March 2026

March 25, 2026

3/25/2026

Hannah Sawyer
by Aaron Brown-Ewing

A childhood ghost story returns years later, carrying with it memories that feel both distant and unresolved. As past and present begin to overlap, something long forgotten refuses to stay buried.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.

“Did you know that our school is haunted?” I remember my friend, Jenni, asking me. The memory bursts into my head like the pop of bubble gum.
Everyone knew that there were ghosts in the old elementary school — the building was almost a hundred years old when we were there, something had to be creeping around, right? It was a big school, holding grades one to five, rumors and stories spread like the flu.
I’ve been reminiscing about those days a lot recently. I live alone now, in a small single room apartment above a pharmacy. My friends have all gone away, my parents moved to Florida and I only hear from them on the holidays, and I’ve been between jobs more often than not. All I can do is think and reminisce.
There was one story about the elementary school that stuck with me, about a girl who lurked in the bathrooms, specifically in the girls bathroom on the third floor, by the art room. It had one small window that looked out over the parking lot, facing the playground.
Jenni told me — or rather, it was her brother — about how to summon her during a sleepover when we were in third grade.
We had finished watching a movie, sitting in her living room, bundled in blankets. Her brother had come home as the credits started, stinking from his job at Subway. Jenni had just asked me the question, if I knew about the ghost.
“She lives in the toilet, right?” I asked, thinking about what I had heard around the school before.
“Are you talking about Hannah Sawyer?” her brother asked. He was about six years older than the two of us, a sophomore in high school. “You have to call her — I did it with my buddy before the end of fifth grade,” he said. He sat down on the floor in front of us. “This is what you do:
“You go into the girls bathroom. Turn off the lights and close the window; keep all the stall doors open except the last one — that’s where she would always hide. Then, knock on it three times — knock knock knock — and say, ‘Hannah Sawyer, do you want to play?’ That’s what the bullies said to her before she died. Then wait and listen.”
“What happens?” I asked.
“She grabs you!—” he grabbed me by the shoulders, his face inches from mine “—and she yanks you down the toilet, into the sewers. That’s where she eats you.”
Silence.
Jenni snorted. “Why were you in the girls bathroom?” She started laughing a squealing laugh.
I laughed too, more to hide my discomfort.
Her brother blushed and stormed away. He was always so easy to upset. I wonder where he is now, what he’s doing with his life.
It’s been a while since I spoke with Jenni. She went to a university in Chicago, got married, and had a kid, last I heard. A beautiful baby girl. I stayed here, in our hometown, studied criminal justice at a community college, struggled with jobs before going to beauty school then worked at a salon. I was fired last week. I’ve had a few romantic flings over the years, too, but nothing stuck. It just hasn’t been in the stars for me.
Maybe I should call her sometime, see how everything is.
Near the end of fifth grade, before going off to middle school, I went into that bathroom. At first I didn’t think anything of it. I just went into the stall, knocked three times before entering to make sure it was empty.
It was only for an instant, but I could never forget. She stood over the toilet, hovering with a broken neck. Flesh picked at by vermin, hair a rotten and muddy tangle that plastered her face. One eye gouged, the other swollen. She was just a kid, not much older than I was. She looked ready to cry from those ruined eyes.
I rushed back to class, nearly collapsing into my seat. My teacher chewed me out for running, I was sent home, my underwear soiled. It made my time in middle school more difficult, being the girl who pissed herself in fifth grade. I tried telling the other kids about what I saw, but the words just never made it out. I wanted to forget.
The memory still terrifies me. The thought of her arms reaching out, grabbing me by the waist and yanking me into the toilet bowl, forcing my body, too big to fit, inside until my spine snapped. The image was so poignant that it took weeks after that until I could go to the bathroom normally again. At home, I would leave the door open, and at night I’d turn the hall lights on.
My little brother would always tattle.
“But Hannah Sawyer will pull me in,” I wanted to tell my parents when they’d scold me, “I need to be able to run away.” It was embarrassing, in retrospect.
I haven’t spoken to my brother in a while either. The last time was at least two years ago when he called from a jail in Portland. He’s had a problem with heroin since he was in high school, and our parents cut all communication with him ever since. He needed money that I didn’t have. I couldn’t help him even if I wanted to.
Maybe I’m just a bad person. I wasn’t there for him back then, and now here I am living alone. No friends, no family, no lover, no job. A life of loneliness, feeling dissatisfied with where I am, always thinking of what could have been if I just let go of my childhood.
That old elementary school is long gone, demolished and replaced by a strip mall and apartment complex. The town that I grew up in has changed into something unrecognizable, with chain restaurants, trendy bars, and supercenter retail stores.
But, I wonder, is Hannah Sawyer still lurking around down in those sewers? She must be so lonely, after all these years. Does anyone summon her anymore? Do they even know?
I get up from my futon and step over the mess to my bathroom. I close the door and knock three times. “Hannah Sawyer, would you like to play?” I wait in the quiet night. A few seconds pass. A minute.
A hand, wet and cold, takes my own, fingers gently intertwining with mine, and a sad, weak voice whispers, “Yes.” I embrace her like a mother comforting her daughter, and I never let go.

💀💀💀

Aaron Brown-Ewing is an Ohio native who currently lives and works in Iwate prefecture, Japan as an English language teacher and travel blogger. As a writer, he enjoys creating narratives and imagery with the surreal and the fantastic. You can follow his travels at aaronhimself.com and @mraaronhimself on Instagram.

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March 18, 2026

3/18/2026

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King of the Mountain
by Matthew Hurst

A determined cyclist, driven by pride, sets out to conquer a punishing mountain route. But when an unexpected alternative appears, the cost of pushing forward becomes something unsettling.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.

Marc felt watched. He lifted a single eyelid and checked his cycle was still leaning against the bench.

The only other person in the scorching afternoon in this French village square was an old man with his hat pulled down over his face, apparently dozing in a mobility scooter outside the small village shop. The shop, Marc had discovered, sold rich cold ice cream which had scorched his tongue as he bit into it.
He closed his eye and lay back on the cool stone wall round the edge of the fountain, enjoying the faint scatter of spray blowing over his face in the afternoon heat. His breath and heartbeat were returning to resting rate. His muscles were relaxing. The sweat saturating his expensive cycling top cooled against his skin.
His bike – his very expensive bike – was leaning a couple of metres away, locked with his equally gratifyingly expensive lock. If there was one place in the world where thieves would understand it was worth stealing, it would be here. The sleepy village in the south of France only came alive once a year when the Tour de France passed through it. Now the days of local professional racing cyclists were over, Le Tour was the only outlet for its cycling obsession.

