Ghost stories from Utah

The Door That Breathed

I’ve always considered myself fortunate. In thirty-seven years, I’d only encountered the inexplicable a handful of times, and each encounter was a brief, sharp shock that faded by morning. I...

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The Unfinished Chime

The old mill house on Weaver’s Lane was never quiet, but the silence that settled over it that autumn felt different, like a held breath. I was eight, and my...

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The Bone Gate

I have lived with the wrongness for as long as I can recall. It settled into my bones like a chill that no fire could chase, and I have long...

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The Cold Intruder

Four years have passed, yet the chill of that July night still lingers in my bones, a phantom cold that no blanket can chase away. My husband, Daniel, and I...

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The Rag Man’s Gift

I was twelve when we inherited the house from my grandfather’s estranged brother, a man I’d only seen in sepia photographs. My father, a practical man, saw it as a...

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The Groaning Pillar

My name is Mira, and I’m fifteen. I live in a crumbling Victorian house on the edge of a fog-choked valley in Oregon, where the old-growth trees press against the...

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The Constant at Mile 4

Marta had always been a night owl, but her doctor had recently advised her to get more exercise. Her apartment complex had a walking track that looped around a small,...

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The Call of the Drain

I’ve heard my name called in empty rooms for as long as I can remember. As a child, it was my mother’s voice, sweet and lilting, drifting from the hallway...

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The Hollow Oak Locket

The first time I saw the locket, it was wedged between the floorboards of my closet, just behind a loose nail that caught the hem of my jeans. Our new...

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The House on Larkspur Lane

When I was a kid, my family lived in a sprawling Victorian on Larkspur Lane. The house had been in our family for generations, and it was always the gathering...

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The Kestrel’s Fence

The town of Marrow’s Bend sat in a high desert valley, three hours from the nearest interstate, where the only chain store was a single Piggly Wiggly and the county...

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The Blue Pattern

The summer I turned sixteen, my half-brother, Leo, packed his duffel bag and went to live with our mother for a while, complaining about the long drives to his new...

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The Marble in the Gap

My first encounter with the other side happened when I was six, though I didn’t understand it then. It was a sweltering August afternoon, and I was sprawled on my...

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The Circuit Breaker’s Child

The house had no name, but we gave it one: the Behemoth. It squatted at the end of a dirt road that wound through pines so old they seemed to...

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The Salt Line

In the autumn of 2016, my husband and I moved into our first apartment in the coastal town of Dunsmouth. We had been living with his grandmother, but after we...

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The Charred Visitor

In the humid summer of 1994, my mother, Elaine, was a regular at ‘SunKissed Tanning’, a small salon tucked between a dry cleaner and a 24-hour diner in the outskirts...

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The Brass Key

When I was nine, we moved into my grandmother’s old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley, a sprawling, two-story structure with peeling paint and a cellar that always smelled of damp...

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The Missing Patch

When I first moved into the Maple Court apartments with my mother, I thought the building had a certain charm—old brick, creaky stairs, and a courtyard with a single, gnarled...

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The Imprint of Cold Fingers

I was eight when we moved to the town of Ashwick, into a brand-new housing development on the edge of an old forest. The house was sterile, smelling of fresh...

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The Salt Line

My mother and I had been living with Uncle Pete for about three weeks. Pete worked on a fishing trawler out of Dutch Harbor, and he was gone for a...

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The Rhythm of the Dripping Tap

It began three weeks after we moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the marsh. My name is Lila, and my partner, Marcus, had been drawn to the...

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The Silent Seam

In the autumn of 1983, Ray Bennett was a man of the earth, born and raised in the smoky valley of Carbonville, where the coal dust had settled into every...

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The Hissing Coils

My husband, Daniel, has always been a skeptic. He’s an engineer, a man who trusts in circuits and equations, not in the cold breath on the back of his neck...

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The Creak of the Stair

Three nights ago, my father and I went to see an old gothic film at the Majestic, a run-down theater on the edge of town that still smelled of stale...

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