Ghost stories from Texas

The Grey Man’s Vigil

The house itself, I know very little about its history. My parents purchased it in the late seventies, and I grew up within its walls. When they decided to move...

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The Unpacking

Our apartment on Meridian Street had always felt temporary, a way station between the life we left and the one we were building. The walls were thin, the floors sloped,...

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The Lantern’s Debt

The winter we moved into the old farmhouse, I told myself the creaks were just the wind. The previous tenants, a young couple, had left in a hurry, abandoning furniture...

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The Unfound Gate

This story is told on the account of my sister, Cara. She lived in a cramped duplex on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, with her boyfriend, Julian, while she attended...

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The Warden of the Quiet Hours

I was twelve when the world began to warp at the edges, a trick of the light that never quite resolved no matter how many times I blinked. My family...

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The Porcelain Rabbit

We moved into the old Hollis place in the summer of ’97, when I was eleven. The house sat at the end of a gravel lane, its porch sagging like...

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The Lens of the Unseen

When I was nine, the world began to blur at the edges. Not just in the way that makes you squint at the chalkboard, but a deeper vagueness, as if...

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The Hummingbird Protocol

The first time it happened, I was in the old Pickman house on Mulberry Lane, a place my aunt had inherited from a great-uncle who had been a collector of...

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The Brume

The old house on Marrow Lane had a way of pressing its weight onto you the moment you stepped through the door. The foyer was a cramped square of peeling...

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The Basement of the Beehive House

In the summer of 1987, when I was six, my father drove my older brother and me to the high desert to visit our great-aunt Maribel. Her home was a...

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The Pantry of Smells

My name is Elara, and I’ve always had a peculiar sensitivity to the unseen. Since childhood, I could feel the emotional residue left in spaces, like a faint scent of...

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The Porcelain Keepsake

The old house had always felt like a living thing, its floorboards creaking like tired bones, its windows weeping with condensation. When I inherited it from my great-aunt, I knew...

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The Gilded Threshold

In the autumn of 1987, a young woman named Clara chose a going-away present for her fiancé, Marcus, who had just enlisted in the Coast Guard. She wandered into a...

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The Bleached Hare

My name is Eleanor, and for as long as I can remember, the world has never felt quite solid. I grew up in the late ’80s in a dusty little...

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The Cicada Choir

My grandmother, Elena, used to say that our family was a lightning rod for the unseen. But it wasn’t until I was eleven that I learned why. We had just...

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The Unquiet Orchard

I’ve heard a dozen tales about the old Motley farm, but none of them prepared me for what I saw with my own eyes. My girlfriend, Lena, her mother, and...

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The Last Bell at Hollow Creek

On a frost-bitten December morning, I stood at the edge of the playground, my breath misting in the air as I watched the other kids laugh and tumble in the...

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The Hollow Between Breaths

Marla had always been a restless sleeper. From the age of thirteen, she’d wake in odd corners of her childhood home, her palms pressed against cold walls, her heart hammering...

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The Ceiling’s Second Skin

My name is Mara, and I’m sixteen. I live in a converted mill town in the Pacific Northwest, where the rain never really stops and the old brick buildings hold...

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The Lantern of the Unsettled

My sister-in-law, Delia, had moved in with us after my brother, Marcus, had left her high and dry with a newborn and a toddler. I couldn’t turn my back on...

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The Constant Companion

My name is Elias Vance, and this is the story of how I learned to live with something that should not exist. It began when I was seven, in the...

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The Cell Block Visitor

In the autumn of 2012, I was working as a corrections officer at the Northgate Correctional Facility, a sprawling complex of concrete and steel nestled in the high desert of...

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The Cushion’s Secret

The Harper family had lived in their creaky Victorian on Maple Street for eleven years, long enough to know every groan and shadow. But that October evening, the house felt...

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The Last Carousel

In the autumn of 1987, the town of Crayburn Hollow had just finished constructing Millbrook Fair, a sprawling amusement park built on the site of a drained cranberry bog. The...

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