Category: Haunted Passages

A Haunted Passages Short Story by Rick White: “Memo from the Beyond”

To: Rickety White (that’s a stupid name) From: Afterlife communications dept. Re: ghost of dead father Dictated but not read. Well now, not long to go until the littlun arrives. You must be very excited. One thing that’s probably worth mentioning—don’t be surprised if you start seeing your dead dad from time to time. You…
Three Original Poems by Lauren Ireland for Haunted Passages

Serotonin Mountain They will call you bravebut what they mean is scary.Falling down the mountainis so much harder than clawing up.Summiting is not a verb I recognize.You must not change your life.When you change your lifeyou ruin someone else’s.You are a rockslide of terror.One look backward andthey will be where you are. I am a…
Haunted Passages Poetry: “Disrupted” by Ansley Clark

That is not a windowbut a circle cut in concrete the desire to consume smoldering like an expensive holidaywhat I have been for a long time becomes real as I walk through glass and metal landscapes the taste of badness in my throat several bags filled with receipts to avoid the building’s shadows which…
Haunted Passages: “Pursued by a Line of Three Ducks,” a poem by Gregory Crosby

One day, you will have no choice but to walk,the punctured tire of these times behind youon a road brimming with sunlight & dust. The clarity of movement, followed byexhaustion. The clarity of exhaustion.Your feet hurt, & you can’t hear the river. The only question is whether you area refugee or a tourist. Or dead.They…
Haunted Passages Fiction: “On Sarpy, Nebraska, and the Places I Go During a Seizure” by Bella Koschalk

The yellow-bellied swallow has chosen me to facilitate her death. We are sitting on a concrete stoop under The Motel’s awning in the Midwest rain. I hold the bird in my hand and I do not think about bird-borne illnesses. She stirs, she is starting her final surrender. I am wearing my ex-stepbrother’s hand-me-down sneakers,…
“Please Consider an Upgrade,” original short fiction for Haunted Passages by Carrie Bindschadler

Dear Declan, Thank you for your recent purchase of our signature Home Seance Basic Package. This specially-curated package is our most affordable option. This package allows you to contact a single recently-deceased human being or beloved pet one time only. If you are interested in repeat spiritual visitations, you will need to upgrade to the…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Matt Wedlock

Tatterdemalion She goes to the laptop on her bed and clicks away with the mouse. It turns white, then cherry colared, then tells herself she needs to update the template. They read for a while, laugh at the link to Waheeda Rehman’s interview in 1996. In the cornerthere’s another tool the techies might send her:…
Haunted Passages Short Story: “How Close Is It?” by Darlene Eliot

Night driving was easy. He knew what to do with a windy mountain pass, a straight shot through cornfields, a detour around streets too narrow for an eighteen-wheeler. He knew what to do when the moon disappeared behind checkpoints and his headlights were the only light on the road. He knew what to do when…
Haunted Passages Poetry: “Phantasmagossip whispered to me between planes, our bodies awake to our mirrored shapes, our ears to the palm of the same bed frame” by Sara Mae

A curve of eyeliner on each side like my sight itself was in brackets, he approached as if to examine me as if to kiss me & remind me what I owed, my heels over the edge of the porch, as above so below, leaving with clowny orange eyeshadow under lower lashes, Persephon-y, & after…