FolkloreMountainsRitual
The Sixth Bowl
Pema Dolkar Bhutia · India
Every winter night in Lachen, Ama set one bowl more than there were people. The Delhi cousins thought it was sweet. Then one of them ate from it.
Read 9 minStories from the dark
50 stories · 24 writers
ReflectionTrainUrban Horror
Ladies Compartment, 11:52 Fast
Pallavi Deshmane · India
The 11:52 fast from Churchgate. Five women in the ladies' compartment, a rattling fan, and six reflections in the dark window, one of them braiding her hair.
Read 6 min
FolkloreShapeshifterVillage
Nahual
Ximena Albarrán · Mexico
In my year of social service in the Sierra, a woman brought me a black dog to stitch after dark and asked me, very politely, to tell nobody.
Read 6 min
GothicGuiltHistory
The Bell at Saltmarsh End
Philippa Brackenbury · United Kingdom
A retired history teacher agrees to write the parish guidebook. Then, at low tide, she starts hearing the bell of a church the sea took in 1607.
Read 15 min
DeathFamilyFate
Room Eleven Is Still Waiting
Pankhuri Tiwari · India
Guests come to our house in Kashi to die within fifteen days. The old man in Room Eleven has been dying with us for eleven years.
Read 8 min
FolklorePossessionUrban Horror
Fish Smell, Fourteenth Floor
Ishani Mukhopadhyay · India
Nobody in flat 14B fries fish at three in the morning. Sharmila would like that on record, before the smell, before the balcony, before Saturday.
Read 11 min
FamilyGriefHaunting
The Trunk from Jalandhar
Jaskirat Bains · United Kingdom
Bibi-ji's tin trunk crossed two borders and sat locked in her back bedroom in Wolverhampton for sixty years. Somebody had to open it eventually.
Read 9 min
GreedNightOffering
Leave at Gate
Partha Pratim Lahkar · India
The orders always come after midnight. Plain rice, one boiled egg, one tamul. Leave at gate. No contact. And the tips are better than a week's pay.
Read 5 min
FolkloreHauntingStorm
Line Work in Bohag
Partha Pratim Lahkar · India
Every Bohag storm, the same call, the same transformer at the end of the paddy road, and the same woman in a wet mekhela waiting to thank me.
Read 9 min
FolkloreGhostNight
Jasmine for the Ride
Kavya Raghunathan · India
Every night at 2:40 the same rider waits outside an unfinished tech park on OMR. She tips in five stars. She only ever wants one stop, for jasmine.
Read 8 min
FateGriefRailway
Found Before Lost
Philippa Brackenbury · United Kingdom
Twenty-two years in the lost property office at Norwich station, and I can tell you where most things end up. It is when they arrive that worries me.
Read 6 min
DeathFamilyStrigoi
Strigoi Season
Ilinca Vrânceanu · Romania
Fifteen years nursing in Turin, and I came home to a village that thinks my dead uncle visits at night. I brought a thermometer. They brought garlic.
Read 9 min
FamilyHaunted HouseInheritance
The House on Raja Nabakrishna Street
Ishani Mukhopadhyay · India
Four brothers, one lawyer, a box of yellow tailor's chalk and a house in Shyambazar that has its own opinion about who deserves which room.
Read 19 min
DoppelgangerEpistolaryFolklore
Voice Notes to Apa
Mehrunnisa Qadri · India
Rukhsar's new mother-in-law keeps an iron knife under every pillow and a dupatta over the long mirror after Isha. Rukhsar thinks it's very sweet. Mostly.
Read 8 min
FolkloreHostelRules
Kos Rule Number Four
Wulan Sasmitaningrum · Indonesia
Our boarding house had six rules on a whiteboard, under the wifi password. Number four was simple. After midnight, if the knock comes in three, you don't open.
Read 5 min
GhostGuiltNight
Coins at Closing
Jaskirat Bains · United Kingdom
Every night at two minutes to eleven he comes in dripping, asks for twenty Lambert & Butler, and pays in coins that are warm, wet and nearly fifty years old.
