This is my family’s ghost story. My great-grandfather was a sea captain out of Leith, Scotland; during WWII he was the pilot of a steamer, the Dresden, that carried cargo between Great Britain and continental Europe. This was dangerous work, as the English Channel and the North Atlantic were both patrolled by German…
I spent the first few months of this year living in a small residential treatment center for eating disorders. I’m grateful for the experience; I was suicidal at the time and going there quite literally saved my life. The treatment center was in an old Victorian house in a small mountain town. The kitchen, dining…
About 10 years ago I worked in a hotel that is famously believed to be haunted. One of my first roles at the hotel was working as a Night Auditor. As soon as anyone I knew heard I was working night shifts in that building they’d ask me if I had seen the ghosts and I’d always reply with “I wish”. I LOVE ghost stories…
My parents are currently selling our childhood home after 35 years, so my siblings and I have been thinking and talking about our many memories growing up there. Including the ghost that has always been around, from the beginning.
Every now and then I need to travel for work, and because of the nature of my work, it’s usually to places in the middle of nowhere. I fly out of the capital city I call home, at the crack of dawn, and two flights later, I’m driving out to the countryside towards my destination - a small town with a population of…
I am walking around my old school, which went from Pre-K through 12th grade. I hadn’t been there in years. I turn around and about ten feet away there’s a little white girl who wasn’t there before, with her head tilted to the side staring at me intently and completely silent. I stop abruptly and look around and…
Last year, I submitted a story to this contest; here is the story in its original, unaltered form.
My mom, aunt, and grandmother have been telling this story for as long as I can remember.
It’s early fall, 2017. We had just fully fenced and added gardens to our backyard, including a lovely fairy path on a narrow stretch of dirt that separated our property from the apartment complex next door. With tall grasses, flowers, and stepping stones it made a magical little space that my daughter loved to run…
Let me just preface this by saying I’m not a writer so please bear with me…
I had the great delight, many years ago, to be able to stay at a villa in Menorca. It was a beautiful old adobe building built in the 1600's. There was a brick oven and a small outdoor pool looking out over an orange grove. My boyfriend’s Polish parents, long since passed, had bought it back in the 50's and the family…
I live in Wales, and the Welsh word for grandfather is Tadcu. My daughter has sadly never known either of her grandfathers as they passed away before she was born. My father had polio as a child, and as a consequence lived with a very pronounced limp for the rest of his life, having to wear an orthopaedic shoe.…
911 From the Other Side
In 2012, my relationship with my child’s father deteriorated and I moved to another state with my child. The only people I knew in the state were somewhat estranged family, so I didn’t have any friends or much access to other people outside of work.
When I was 6 (1981 California), I had an experience with a Raggedy Andy doll. It was terrifying. In my teens during spooky story time at hangouts I would tell the story. The part of my experience that led 6 year old me to finally scream became the jump scare part in my retelling. I would jump up to a person near me,…
I’ve written about the haunted house that I live in a few times over the years (https://jezebel.com/1838851052) and (https://jezebel.com/1849658024). Last night, my wife and I were out at her sisters and my stepdaughter was home alone with the dogs. We left around 4:00 and around an hour later, both my wife and I…
I currently live in a haunted home. We live in a 150+ year old farmhouse outside of Toronto, Canada. My wife’s family has lived here for 40 years and in that time they’ve seen and heard lots of different things.
Christmas Eve, 1981
But it adds to the suspense! I rather like it! “...like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gone get!" 😁
Just about every year we go to Savannah for New Year’s Eve; it is gorgeous, steeped in history and legend, and rightfully dubbed America’s Most Haunted City. It is also a walking city, with lots of excellent ghost tours; Savannah at night is very spooky and atmospheric, you can palpably feel other presences . We’ve…