He sat up. He needed to stop dozing and do his socials. The Tour connection had been exactly why he’d suggested the holiday to the rest of the boys in his cycling club – ‘the boys’, who were staving off middle age with lycra and over-priced cycling equipment. They’d been keen when he'd suggested it at their usual cake-stop on their regular rides. Then they’d seen the hills and the temperatures of southern France in July, and suddenly it became very hard for them to find dates they could get away from work. Unwilling to back down, his pride had made him announce he’d do it alone: a solo trip, in the hope of goading at least a couple of them to come with him. But nobody had taken the bait, and now here he was all by himself, struggling slowly up the steep valley sides, and taking ever more frequent breaks in village squares. He couldn't admit his increasing weariness to ‘the boys’, so he had increased the number of upbeat selfie shots and updates on the group app favoured for their humble-bragging. He could tell from the response numbers on the app that they were reading them. He wasn’t going to have to admit defeat.

Pushing himself to his feet, he pulled out his phone from the pocket in the back of his lycra top and sized up the potential backdrops for another photo. The fountain? He’d had two of those already, in other village squares. The shop? Insufficiently primal. On the opposite side of the square, there was a statue of a young man in old fashioned cycling gear and with one of those frail, heavy looking pre-war touring cycles they used in the early Tours. Perfect. He strolled over to the statue, masochistically enjoying the aching in his legs, and tried to decode the words on the plaque underneath it.
‘A la mémoire de Jean Garmin, né dans cette ville, et champion cycliste, héros de la Résistance, 1921-43. Un homme d'honneur’.

Nicely heroic and masculine. And Garmin was a good in-joke for the boys. Everyone in the club had one of the Garmin GPS monitors on their handlebars or on their wrists, reporting back location, speed, heart rate and pretty much everything else to the club app. The boys loved setting their stats competitively against each other. They were monitoring his French numbers from their air conditioned offices, he knew.
He turned his back on the plaque and lined up the shot on his phone camera – the statue behind him in the frame. He lifted the lens a little above his eyeline, tilted down at his face. He wasn’t getting any younger and jowly wasn’t a good look when you’re trying to be heroic and virile.
He held up a palm to trigger the selfie countdown and glared heroically at the lens. He quickly tweaked the image with a couple of filters and tapped in a short caption:

‘This soldier’s name is Garmin! IYKYK. Cyclist and resistance martyr. Puts my 150km on 30% inclines on the hottest day for years into the shade! #sohumbled’.

He was pleased with the implicit identification with heroism, neatly undercut with the hashtag. He gave the photo one last check before posting it and – shit, he’d nearly missed that. Tucked in the corner of the photo was the empty pot of ice-cream he’d bought from the tiny little shop in the square. He cropped out the evidence of unmasculine indulgence, and satisfied that he was showing himself living his best life, hit ‘post’.
“You ride, then?”
The old man in the mobility scooter was behind him, glaring at the little computerised display on his handlebars. “These days, everybody has these… machines.” His lip curled a little.
“I like people to know my numbers.”
“Do the numbers tell them whether you enjoyed your ride, too?”

“Ha. Well, no.”

“This knowledge comes only from inside.”

“I suppose.” He held up his phone again and manoeuvred to get a better angle for the selfie.

The man’s voice floated up to him again. “The satisfaction must be earned by work.”

He turned the scooter round and it whined slowly away across the square.

The cyclist returned to his bike leant by the fountain, and refilled his two water bottles, wedging them back in the cages on the frame underneath his saddle, feeling the sun already burning through his top as he bent over. He stood the bike up, hitching his leg over the frame and felt the saddle in the soreness between his legs as he sat down. He clipped one shoe back into the cleat on his pedal and pushed off, and as the bike moved forward, he twisted his other foot onto the other pedal’s cleat so they were both firmly attached, clicked securely into place. Attaching your feet gave that extra bit of power as you pulled up the pedals on the rear half of each revolution, complementing pushing down on the front. Every extra joule of energy helps. As he pedalled out of the square and left the centre of the village, the buildings petered out until he was back on the quiet, narrow road heading up the side of the valley. He clicked up through he gears and found his rhythm for the next phase of the climb. It would be steep and relentless before he reached the top and could plunge down the other side.
Five miles out from the village, his whole body was covered in a layer of sweat, and he felt as though he was poaching in his lycra. His core was heating up – that was just biochemistry. He kept his legs moving. Kept moving forward. The top of the hill was miles away.

The road was a carless green tunnel of overhanging trees, but soon his vision was tunnelled with black walls closing in.

His hearing muffled to near-silence. He tried to focus but realised he was weaving left and right, his head swimming. He tried to push on, but he knew His legs were weakening. He could easily lose his balance, keel over, his feet held tight in the pedal cleats, and end up bruised on the road. Was this heat stroke? Acute dehydration? He didn’t have the strength to push forward.

Swearing and annoyed at himself, he freewheeled to a stop. He twisted his ankles to unclip his shoes, and got off the bike.
He leant heavily on the crossbar, grabbing for breath.

At the top of this stretch of hill, there was a half-moon of flat, grassy bank, a natural lay-by, shady and dark, and beyond that a few hundred metres of flat road. Even in the longest climb there were these sections of a few hundred metres where the road seemed flat, or even downhill, for a precious few hundred metres. Over all, you were still ascending, but it allowed your muscles a few minutes' respite. Best of all, when you - or your competitive friends - checked the Garmin numbers it looked near enough like a constant ascent. Your little break from the uphill drag stayed secret.

Marc knew he could walk the few metres up the hill to that flat stretch, and his heart rate subside and his muscles calm a little. He could take a drink and cool down a little. He imagined laying splayed out in the shadow of a wall somewhere, feeling his breathing getting slower until he was no longer struggling to pump enough oxygen around his body.

Step by step, he slowly dragged himself up to shade of the lay-by. He leant his bike against a log, yanking one of the water bottles from its cage and unscrewed the top, already feeling the cool of the grass through the soles of his shoes. Surely there could be no harm in laying full length on it for a few minutes to let his breathing shallow and muscles relax. He wouldn’t have to admit his failed heroics. If it showed up on the Garmin, he would say it was a puncture. His friends would never know.