Read 6 min
BargainDark ComedyDjinn
Rent Agreement
Zoheb Ansari · India
Two bedrooms, Tolichowki, east-facing, nine thousand five hundred a month, and no tenant had lasted eight days. Then the maulana told me it wanted paperwork.
Read 8 min
Body HorrorCurseHostel
Bones on Loan
Arnab Ghoshal · India
Rudra-da sold me a man for eleven hundred rupees, which in first-year anatomy is a bargain. Every morning since, a little of him goes missing.
Read 6 min
FolkloreGuiltriver
The Fare
Partha Pratim Lahkar · India
The last bhutbhuti out of Nimati ghat runs aground on a sandbank in the fog, and the old boatman says somebody on board still owes the river.
Read 16 min
ChildhoodFolkloreHalloween
Calan Gaeaf
Rhian Pryce · United Kingdom
When we were small we ran home from the bonfire shouting the old rhyme, so the tailless black sow would not take the last one. Elin was always slow.
Read 9 min
FloodHistoryUnderground
What the Drains Remember
Zoheb Ansari · India
The blockage was four hundred metres in, under the Old City, and everything in it was older than the oldest man on Afroz Hussain's crew.
Read 9 min
Haunted HouseHotelStorytelling
The Last Night of the Dastan
Mehrunnisa Qadri · India
I was hired to tell Amir Hamza at a hotel's opening night. Somewhere in the second hour the haveli decided it had a story of its own.
Read 19 min
FamilyFolkloreSpirit
Iyi-uwa
Chidinma Ezeugo · Nigeria
My mother kept a list of every time I nearly died, and she read it to anyone who would listen. I thought it was her hobby. It wasn't.
Read 10 min
DeathFolkloreHospital
The Light on Ward Nine
Rhian Pryce · United Kingdom
Three in the morning on a medical ward in North Wales. A small pale light comes along the floor from the lifts, and it always knows which bed.
Read 5 min
CurseFolkloreSpirit
The Cobbler of Bhelupur Lane
Pankhuri Tiwari · India
Munna the cobbler had mended every foot in Bhelupur for forty years. Then a veiled woman sat on his stool and put out a foot that faced the wrong way.
Read 6 min
DrowningFamilyKorean Folklore
Sumbisori
Jeon Yu-seul · South Korea
On Jeju a sea-woman's breath has a sound. My grandmother taught me how to make it. On my first dive, I heard one coming up from below.
Read 6 min
BetrayalFolkloreTiger
The Mask Facing Forward
Arnab Ghoshal · India
In the mangroves the honey collectors wear their masks on the backs of their heads. Every morning Ratan wakes to find his has been turned around.
Read 8 min
GhostNightUrban Horror
Third Mainland, Last Bus
Chidinma Ezeugo · Nigeria
Last danfo out of Oworonshoki, past midnight, and Sunday the conductor keeps counting heads. Eleven paid. Fourteen sitting. Nobody has asked to stop yet.
Read 6 min
DisappearanceFogFolklore
Don’t Whistle on the Bugyal
Tarun Dhoundiyal · India
Two rules above the treeline. No whistling. No red. I tell every group the same thing at the last village, and most of them laugh.
Read 9 min
DebtGhostPhone
Inherited Number
Nyokabi Gathecha · Kenya
The new line was cheap and the number was easy to remember. It came with someone else's debts, someone else's mother, and eventually someone else.
Read 5 min
LonelinessUrban HorrorYurei
Disclosure Form, Room 302
Haruka Nishimiya · Japan
Half the usual rent, a form to sign about the previous tenant, and a small studio in Kanazawa where the towels keep getting folded in thirds.
Read 8 min
FolkloreGriefMountains
Old Flags
Pema Dolkar Bhutia · India
She only wanted a nicer background for her photos. So she pulled down the faded flags on the ridge and burned them, and the wind turned round.
Read 9 min
Drowned TownFolk HorrorWater
What the Lake Took Back
Wade Tolliver · United States
The summer the reservoir dropped thirty feet, Chloe Creek came back up into the light. A week later, the well water across the county started singing.
Read 16 min
GriefJapanese FolkloreSea
Give Us a Ladle
Haruka Nishimiya · Japan
The old fisherman knocked the bottoms out of six ladles with a hammer and a nail, and told me what to do if the sea asked politely.
