Curiosities & wonders > Demonology and witchcraft

8
LETTERS ON
Somnambulism and other nocturnal deceptions fre¬
quently lend their aid to the formation of such phantas-
mata as are formed in this middle state, betwixt sleeping
and waking. A most respectable person, whose active
life had been spent as master and part owner of a large
merchant vessel in the Lisbon trade, gave the writer
an account of such an instance which came under his
observation. He was lying in the Tagus, when he was
put to great anxiety and alarm, by the following inci¬
dent and its consequences. One of his crew was
murdered by a Portuguese assassin, and a report arose
that the ghost of the slain man haunted the vessel.
Sailors are generally superstitious, and those of my
friend’s vessel became unwilling to remain on board the
ship ; and it was probable they might desert, rather
than return to England with the ghost for a passenger.
To prevent so great a calamity, the captain determined
to examine the story to the bottom. He soon found,
that though all pretended to have seen lights, and heard
noises and so forth, the weight of the evidence lay upon
the statement of one of his own mates, an Irishman
and a Catholic, which might increase his tendency to
superstition, but in other respects a veracious, honest,
and sensible person, whom Captain S had no reason
to suspect would wilfully deceive him. He affirmed
to Captain S , with the deepest obtestations, that
the spectre of the murdered man appeared to him almost
nightly, took him from his place in the vessel, and,
according to his own expression, worried his life out.
He made these communications with a degree of hor¬
ror, which intimated the reality of his distress and