Ghost stories from South Carolina

The Knocking

This was my first real experience with the paranormal, although as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with it, and read every book on the subject that...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Invitation

Three nights after the funeral, the dream came. I was standing in a vast, dimly lit hall, the kind you’d find in an old railway station, but the walls were...

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The Face in the Lantern Light

The cobblestone streets of Savannah were slick with a recent rain, and the iron lampposts cast a sickly amber glow that seemed to stretch our shadows into long, grasping fingers....

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The Grip of the Deep

The house on Mulberry Lane had always felt like a compromise. Not quite a home, but a place we could afford after the city drove us out. The pipes groaned...

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The Second Shift

I’ve never been one to believe in ghosts, not really. I’ve always been the practical type, the one who checks the carbon monoxide detector and locks the doors twice. But...

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The Last Visit in a Dream

My uncle came to live with us after his health began to fail. He had no one else nearby, and I had always felt a special bond with him, stronger...

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The Blue Sedan’s Promise

Five years ago, my grandmother, Edith, came to live with us. She was always my favorite relative, the one who taught me to appreciate the smell of rain on pavement...

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The Unreturned Call

The old farmhouse creaked and groaned around Elias like a dying beast. Dust motes danced in the weak shafts of moonlight piercing the grimy panes of the parlor window. His...

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The Blue Locket

It was the summer of 2018 when my cousin, Elena, asked me to take in her mother, my Aunt Rosa, who was battling a rare blood disease. Her kids were...

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The Hush in the Alcove

My grandmother’s house had an alcove on the second floor, a deep-set nook where the light always seemed to gather dust. It was the sort of place a child loves...

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The Carpet Skinner

I’ve always been a light sleeper, but last night was different. A dull, persistent ache throbbed behind my eyes, a migraine that refused to relent. I tried everything – reading,...

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The Phantom’s Gaze

Ever since I was a child, I’ve been haunted by the sensation of a presence behind me. It’s not a fleeting chill or a sudden shiver, but a constant, oppressive...

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The Porcelain Face

I was sixteen the summer we moved to the old farmhouse on Foxglove Lane. My parents had inherited it from a distant aunt, and they saw it as a fresh...

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The Static Hymn

Marnie and I had shared an apartment in the old Westerly building for three years. It was a crumbling pre-war walk-up, the kind where the radiators clanked like ghostly chains...

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The Shifting Bed

I never believed in ghosts, not really. When my great-aunt died and left me her old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, I thought I was getting a fresh start....

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The Static Gaze

The house on Aster Lane had always breathed. It was a slow, deliberate rhythm that you felt in the floorboards, in the way the windows rattled in their frames even...

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The Cupboard’s Lament

In the autumn of 2004, when I was seventeen, I lived with my mother and my younger brother, Theo, in a ramshackle farmhouse on the outskirts of a town called...

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The Pale Glow of the Fifth Stair

I had not slept in the upstairs bedroom for eight months, not since the night the pressure on my side had become so unbearable that I swore I saw the...

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The Ledger of Last Rites

The summer of 2007 was sticky and unforgiving in Savannah, Georgia, a city where the past refuses to stay buried. My daughter, Lily, had just turned eight, and my older...

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The Hollow Man in the Spare Room

The house on Meridian Lane had always creaked in ways that felt deliberate, as if it were testing the weight of each footstep. When I moved in with my daughter,...

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The Clockwork Lullaby

Maya had always been a woman of logic, a former believer turned atheist, then a brief flame of faith, and now a skeptical agnostic. But the absence of God never...

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The Crease in the Linen

Three mornings ago, I found my four-year-old daughter, Eliza, sitting bolt upright in her bed, her small hands clenched around the quilt, her eyes wide and fixed on the closet...

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The Glass Door’s Arithmetic

The house on Mercer Lane was supposed to be a fresh start, a modern glass-and-cedar structure that bled light into the cold Maine autumn. Clara had chosen it for the...

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