He lay down. The baking sun broke through the canopy of trees and he felt the heat on his neck, and the cold sweat on his skin. So much for their expensive sweat dispelling properties. He tipped the water over his face till the bottle ran dry.

Then he closed his eyes, just for a few minutes.

He was woken by the whine of the mobility scooter from the market square and looked up to see the old man leaning over him.

"What are your numbers telling you now, may I ask?"
"That I'm hot and tired."

"Even I can see that."

Marc tried to change the subject. “Is it far to the top, past the flat section?”
“Depends on your route.”

“They’ll all be up hill.”
The man nodded to himself, as though confirming a private unspoken opinion. “If I told you about way over the hill without the sacrifice, would you take it?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Work is good for the soul.”
More bloody Yoda. “Who’s to know?”

“Your machines, perhaps.”

“So is there a way? Without sacrifice?”

“Just over the brow of this hill, there’s an entrance to track, off the road. Not a smooth track, but your bike will cope. The track is downhill but it will take you over the top of the hill and down into the valley.

"How can it all be downhill if it goes over the top?"

“Who do you believe? Your machines or a man who’s lived here all his life? It’s how it is. Your choice. Your consequences.”

The old man looped a u-turn in the road and headed back towards the village. Marc gazed after it, noticing the badge on the back: a J and a G, drawn to form a cycle, over the words 'Tour de France 1939'.

Marc lay back on the grass.

His nap had only made the throbbing in his thighs worse, and he knew his muscles would tighten the longer he lay there. The hill would get more and more agonising. But there was no avoiding it, whatever the old man said. He pulled himself to his feet and returned to his bike, throwing his leg over it.

Pushing down on the pedals, he twisted his shoes into the clips, fastening his feet on to the bike, and willed himself forwards. The length of road looked flat, but as he cycled, it felt imperceptibly up hill. He had to keep to low gear, and the numbers on the Garmin stayed embarrassingly low.

As he rounded the corner and saw the road steepen in front of him, he noticed the gap in the trees the old man had described, and as he’d described it, the track leading from it headed downhill. Marc was sweating and panting already, muscles starting to seize and ache, and there was more incline to come. The track couldn’t be worse than the road, and it would never show on the Garmin tracking. He shifted his handlebars slightly to the left and the bike bumped off the road onto the track.
He found himself in a cool shaded tunnel of trees blocking the sun, the track surface unexpectedly smooth, free of bumps and patches repaired from roadworks and potholes. But most importantly, it was down hill – not dramatic, just a gentle consistent slope. The cyclist let his screaming thighs relax and felt the top of the range freewheel coast him along, the clicks of the mechanism slowly picking up speed, gradually blending into one as the cogs spun faster and faster. He rotated the front cog forward to change up through the gears, the derailleur shunting the chain from the biggest gears on the back to the smaller. At least that way, he would start to have some control when he reached the bottom and the hill flattened out.

The track got steeper and the branches flew faster and faster over his head, and his wheels spinning faster. Straight at first, it started to curve a little, left and right, and enjoyed the pleasure of his own skill in steering simply by leaning infinitesimally left then right, the tiny shift in his centre of gravity taking the bike in each direction. He was enjoying himself – this was what cycling should be like. Cool air streamlining over his body, a smooth surface, just enough steering to enjoy his mastery of the machine. The numbers on the Garmin were satisfyingly high; the boys would be impressed.
The downhill steepened even more and his speed increased, and the curves tightened a little more, each needing a more of a tilt one after the other, becoming more of a bend, each time. He focussed on taking the perfect line through them, relishing his own ability to control the descent as he went faster and faster, relentlessly down and down. The bends tightened to become corners and there was a thrill now in getting through each one, leaning enough to shift the bike’s path, and keep the tyres gripping the road as he turned. The surface was stable like nothing he had cycled on before.

After what felt like about fifteen minutes of quickening descent and sharpening corners, he conceded to himself that his mastery of the his machine would mean a few light touches of brake as he set his line into the next corner, just to take the edge off his ever increasing speed. His fingers closed round the brake levers on the curve of his handlebars and delicately tightened, just enough, he estimated, to stop the acceleration but maintain the excitement of the descent. Too delicate a touch, perhaps, as he didn’t feel any slowing, and he pulled them tighter, wondering if the expensive lightness of his disc brakes was just too light for their own good. But still no change in his acceleration, and he was starting to feel out of control, his heart beating faster. The next corner was hurtling towards him and he concentrated and tensed, focussing on leaning and twitching the handlebars to make it round, with no thought of his perfect line though this time. Straightening up, he pulled at the handlebars with full force, determined to slow enough to make it through the next corner. But nothing.

The bike continued to accelerate down the twisting tunnel of trees, with the cyclist sliding from side to side as though on a bobsleigh run. He had no run-off, no way of escaping.

Instinctively, he tried backpedalling, but it made no difference, as some part of his rational mind outside his terror knew. All he could do was cling on to his bike, head down, fingers gripping the sweat-damped tape on his handlebars, and keep remembering that sooner or later, the steepness would relent. He would reach the bottom of the valley and the track would level to flatness, and friction and the laws of entropy would bring his bike to a halt. All he had to do was to stay in the saddle till then. That was all.

But the track continued to drop away just as steeply. His adrenalin sodden brain had no idea of time, but it seemed to be hours, and there was no sign of any decrease in the incline.

With each curve, he had no idea how he stayed on the bike: the corners were too tight, his speed too great, and he braced for the bike to slip away from under him, the front wheel losing traction on the ground. He almost craved that moment of touching nothing and anticipating whatever hellish impact he’d have at this speed, onto the ground, into a branch, his head slamming into a tree trunk. But somehow he kept descending, and his primitive will to survive taking over his brain, keeping him on the bike as it zigzagged through the tunnel, down and down and down.

Faster and faster, never stopping. Forever. No choice is without sacrifice.

💀💀💀

Matthew Hurst is a British writer in Canada. He's had work produced by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Ukrainian TV and has written journalism and copy for clients since he left school, but this is his first published short story. He’s on Bluesky and Substack at stubsack.substack.com (same for both) and you can sign up for his November project for free at fupperynewsletter.substack.com."

