Ghost stories from Wisconsin

The Turn at Mile Marker 14

Six years had passed since the night my cousin Daniel died, but the road still felt like a wound that wouldn’t heal. I’d avoided it for years, taking the long...

Read Story →

The Hollow Vigil

I never should have agreed to cut through the old parish grounds. My friend Dana swore it was a shortcut, but the moment we stepped past the rusted gate, the...

Read Story →

The Hollow in the Floorboards

I spent my childhood in a house that breathed. Not the steady rhythm of a living thing, but the uneven, halting respiration of something that had forgotten how to die....

Read Story →

The Unseen Visitor at Night

For all my childhood, our home in Maple Creek felt watched. Odd events were a normal part of life there. One night, when I was fifteen, I was asleep in...

Read Story →

The Last Broadcast

It began, as these things often do, with a video. A grainy, amateurish clip of a dimly lit hallway, a door creaking open on its own, and a faint figure...

Read Story →

The Field in the Autumn Wind

I once told everyone that spirits were not real. I would never make that claim now, after what happened to us. It all began innocently enough. My cousin and I...

Read Story →

The Last Crayon

My mother, Elena, swears it happened when I was five, at a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, belonging to a man she was dating named Carl. The house sat...

Read Story →

The Hollow Hallway

I was fifteen, not sixteen, but close enough that the year blurs. It was a Tuesday in late October, the kind of cold that clings to the windows and makes...

Read Story →

The Stairwell’s Last Tenant

At nineteen, I thought I was invincible. After being kicked out of yet another school and burning every bridge in my hometown, I found myself standing in front of a...

Read Story →

Woken Up By A Crash

This happened to me roughly five to seven years ago. I believe I was thirteen at the time. I am often woken up in the middle of the night by...

Read Story →

The Static Hum

I’m Maya, and at sixteen, I’ve always been the light sleeper in our family. This summer, Dad dragged us to the dried-up mining town of Red Valley for a ‘historical...

Read Story →

The Last Door on Maple Street

I was 12, alone in our house on Maple Street, a two-story Victorian that had seen better decades. My sister was at a sleepover, my parents were at a dinner...

Read Story →

The Figures in the Old House

When I was ten, my family moved into my great-aunt’s house after she passed away. From the first night, I felt uneasy in my bedroom, as if unseen eyes were...

Read Story →

The Mud Man of Ashgrove House

When I was nine, we moved into my great-grandparents’ old house in the countryside, far from the city’s noise. The house, named Ashgrove after the ancient trees that lined the...

Read Story →

The Ledger in the Limewood

Our family’s old hunting lodge, Raven’s Hollow, sat deep in the Appalachian woods, a two-hour drive from the nearest town of Millbrook. It had been in our family since the...

Read Story →

The Secret of the Old Barn

In the quiet town of Maplewood, there stood an old barn on the outskirts, belonging to the Thompson family for generations. Every summer, the children would gather there to play...

Read Story →

The Linen Closet

When I was eleven, my cousin Elena and I shared a strange summer in my aunt’s old farmhouse. The house had a second floor that felt like a held breath,...

Read Story →

The Secrets of Maple Hill

When I was a child, my family moved into an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town. It was known as Maple Hill, named after the towering trees that surrounded...

Read Story →

The Tenant on Guthrie Road

I’ve never told this story to anyone who didn’t look at me like I was crazy, but I swear on my mother’s grave it’s true. It happened in the autumn...

Read Story →

The Lantern’s Last Trick

It was the last night of our cross-country move, and the old farmhouse we’d bought sight unseen creaked like a ship in a storm. The realtor had warned us about...

Read Story →

The Night of the Surprise

Last Saturday evening, my two daughters were staying over at their friend’s house. My wife and I decided it was the perfect opportunity to surprise them with a kitten. We...

Read Story →

The Locked Door’s Guest

The house on Cedar Lane was our fresh start, a two-story colonial with a sprawling backyard that promised endless summers. My room, at the end of the hallway, was a...

Read Story →

The Door That Moved

It was 3:45 in the afternoon, and the school bus had just dropped off the kids at the end of the gravel drive. Through the kitchen window, I watched Maya...

Read Story →

The Hollow Stables

The first time I saw the hollow stables, I thought they were beautiful. The weathered wood, the rusted hinges, the faint smell of hay and old leather—it all felt like...

Read Story →