glass

I’ve always seen them, the quiet ones who drift at the edges of the world. My grandmother called it ‘the sight’, but it was never a gift; it was more...

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The Blue Atlas Quilt

In the late autumn of 2018, my parents bought a decaying Victorian on the outskirts of Asheville, North Carolina, a house with a sagging porch and a garden gone feral....

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The Lamplight Contract

In the autumn of 1987, my husband and I moved into his grandmother’s old farmhouse. We were newlyweds, expecting our first child, and the house was a refuge from our...

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The Weight of His Arms

Three years had passed since my uncle Elias had left this world, but the grief had settled into my bones like a slow poison. He had been my anchor after...

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The Porcelain Watchers

In the autumn of 1984, eight-year-old Elara lived with her father and two older brothers in a creaking farmhouse on the edge of a dying orchard. Her mother had vanished...

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The Static in the Lamplight

I never believed in the supernatural until I moved to the dry, wind-scoured town of Garnet Flats, where the only whispers were the ones the dust made against the windows....

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The Hat in the Half-Light

My grandmother’s house had stood on the corner of Maple and Third for as long as anyone could remember, its peeling white paint and sagging porch steps a testament to...

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The Blue Room

I’ve always been sensitive to the unseen, a gift or curse I’ve had since I can remember. At twelve, I see things others don’t, feel presences that others dismiss. My...

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The Tenth Step

I was born and raised in a cramped suburb outside of Phoenix, where the desert sun bleached everything to the color of old bone. When I was twelve, my father’s...

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The Pinewood Visitor

It was the autumn of 2012, and the world was still mourning the sudden passing of my cousin, Elena. She had been a vibrant soul, a painter who filled her...

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The Keepsake Order

Six months after we moved into the bungalow on Maplewood Lane, I had already mapped every inch of my room with the precision of a cartographer. My stuffed animals, each...

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The Game at the Holloway House

My introduction to the Holloway family was a blur of handshakes and polite smiles, but the house itself was the real character. It sat at the end of a winding...

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The Belt in the Fog

The apartment on Marrow Lane wasn’t much: two bedrooms, a kitchen that doubled as a dining room, and a living room with a window that looked out onto a perpetually...

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The Locked Drawers

Two years after my mother’s brush with a Ouija board, I turned eight, and strange things began to stir around me. My mother and first stepfather had split, and we...

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The Pinewood Cabinet

My first encounter with the other side came when I was six, in the autumn of 1974, in a small town called Millbrook, nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian...

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The Last Clean

I still think about that night, four years ago, in the old farmhouse we rented on the edge of a dying town in the Texas panhandle. The house had this...

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The Unopened Lock

It was the summer we moved into the old farmhouse on Marrow Lane, a place my daughter called the ‘gray house’ because of its weathered, sun-bleached siding. My husband, Daniel,...

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