The Night Shift at Mile 49
A night clerk at a lonely desert gas station learns why the shift at Mile 49 pays double. An original short horror story for teens and adults.
Haunted House Stories
Three original haunted house stories: an open house with one visitor too many, a clock that won’t stop and a room that isn’t on the floor plan.
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A haunted house story works because home is supposed to be safe. These three are original and short enough to read in one sitting. Read them in your own house, if you dare.
The Open House
Denise had sold houses for twenty years, and she knew an easy sale when she saw one: big rooms, good light, a garden full of roses. She set out cookies, lit a candle and opened the door at noon.
Visitors came and went all afternoon. She counted them in the sign-in book: thirty-one names.
At five, she walked through the rooms one last time. Everyone had gone. She locked up, drove home and, over dinner, flipped through the sign-in book to write thank-you emails.
Thirty-one names. Thirty of them in different handwriting, different pens.
The thirty-first name was written in faded brown ink, in the careful loops of a very old hand, beneath a note: Please don’t sell it. We’re not finished living here.
It was the name of the family on the original deed from 1911.
The Clock
The grandfather clock came with the house, and it didn’t work. The previous owners said nobody had managed to fix it in fifty years. We kept it anyway. It looked nice in the hall.
On our first night, it struck three.
We came downstairs in our dressing gowns. The pendulum was still. The hands pointed at three. The house was silent.
It struck three the next night, and the next. We had a clockmaker look at it. He opened the case, went pale and closed it again. He wouldn’t tell us what he saw. He wouldn’t take our money either.
Last night, at three, it didn’t strike. Instead, very quietly, from inside the case, something began to wind it.
The Room We Don’t Have
The floor plan of our house has four bedrooms. We counted them before we bought it. Four doors upstairs, four bedrooms.
My son says there are five.
He says the fifth door appears at the end of the landing when everyone else is asleep. It’s painted the same color as the wall, and there’s light under it, and sometimes music.
We told him it was a dream. We told him until last night, when I got up for a glass of water and walked along the landing in the dark, and counted the doors, the way you do.
One, two, three, four.
Five.
Light under it. Music, very faint, an old song I half knew.
And from inside, my son’s voice, happy, saying, “Mom’s here. I told you she’d find it.”
His own bedroom door was open. His bed was empty.
What makes a haunted house story work
| Element | How it’s used here |
|---|---|
| A safe space turned strange | An open house, a hallway clock, a landing at night |
| A small wrongness | An extra name, a silent strike, one more door |
| Rules that break | A clock that can’t work but does |
| An ending that lingers | Each story stops just past the point of explanation |
Want to write your own? Try our horror story prompts. For chills in fewer words, read our two-sentence horror stories.
Frequently asked questions
Are these stories based on real houses?
No. They’re original fiction, and any resemblance to real places or people is coincidental.
Are these suitable for children?
They’re written for teens and adults. For younger readers, try our scary stories for kids.
Every article is edited by a human and checked against our editorial policy. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.
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