This late night radio horror story begins with a sweet little song dedication for the woman in the blue Corolla. Then the caller kept phoning back to tell me exactly where she was driving, and I kept reading it on the air. I hosted overnights at a small radio station in south Georgia for three … Read more
This haunted elevator story comes from a night security guard in Phoenix and a fourth floor that had been gutted down to bare concrete. Nobody had any reason to go up there, but every night at 2:17, the elevator went up anyway. I worked nights as a security guard in an office building in Phoenix … Read more
This truck stop horror story happened during a wind closure on I-80 in Wyoming, when the speaker in the drivers’ lounge called my first name for a shower I never booked. I thought it was a mix-up until the third call came from somewhere it shouldn’t have. I’ve been called just about everything over a … Read more
This fake detour horror story starts on an empty Nebraska highway at midnight, with orange signs that looked exactly like every detour I’d ever followed. A deputy later told me there was no roadwork anywhere on that road, and then he showed me how they picked my car. The detour signs looked exactly like every … Read more
This trail cam horror story begins with a missing wool jacket at a campsite in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and an animal I was sure had dragged it away. Then I got home and looked at what my camera caught at 2:13 in the morning. I lost my dad’s jacket on a camping trip in September … Read more
This creepy geocaching story starts with an old ammo can on a ridge in western North Carolina and a paper log that should have been ordinary. Every name in that log was different, but every line was written by the same hand, and the last one was written for me. I’ve been geocaching for six … Read more
The mirror had sat in my grandmother’s attic for as long as anyone could remember — a tall, antique thing in a heavy carved frame, always covered with an old bedsheet. As a child, I was told never to uncover it, and like most rules given to children, this one only made me more curious. … Read more
The first time I saw the old woman at the foot of my bed, I was certain I was dreaming. I woke in the dead of night, the way you sometimes do for no reason, and there she was — a small, hunched figure in a dark shawl, standing perfectly still at the foot of … Read more
Every old house has its quirks, but the locked room in ours was something else entirely. When we bought the house — a big, beautiful, century-old place we could never have afforded if it hadn’t been priced so strangely low — the previous owners mentioned one thing almost in passing. There was a room at … Read more
The little girl my daughter talked about started as nothing more than an imaginary friend. Or at least, that’s what my husband and I told ourselves for the first few months. Our daughter Lily was four, and four-year-olds have imaginary friends. It’s normal. It’s healthy. There was nothing to worry about. Lily called her “the … Read more