Midnight has passed, and in the stillness of these hours, the hauntings are never silent.

This is Real Ghost Stories Online.

After midnight.

For most of his life, he had been the kind of person who noticed things other people ignored.

Not in some mystical way.

He didn't think he was psychic, and he certainly didn't go around talking about ghosts or

energies or any of the other things people used to explain experiences they couldn't

fully understand.

But strange moments had followed him often enough over the years that he had stopped dismissing

them completely, small things mostly, hearing someone call his name when no one was there,

catching movement in reflections that disappeared when he turned around. Once, as a kid,

he woke in the middle of the night, convinced someone had been standing beside his bed, watching him sleep.

His parents brushed it off as nightmares, and eventually, he did two.

Mostly!

By his twenties, he had settled into an uneasy compromises with those experiences.

He neither chased them nor fully denied them. If something strange

happened, he noticed it, thought about it for a while, and eventually let it go, at least until the

walks started. At the time he worked nights stocking shelves at a grocery store on the edge of town.

The schedule wrecked his sleep. Some

mornings he would collapse into bed immediately after work, but most nights he came home exhausted

and somehow still unable to shut his brain off. The apartment felt claustrophobic after midnight,

too quiet in a way that made every thought seem louder. So he started walking.

...