Status: Currently looking for more stories.

Share your true experiences with haunted homes!  Our readers are interested in your ghostly encounters.

What you need to know

We’re looking for true stories that happened to you in your haunted home.

We want to show readers that living in a haunted house doesn’t have to be scary.

We can use original short stories of any length, with or without illustrations.  You can send them at any time.  Use the Contact form, linked above, to share your story.

Please include a sentence or two clearly stating that

• your story is true
• it’s your original work (not copied from a website or book)
• and you give us permission to publish your story.

(Otherwise, we might confuse it with personal email that’s not shared with anyone else.)

You will still own the copyrights to your story and any photos or illustrations that you send to us.

(If you have questions, read the following sections, and ask us if you’re still not sure about something.)

More details

We welcome your true stories, your comments, genuine photos of ghosts in your home, and recommendations for future articles.

Send them via the Contact form, or email fiona at hollowhill dot com. Unless this page says we’re not accepting new stories, you can send them at any time.

You don’t need to be a great writer.  If your story is told with sincerity, that’s all that’s important.

Keep in mind that this website is read by children as well as adults.  All stories, photos and illustrations must be “office safe.”

Guidelines

Stories can be any length, up to 1500 words.  They must be true, and told primarily in the first person. (That is, “I saw this,” and “I did that.”)

We cannot publish stories that sound fictional, are intended as a “good scare,” or that might result in the invasion of your privacy or others’.

Please do not provide specific addresses or any other identifying information, unless you own a haunted house that is open to the public.

Everything we publish must be about your home. Illustrations must show your home, and not reveal the face of anyone living.

Do not tell us about someone else’s ghost. Ask them to write to us, instead.

Do not share someone else’s story from another website or book.  That is against copyright law, and we will remove anything that’s not your original work.

Always provide general information about your location (country, state, county, and/or town), and spell-check your stories before submitting them.

Scary stories

It’s okay to tell us how you were scared at first.  However, then tell us how you learned to live with your ghost or ghosts.

On the other hand, if your story is scary — such as an “old hag” encounter, where you feel trapped in your bed, or a ghost that drove you out of your home, permanently — don’t send it.

We also can’t use any dream stories. That is, don’t send us ghost stories that conclude with, “… and then I woke up.  It was all a dream.”

Read stories already at this website, if you’re not sure about this website’s purpose.

Remember, Living With Ghosts shows readers that it doesn’t have to be scary to live with ghosts.

Send your photos, too

We welcome your original and authentic ghost-related photos.

Send them to fiona at hollowhill dot com.  Please tell us what’s in the photo, where you took it, and when.

We cannot use orb photos unless they accompany a true story.

We cannot use a photo — no matter how authentic — that looks like it was digitally altered, unless it’s an illustration for a story.

If a photo shows someone’s face, please blur it before sending us the photo.  Even if it’s a picture of you, the face must be blurred.  This is to protect your privacy.

We may place a faint “Living with Ghosts” marker on each photo, to identify it with this website. (That’s to protect you from seeing your unauthorized photo on someone else’s website.)

Do not send us a photo that someone else took. If we discover that a photo was published without permission, we will remove it immediately. (If it accompanies a story, we may remove the story, too.)

(Webmasters: Send us the URL where the photo originally appeared, so we can verify it.)

Who are you?

Tell us how to identify you as the author or photographer.

A pen name (Jane Doe), screen name (Ghostfriend), or description (Believer in northeast Texas) will be ideal.

If you have a ghost-related website and you’d like us to link to it, send us the URL.

Editorial policies

We may edit stories for length or clarity.  We won’t add anything that wasn’t in the original story.  (Credibility is important.)

We may change names or identifying features, to be sure that privacy is protected.

We may crop or resize photos to fit our pages.

We’ll post the best stories and photos as soon as we can.  During “ghost season” (mid-September through mid-November), that may take several weeks.

It’s okay to ask us about your story — just once — if you don’t hear from us within three weeks.

Also, you can check this page to see if we have enough stories.   If you see that notice, it means that we’re busy working on the backlog.

Copyrights

You keep the copyrights to your stories and photos. You are simply granting us the license to publish them at Living With Ghosts.

Please tell us how to reach you, in case we want to feature your story in an upcoming book.  That contact info can be an email address, your Facebook or Twitter account, your MySpace, or any reliable, long-term way that we’re likely to reach you if we need to.

Thanks!