We were eating dinner one night on the old cargo ship, says a New York Sun writer, and talking of the happenings at sea and on shore that are called supernatural, when the captain said:
    “One sees some things at sea not supernatural which are fit to make a nervous man see ghosts. There was that case in one of Green’s liners to the colonies, where a man was sent down to clean out the chain locker. The locker had seemed foul all the passage home, and so they hoisted out the chain and sent this fellow down with his brush and soap and bucket, with a lamp, to clean it out. I’ll wager he saw ghosts for a year after that, for when he’d got down on his knees to begin scrubbing he found himself bending over the skull of a dead man.
    “It was most likely a man that had stowed away out in the colony, and had been caught under the cable when they were running it down quickly, and so had the life crushed out of him.
    However, I did know of a case that seemed supernatural right enough. It was in the Demarara trade and I was acquainted with the first officer of the bark [sailing ship] where it all happened.
    “In the first place, while she was out there loaded and ready to sail, the captain had trouble with one of the seamen, who out with his knife and stabbed him to death then and there. The mate afterward took her [the bark] home, but on the way a passenger took to ailing in some mysterious fashion, and up and died very suddenly.
    “Of course, she was a haunted ship when she arrived home, and so her owners had her name changed, and she was refitted and painted up entirely different from what she had been. Then she sailed away with a new captain, but on the way out he took to drink, and by the time she reached Demerara he was off his head and killed himself with a revolver.
    “Now she was haunted, sure enough, if you could believe the mate. Mind you, after she was refitted the mate said never a word to the new captain about what had happened in her before, and even when the new captain came out from home to take charge of her, believing that the last captain was naturally a drunkard instead of one who had taken to it after he had come on this ship, the first officer never said a word, because he did not believe in ghosts or even in a future state.
    “However, the first night the new captain was on board the trouble began. The captain at about 9 o’clock went to his room and retired. An hour later he was calling the mate and telling him that he had gone to sleep, and then had been awakened by a light in the room. On opening his eyes he saw a short, thick-set man with side whiskers, in the arm-chair at the desk, leaning over, with his elbows on the desk, holding his head between his hands and saying: “Oh, my poor head! Oh, my poor head!”
    “That was enough for the mate. He left the vessel that night with all hands. This new captain knew nothing of the style or manner of the, one who had killed himself, and yet the picture—ghost, or what you may call it—in the chair was the image in appearance and dress of the suicide, and had complained in precisely the same words and voice of the dead man.”
    This brought out the story of an exile from Salvador, whom the narrator met in Guatemala. Having got into trouble with the authorities, Senor Don Sebastian Mojarieta, saved his life by fleeing to Amapala, Honduras, as many another exile has done, and there taking a steamer north to San Jose, Guatemala. A friend of his who was involved in like manner was to have reached Amapala by a different route in time for the same steamer, and to prevent any possible delays, Mojarieta engaged staterooms and secured passes from the Amapala authorities for his friend and himself as soon as he arrived. But the steamer came without his friend, and Majorieta was obliged to sail alone.
    “At the usual hour, on the first night out,” the story went on, “Mojarieta retired and went to sleep, but had no sooner dozed off than he awoke, hearing his friend’s voice, as he says, in the next stateroom, which he had supposed to be empty. Leaving his berth [bed on a ship] he went out into the passageway and opened the door to the adjoining room, and there, he says, he saw lying in the berth the body of his friend fully dressed, but with three bullet holes in the breast of his coat and one in the right cheek.
    “At that Mojarieta fainted, and was found on the deck by the steward and put to bed again. Thereafter it was a most miserable passage, for the vessel touched at both the Salvador ports, and was about a week reaching San Jose. Mojarieta was sure his friend had been shot, and expected a force to come off from each of the Salvador ports to demand him. Moreover, he was haunted continually by the picture ; of his dead friend.
    “Once in Guatemala he obtained employment quickly, and then began to recover something of his former spirits. He ascribed his vision to his overwrought imagination and was beginning to hope that his friend would yet appear, when a letter was received from a relative in Salvador. It not only told that the friend had been shot by the government soldiers, but described the wounds of the body after it was dead. Mojarieta declares that the description accurately portrayed the vision he had of his friend, and believes that his friend’s spirit, being unable to rest or wholly throw off its desire to take passage on the steamer, had come on board and was occupying that berth.”


From— The McCook Tribune. (McCook, Neb.), 11 Jan. 1895. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.