Twenty-Five Ghost Stories, W. Bob Holland [ebook reader txt] 📗

while he was out fishin’. I don’t furnish any affidavits with that part of the story, though.

“However, after that nobody lived in the Old Mansion for long at a time. People would go there, stay a week or two, and leave—and at last it was given up entirely to beach parties in the day time, and ghosts at night.”

“But, Captain, you don’t really believe the ghost part, do you?” I asked.

Captain Jim looked down the bay, expectorated gravely over the side of the boat, and answered, slowly:

“Well, I don’t know as I would have believed in ’em if I hadn’t seen the ghost.”

“What!” I exclaimed; “you saw it? Tell me about it. I’ve always wanted to see a ghost, or next best thing, a man who has seen one.”

“It was one August, about 1861,” said the captain.{208} “I was a young feller then, and with a half dozen more was over on the beach cutting salt hay. We didn’t go home at nights, but did our own cooking in the Old Mansion kitchen, and at nights slept on piles of hay upstairs. We were a reckless lot of scamps, and reckoned that no ghosts could scare us. There was a big full moon that night, and it was as light as day. The muskeeters was pretty bad, too, and it was easier to stay awake than go to sleep. Along toward midnight me and two other fellers went out on the old balcony, and began to race around the house. We hollered and yelled, and chased each other for half an hour or so, and then we concluded we had better go to sleep, so we started for the window of the room where the rest were. This window was near one end on the ocean side, and as I came around the corner I stopped as if I had been shot, and my hair raised straight up on top of my head. Right there in front of that window stood a woman looking out over the sea, and in her arms she held a little child. I saw her as plain as I see you now. It seemed to me like an hour she stood there, but I don’t suppose it was a second; then she was gone. When I could move I looked around for the other boys, and they were standing there paralyzed. They had seen the woman, too. We didn’t say much, and we didn’t sleep much that night, and the next night we bunked out on the beach. The rest of the crowd{209} made all manner of fun of us, but we had had all the ghost we wanted, and I never set foot inside the old house after that.”

“When did it burn down, Captain?” I asked, as Jim relapsed into silence.

“Somewhere about twenty-five years ago. A beach party had been roasting clams in the old oven, and in some way the fire got to the woodwork. It was as dry as tinder, and I hope the ghosts were all burnt up with it.”{210}

A MISFIT GHOST.

Every boy with a knowledge of adventurous literature, otherwise “novels of action,” knows of the “phantom ship,” the spook of the high seas.

But it has not been known that ships themselves are haunted, and that in the service of the United States Coast Survey there is a vessel now in commission that is by her own officers supposed to be haunted.

Yet the Eagre, a 140-foot schooner of the coast survey, is looked upon in the service as a very undesirable vessel to be aboard of. About her there is an atmosphere of gloom that wardroom jest cannot dispel.

Duty on board her has been shunned as would be a pestilence, and stories have been told by officers who have cruised aboard her that are not good for timid people to hear. Officers have hesitated about telling these uncanny stories, but they have become sufficiently well known to make a billet to duty aboard the Eagre unwelcome among the coast survey men.

The Mohawk was launched June 10, 1875, at Greenpoint, and she was then the largest sailing yacht afloat.{211}

William T. Garner, her young millionaire owner, was very proud of his new craft, and all the then leaders of New York society were invited to participate in the good time afloat with which her launching was celebrated. Commodore Garner, then but thirty-three years old, and his young wife entertained charmingly, and the trim, speedy Mohawk was christened with unusually merry festivities. Soon after that she was capsized by a sudden squall off the landing at Stapleton, N. Y., and six people were drowned like rats in her cabin and forecastle.

Then the Mohawk was raised at a cost of $25,000 and purchased by the United States Government for the service of the coast survey. Her name was changed to Eagre, for Jack Tar is proverbially superstitious, and with the old name it would have been impossible to ship a crew.

Lieutenant Higby King describes his initial experience when he was assigned to duty on the Eagre in this way:

“She had her full complement of officers minus one when I boarded her at Newport to complete the list. Every cabin was occupied but the port cabin by the companion way, and to that I was assigned.

“We had a jolly wardroom mess that night, and I retired from it early, as I was tired by my journey to join the vessel. The others who were still at the table regarded my retirement to the{212} port cabin in absolute silence, having bidden me good-night. Their silence did not lead me to suspect anything, though I knew that the Eagre had once been the Mohawk. My cabin door had the usual cabin lock of brass, and the porthole was also securely fastened. There could have been no one under the bed or sofa, as beneath each was a facing of solid oak paneling.

“I undressed lazily and left the light burning dimly in my bracket lamp. I tried conscientiously to go to sleep for I don’t know how long with my back turned to the light. The noise ceased in the wardroom after a time, and I knew the others had turned in, but I felt unaccountably nervous and restless. I turned over and faced the light, thoroughly wide awake, and there in the single chair sat an elderly man, seemingly wrapt in deep thought. He was dressed in a blue yachting reefer, and had a long, gray beard. His hands were clasped in his lap, and his eyes were downcast. His face was not pale and ghastly, as the faces of ghosts are popularly supposed to be, but ruddy and weatherbeaten.

