Ghost stories from Texas

The Faucet’s Lullaby

I’ve been living in the basement unit of a crumbling Victorian house on Bramble Street for seven months now. It’s a two-bedroom, but we only use one; the other is...

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The Tether

The first time I saw him, I was seven, and the summer heat was so thick you could almost chew it. Our house sat at the end of a long...

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The Quilted Keeper

The day we moved into the rusted trailer at the edge of Ponderosa Pines, I told myself the creaking was just the metal bones of the place settling. My best...

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The Stare of the Hollow Man

In the autumn of 1972, my sister Elena brought a man named Carl to our farm on the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas. Carl was from a small town called Giddings,...

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The Ledger of Unbound Hours

In the autumn of my sixteenth year, I found a book in the basement of the Meridian County Archive—a place where the living rarely lingered and the dead seemed to...

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The Curtain of Bone and Ash

Marisol had lived in the same apartment complex on the edge of the Salt Flats for forty years, but she had never once called it home. The walls were thin,...

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The Paint on the Third Floor

Lena woke to the soft gray of a February dawn, her husband Marcus already half-dressed in the shadows near the closet. He crossed to the bed and kissed her forehead,...

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The Pillar of Salt

The salt flat stretched to the horizon, a bleached, brittle crust over the ancient lakebed. Our rental car—a dusty sedan with a failing air conditioner—coughed along the single-lane gravel road...

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The Crying Stairwell

My mother, Clara, used to tell me stories about the strange things she encountered in her youth. Most were forgettable, but one always lingered in my mind. It happened when...

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The Porcelain Key

The last time I saw the house on Birchwood Lane, the porch light was flickering like a dying star. I had driven eight hours from the city to help my...

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The Lamp at the Edge of the Field

At the edge of the Petersen’s farm, there stood a solitary lamp post that had been dead for years. I used to think it was just a rusted relic from...

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The Unpaused Game

In the autumn of 2011, I was at my friend Danny’s house, a sprawling Victorian relic on the edge of our small town. Danny and our other friend, Leo, were...

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The Weeping Ash

In the salt-bitten town of Port Orford, Oregon, where the Pacific gnawed at cliffs and the rains fell like gray curtains, I grew up in a house that sagged on...

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The Static-Faced Woman

We were in my friend Mira’s basement, huddled in a fort of old quilts and couch cushions. The summer heat above us was a weight, but down here it was...

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The Wall Between

It was a small, tidy house on the edge of town, its red brick facade worn smooth by years of rain. We moved in when our daughter, Lila, was two,...

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The Blue Crayon

My name is Evelyn, and this begins in the winter of my junior year. I was obsessed with old parlor games, anything that promised a glimpse beyond the veil. My...

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The Brass Chain

The summer I turned nine, we left the cramped apartment in the city and moved into my grandfather’s old house in the foothills of the Appalachians. The house had been...

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The Brass Key to the North Wing

I’ve known some peculiar souls in my time, but my friend Owen takes the cake. He claims to have a gift, a sensitivity that lets him see things others can’t....

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The Cold Trap

I was eleven, maybe twelve, the summer we moved to my grandmother’s old house in the dusty outskirts of Marfa. The place was a relic, all creaking floorboards and peeling...

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The Cardboard Celestial

In the autumn of 1987, the Finch house sat at the end of a gravel lane, its peeling white paint and sagging porch a testament to better days. Inside, the...

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The Bulb in the Root Cellar

In the autumn of 1987, my family moved into an old farmhouse on the edge of a sprawling soybean field, a place that had been vacant for years. The previous...

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The Pale Corridor

I was born in the flat, sun-scorched lands of eastern New Mexico, in a town so small it didn’t appear on most maps. The name I won’t give, because the...

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The Blue Thread of the Loom

I was eleven when the first thread came loose. It happened on a Tuesday, during my grandmother’s funeral. Not her death—that had been a quiet, expected thing, like the last...

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The Saltwood Ledger

Between the ages of five and nine, I sometimes felt a cold draft in my bedroom, even with the windows shut and the radiator hissing. A weight would settle at...

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