In front of the circus truck came a moving van and two old clunkers. People were finally moving into the house at the end of the cul-de-sac, which we’d all suspected was haunted. The circus truck double parked beside the moving van and out poured our old friends, the bearded lady and fortune teller, clutching his crystal ball, two sweet loveable clowns who rolled out smiling, somersaulting around the cul-de-sac. Soon our kids were busy taming the lions while the elephants practiced their counting and we gossiped about the new neighbors until one of them floated by and said hello.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

There’s a refraction of light that occurs in the brightest sun, causing apparitions to appear. The superstitious call them ghosts.

Philip knows better. His ghosts are worst at high noon. The more there is to look at, the less you’re able to see. And so the ghosts of all those enemy soldiers he killed in the War attend him daily, and he can only drink himself to oblivion.

Hamlet wanders the halls of the castle, a man who isn’t sure what to do, what he believes. Ghosts, are they real? Should he tell his mother what he knows, or is it what he thinks? Was she in on it? She had to be, or not, the possibilities all dangerous, like plague in winter, like bad advice, like poison. Why is he wandering around the castle like it’s act two? It’s so dreary cold and kind of dark, isn’t it? Who to trust, who to tell, what to remember? Oh yes, to never a borrower nor a lender be.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

As the new employee at the haunted mansion, I quickly realized that my job is to communicate with the ghosts rather than clean up after them. Neither appeal to me very much.

It turns out that the undead are just as susceptible to gaslighting as the living.

The greatroom was full to bursting, ghosts everywhere: playing charades, talking, resting, dancing, darting between clusters of spirits engaged in various means of whiling away time.

Just one, the young ghost said, voice wavering: “When do they notice you’re gone?”

From Guest Contributor Melissa Ridley Elmes

Melissa is a Virginia native currently living in Missouri in an apartment that delightfully approximates a hobbit-hole. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Reunion; The Dallas Review Online, Eye to the Telescope, Star*Line, Gyroscope, In Parentheses, and other print and web venues, and her first book of poetry, Arthurian Things: A Collection of Poems, was published by Dark Myth Publications in 2020. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @MRidleyElmes

The ghosts came and went.

Then with my heart beating fast, I woke up and the ghost was gone.

From Guest Contributor Kaia Gallagher

More than spirits, ghosts are the chill of a finger tracing your spine, a whisper only loud enough for you to hear, a memory of something long gone. What happens when the ghosts I’m afraid of are the ones that are alive? Will they continue to feed on me until there is nothing left? Will I join the other ghosts then? Piece by piece, they keep picking away until I am nothing. Will they pity me? The girl they once knew was full of life; and now, she is no better than the rest of them. A bag of bones.

From Guest Contributor Kelsey Swancott

Kelsey is a senior majoring in English with a minor in Visual Arts and Spanish while also being involved in the campus literary magazine Angles. She plans on furthering her education by getting her masters degree in English as well.

Sand rolls steadily along the prairie with a wild wind. The fox finds his home between the sagebrush and through the sunflowers. He leaps airily at ease with his snout grinning. Atop the hill, he shimmies about and slides down while birds depart. Below he creeps to the cemetery and waits for night to lay a veil. A gentle chill glides along as starlight washes over weary stone. With a swift bark and a bound, he weaves among the graves. Moonlight tickles his whiskers and mist wanders in. Here the fox dances with ghosts who once called his prairie home.

From Guest Contributor Kristi Kerico

Kristi is a psychology major at Pikes Peak Community College. She is studying to become a horticultural therapist. She currently works at a bookstore and volunteers at a zoo and nature center. She began writing after enrolling in a creative writing course at PPCC. She enjoys poetry the most, considering it’s brief yet complex beauty. She also loves writing with a focus on nature.

Jack wanders into the local for a pint at the end of his evening walk.

He glances back through the pub window at the carnival of fools, none of whom will escape the Reaper.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

He used the lamppost to drag himself to his feet, having groped for the muddy spectacles.

The blood seemed the only irrefutable fact.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid