Ghost stories from Wisconsin

The Resonance in the Reeds

I was sixteen when I first realized the marsh wasn’t just quiet—it was listening. My family had moved to the edge of the Cranmoor Fen, a sprawling wetland that swallowed...

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The Mangrove Pact

I have a theory about the strange things that happen to some of us, but that can wait. The important part is that I don’t believe in ghosts. Or rather,...

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The Last Cuckoo

The old farmhouse on Mirewood Lane had stood for over a century, its clapboard siding weathered to a soft gray, its windows like dark, watchful eyes. My grandmother, Elsie, had...

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The Attic’s Tenant

The house on Maple Street had been my grandmother’s, and after she passed, it sat empty for years. My father, now 80, had moved in with his girlfriend, Clara, three...

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The Stairwell’s Persistence

The house on Maple Hollow Road was a Victorian relic with peeling paint and a porch that groaned underfoot. My parents bought it in the autumn of ’86, drawn by...

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The Crawlspace Covenant

I never believed in the old stories about Hollow Creek, not really. Sure, the town had its legends, but I figured they were just tales to scare kids and keep...

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The Quilted Afterimage

In 2014, my wife and I lived in a small, drafty farmhouse on the edge of a cornfield in rural Iowa. Our two dogs, an elderly Bichon Frise named Greta...

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The Winter of the Hollow House

In the autumn of my fifth year, our family traded the cramped quarters of a city apartment for a sprawling Victorian relic that stood alone on the windswept plains of...

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The Woman on the Old Spur Line

I grew up in a town carved out of the cornfields, where the only thing that cut through the flatness was the old railroad. They tore up the tracks when...

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The Dry Creek’s Turn

My grandmother’s cottage sat at the edge of the Ashworth pines, a narrow band of trees that ran along the base of Blackwood Hill. Through the center of that wood...

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The Unseen Tenant

Lena and I moved from Arizona to the quiet town of Millbrook in October 2010, settling into a charming but older duplex on Maple Street. It was the nicest place...

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The Cellar Tape

When I was twelve, my best friend Danny and I were obsessed with the paranormal. We lived in a small town called Ash Creek, and Danny’s family owned a large,...

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The Fourth Man

I remember the summer I turned nineteen, when my grandfather, Alonso, began his slow descent into the haze of sickness. He was a man of routine, a retired fisherman who...

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The Pale Passenger

It happened during the tail end of autumn, when the nights in the countryside feel like a held breath. I was driving a friend, Carla, back to her place in...

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The Hour Between the Clock Ticks

In the autumn of 1991, my family moved into a sprawling, century-old farmhouse on the outskirts of a small Wisconsin town called Lost Creek. The house had been empty for...

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The Stairwell Thread

Our house on Maple Street had a history that clung to its walls like old wallpaper. The previous owner, a respected music teacher named Mr. Harlan, had been discovered with...

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The Clockmaker’s Final Toll

My grandmother, Eleanor, was the heart of our family, and I was her favorite. She had a magical presence, a warmth that made her small, cluttered house in the dusty...

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The Long Stay

I’ve been on the road for fifteen years, laying fiber optic cable for a company that treats its techs like interchangeable parts. I’ve slept in every kind of flop from...

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The Hollow Pegasus

I didn’t think much of the old clock when I first saw it, dangling from a nail in the hallway of my new apartment. It was a grotesque thing—a brass...

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The Salt Grain Argument

I’ve never told anyone the full story. Not even my husband. Certain things are too strange to share, and some memories feel like they belong to someone else, a younger,...

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The Unheated Room

When I was a senior in high school, my family moved to a sprawling Victorian house in a small town in northern Minnesota. The house had a peculiar layout: the...

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The Lath and Plaster Man

In the autumn of 2004, my stepfather, a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant named Frank, traded his drill for a framing hammer. He dragged my stepbrother Leo and me, both fourteen,...

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The Grey Visitor of Hollow Oak

Ever since the autumn turned the leaves to rust, I have felt a presence in the corner of my mind, a stranger scratching at the edge of thought. The first...

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The Thing in the Attic Stairs

I’m twenty-three now, but I’ve been living in my grandmother’s old farmhouse since I was eight. It’s a sprawling, creaking place with a wrap-around porch and a tin roof that...

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