Hadley Duncan Howard

HADLEY DUNCAN HOWARD is a Utah-based writer, editor, and creative. Her professional work is word-centric and cause-based, and her writing focuses on themes of family, identity, and faith. She’s a wife, mother, and dog lover. Find her on X: @notingthebeauty.

Haunted Houses

Articles/Essays – Volume 54, No. 4

On a late October afternoon, as I stood on my parents’ driveway in the pleasantly chilled autumn air, a tree applauded me. I was twenty-one years old. Just days before, I’d returned home from my mission, too ill to be of any use in that regard. It had been a doomed endeavor from the beginning, but I didn’t know that then. What I did know was that I was home, wearing jeans and no nametag, companionless, and relieved beyond measure for my honorable and very early release.