Into the caverns of the deep

                  Go phantom ships, where phantom faces

                  Peer in the dark; not even sleep

                  Can blind their eyes; arm interlaces

                  With kelp and salty fin; feet tread

                  The somber currents of the dead.

                  Into dark caverns, deep and strange,

                  Go specter-ships, with specter-men;

                  Fathoms are theirs, and theirs the range

                  Of hemispheres beyond the ken

                  Of human mind and human heart—

                  A country on a wider chart.

—Marguerite Janvrin Adams        

Have you ever been on a haunted ship? Did you ever wake up to find a clammy hand clawing your shoulder, or hear a mysterious voice from nowhere bidding you arise? Did you ever see a shadowy, creepy thing gliding across the deck and coming between you and the person you were talking to? Did your hair ever rise and your skin make “gooseflesh” at rumblings or thuds or thumps or harrowing groans where living beings were not? You have not? Then you are no sailor.

—Washington Post, February 3, 1907