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March 11, 2026

3/11/2026

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Ghost Jam
by Daniel Scott Tysdal

A young musician finally has the space to create again—until a relentless midnight knocking begins to unravel her life. Exhaustion, frustration, and desperation push her to search for a solution. Blending humor, heart, and the supernatural, Ghost Jam is about creativity, resilience, and the surprising possibilities that can emerge when we stop fighting the unknown and start listening to it.

Listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.

Fittingly, the story of how our band started begins with a ghostly knocking in the night. This was back before I knew Emi. But I heard her tell the story enough that even though I can’t do her voice justice I feel confident I can share the truth.
            Emi had just received a modest arts grant and used the money to move downtown. She totally fell in love with her new apartment. How much? She was so enamoured with her sweet little place that she actually enjoyed working at Coffee Nut. Yup, that’s love. With a genuine smile on her face, she happily served entitled customers, dealt with jerk supervisors, and wore that ugly mustard-coloured vest and visor with the grinning, creepy nut logo.
            What was the reason for this love?
            For one, she could walk to and from work. No more hours wasted in unreliable public transit. And she found the downtown bustle and action, the energy of being at the centre of it all, inspiring.
            On top of that, she had her own, full kitchen. Sure, the kitchen wasn’t much bigger than a coffin, but it had everything she needed to cook her favourites—oden soup, double chocolate chip cookies, a full roast chicken dinner—which topped her previous apartment’s microwave and hotplate. This kitchen also came with a refreshing lack of what she didn’t need, unlike her place before the studio, which had roommates who left the kitchen filthy, stole her groceries, and told her to cook more chicken dinners and less of her “stinky Asian food.”
            More than the enjoyable commute and perfect kitchen, though, Emi loved her new apartment because, for the first time since graduating from university three years earlier, she could finally make music again.
            She turned her living room into her dream recording studio. The building’s walls were thick enough that, if she played at a reasonable level, she didn’t disturb her neighbours, and covering the walls, doorways, and windows in thick blankets she picked up at Goodwill gave her solid sound recording quality.
            She described her music making station, by which she meant her desk, floor, and couch, as a cornucopia. Instead of overflowing with fruit, gourds, nuts, and flowers, though, her cornucopia overflowed with instruments, cords, mics, and notebooks—a large synth on a stand and a small one parked atop her laptop; a drum pad on her desk and claves, a tambourine, and other simple instruments piled in a plastic storage container; an electric guitar properly stored in its case and an acoustic guitar half-buried under notebooks on the couch.
            Every day after work, she would giddily rush into her apartment, hang up her Coffee Nut vest and visor on the hook beside the door, and get to work creating. She would break to let ideas percolate while cooking a sustaining feast and then continue making music.
            Every night before bed, she would visit her defunct Streamify account Emifalaso and look at her disappointing musical pinnacle: twelve tracks, six followers, and three hundred and forty-eight streams. She used this to fuel her. She knew she was capable of so much more.
            Every night before bed, she also had another ritual: pray the ghost would leave her alone.
            She always told this part of her story like it was an old cartoon. Emi idyllically slept snugly in bed, snoring softly, a smile curling on her lips as she meandered in dreamland. On her nightstand, an oversized mechanical alarm clock read 2:59AM. The seconds hand ticked, ticked, ticked around to twelve, the clock struck 3:00AM. The faint, erratic knocking began. Emi’s eyes fired open, saucer-wide and bloodshot.
            Her prayers were never answered.
Each night the ghostly knocking returned.
And each day, Emi deteriorated.
            This part of her story she would tell like a dramatic, cinematic montage.
Emi, exhausted, struggled to maintain a smile as she served a complaining customer. She stumbled home, battling through the crowd. She played her big synth, messed up, then restarted the recording. She returned to playing the synth, messed up again, then hit the keys in frustration. She tended to a simple, one-pot meal. She laid awake in her darkened bedroom. She watched her alarm clock: 2:59AM. 3:00AM hit. The erratic knocking began, louder. Emi moaned.
The cycle repeated for weeks, Emi spiralling into exhaustion. She spent as much time at work getting reamed out by her manager as she did scowling at crummy customers. She shuffled zombie-like into traffic, almost getting hit by a turning car. She fell asleep on the couch, acoustic guitar falling from her lap to the floor, forgetting about the pot of canned soup she left boiling on the stove. The soup burned. Emi’s fire alarm blared. She shot up in a panic and then stopped. She looked down at her foot. She had stomped it through her acoustic guitar.
That night, lights on, Emi stood on her bed, scanning the ceiling. 3:00AM arrived. The knocking returned, louder and wilder. Emi scurried around her bed, the floor, her dresser, tracking the sound’s source. The knocking moved around the room, as though running from her.
            The next afternoon, Emi returned home from work, dead on her feet. She took off her work visor and vest. She attempted to hang them on the hook beside the entrance, but they dropped to the floor. She shuffled a few steps before finally registering her uniform’s fall. She glanced back, that creepy bean logo grinning at her, and then continued to her desk.
            Sitting, Emi pushed the mini-synth and a mess of cords out of the way. She pulled her laptop forward and opened it. The browser was still opened on her defunct Streamify page. Her metrics remained unchanged: twelve tracks, six followers, and three hundred and forty-eight streams. She scoffed, closing the page.
            She typed in the search bar: “how to get rid of a ghost.”
She clicked the first result.
The website title, “Ghost Be Gone,” appeared at the top in big, gaudy letters, bookended by strobing red crucifixes.
When Emi scrolled down the page to read more, a video popped up and played.
Pastor GBG, a white guy in his fifties, walked smiling towards the camera on the perfectly manicured lawn of a large house. A lawnmower engine roared. The pastor wore cowboy boots, jeans, a short sleeved light blue shirt, that, of course, revealed his large biceps, a clerical collar, and cowboy hat. He held against his chest a large, leather-bound Bible with a crucifix on the front.
Emi always had a blast mimicking the pastor. I’m not sure what listeners got a kick of out of more—the ridiculousnesses of the man or the energy of Emi’s impersonation.
“Great heavenly day, friends,” the pastor shouted over the lawnmower. “I’m the Wise and Mighty Reverend Ghost Be Gone, but you can call me, Pastor GBG.”
The pastor reached a generic white dad slumped on a ride lawnmower, jammed unmoving against a tree.
“Like this poor fella here,” Pastor GBF shouted, “is a ghost making a mockery of you, tormenting your family, and keeping you all from truly accepting into your hearts our dear saviour Jesus Christ’s suffering and love?”
The ad cut to two kids crying as a ghost—that’s right, a man in a sheet—mockingly pointed at them.
“Is a ghost,” the pastor continued in voiceover, “making your already soft and disappointing offspring softer?”
The ad cut to a generic white wife clutching her head and bawling hysterically as the ghost broke dishes on the floor.
“Is a ghost messing with your wife’s kitchen so she can’t cook you a proper meal?”
Suddenly, and this was where Emi could hardly keep it together, the ghost and wife were curled up in bed, the wife lovingly stroking the ghost’s chest and the ghost smoking a cigarette even though he didn’t have a mouth hole in his sheet.
“Heck,” Pastor GBG continued, “has a ghost got you so worn down that you no longer have what it takes to be a real man and he’s seducing your wife?”
That was when Emi closed the site and stared at the screen, jaw dropped.
She modified her search: “how to get rid of a ghost non-religious.”
At this point in her telling, Emi would deflate. She couldn’t stop the frustration and dread of that time from resonating in her voice as she described clicking the first link, the second, the third, fourth, fifth, and fiftieth. They were all the same: too expensive.
Take as an example a standard trades-looking site like “Five Star Ghost Exterminators,” the business name written in star-filled letters with the services highlighted beneath, each word bookended by a star: “Removal. Disposal. Protection.”
The misery amplified when Emi scrolled down, and a banner popped up, offering something like, “Discount Removal Services! Starting as Low as $499.99!”
Then another popped up with, “No Tax on Full RDP Packages! Save Up To $750!”
Then another: “Sign Up for Our New Elite Members Subscription Service! Only $299.99/month! (Must sign up for five years.)”
Emi finally slammed her laptop shut.
She stood, catching herself before stepping on her broken acoustic guitar again, and laid down on the couch. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and opened Instagram.
She searched: “ghost removal DIY.”
Hopeless and defeated, she scrolled through the results.
Noticing a pattern, she perked up.
More and more preview images contained a bright golden jam, or people holding or making this jam, much of the media stamped with text praising “Ghost Jam.”
Emi tapped on a video that read “[heart eye emoji] Why We <3 Ghost Jam! [heart eye emoji].”
