I usually don't buy into this kind of thing, but if I saw what these people saw, I'd be pretty freaked out.
Rain drummed on the deck of the 19th-century whaling ship Charles W. Morgan late Saturday night, as below deck, in the cramped and stuffy captain's quarters, a group of men and women armed with flashlights and digital cameras took their positions.
They were ghost hunters, members of the Rhode Island Paranormal Research Group, who had come to Mystic Seaport, the museum that houses the Morgan, to investigate reports of strange happenings on board the ship. Leaders of the respected maritime museum had agreed to let them roam the 165-year-old vessel, the centerpiece of the collection, for a simple reason: The recent talk of ghosts aboard the Morgan has been a much-needed boon to business.
``Whether they find anything or not, people like that they're looking," said Michael O'Farrell, the publicist for the museum. ``We're not promoting the Charles W. Morgan as a ghost ship -- it's up to you to decide -- but we know people are coming because of [the investigation]."
The paranormal research group became interested in the Charles W. Morgan last fall, after it received e-mails from three people who described similar experiences while visiting the ship on different days last year. All three visitors said they were below deck, in the room where the crew once stripped blubber from whales, when they saw a man dressed in period clothing sitting on a pile of rope and smoking a pipe, said Andrew Laird, the group's director.
The tourists assumed that the man was an actor working for the museum, and were later stunned to learn that there are no such guides on the Morgan.
``That was the weird part about it -- the letters were the same, almost verbatim," said Laird, 48, of Glocester, R.I.
Comments