There is no greater pairing than a misfit thirteen-year-old girl and her Ouija board. I was new in town, afraid to speak up, and sporting an extremely unfortunate haircut. I’d never been kissed. I loathed my odd name. I ached 24/7, in different inexplicable ways. …

Do you need to know what the sign looked like? It was neon. It was violet. It was flickering. PSYCHIC, it glowed: that singular word. That was all it needed to say. I was a young unknown writer in the big city and for months on end, possibly years, I…

When I first moved to Philadelphia, I saw an omen. It was my first weekend in the city in the spring of 2018. I awoke late Sunday morning in the apartment we’d just rented in Center City and headed out to go get coffee. But as I emerged from the…

I was born with the mark of a flying saucer on my leg. The birthmark is smooth, pigmented a light brown, and creates the shape of a long oval — a UFO setting off back to its homeland in the stars. When I was young I was painfully aware of…

I have always been afraid of stairs. In darker moments — literally when the sun goes down — a staircase becomes taller somehow, bending off into unknowable, impenetrable shadow. The fall down is longer, more dangerous. The prickling sensation along the spine comes. I start hurrying up. I can’t look…