The video was a cut of people sharing why they loved ghost jam. The footage and sound varied in quality and polish and the people were diverse in age, gender, race, and ethnicity. What did not vary was the genuine enthusiasm and dynamic energy with which Emi repeated the testimonials.
“I love that the ghost jam recipe is free.”
“I love that ghost jam is eco-friendly.”
“I love that making ghost jam has levelled up my cooking skills.”
“I love how ghost jam helps you kill two birds with one stone. Just spread the jam on any old junk you’re ready to get rid of and the ghost’ll hop right on it!”
The praise went on and on: ghosts couldn’t resist it; the ingredients were at the grocery store; you’ll feel at home in my home again; you’ll have the energy you need to succeed at work; you’ll finally have time to do the things you love.
Emi, giddy, stood and pocketed her phone. She started forward. A loud crack stopped her. She looked down. She had stepped on her acoustic guitar again, breaking it further. She overcame her indignity with the hope her discovery inspired. She continued to the front door.
In this phase of her telling, Emi used the ticking clock, like she was a spy building the device that would stop the bomb from exploding at 3:00AM.
7:45PM: Emi strode down a busy sidewalk, pulling her empty grocery wagon. She did her best to manage the pedestrian traffic while looking up the ghost jam recipe.
8:37PM: Emi desperately scoured the shelf for an ingredient, her cart full.
9:51PM: Emi rushed into her apartment, her wagon overflowing.
11:03PM: Ingredients neatly arranged on the counter, Emi added a powder to a mixing bowl and stirred. The bowl steamed. She coughed and choked at the foul stench, dry heaving. She dumped the contents into the garbage can, tossed the mixing bowl in the sink, and opened the kitchen window. She took a fortifying breath and washed the bowl.
12:57AM: The kitchen in slight disarray, Emi tended to a pair of boiling pots on the stove. She picked up one, poured its goopy contents into the other, and the concoction exploded, covering her, the stove, and counter in a sickly green. Emi’s face hardened in focus as she started again.
2:14AM: The kitchen now in total disarray, Emi was at the same stage again, two pots boiling in front of her. She grabbed one pot with confidence and poured it into the other. As the pot emptied, she closed her eyes, waiting for it to explode. She opened one eye. The mixture turned an appealing, shining gold.
2:50AM: Emi pushed through the blanket that hung in front of her kitchen entrance. She held a bowl full of golden ghost jam. She quickly scanned her living room, her eye moving from object to object. She smiled, hurrying over to her broken acoustic guitar.
Emi entered her bedroom. She cradled her ghost jam-covered acoustic guitar on her forearms, holding it away from her body. Her alarm clock read: 2:59AM. She looked up at the ceiling, waiting.
Her clock struck 3:00AM.
The dissonant knocking began.
Emi carefully extended the jam-covered guitar up to the ceiling, in the direction of the sound. The knocking grew quiet, then almost rhythmic, then louder, then more rhythmic still. Emi watched the ceiling, hopeful.
The guitar shook in her hands.
The knocking slowed, quieted, hitting a soothing rhythm joined by a stilted melody from the guitar’s remaining strings. Emi lowered the guitar, bringing it closer to her ear. The ghost was in the guitar.
Emi celebrated, dancing around her bedroom. The knocking and strumming fell into rhythm with her dancing. Emi continued her celebration out of her apartment, into the hallway, down the rear stairs, and into the alley, the guitar’s knocking and strumming joyful and rhythmic.
She tossed the guitar in the dumpster. The knocking and strumming continued. Emi raised her hands in celebration.
She returned to her apartment, crawled into bed, and smiled up at the quiet ceiling. She closed her eyes and slept through the rest of the night.
The next day, though Emi was exhausted, she served customers with genuine happiness. Her vision of nights of peaceful sleep and days of making music buoyed her.
Walking home from work, she paused when she reached her building. She peered into the alley. The end of the guitar still stuck out of the dumpster. Emi smiled wide at her success, but her smile faltered a little. She considered her reaction then forced a smile. She hurried into her building.
Emi entered her apartment, hung her uniform on its hook, and hustled over to her music making station. Opening her laptop and popping on her headphones, she fell into the flow as she returned to work on a new track. She paused her groove, listening close. Something was missing. After an “a ha” moment, she grabbed her drum pad. She hesitated, staring at the drum pad, deep in thought.
Taking a break, Emi surveyed her messy kitchen then started to clean up. As she moved to scrape the remaining ghost jam out of the mixing bowl into the garbage, she wavered. She studied the unused portion, deep in thought. She broke out of her spell and transferred the remaining ghost jam into a Tupperware container.
That night in bed, Emi laid on her side in the dark, watching her clock.
3:00AM hit.
Emi flipped onto her back. Her eyes closed, face scrunched, and body tensed, she braced for the knocking to return.
Her bedroom remained silent. She opened her eyes and listened. Her body relaxed. A smile spread wide across her face. The silence remained.
Still smiling, she closed her eyes to sleep. Her smile fell. Her eyes opened again. Her face clenched in concern.
Wearing a housecoat over her pyjamas, Emi pushed through the steel door at the base of the rear stairs and stepped cautiously into the alley. Confirming she was alone, Emi shuffled over to the dumpster.
Her broken guitar stuck out of the dumpster, the ghost inside releasing a plaintive, atonal combo of knocking and strumming. As she got closer, the ghost’s expressions remained atonal but grew more plaintive.
Emi sighed. She retrieved her guitar.
Back in her apartment, when Emi sat the broken guitar on her music making station, its expressions remained erratic but were now upbeat. Emi played a sweet, simple melody on her synth. The ghost’s knocking and strumming grew more rhythmic and melodic. Emi adapted to the ghost’s music.
Together they played what Emi always described as a haunting, hopeful song. Having played the song that arose from that session myself several times, I can second her description.
At this point when telling her story, Emi would remove herself in the name of creating a suspenseful montage.
The next morning, Emi’s bedroom was empty, her bed made.
Emi’s kitchen was clean, but various utensils and ingredients were arranged on the counter in preparation for cooking.
Emi’s broken guitar sat silent on her music making station, still glistening golden.
Though brighter in the daylight, the alley looked the same as it did the night before, except for one change. Atop the pile of garbage in the dumpster sat Emi's Coffee Nut vest and visor, the creepy bean logo hidden.
Emi happily strode past the alley toward her building’s entrance, her wagon full of groceries.
This next part of Emi’s story she described as creating her second cornucopia. She visited junk shops and goodwill stores until her wagon was full of broken, neglected instruments: a flute with a busted mouthpiece, a set of bongos with a batter head punched in, a partly melted, fire damaged keyboard, a stringless ukulele.
But that was only the first step. She completed her new cornucopia by trekking across the city and visiting people she had found online distraught over unwanted hauntings. She messaged them each an offer: she could remove their ghost for free in return for a testimonial. The distressed, exhausted people agreed, welcoming her into their homes. She entered, carrying a broken instrument glistening gold with a fresh coat of ghost jam.
Once she had completed half-a-dozen jobs, she officially started her new business. She took branding inspiration from her competitors, while forgoing their high cost and higher cruelty. Five Star Ghost Rescue offered flexible pricing options and, instead of treating ghosts like garbage, promised to: “Rescue. Rehome. Renew.”
That was how I met Emi. I was one of her first paid jobs. I had been a young woman who did not want to leave this world but could not go on living in the one available to me, if that makes sense. The room I haunted had been a library when I died but was an entertainment room decades later when Emi showed up to rescue me, a smashed French horn covered in ghost jam in her hands.
I was there when Emi first started leading our chaotic spectral band. I did get to spend a few nights in that apartment, but with our members numbering nearly twenty already the landlord kicked us out due to noise complaints. The house Emi rented in the suburbs was much better anyway, freeing us to play whenever and however we pleased.
I was there each time Emi welcomed a new member into our home, each time she told them this story of how our band began.
I was there when Emi started her other new website: a Streamify page for “GJC (Ghost Jam Collective).” It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when we had zero subscribers and zero streams.
I was there when those numbers exploded, there for all the rises and falls, the joys and struggles that came with our musical breakthrough.
I was there for a different breakthrough, too, the one that was for us the most important outcome of Emi’s work to empower us to express. Music making freed some of us to move onto the next realm. It broadened others. They could bounce between instruments or play within multiple instruments at once. And a few, like me, experienced the full return of our consciousness and speech.
I’m not sure what we would do at this difficult time without this breakthrough. And though I suppose this sounds self-aggrandizing, I do take my capacity to communicate verbally with you as sign that our ghostly orchestra is part of a bigger plan, guided by a larger hand.
Hearing our story, I hope sways you to join us. With her work in this world done, when Emi died, she fully passed on. Despite our growth, we still need a gatherer, a leader, a guide, a friend.
Just think of the story you can tell when people ask how you joined. You can say, it all started the way you’d expect: a banged up French horn came knocking in the night.

