Being True Ghost Stories from Labrador, Borneo, New Guinea, the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Pacific Ocean Genuinely true ghost stories are hard to come by, as anyone who takes the trouble to track them to their origin may know. They have a way of becoming less convincing, less impressive, the nearer one draws to their source. Often enough they evaporate completely. A true ghost story, honestly told, always thrills; and some of the best I have found in books of travel and exploration, where the traveller, bent upon quite other matters and probably not even interested in otherworldly things, has come across a queer happening and set it down honestly and faithfully. Having read several such experiences in books of this kind, I have jotted them down. They may interest others as they did me. The narrators, as a rule, are hardheaded men, who have warmed both hands at the fires of life. Most of them have looked bright-eyed danger in the face without blinking. They have been “up against it” in a thousand ways. They hold life cheap. Their books, respectively, prove them men of courage and resource. And when men of this stamp tell a queer story and vouch for its veracity, the story is usually impressive. Not all of the tales I shall quote from are, strictly speaking, ghost stories, but all are interesting, suggestive, and, to say the least, mighty queer. They happened both on sea and land. To take a sea experience first: It is described in A Gypsy of the Horn, where Rex Clements tells of his voyage in a windjammer round the world some twenty years ago. The queer incident may be found on page 129 et seq., and it occurred in the Pacific, soon after leaving Chatham Island. The weather for days had been severe, even terrible, but the ship at last had run into calmer water. “One dark, moonless night,” says the author, “just before we got clear of the ‘Forties’, with a fresh breeze blowing, and the ship running quietly along under t’gallant’sls, there occurred a most uncanny experience. “It was about four bells in the middle watch, the ‘churchyard watch,’ as the four hours after midnight is called, that it happened. We, of the mate’s watch, were on deck, the men for’ard, Burton and I under the break, and Mr. Thomas pacing the poop above our heads. Suddenly, apparently close aboard on the port hand, there came howling out of the darkness a most frightful, wailing cry, ghastly in its agony and intensity. Not of overpowering volume⁠—a score of men shouting together could have raised as loud a hail⁠—it was the indescribable calibre and agony of the shriek that almost froze the blood in our veins.” All rushed to the rail, mate and men too, and stared into the blackness to windward. “The starbowlines, tired men asleep in their bunks below, poured up on deck, If ever men were horror-struck, we were. Even the Old Man was awakened by it, and came up on deck to see. All listened, eyes strained. A moment or two passed⁠—then the appalling scream rang out again, rising to the point of almost unbearable torture and dying crazily away in broken whimperings.⁠ ⁠… No one said a word. All stood like stones, peering into the gloom. The sound was not repeated.⁠ ⁠… Slowly, at length, like men emerging from a trance, we moved and spoke.⁠ ⁠… The men sat up all night, unable to sleep.⁠ ⁠…” Many guesses, the author goes on to say, were hazarded as to the explanation of the awful, terrifying cry, but none of them seemed satisfactory to anybody. The cry of a whale was suggested, “but I never heard a whale utter any sounds with its throat,” is the writer’s comment. Some sea-monster that only rarely comes to the surface? “More unlikely still.” The scream of seals, or of sea-lions, on an island beach? Yet the nearest land was Easter Island, 600 miles to the north! The shriek, moreover, as all who heard it agreed, was “so human.” Was it a shipwrecked boat’s crew? The uncanny sound was never explained. Its effect upon all concerned, from the captain downwards, lasted for days. “In bare words,” adds the author finally, “it doesn’t sound very terrible, but it made that night a night of terror, and even now it sends a shiver through me to think of it.” A sound that keeps the crew of a windjammer out of their beds all night and put the fear of God into the ship’s officers as well, to say nothing of the Old Man, may well have been of a fairly convincing nature! The incident, taken out of its full context, and apart from the atmosphere of an enthralling book, loses, of course, something of its impressiveness. It has, however, the true ring about it. That cry was heard by a large number of hardheaded men; it scared them badly; and explanation there was none.