Fearless Friday: Charles Haskell and the history of madness at sea (A Real Life Ghost Story)

Fearless Friday: Charles Haskell and the history of madness at sea (A Real Life Ghost Story)

Between 1830 and 1892 nearly 600 ships and more than 3,000 lives were lost in the treacherous and gale-swept waters of the Grand Banks, off Newfoundland. The victims were fishermen, seeking cod in the icy shoaling grounds, and most of them drowned when their ships rammed one another as they jostled in the fierce competition for fish or were wrecked on the shoals. It was hard, nerve-wracking work, and the men who risked their lives each time they put to sea were alert to every kind of omen, good or bad, real or imagined.

In 1869 the Charles Haskell a graceful schooner built and outfitted for cod fishing, was undergoing final inspection when a workman slipped on a companion- way and broke his neck. There could not have been a worse omen than a death, and the captain who was to take the Charles Haskell to sea for her maiden voyage refused to sail in her. For a year no one would assume command of the ship; then, a Captain Curtis of Gloucester, Massachusetts, accepted the position.

During her first winter at sea — a notably harsh one—the Haskell and a fleet of some hundred other vessels were fishing off Georges Bank when a hurricane struck. In the confusion the Haskell rammed the Andrew Johnson. Both ships were badly damaged, but the Haskell managed to limp back to port; the Andrew Johnson was lost with all hands.

If the Haskell's escape seemed to belie her early, unlucky reputation, the fishermen did not believe it: the ship had been too lucky; she should have gone down with the Andrew Johnson, and it was the Devils work that she hadn’t.

Eventually the spring came, and with it better weather and excellent catches. Once more the Haskell was at sea, fishing off the Banks. On her sixth day out, the two men on midnight watch were suddenly terrified: men in oilskins streaming with water from the sea were silently climbing over the rails, their eyes staring hollows. The watch called the captain, and he and the crew saw the phantoms take up positions on the fishermen's benches and go through the motions of baiting and sinking invisible lines. Then, their task done, and in single file, the 26 dead seamen climbed back over the rail and returned to the depths of the sea.

Captain Curtis immediately turned the Haskell toward home, but another night passed before she reached the shore. Again, at midnight, dead men climbed from the sea onto her deck and played out their ghastly charade. But this time, as dawn came and the Haskell approached Gloucester harbor, they climbed overboard and formed a grim, mute procession, walking across the sea toward Salem.

That was the last voyage of the Charles Haskell, for there after not a man would crew her, and she eventually fell into decay and ruin at her mooring.

SOURCE: (Mary Bolte, Haunted New England: A Devilish View of the Yankee Past, pp. 43-46)

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Daily Strange's Fearless Friday: Spectral Incursions

"i get to be angry too" Photo By Daniel Danger

Those who scorn the idea that spooks and specters prowl and shimmer through the world do so because no one has so far caught a ghost in a bottle, because they are skeptical by habit, or because they resist the notion that death may not be final For many the word ''ghost'' conjures up an anonymous white-robed figure, a spirit who has come back from the grave to haunt the living. But in the annals of ghostdom, spectral beings come in a variety of forms and shapes, and some never put in an appearance at all, although they make their presence felt. Ghosts also differ in behavior — they may be aimless, purposeful, playful, angelic, and even demonic.

There are three lines of explanation for ghostly phenomena: the spiritual, mechanical, and psychological.

The most firmly established is the spiritual thesis, which holds that ghosts are intelligent beings. The first version of this idea is that ghosts are the spirits of dead humans. They continue to resemble their earthly forms in appearance and dress and are found reenacting things they did in the past, bound to their haunting grounds by guilt, remorse, desire, or habit. They may be malevolent, kindly, or indifferent toward human beings. People who take this view of ghosts regard them as marking time in a spiritual halfway house between this world and heaven, purgatory, or hell.

According to another version of the spiritual view, a ghost's resemblance to a formerly living person or animal is actually a masquerade adopted for its own purpose, the real appearance of ghosts being quite different. Some ghosts, for instance, appear as vaporous columns or clouds of light.

In the third view of ghosts as a spiritual phenomenon, these apparitions are not beings in either of the senses described above. Instead, they are illusions created by powerful classes of angelic or demonic beings for the purpose of helping or harming those who see them. Miracles are an example of intervention by angelic or enlightened powers, while most poltergeist episodes are held to be demonic.

In the psychological view of the phenomenon, ghosts reveal a spectrum of powerful but not yet understood capacities of the human mind. In these terms, some ghosts are the product of telepathic powers, as when a relative or friend appears to another at the time of death; others — poltergeist phenomena—suggest unwitting and uncontrolled psychokinetic abilities. And some — the appearance of phantom doubles — suggest that out-of-body experiences may sometimes be manifest to others.

In fact, most believers in ghosts are probably willing to accept all of these theses as helping to explain a complex and varied phenomenon. Skeptics, on the other hand, resorting to the dry but sturdy arguments of what they consider to be common sense, are apt to maintain that stories of ghosts are lies, hallucinations, or earnest reports of misperceptions. But the most convincing evidence of the existence of specters still seems to be their appearance on the scene.

#hallucinations #ghost #poltergeist #phenomena #spirit #spectralincursions #fearlessfriday