💀💀💀

Daniel Scott Tysdal is a writer, filmmaker, and teacher. He is the author of four books of poetry, the poetry textbook The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems (Oxford University Press), and the TEDx talk, “Everything You Need to Write a Poem (and How It Can Save a Life).” His debut horror novel is forthcoming in fall 2027.
FB: Daniel Tysdal / IG: @danielscottttysdal / T: @dstiz

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March 4, 2026

3/4/2026

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Laughter & The Devil
by Nemo Arator

A haunting literary horror story about childhood obsession, forgotten rituals, and the terrifying consequences of curiosity.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.

When I was twelve years old, it became my ambition to summon the Devil. I don’t remember what I intended to achieve by this, but my methods were clearly flawed, for the Lord of Darkness did never appear to me, no deal was ever made, and eventually I came to accept that anything I wished to achieve would have to be through my own effort, by the sheer force of will. After a while, my boyhood obsession with diabolism gave way to more typical adolescent interests, such as heavy metal, horror movies, horror novels, porn, drugs. First, I tried to be a musician, then I became a writer. Years passed, life went on.

Then something odd happened to me about twelve years later, the autumn I was twenty-four, something that happened at Sarak that I didn’t remember until after completing the novel. I remember waking one cold gray morning to find our motel room deserted: both Chow and Monty were gone. Since I didn’t know where they went or when they’d be back, I inexplicably decided to indulge myself the luxury of smoking a fat joint and taking a long hot shower, which I then did.

