In 2014, Tom Maxwell and his family moved into a “big and strangely cheap” historic house in Hillsborough, North Carolina, on a lush pasture next to a river. They named it Nannie, after the wife of the house’s most famous owner. But as Maxwell recounts in this spooky true tale, it was “thoroughly haunted,” and less than a year later, they broke their lease, left, and never looked back. Afterward, Maxwell learned about the house and surrounding land’s violent history—and all the tortured spirits that roamed there. Originally published in 2016, this Bitter Southerner story also includes moody illustrations by Phil Blank.
If she was upstairs, it would come from below. Brooke once heard Evelyn’s voice calling her from downstairs, and walked downstairs to answer. She called Evelyn’s…
In 2014, Tom Maxwell and his family moved into a “big and strangely cheap” historic house in Hillsborough, North Carolina, on a lush pasture next to a river. They named it Nannie, after the wife of the house’s most famous owner. But as Maxwell recounts in this spooky true tale, it was “thoroughly haunted,” and less than a year later, they broke their lease, left, and never looked back. Afterward, Maxwell learned about the house and surrounding land’s violent history—and all the tortured spirits that roamed there. Originally published in 2016, this Bitter Southerner story also includes moody illustrations by Phil Blank.
If she was upstairs, it would come from below. Brooke once heard Evelyn’s voice calling her from downstairs, and walked downstairs to answer. She called Evelyn’s name, and Evelyn answered from her upstairs bedroom. The side-door locks rattled frantically one night as the three of us sat alarmed in the living room. Occasionally, men’s voices could be heard downstairs, speaking in hushed and excited tones. They stopped as soon as someone reached the bottom of the stairs. We shared a growing feeling that we were to be split up, one from another. Something was trying to isolate us. A hard winter was bearing down. The first cord of wood got burned up in less than a month.
More picks about ghosts
It’s Dead Around Here
Lauren Hough | Texas Highways | October 13, 2025 | 2,799 words
“A ghost town enthusiast searches for the essence of these scarcely populated locales.”
Who Walks Always Beside You?
Benjamin Hale | Harper’s | July 17, 2023 | 14,265 words
“A disappearance in Arkansas.”
Hungry Ghosts
Natalie Linh Bolderston | The White Review | May 20, 2022 | 3,581 words
“I think of all the hurts she can never outlive — the ghosts that can never be satisfied, no matter how much of herself she feeds to them.”
Haunting the Archive
Victoria Newton Ford | Scalawag | December 1, 2022 | 2,105 words
“The media’s obsession with my mother changed my relationship to grief.”
Encounters With Ghosts
Sadie Stein | The Paris Review | November 2, 2022 | 1,894 words
“We were all there to see ghosts; we were all, I suppose, future ghosts.”
The Ghosts of Antarctica Will Haunt the End of the World
Jack Ryan | CNET | September 11, 2022 | 2,680 words
“As climate change threatens to upend the icy kingdom, we’re writing ghost stories in real time.”