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

This is Real Ghost Stories Online.

After midnight.

You know how some names feel cursed the moment you say them out loud, like they don't just belong to a person, but to something

that's been waiting for you to speak it. For me, that name was Jerry. Or maybe it was Miguel. I still

don't know which one is the real one, or which one answered me that night. I'd moved again,

a new house in Denver, just 35 minutes from the suburb where I grew up.

That should have been far enough to leave the past behind, far enough to finally believe that

whatever followed me in my mother's house had stayed there when she sold it and moved out of

state. I was wrong. The thing I called Jerry, lanky, sleeveless, always at the edges of my

sight, seemed to find me no matter where I went, and this time he didn't come alone. Before I tell you

what happened in Denver, I need to go back to something I'd nearly forgotten. It's strange how an

object can hold a shadow. When I was a kid, my parents hung a

framed advertisement for a local art festival, nothing remarkable, bright colors, a few black

and white checker tiles across the top, and every few tiles, a tiny portrait of William Shakespeare.

It hung by the sunny corner window of our old house for

years, harmless there. But one spring they moved it to the wall at the head of the basement

stairs, the stairs that led down to the coldest part of the house. From that day on, everything shifted.

The basement had always felt heavy to me, like the air was thicker, a few feet below the ground.

Once the picture moved there, the feeling turned from heavy to hostile.

Every other time I passed the frame, the images in those little tiles would be different.

Sometimes just one Shakespeare face staring down at me instead of four.

...