#folklore

What are ghost stories, anyway?

It was a dark, foggy night, as it really should be whenever something eerie happens. I was walking from my dad’s house over to my mom’s. I’d had a fight with my dad about something, the topic of which I’ve since forgotten, and realized at 17 years old that I was old enough and capable enough to walk alone back to my mom’s house, instead of stewing in my room at dad’s. Besides, both of my sisters were asleep already, so I wasn’t worried about them not getting their homework done or needing help…

I remember that night all too vividly, as if the memories were etched into my very soul. It was a cold, moonless evening, the kind that sends shivers down your spine and makes you wish for the warmth and safety of home. But little did I know that home would offer no sanctuary from the horrors that awaited me.

When I was eleven years old, my family lived in a small, blue, relatively remote house in northern Sweden. The rear of the house had a small deck facing a dense old-growth pine and spruce forest, while the front had a garage, a shed for firewood, and a fairly large lawn. My little brother, Oskar, had just been born about a month prior, and my parents were beginning to settle into their new routine. On the day in question, my father was away shopping for groceries, while my mother was inside…

[Originally posted to a paranormal forum in March 2023, split across four posts because of the character limit. Reproduced here in full, with the poster's section headings.] My counsellor thinks I should write this down. Not to post, necessarily. Just to get it out of my head and onto something that isn't my head. I'm posting it because if I only write it down, it's just me and the page again, and I've spent five years being the only person who knows the whole of it.

It was a quiet, cold, windy night in the cornfield I was in with my dog. My father told me to search through the somewhat small yet vast cornfield. My father was always scared of people that weren't us in his field. We both grew up hearing stories of our family members encountering unexplainable shit in forests, old buildings, and that very cornfield my father sent me to search. I remember how my father used to tell me experiences he had in that field. Like seeing the stalks move on their own…

If you've ever done a walking tour of the Derry Walls, there's a fair chance I've told you about the fetch.

I know you're probably wondering why the hell I'm telling you this. I should have kept my mouth shut, should've stayed quiet like everyone else does when they've seen something they shouldn't have. People do it for all sorts of reasons. Some are too scared to talk, afraid that speaking out might invite whatever it is they saw back into their lives. Others stay silent because they can't put the pieces together, can't explain what happened, and the fear of not being believed is worse than…

I always found Baba Yaga as a concept, a rather disturbing idea. That witch from Russian folklore that would snatch bad kids away, never to be seen again, or a figure that would punish those that had wronged it. I always found those stories stupid. Not because I don’t believe, but because I know the truth: there IS something in the Russian forests, a cruel, inhuman being that is nothing like the way people paint it in the stories. I have seen Baba Yaga, and I know what it really is.

This was supposed to be a radio documentary.

The first thing my granny ever taught me about food was that you never, ever leave the house without a bit of bread in your pocket.

In June this year, my son came up in one of my lobster pots. He'd been dead nearly seven years. I'll explain that. But I wanted you to have it first, the way I had it, on the deck of my boat at half five on a Sunday morning in June, with the tide going slack in the Narrows and the gulls screaming and the pot coming up over the gunwale dripping, and something in it that wasn't a lobster. Once you know the rest, you'll not hear it the same.

[Originally posted as a reply in a thread titled "Irish folklore creatures that are actually terrifying," on a paranormal forum, January 2026. The reply was long enough that the poster later moved it into its own thread. Reproduced here in full.]

On the morning of Tuesday the 16th of December 2025, I took a dead woman off the stones below the Old Cross at Ardboe.

Adventure. Adventure is what I craved. I wanted to gain the fruits of life that I had so long been denied in my youth—and, in those days, those fruits could be found and plucked in the American West. But if I had a hint of what would happen to me and my boys when I found that adventure, it would’ve made me never want to leave civilization...

My wife has been buried in the old graveyard at Killevy, under Slieve Gullion, since the 9th of October 2025.

If you were on TikTok or Instagram in the week before Christmas 2024, there's a good chance you've seen my brother die.

{ In Rekteia, a small (fictional) town on the Greek island of Evia (Euboea), Nature plants the seed of horror among the ashes of burned ancient trees. What lies deep in the sacred soil seeks vengeance against human greed, using a child and a mysterious rabbit as accomplices. }

The following are notes I wrote on my phone during my night shifts in December 2025, mostly on my breaks, sometimes in the toilets, once lying on the floor of a linen cupboard. I've fixed the spelling and nothing else. I'm posting them because the Trust's investigation has closed, and it says what it says, and this says what happened. — Clare

There's a name tattooed on the inside of my left wrist.