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

This is Real Ghost Stories Online.

After midnight.

Tessa didn't move because she was chasing a fresh start.

She moved because her life had become a calendar problem, a contract

job that ended mid-month, a lease that wouldn't flex, a friend of a friend who offered a clean,

quiet duplex on the edge of town with a simple deal. Month to month, no questions, first and last

up front. The kind of place you take when you're tired of negotiating with everything.

The unit was small but sensible. Two bedrooms, one bath, a narrow galley kitchen that opened into a living

room, just big enough for a couch and a desk. The front door faced a short sidewalk and a patch of

grass that someone mowed just often enough to keep the neighbors from complaining. The front door faced a short sidewalk and a patch of grass that someone mowed just often enough to keep the neighbors from complaining.

The back door opened to a gravel strip and a shared fence line that leaned slightly, as if it had been pushed on too many times.

Tessa noticed practical things first. The deadbolt had been replaced recently.

The peephole was new enough to still look shiny. The deadbolt had been replaced recently. The people was new enough to still

look shiny. The windows had those cheap stick-on alarms, the kind that chirped when you opened them.

It read less like paranoia and more like a landlord who'd had one too many close calls. She told

herself she liked it. Like the plainness, like that nothing in the place

asked her to feel anything. Her first week was almost aggressively normal. She unpacked by

categories, kitchen linens, then office, because it made her feel like she was putting her life

back into a shape she recognized. She worked from the

small second bedroom, laptop facing the wall, a tidy row of pens and sticky notes arranged with

unnecessary care. She learned which floorboard creaked near the hallway and which cabinet door

...