
The lamp on the verandah
A lamp that lights itself every monsoon night, and the family who learned not to look.
Ghost story writer
I’m Dilani. I write ghost stories from a coastal town and read them aloud, and I sell story collections, an audio pack, a ghost story workbook and a course on writing suspense.

New here? Start with these.
How a pause, a half sentence and a door left open do more than any monster.
Eight handwritten pages, a bad ending and a grandmother who told me what it should have been.
A ghost story every Friday: written for a lamp, a rainy night and a quiet house.

A lamp that lights itself every monsoon night, and the family who learned not to look.

8 min read
A blue train by the sea, a passenger who is never counted and a ticket that does not match.

5 min read
Why I wait for rain, close the windows and turn off the fan before I read aloud.
Online course


Video course · 8 lessons
From a quiet opening to an ending that stays with the reader, one short lesson and one task a week.
Downloads and merch
Downloads arrive by email. Merch is printed to order and shipped by Printful.

Nine ghost stories from a coastal town, to read by an oil lamp or a phone torch.

Seven short ghost stories that all begin on the same verandah on different nights.

Six stories for the weeks of heavy rain, when the house is closed and the lamps are on early.

Six of my ghost stories recorded in my own voice, about two hours to listen to in the dark.

Thirty-six pages of exercises for choosing a haunting, building a place and writing the last line.

Forty cards, each with a sound, a room and a missing thing to start a ghost story from.

About
I grew up in a coastal town where everyone had a ghost story and nobody told it the same way twice. There was a lamp on a verandah that lit itself, a train that never reached the station and fishermen who stood in the surf long after dark. I wrote them down because I was afraid they would be forgotten, and then I started to read them aloud.
My stories are quiet. Nothing jumps out. A moth, a sound in the next room, a name that nobody remembers saying, and the feeling that the house is listening. I send one every Friday as a letter, and I record some of them to be listened to in the dark with the lamp low.
I am not a professional storyteller. What I sell is what I use myself: story collections to read, an audio pack of stories read aloud, a workbook for writing your own, and two video courses on suspense and on reading your stories to an audience.
After checkout you receive an email with a download link, and the same link is shown on the confirmation page. Everything is a PDF you can read on a screen or print on ordinary A4 or Letter paper.
No. Once you buy a course it is yours to watch whenever you like, as often as you like. Both courses are in video, with a short writing task after each lesson.
One every Friday. Each one is a short ghost story, and some come with a recording. Every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and it works at once.
Write to me within fourteen days and I will refund it, no questions asked.
Yes: tees, mugs, totes, prints and stickers with my own designs. Each is printed to order and shipped by Printful, and the cost and delivery time show at checkout.

Newsletter
One ghost story every Friday, written for a lamp and a quiet house, and sometimes read aloud.