Charlevoix county herald., 1912-12-21

partition was signifcant-tiIp ship nPyei
heard OF again.
The rocky coasts of New England are haunted
by many ghost ships. The Paatne is the hest
known specter. The coasters and fishermen OF
Long IsIanI Sound will tell you that when sight
of her is gotten disastrous and long-asting
storms will follow. The Palavine, Dutch trader,
misled by false lights shown by wreckers, ran
ashore upon Block Island in ahe year 1852. The
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
out to sea, agonizing shreks from the
blaze, and the figure Of a 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 anu woman vanished.
The whaling in Nantucket as you will renem-
ber was in its palmy days carried on almost
tirely by Quakers One Sunday evening meet
ing in progress; the simple service seemed
though 1t might pass, and the spirit moved
none of the company. The elder Friend was just
about to offer his hand to his neghbor in the
closing of the meeting WREN a stranger rose
and declared that the Lords wrath upon
certain whaling ship, and that he had seen her
in vision descending huge from the
hollow of which she 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 are fiat stretching for miles, and rather
subject to mists, has said pretty we'll all that
is TO be said-the rest must be felt However,
just there is call Of the sea. so there is
cafi of the marshland. You shall go into the
saltern and feel its moist breath upon your cheek
and the breath of its salty winds and the ozone
of its Gains You shall be lost in it's vastness,
and, threading its innumerable twisted narrow
waterways, which lead to nowhere We shall
tread its carpet Of scentless flowers. You shall
go to its very edge where the comes often
most. and where the flowers decaying leave their
rust-colored remains There you shall meet mud
and the cry of the curew shall mock as you
founder in its filth. The shall come up
refracted by the mist into unacceptable shape
which shall be blood color. You shall be gray
shape, differing little from the common things
that are there. for you shall be enshrouded by
fog: nay it shall sink into your very soul until
you are not flesh and bones, bat a particle of
fog yourself. You shall listen 10 it's silences you
shall be told things by them, and strong man
that you are. you shall be afraid.
is ii to be wondered at then that these simple
Essex marshdwelers remember such tales as
that of the young skipper, home from a 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 1t that in
crossing n narrow gutway, Pitsea he sank
in the mud. So deeply did he sink that he could
not extricate himself; the 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 saterns near
Pitsea are lonely; the cries heard only by
halfwitted 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 mysterious air. and, with arge-eyed
gancings athwart their shoulders. will tell you
that the shippers shrieks are heard on stari.
nights as the tide glides up that creek
So here are my ghost stories. and IL some
times believe In them when | sail all alone IN
the midnight Deep you will not laugh at me.