Ghost stories,
told by candlelight
Real tales from folklore, haunted places, and history. Each one illustrated in a style all its own.
Haunted Places
Real locations with documented ghost lore
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The Tower of London's Grey Lady
Anne Boleyn, beheaded at the Tower in 1536, has been seen drifting through corridors for centuries, sometimes carrying her own head. In 1864, a guard was nearly court-martialed after fleeing her apparition.
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The Green Lady of Fyvie Castle
Lillias Drummond died in 1601 after her husband cast her aside. On the night of his second wedding, her name appeared carved into a window ledge five stories up. The Green Lady has been seen in the castle's oldest tower ever since, trailing the scent of roses.
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The Ghost Lights of Marfa
On the flat desert plain east of Marfa, Texas, lights appear at night. They have appeared since before written record. Scientists have studied them for a century without conclusion. Local legend holds they are the lanterns of the lost.
Folklore Spirits
Ghost and spirit traditions from cultures around the world
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La Llorona
A beautiful woman, betrayed in love, drowns her children and dies of grief. Refused entry to the afterlife, she wanders every river at night in a white dress, weeping and searching for her lost children.
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The Flying Dutchman
A Dutch captain swears to round the Cape of Good Hope if it takes until Judgment Day. The Devil holds him to his word. The ghost ship sails forever, crewed by the damned, appearing before storms as a death omen.
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The Banshee of the O'Neill Clan
In Ireland, certain ancient families have a spirit woman bound to them: the banshee. She does not cause death, she mourns it before it arrives, her keening wail rising outside the window of a home where one of the blood is about to die.
Campfire Classics
Well-known tales from oral tradition
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The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow
Superstitious schoolteacher Ichabod Crane, riding home through dark woods after a harvest party, is pursued by a headless horseman on a black horse. He races for the bridge but something strikes him. Only a shattered pumpkin is found the next morning.
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The Vanishing Hitchhiker
A driver picks up a young woman on a lonely road at night. She gives an address and rides in silence. When they arrive, the back seat is empty. At the address, an older woman says her daughter died on that road years ago, on this very date.
Historical Hauntings
Real people and documented encounters
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The Bell Witch of Adams
A prosperous Tennessee farmer's family is tormented by an invisible entity that knocks, scratches, tears bedclothes, slaps children, and eventually speaks. The haunting escalates until the farmer dies under mysterious circumstances.
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The Yurei of Yotsuya
Oiwa, a devoted wife poisoned and disfigured by her unfaithful samurai husband, dies and returns as a yurei. Her ruined face appears in lantern flames, in reflections, in the faces of everyone her husband looks upon, driving him to madness and ruin.