“I regarded him in scared silence for I don’t know how long, though it seemed an hour when he, or it, or whatever it was, disappeared. During that time the ghost, and such I now believe it to have been, made not a motion, nor did it say anything. Presently I looked again, and it was gone.{213}

“At breakfast the others watched me critically as I took my seat. I had not intended to say anything about my experience, for I thought then I had seen some sort of hallucination and strongly suspected that I was verging on insanity. Lieutenant Irving asked me if I had slept well. I replied that I had. ‘Didn’t you see anything?’ he inquired. I then frankly admitted that I had and described my experience. Then I learned that each one of the seven others present had tried the port cabin at one time or another, and each had seen the self-same apparition. It had acted in exactly the same way in each case, except in the case of Irving, who shot at it with his pistol, when it immediately disappeared. Some of the others had been led by their curiosity to inquire if anyone lost on the Mohawk resembled the figure, and found that none of the unfortunate ones at all fitted the description. It had been dubbed by them the ‘misfit ghost.’ That one experience was enough for me, and after that I, by courtesy, shared the cabin of another fellow.”

Lieutenant Irving and others corroborate the story of Lieutenant King, and as additional evidence that the Eagre is haunted, Lieutenant Irving describes a New Year’s eve experience of the Eagre’s officers, that is, to say the least, novel in the way of supernatural manifestations.

“It was at mess. The first toast, ‘Sweethearts and Wives,’ had been drunk, as it always is by{214} Yankee sailors the world over on occasions of festivity. Everyone was feeling happy, or, as Thackeray has it, ‘pleasant,’ when suddenly the sliding-doors separating the wardroom from the companion way closed slowly with a loud, squeaking noise. They had seldom been closed, and it took the entire strength of a man to start them from their rusty fastenings. Yet upon this occasion they started easily and closed tightly, while the officers jumped to their feet in breathless astonishment. Half a dozen men hauled them open in haste, but not a soul was behind them or anywhere about. ‘It must be our old friend of the port cabin,’ suggested one, and in awe-stricken silence the health of the ‘misfit ghost’ was drunk.”{215}

AN UNBIDDEN GUEST.

My cousins, Kate and Tom Howard, married at Trinity, at Easter time, concluded to commence housekeeping by taking one of those delightfully expensively furnished, unfurnished cottages, with which the fashionable watering place of W—— abounds, from whose rear windows one might almost take a plunge into the surf, the beach beginning at the back door. They went down quite early in May, being in a great hurry to try their domestic experiment; and, as the evenings were still cold, they spent them about the open fire, “spooning.”

It was upon one of those nights, about eleven o’clock, that they were startled by a noise, as of some small object falling, soon followed by the sound of heavy footsteps, and then quiet again reigned supreme. At once Tom, poker in hand, boldly started in search of the burglar, followed by Kate, wildly clutching at his coat-tail, and in a state of tremor. They looked upstairs, under the various beds, Kate suggesting that in novels they were always to be found there.

The dining-room was next explored, where all{216} seemed well, and, lastly the kitchen, where they found what was evidently a solution of the mystery. The burglar had entered by the back door, which was found to be unlocked and slightly ajar. The first excitement subsiding, they returned again to the dining-room, where Tom, upon closer inspection, then discovered that one of a pair of quaint little pepper-pots, wedding gifts, was missing, and other small articles on the sideboard had been slightly disturbed.

The next morning, when Kate mildly remonstrated with the queen of the kitchen for her carelessness, she received a shock by being told that it was her usual custom to leave the door open, “so that it would be aisy, convanient loike for the milkmaid.” They parted with her, and a new maid was engaged, whose chief qualification for the place was that she was most faithful in the discharge of her duties, especially in “locking up.”

While they mourned the loss of the pepper-pot, still it seemed so trifling when they thought of that lovely repousse salad bowl, sent by Aunt Julia, which stood near by, that nothing was said of the loss outside of the family, and the little household settled into its normal state once more of “billing and cooing.”

About a fortnight later, Tom started out one night with an old fisherman, one of the natives, and a local “character,” to indulge in that delightful{217} pastime, so dear to the heart of man, known as “eeling,” and, as the night was dark, the eels were particularly “sporty,” so that it was well on towards the “wee sma’ hours” when Tom at last returned to the cottage.

He found all excitement within. Kate was in hysterics, and the new maid, also weeping, was industriously applying the camphor bottle to her mistress’ nose. The burglar, or ghost, as they had now decided, the windows and doors being found to be securely locked this time, had been abroad again, but had succeeded in purloining nothing. His royal ghostship had amused himself, apparently, by simply walking about.

“Oh, Tom! he had on such heavy boots and was so dreadfully bold about it,” said Kate, tearfully.

From that time Kate became nervous and refused to be left alone. Tom started whenever a door creaked, and the “treasure” departed hurriedly, saying, “Faith, the house is haunted, sure.”

After that Kate spent her days in “girl hunting,” and her nights