Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1912-12-12

partition was signifcant-the ship was never
heard of again.
The rocky coasts of New England are haunted
by many ghost ships. The Palatine is the pest
known specter. The coasters and fishermen OF
Long Island Sound will tell you that when sight
of her is gotten, disastrous and long-asting
storms will follow. The Palatine, Dutch trader
misled by false lights shown by wreckers, ran
ashore upon Block Island in the year l152. me
wreckers when they had stripped the vessel,
set her on fire in order to conceal their crime.
AS the tide lifted her and carried her flaming
ont to sea- agonizing shria6s came from the
blaze and the figure Of woman who had hid
den herself in the hold in fear OF the wreckers
stood out black amid the roaring blaze Then
the deck fell in and ship and woman vanished.
The whaling in Nantucket, as you will remem-
ber was In its palmy days carried on almost en-
tirely by Quakers. One Sunday evening meet
ing was in progress; the simple service seemed
as though 1t might pass and the spirit moved
none of the company. The elder Friend was just
about to offer his hand to his neighbor In the
closing of the meeting when stranger rose
and declared that the Lords wrath was upon
certain whaling ship and that he had seen her
in vision descending huge wave from the
hollow of which she never rose The meeting
closed hurriedly but the speaker could not be
found and the ship never heard OF.
Some of the best ghost stories are those which
the writer has heard from the simple folk of the
salt marshes. 1t is hardly possible to describe
these dreary districts, for when one has said
they fiat, stretching for miles, and rather
subject to msts, has said pretty well all that
is to be said-the rest must be felt. However,
just as there is a call of the sea, there Is a
call of the marshland. You shall go into the
satern and feel its moist breath upon your cheek
and the breath of its salty winds and the ozone
of its calms You shall be lost in its vastness.
and, threading its innumerabe twisted narrow
waterways, which lead to nowhere ye shall
tread it's carpet of scentless flowers You shall
go to its very edge where the comes often.
most, and where the flowers decaying leave their
rustcolored remains There you shall meet mud,
and the cry Of the curlew shall mock as you
founder in its filth. The shall come up
Tefracted by the mist into unrecognizable shape,
which shall be blood color You shall be a gray
shape, differing little from the common things
that there, for you shall be enshrouded by
fog; nay it shall sink into your very soul until
you are not flesh and bones but particle OF
fog yourself. You shall listen to its sences; you
shall be told things by them and, strong man
that you are, you shall be afraid.
Is 1t to be wondered at, then. that these simple
Essex marshdweers remember such tales as
that Of the young skipper. home from long
voyage whose haste to embrace his wife and the
babe he had not yet SEEN bid him to go the nearer
way Of the marshes? The tale has It that In
crossing narrow gutway Pitsea, he sank
in the mud. So deeply did he sink that he could
not extricate himself; the more he struggled the
deeper he sank, and with the horror of knowing
that the tide was rising and would come stealing
up the creek, he shouted. AS the tide rose higher
the louder were his screams. The salterns near
Pitsea are lonely the cries we're heard only BY
half-witted peat-cutter. who often in his less
sane moments heard such screams and thought
no more Of the matter. So the shrieks became
gurgles and by the time the tide had lifted the
peat-cutters punt they had ceased
The older folk at this stage OF the story as
sumo a mysterious air. and. with large-eyed
glancings athwart their shoulders, will tell you
that the shippers shrieks are heard on starit
nights as the tide gdes up that creek
So here are my ghost stories, and II some
times believe in them when sail all alone Oh
the midnight deep. you will not laugh at me-