Ghost stories from Washington

The Debt Collector’s Ledger

In the arid expanse of New Mexico, where the desert sun bleaches bones and secrets alike, Mara had spent eighteen years feeling the weight of a promise she made at...

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The Weight of Air

Dr. Alan Marsh had spent twenty years in the same elementary school, first as a hall monitor during his residency, then as the school physician. The building was a testament...

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The Painted Bride of Ward 13

After the incident at the old paper mill, I thought my dealings with the unexplained were finished. For three months, nothing. Just the hum of my apartment, the squeak of...

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The Weeping Fig

I’ve been renting the ground floor of an old Victorian house on Juniper Street for about eight months now. The landlady, Mrs. Halloway, lives upstairs with her adult son, but...

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The Ceiling Light

We moved into the Meridian Flats six months ago, eager for a fresh start in the new building. The walls were pristine white, the floors polished concrete, and the air...

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The Tailor’s Last Stitch

My grandmother’s house was a fortress of creaking floors and cold drafts, a Victorian relic that had stood on the same corner for a century and a half. I’d lived...

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The Hour of the Quiet Room

The motel room smelled of stale smoke and bleach, a combination that clung to the curtains even after Mrs. Alvarez had sprayed lavender mist. She lay on her side of...

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The Painted Path

I never thought I’d tell this story, but lately, I’ve felt this urge to get it out before it buries me completely. My name is Elias, and I’m nineteen now....

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The Creak of Linoleum

I’m Margaret, and I’ve always had a sixth sense for the unseen, but that night in our new home in Salem, Oregon, tested me in ways I never expected. We...

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The Floor’s Clockwork

When I was six, my family moved into a dilapidated farmhouse on the edge of Willow Creek, a town that seemed to exist only in the space between map lines....

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The Woman in the Hollow

The house sat at the far end of a gravel road, a two-story farmhouse swallowed by cottonwoods and weeds. I was three, maybe four, when we lived there, and the...

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The Draft

I worked the graveyard shift at the cannery, the hiss of steam and clatter of tin cans for eight hours straight. By the time I trudged up the three flights...

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The Night the Beetles Came

It started with the neighbor’s dog. I was out on the porch of my rented farmhouse, sipping coffee at 2 a.m., the usual insomnia hour. The dog, a mangy mutt...

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The Third Tenant

The new apartment complex was called The Meridian, a name that sounded like a promise of clean lines and orderly living. I’d moved there after the studio with Nate became...

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The Knocking Code

I was eleven when we moved into the old farmhouse at the edge of the salt flats. My father had inherited it from a great-uncle he barely remembered, a man...

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The Photographic Memory

The house on Maple Hollow Road was a mistake from the start. My parents fell in love with its high ceilings and the wraparound porch, but I noticed the way...

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The Saffron Sliver

When Marcus and I moved into the old farmhouse on the outskirts of Maple Hollow, I chalked up the unease to the chipping paint and the way the floorboards groaned....

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The Urn in the Attic

I never believed in ghosts until I moved into the old farmhouse on Hemlock Road. My father and stepmother had found it after a cross-country move, a sprawling Victorian relic...

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The Mirror at the Landing

The house on Birchwood Lane was a remnant of another century, a sprawling Victorian with peeling wallpaper and floorboards that sang with every step. My grandmother left it to me,...

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The Man Who Left No Trace

Ever since my first article hit the pages of a local magazine, I’ve become an accidental medium. It started with a whisper in my ear, then a glimpse of a...

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The Man in the Dark Hallway

I was twelve when I first noticed the hallway. My family had just moved into the old house on Crane Street, a two-story Victorian with peeling wallpaper and floors that...

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The Chair at the Door

It had been nine months since the city’s sewage had surged through our home, and the lingering smell of damp decay still clung to the floorboards. My name is Leo,...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Ledger

I never believed in ghosts, not really. I believed in drafts and creaking floorboards, in the way old houses settle their bones. But when my mother and sister packed us...

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The Cinder Warden’s Bargain

Elara had always been drawn to the old ways, the whispered traditions that predated the gleaming towers of New Corinth. Her apartment, a cramped nest on the 47th floor, was...

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