While I stood there, languishing in the comforting downpour, wallowing in that half-asleep half-awake sauna-like haze, I started mumbling incoherently to myself. Nothing unusual, but then I heard the sound of my own voice perfectly recite the words to a blasphemous little prayer invoking the Devil, something I read during one of my preteen researches, which I had completely forgotten in the dozen years since. With a detached sort of amazement, I marveled how easily and unbidden it came to my lips, how perfectly I remembered it after such a long time – retrieved from the void so whole and complete, an unprompted spontaneous outpour.

It wasn’t until after completing the invocation that I suddenly realized it might have been a dangerous thing to have done while being so deep in such a suggestible state. But it was too late: the moment after faltering out the last halting syllables, I felt the gong sound... a call had been made… and heard... and now it was being answered.

The bathroom didn’t have a fan, but there was a window right outside the bathroom door, which I had opened partway and left the door ajar so that steam wouldn’t excessively accumulate in here while I showered. But it did anyway, and in the moments after completing the satanic somniloquy, I felt a tendril of cold worm its way in from outside, piercing through all that sauna-like haze of steam and touch me and I quaked.
For with the cold, I felt the growing sense of presence, of something coming toward me, something distant nearing, huge and aetherial, like some great shaggy beast woken from its slumber by my summons and now it was coming for me, I could feel its growing, nearing, inexorable approach.

Quickly, I recanted, jerking around in terror, and shouted, “Jesus Christ, the son of God, was raised back from the dead! He did rise up! Get thee behind me, Satan! Get thee behind me, Satan! Get thee behind me, Satan!”

Immediately, I felt the rising cold pause and then begin to rapidly subside. I started shaking in relief. So near that it was, I was almost totally overwhelmed by the awesome power of its immanence. A few seconds more and I probably wouldn’t have even been capable of speech. It was almost right here – but now it was fading so fast it was gone.

I rushed to the window just in time to catch the barest glimpse of something: the fleeting shape of some lumbering enormity. I had my head pressed against the screen and I could see the area behind the restaurant, littered with detritus; beyond that, the empty street, a row of trees, some parked cars, a dumpster; there was nothing. And then I heard a voice echoing in my head – a dejected mocking, but something so horribly sinister in it that I needed no further confirmation I barely evaded something unspeakable.

I don’t remember what happened after that. Maybe I fainted. Chow must have returned with Monty and then we went to the restaurant and continued working. Things inevitably carried on from there. Somehow, I completely forgot the whole thing immediately afterwards – it was just too unreal. I almost met the Evil One, invited It right into my company; luckily, I revoked at the last second. What else could I do but go on with my life and try to tread more carefully?

I forgot about it, but in my notes of later that day, I found mention of an incident that happened two years earlier, when I was twenty-two and spent most of a week early that summer smoking crack with a junkie named Calen Mallow.

We had gone to this apartment he knew about, hoping to score another couple meager chunks of ready-rock, which we would then smoke in a gibbled frenzy of melting cubes and fire on through the afternoon; in the evenings, we snorted codeine and smoked hash by knife-tip in an attempt to blot the painful yearning that accompanies coming-down. We stood outside that building for some time waiting, smoking cigarettes in the shade of a huge oak tree until someone either came in or went out, and Calen ran over and grabbed the door before it shut, and I went in with him and down the stairs to the basement.

Outside the suite, Calen had first knocked on the door, and then started pounding on it, pounding and yelling in that horrible voice of his, and this went on and on until it was intolerable, and then finally he tried the knob and the door opened. Then he went into the suite and told me to come inside and close the door and not stand in the hallway and draw so much attention. So, I went in and closed the door, feeling vaguely disgusted to touch the handle.

I remember entering that apartment and thinking this place is a filthy rotten fuck-hole. It was like some degenerate’s hovel inside. Everything was soiled and broken. The furniture was smashed, the sink was full of dirty dishes, garbage was piled everywhere. The place stank, the sour reeking pungence of putrefaction. The walls were smeared with some dried brown substance. I could hear flies buzzing, and in the canted light, I saw forks and knives jammed in the ceiling. The entire place seemed intrinsically stained somehow. I felt a strange electric chill; I felt it immediately upon entering, but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t realize it then, not until after that morning at Sarak, but when I went into that apartment, I could feel, but did not know, that the Devil was here.

And that was all. I stood there motionless, just a few feet inside the door, while Calen looked around the kitchen and living room, then disappeared down the hallway. I heard the sound of a door creak open as he looked into that single room, then I heard it creak closed, and he returned.

I remember he had an expression on his face, or rather, the lack of expression, a sort of perfect blankness hardened in place, his eyes frightened pinpricks. And I knew he saw something in there. And I knew that I’d never know what it was, not only because I’d never ask, but also because he wouldn’t tell me. But I knew that it shook him, whatever it was. And being a junkie, which was the merest of the depravities he engaged in, if it was enough to shake him, then it must have been something.

“Who lives here?” I asked.

“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s go.”

So we left, and the rest of it played out from there.

The summer after Sarak, I decided to go camping one weekend and drop some acid and see what happened. I had a specific place in mind for the occasion, a certain point along the old telegraph trail whereat there’s an old church and cemetery that seemed like the perfect spot to get zonkered on psychedelic drugs and revel in the desolate splendor of the scene and whatever visions might come to me there. It’s a fair way from the beaten track and hardly anyone knows about it, so I thought I’d be safe.

I am not sure if I’d even taken the acid yet or precisely what happened after I arrived. My memory of it begins when the spasm of my knee jerked me back awake – I was sprawled out in the grass, the joint of the limb pressed into the ground as if I’d been crawling and had caught myself mid-crawl, a sleep crawl, like an injured slug flubbing along. And I could hear the most horrible sound, the most disgusting and pathetic sound I ever heard, it made me want to vomit; and I could feel my throat vibrating with that sound, and then I realized it was coming from my own mouth, and then I collapsed.