Read 16 min
GriefLa LloronaMotherhood
Track Twelve, River Ambience
Ximena Albarrán · Mexico
I was hired to record a river outside Oaxaca. Every take came back with a woman crying under the water, and every day she was closer to the microphone.
Read 14 min
BathhouseKorean FolkloreUrban Horror
Sauna Rules
Jeon Yu-seul · South Korea
Hana is sleeping at a 24-hour bathhouse in Busan until her deposit comes back. The cleaner gives her two rules. Somebody keeps asking to share her towel.
Read 10 min
DanceFolkloreWedding
The Hora Doesn’t Stop
Ilinca Vrânceanu · Romania
At her cousin's wedding in Maramureș, the hora started just after nine. By midnight nobody could let go of the hands they were holding, and nobody was laughing.
Read 9 min
FolkloreHauntingHouse
Haint Blue
Wade Tolliver · United States
The city couple wanted their porch ceiling white. The old woman next door asked me not to do it. I needed the money, so I did it anyway.
Read 5 min
ColonialDebtFamily
Bungalow No. 3, Kordoiguri
Mridusmita Hazarika · India
A new assistant manager, a 1919 planters' bungalow, a bell board that rings for rooms with no bells, and an old ledger that keeps adding lines overnight.
Read 14 min
FolkloreGreedMonsoon
The Tamarind at the Edge of Varchi Wadi
Pallavi Deshmane · India
In Varchi Wadi we left new chappals for Vetoba every Shimga, because he wore the old ones out walking our boundary. Then Raghu Sawant came home from Dubai.
Read 11 min
CurseMusicRitual
The Gong That Must Be Fed
Wulan Sasmitaningrum · Indonesia
The old gong came to our workshop with one instruction, written in pencil on the crate: every Thursday night, flowers and incense. Do not forget. I forgot.
Read 10 min
Day of the DeadFamilyUncanny
The Stranger on the Ofrenda
Ximena Albarrán · Mexico
Nobody in the family knew the smiling man in the photograph. Abuela Chela said to leave him on the altar. Every family has one, she said.
Read 10 min
FolkloreGrandmotherRitual
Fourteen Dots
Kavya Raghunathan · India
Home in Mylapore to sell my grandmother's house, I left her doorstep bare after sixty years of kolams. The neighbours noticed. So did whatever counts the dots.
Read 14 min
FolkloreGrandmotherSacrifice
Three Times from the Shade Tree
Mridusmita Hazarika · India
In the labour lines everybody knew the rule. If your name came three times from the shade trees after dark, you didn't answer. Somebody always did.
Read 9 min
DreadFound FootageMountains
Camera Trap 7
Tarun Dhoundiyal · India
Snow leopard census, Gangotri, winter. Twenty-two camera traps, one assistant, and one trap that keeps photographing a man nobody else can find tracks for.
Read 5 min
AswangOfficeShapeshifter
Night Shift, Floor 9
Maricel Abellanosa · Philippines
The new agent had perfect scores, a lovely phone voice and no lunch, ever. She also liked sitting next to Joy, who was seven months along.
Read 10 min
DeathFolkloreRitual
The Wake at Keaveney’s Cross
Siobhán Keaveney · Ireland
Three nights of tea, ham sandwiches and the rosary in a Mayo farmhouse. The clocks are stopped, the mirrors covered, the window open. Conor thinks it's theatre.
Read 15 min
ChildhoodCurseFolklore
Tabi Tabi Po
Maricel Abellanosa · Philippines
Lola Pacing tells the story of the boy who kicked the anthill under the balete. It is a very old story. It is also not finished.
Read 4 min
CurseFamineHunger
Hungry Grass
Siobhán Keaveney · Ireland
A postwoman steps off the bog road to let a tractor pass. That evening she eats a full dinner, then another, and she is still hungry.
Read 10 min
DroughtFolk HorrorWater
The Borehole at Kamuthi
Nyokabi Gathecha · Kenya
Past one hundred and twenty metres the drill found water in Kamuthi. The village sang. The old men did not, and the cattle went quiet.
Read 10 min