Ghost stories from Vermont

The Gasping Field

The summer that the corn refused to ripen, we learned that some thirsts are older than the soil. I remember the nights most vividly, when the air hung thick and...

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The Cold Draft

I’ve never told this to anyone except my brother, and even he looked at me like I was crazy. But I know what I felt that night, and it still...

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Elara had always navigated the world with a fine-tuned sensitivity to the spectral. Her inherited cottage, perched precariously on the windswept moors of Cumbria, often felt like a crowded boarding...

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The Shadow in the Old Room

I have always sensed things others cannot, glimpses of those who have passed on. Our home shifts between perfect quiet and sudden, unexplained noises. Last spring, I swapped bedrooms with...

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The Unseen Gardener’s Bloom

The old farmhouse had always felt too large for Elara and her younger brother, Finn. Nestled deep within a sprawling acreage far from any neighbors, its silence was usually a...

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The Bureau of Unfinished Business

When my wife and I moved into the old Harlow house in the autumn of 2019, we laughed at the realtor’s nervous jokes about the previous owner’s ‘eccentricities.’ We were...

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The Cup and the Coin

The first time I noticed anything wrong was three autumns ago, in the old farmhouse my uncle left me. I’d moved from the city to escape the noise, and the...

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The Salt-Glass Window

I was nine when the state took me from my mother’s trailer, and eleven when I landed at the Severn Crossings Home for Children, a converted Victorian orphanage perched on...

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The Rotwood Stalker

I’ve always had the sight, as my grandmother called it. Since I was a kid, I’ve seen things that shouldn’t be: flickering wraiths, snarling imps, even a towering guardian of...

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The Hour of Needles

The apartment had a strange smell, like burnt almonds and damp plaster, that I’d never noticed before. I’d lived here for three years, but today, as I pulled the dusty...

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The Bootheel Incident

The old farmhouse sat at the end of a gravel road, five miles from the nearest neighbor. It was the newest account for Pine Hollow Property Management, a job I’d...

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The Ledger in the Attic

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve devoured ghost stories—books, podcasts, grainy documentaries—always hoping that one day I’d see something real. I never imagined it would happen in my own...

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The Constant in the Static

The first time I saw it was in the basement of my girlfriend’s parents’ house, three years into our relationship. We’d been dating for a year and a half, and...

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The Hollow in the Wall

I know what you’re thinking. Another newbie with a wild tale, trying to earn their stripes in the ghost story circuit. I get it. I wouldn’t believe me either. But...

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The Static Visitor

The first time I noticed something was wrong was on a Tuesday in late October, 1994. I was living in a run-down apartment above a vacant laundromat in a small...

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The Last Manuscript

I was a graduate student at the Ashford School of Arts, tucked away in the fog-draped hills of coastal Maine. The program was low-residency, so twice a year I’d spend...

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The Couch with the Hollow Back

It was the summer of 2008, and I was living out of my old sedan with my cat, Marbles, a gray tabby with a penchant for finding the one warm...

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The Hollow Beat of the Barn

I was eleven that autumn, left alone on the farm while my parents drove the harvest into town. We’d done it a hundred times before, so I wasn’t scared at...

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The Cat Pajama Loop

A week after I moved into the restored Victorian on Maple Street, I started sensing a presence in the house—a flicker of movement at the edge of my vision, the...

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