When I looked around, I saw that I was surrounded by old grave-markers, pillow-stones and uprights, all weathered and rounded with age. I could see my tent over by the trees at the edge of the burial ground, the open doorway of it black and drifting out with a dense gray smoke. For some reason, I was fearful of going anywhere near it. The air was leaden with a weighted stillness. I looked around, wondering if someone had found me alone out here and was playing some sort of horrible prank. But it didn’t seem to be, for there wasn’t a soul in sight.

When I looked back at my tent, I saw the Devil standing outside of it – a tall dark shape, a massive shadow, a cold eminence. I felt all the hairs on my body rise up and I couldn’t even move I was suddenly so terrified. Now truly I did feel like a worm on a hook, helpless against its fate, which was doom. The Devil stared down at me and I felt its gaze pierce through like a blast of frigid air – it could see everything, all the lust, anger, envy, and deceit, the whole self-made web I was mired in – I shriveled beneath the scrutiny of that infernal gaze, and its approval. In one hand, the Devil held a vicious-looking scepter-staff; in the other hand, it held a burlap knapsack, a twitching, kicking bag.

“Got someone’s soul,” the Devil said, a voice like grinding slate. “Another fool willing to give it all for their heart’s desire. But they got what they wanted, now I get what’s mine. Come inside, I want to show you something.”

The Devil gestured for me to come into the tent with it, and suddenly, I felt my body somehow rise to its feet and stagger-stumble over there like a clumsy puppet being dragged by its strings. I shambled across the threshold into the tent and the entrance flap fell closed behind me. Inside the tent, it had become a huge cavernous space, its interior expanded to unknown reaches; neither walls nor ceiling were detectable in the darkness.
The only light came from the fire flickering within the stone barbeque that was just a few feet inside the doorway. A big round frying pan sat upon the grill, loaded with all sorts of choice cuts and various organs: spleen, kidney, liver, brain, all nested in together and sizzling up into the air the sweet succulent aroma of cooking meat and spices.

The Devil walked over to the stove pyre and gripped the pan by its handle and flung the entirety of its contents into the shadows before him. He had hardly set the pan back upon the grill when a hideous pig-dog suddenly burst from the shadows behind us and charged after them, grunting and squealing, a revolting bullet-blur across the visible space and then disappear back into the shadows. A brief silence as it located the cast-off bits, then I could hear the noisy gristle gobble slop tear of grinding teeth gnawing meat.
The Devil had meanwhile upended the sack and dumped out a pale two-headed serpent onto the frying pan. The snake coiled and uncoiled immediately upon landing, then it flipped over and did this again, and again. We watched it squirm, trying not to burn, but it was futile, and soon the air filled with the noxious smell of burning reptile. I watched this, mesmerized by the helpless creature’s writhing flop, my stomach churning, unable to look away. It never tried to escape; the snake knew this was its fate. Soon, I saw charred holes scorched in its side, and before long, the albino serpent was reduced to a blackened, twitching, blistered piece of anatomy.

And then the Devil stepped forward and started hacking and slashing at it with a meat cleaver, chopping the serpent into pieces. Each severed section had its own autonomy, and writhed in agony anew, coiling and uncoiling. Its vile blood sizzled as it spilled, and it was so putrid that I gagged. I crouched down lest I keel over, my head was spinning, and I started sweating and shivering. I could hear the Devil’s voice speaking. It seemed to be explaining the terms and conditions, how this all came to pass, but it was vague and indistinct, I didn’t understand any of the actual details.

“Come with me,” the Devil said. We left the tent and went across the cemetery into the trees encircling the grounds. We proceeded into the bush a short distance before arriving at a small house that was hidden out there. (For a long time, I never knew this house was real, but six years later, at a funeral, someone told me there really is such a structure on that site, and when I went back, I saw that it was so.)

The lights were on inside, but the windows were covered by cataracts of frost, so that it was impossible to see through. I saw a fat black raven alight upon the leafless branch of a dead tree as we arrived, but it made not a sound, not even as we mounted the front steps and went to the door. The Devil knocked three times, and we waited briefly before someone came to answer.

The door opened and the Devil strode into the house and I followed. Inside, the main room was a haze of lingering smoke from incense and recently extinguished candles. Beneath the smoke, I could smell flowers, their pleasant reek abundantly provided by the many bunches and bouquets I saw clustered at the front of the room.

All the furniture had been moved to one side and the central space filled with rows of chairs facing the floral display. It was the north wall, and a quartet of green wreaths with colored ribbons hung from a metal stand behind a table that was covered with candles. A few somber people in black clothes shuffled about; they had the air of being the last few present after some social event was finished up and put away with.

Then I noticed those two women from the carnival were here. They were sitting together on a couch by the wall, and when I saw them, I started walking over. Their faces were blank as they watched me approach; neither appeared to recognize me. They both moved to the furthest end of the couch away from me without saying anything. I wasn’t sure if they did this to put distance between us or to make room for me to sit down – their faces were unreadable. I looked around and saw the Devil was nowhere in sight, so I sat in the space they had made and asked them what happened here.

“You don’t know?” said the brunette, leaning back into the blond, her pupils contracting. “You’re too late. You’re not even here right now.”

Then she turned and whispered something to the blond, and they both started laughing. I heard laughter over my shoulder as well, and when I turned back to look, I saw the ringmaster standing there, bellowing guffaws right at me. And then I heard laughter break out in exploding pockets all over the room, until finally it sounded like everybody was laughing. And the air was filled with the sound of laughter, flowing from everyone’s mouth except my own.

And then for some reason, I started laughing too – uneasily at first, but it grew and bloomed. Laughing with sick relief, but I had no idea why.

I looked around: there was nobody else here. I was alone in that abandoned house in the woods. And those piles of dust on the floor were surely a hundred years old.

💀💀💀

Nemo Arator is a writer from Saskatchewan. He studied Journalism at the University of Regina and worked at various odd jobs while writing his first book. He seeks gnosis through dreams, intoxication, and objective chance. This story is from his unpublished picaresque novel TO WHAT END.

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March 25, 2026

Hannah Sawyerby Aaron Brown-Ewing

March 18, 2026

King of the Mountain​by Matthew Hurst

March 11, 2026

Ghost Jam​by Daniel Scott Tysdal

March 4, 2026

Laughter & The Devil​by Nemo Arator

About

Hannah Sawyer
by Aaron Brown-Ewing

King of the Mountain
by Matthew Hurst

Ghost Jam
by Daniel Scott Tysdal

Laughter & The Devil
by Nemo Arator