A ghost story is usually a solitary thing. It lives by itself and doesn’t go out much and by its nature, is solitary and lonesome. A ghost story is the hermit of tales because, so often, a spirit is only experienced by a single person, whether it be a chill in the air, a fleeting image in the darkness, a shadow in the window on the top floor as you casually  glance upward. Most people don’t see spirits in pairs or groups. They seem them when they’re all alone. It makes you wonder, if you’re an imbiber of such stories, if most of them might simply be creations of the mind, unintended tulpas of the imagination. They’re a part of the human experience. Ghost stories are as old as we are and stretch back into our prehistory, into the times before we could record them for future generations. Ghosts are part of that collective memory we all share. Their stories continue to be told because, I believe, we need them. Strangely, they frighten us but they also bring us hope? We’ll see about that.  But what can we make of the other stories, the ones where multiple people claim to have seen or experienced’ that which cannot be easily explained and therefore fall into the inescapable realm of confused possibility? If one person sees a ghost, much like a single witness of a UFO, we can easily dismiss their story as idyll fancy. It’s your word against theirs.  But if many people claim to have seen a strange and inexplicable sight such as a ghost, well, that’s something completely different. That’s a little more difficult to refute. This is the story of such a sighting, though the names of the witnesses are mostly lost to history. We have a captain’s name and the name of two ships. The sighting has devolved into a legend, but when it was first reported in the 1860s, just after the American Civil War, it was regarded as the truth at a time when people were less skeptical and more ready to believe in things they could not prove. As for its actual veracity, I’ll let you be the judge. The Charles Haskell was a fishing schooner built in Boston. A two-masted ship, fast and efficient, she was built for cod fishing in the Atlantic, where ships like her went for extended periods, for weeks or even months at a time. Typically, the cod was salted right on board before returning to shore. In the case of the Charles Haskell, she was headed for Georges’ Bank, there to reap the rich harvest. By all accounts, she was a sleek vessel, well-made for carving through the waves and making her way. The problem with the Haskell was that….no one wanted to sail on her. Before her maiden voyage, a workman on the ship slipped on the deck and broke his neck, killing him on the spot. Sailors have long been superstitious and they have tales among themselves that prove their belief. There was no whistling aboard ship - it summons the wind down or provokes storms. Women on board were forbidden - they distract the crew and anger the sea gods themselves. Never depart on a Friday, for that was the day the Lord was crucified. A red sky in the morning was a bad omen, spelling out inclement weather. It is not hard to imagine why a sailor might not want to serve on a brand new ship that had been christened by the death of a man. Her owners couldn’t even find a captain - but as must happen in every good story, a captain was eventually found, a man named Curtis and was a Gloucester man and he found a crew alright, mostly fellow Gloucester men like himself.  New England fishermen typically fish for cod during the spring or summer months with the prime season being from late April or early May through September. The Charles Haskell didn’t wait for spring. Like many, she had to venture to much deeper offshore waters as the cod migrated away from shore seeking their food. Winter fishing was challenging and dangerous and required only the sturdiest of vessels using long-lining and nets to catch the cod in the dark depths below. Captain Curt