#ghosts

My brain couldn’t cooperate with what I was seeing. It was 39 minutes past 12, and my 58 year old father was standing outside my front door, looking especially tired and zombified. And he was asking me… “Are you sure you haven’t seen your sister?” He questioned in a raspy, hollow voice. I continued gaping at him, shaking my head. I forced my jaw to shut. “No, Dad. I don’t have a sister, I’m the only child.” I said, for the millionth time. “Are you… okay?”

My dad Don may as well have been dead this past year. Hell, you could make the argument he may as well have been dead for nearly the past fifty… ever since his brother Tommy passed away from cancer in 1973.

“Wanna hear about the weirdest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen in the ocean?” Harvey, the old salt who lived at Neptune’s Net, asked me one night. “Buy me a sip of Cutty Sark, and I’ll tell you something only a handful of people have ever heard, and all of them are dead,” he said, jabbing his finger for emphasis. His gravelly voice gave the ancient mariner a gravitas you wouldn’t expect from a drunk at the end of the bar.

Don’t go in there! It’s all a trap." ​Josh was a 25-year-old hotel receptionist in Black Stone, a town in northern Pennsylvania. He had started the job shortly after graduating from university in Michigan. He was a quiet, down-to-earth kind of guy who always tried to find a rational explanation for everything. But that night, something happened at the hotel that put his sense of reality to the ultimate test.

The night was calm. It rained in the afternoon, so the plants and soil were wet, the glow of the moonlight made the leaves flicker as the soft breeze started blowing, the remainder of the storm. I was standing in the middle of our kitchen. The heat of whatever Mama was cooking on the stove gave me the warmth I needed. I spent most of the day in the rain soaking wet looking for one of Mama’s new born goats. Our goat gave birth to two kids three days ago much to the delight of Mama. A fully grown…

One day, my mommy and daddy decided to buy a new house so we could move out of our apartment. Mommy had just given birth to my baby sister, Anna. She was nine months old, and I was five. My name is Leon.

The morning came gently, the way it often did in late spring - without urgency, without noise, as if the world itself had decided to stretch before speaking. Sunlight spilled across the small street in soft, slanted lines. It touched the rooftops first, then the windows, then slowly made its way down to the pavement where it shimmered faintly like water. Somewhere in the distance, a bicycle passed, its wheels clicking in a steady rhythm that faded as quickly as it arrived.

Martha still felt as if she were trapped in some nightmare. She saw people who bowed deeply to her time and again, only to vanish moments later. Magical carriages and coaches appeared and disappeared into thin air. She looked up at the sky, and suddenly, the image of a man in a hat appeared before her eyes. He looked like a vampire, baring his sharp fangs and smiling malevolently. Then, just as suddenly, the whole vision vanished. Martha felt her strength returning. By some miracle, she managed…

Year 157, Near the end of the fall season. I'm not sure what day it is. I am a regular guy who lives in the peaceful village of "Unut." And today, I am helping the village elder by chopping some logs for him. "But he's not going to pay me shit." I said as I swung my axe. I'm only helping him because he's like a father to me. I was a little child when my family abandoned me. Yet he took me in and raised me to this age. "And I am going to do his chores for the rest of his lifetime."

I have 847 hours of field recording across three years of this work. I can tell you the exact timestamp — 2:14:37 AM — when a door opened by itself in a farmhouse outside Carbondale. Baseline decibel reading before it moved, the spike, the return to baseline in 0.4 seconds. Filed, labeled, cross-referenced with humidity readings and structural reports. Probable explanation still listed as HVAC pressure differential, confirm with building superintendent. The superintendent retired in 2019.

We bought the house in March, which my mother always said was the worst month to make decisions. Too late for winter clarity, too early for spring hope. The month where you mistake exhaustion for certainty.

Last night it was on my counter. I don’t sleep well anymore. Haven’t since October, which is when Eleanor died.

Back in the early 2000s, I worked as a truck driver. I drove everywhere—from my hometown in Georgia to Alaska—and I’d seen it all. One day, early in my career, I was on a routine drive. I’d been on the road for a few days, and everything was going as planned. I stopped for a tank of diesel and rested for the night. The next morning, I got back on the road.

Xavier Truman drove with one hand resting loosely on the steering wheel, the other drumming against the door in rhythm with the radio. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the windshield, bathing the quiet neighborhood in a warm, nostalgic haze. The radio crackled softly.

In a small cottage lived a girl with brown hair with curls and amber eyes of soft hues. She wore a light blue dress as she moved into the kitchen. Her name is Hellen Greeds. Her hands always smelled like vanilla, even when she wasn't baking, even when she was only sitting at her desk with a pen between her fingertips. A blank page waiting to be turned into a world, the scent clung to her life, proof that sweetness could be made from nothing but patience and heat.

​In a mysterious forest, among ancient trees and a clearing long forgotten by man, stood an abandoned shack surrounded by old, neglected graves. The place was shrouded in infamy; disturbing things happened there. Witnesses claimed that something sinister lurked in the darkness. Local residents spoke of terrifying screams echoing from the shack—cries that resembled a chimera or some other horrific beast.

My father always had this one problem of talking to himself but at least it wasn't in public, as he always made sure he would talk to himself in his special room in our house. Me and my mother have gotten use to it over the years and it became normal in our house hold and we both never really questioned why my father enjoyed to talk to himself. My father didn't have many friends and he enjoyed his own company as he was a bit of a recluse. He did now and then due to the environmental mental…

I remember being 15 years old and me and my family along with two other families who were friends to us, we all went on holiday together. It was amazing and I had lots of people my age to play with and we were all in spain. I remember my mother bought a load of ice cream and she said who ever can hold their breath the longest can have the biggest ice cream and we all held our breath and then all of a sudden I heard something fast coming and everything went black. I remember opening my eyes and…

Ever since I dropped out of university the only jobs I ever had was in the security sector and I will be honest I didn’t get my SIA security licence through legal means but knew someone who could get me an SIA licence for a price. I had contacts with all sorts of people within the security sector which is how I got jobs in the first place and in this profession its all about who you know rather than what you know. I bet you don’t feel safe now knowing what the security industry is really like…

Lucas Thorne gulped as he turned the corner and saw the rotting corpse of a house that sat at the edge of town. The house seemed twisted as its warped wooden frame sagged under its weight. Grime smeared the windows, reflecting only the fading light of dusk. As his eyes darted around, he confirmed one thing: he was alone. He reconsidered his choice to volunteer for the cleanup.