Category: ghosts
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the short
We’re in the back bedroom, my wife and I. Fucking. It’s hard sometimes to find the time, the moment. Children, work, day-to-day life — these things conspire and distract and exhaust. But we find the time, when we can. We find the moments, synchronized, together. And it is good. Perhaps it is too brief, too…
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little girls
Reported by my wife: A few days ago she and our daughter were in the back stairwell, getting ready to go for a walk. Once she got our daughter into her shoes, my wife sat down to put her own on. While she was doing this, our daughter went down the three steps to the…
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ragged
Sitting on the toilet in the back bathroom, I hear a sound at the door — as through someone pressed against it from the outside, maybe one of the cats? But the door has nearly an inch gap at the bottom. I can see nothing outside. A few minutes later I am jolted into a…
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whisper
As I come into the front room of our house, I hear man’s voice whisper something — a single phrase, very distinct but unintelligible. Cleaning up in the back bathroom, I hear voices pitched in an argument — just a few lines back and forth — again, distinctly audible but no words can be made…
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footsteps again, of course
Standing in the kitchen, I hear the sound of someone coming down the back stairs — slow, cautious . . . almost stealthy. But when I go to check, of course, no one is there. It takes a few minutes for the hair on my arms to lay back down again. My skin is electric,…
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gentleman caller
…and while my daughter plays in the tub, there’s a sudden wave of men’s cologne — acrid and sour — that passes over me. My throat closes, I am overcome with a coughing fit. Inexplicable. My wife does not wear perfume. I do not wear cologne. It lingers for a number of minutes there in…
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early morning
Woken by my daughter early this morning, unable to get back to sleep so I head downstairs to sit in the predawn dark, looking up from my book from time to time as little beads of shadow stream across the floor like dark mercury. An hour or so later, I hear footfalls overhead. They move…
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laundry room
As I came into the laundry room this morning, a shadow moved in the dim light from right to left — coming from the hallway and passing through the closed and locked door at the top of the back stairs. The shadow was large, as wide as a refrigerator though not as tall. It has…
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doing the dishes
…and as I turn to put a glass in the cupboard I startle and flinch backwards from the dark figure standing right at my left shoulder. Vague impressions . . . someone looking into my face . . . a male presence about my height but larger, heavy-set almost . . . broad head, the…
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footsteps and flashes
After dinner, my wife runs to the store. My daughter and I play in my office. The whole time, my skin is crawling. I have a sense that someone — or multiple someones — is passing through my office, moving past us unseen. The sensation is uncanny, disquieting. My daughter seems not to notice. When…