Spooky Sailing Stories: Haunted Houseboat

Article and illustration by Rick Scott

The wooden house barge sits darkly, tethered to ground tackle buried in the shallow muddy bottom of the Ortega River.Occasionally a startled quayside observer catches an errant flash of light in her lifeless windows. 

Quietly she rocks and pivots with the daily tidal flows, the passing time marked by the barnacle growth on her flat hull. That is until a north breeze chills the night of a full autumn moon. The light wind brings a shiver like an icy breath on the back of the neck. A tattered gaff-rigged staysail suddenly unfurls from the rotting mast. Catching the puffs she sails lonely around her mooring, stressing her timbers as she swings and tacks.  

The hull planks whisper their protests as the seams part. Trickles of seawater spatter in the bilge. These subtle sounds seem to awaken other noises within: a dice like rattling of loose bones. Slowly, skeletal hands claw through the cabin sides and a bare-boned crew emerge through the gaping holes. 

The pirate captain takes the wheel, his featherless parrot perched faithfully on his shoulder. The ship’s dog steals the forearm of the first mate as the captain orders a deckhand to climb the mast and raise the Jolly Roger. As the crewman descends from his task he is rewarded by a lightning strike that lights up a clattering scene of bony buccaneers drinking, cavorting, dueling, fishing, and swimming. One hapless bucko searches for his misplaced skull. 

Woe be the flesh and blood mariner who sails too close and disturbs the reverie. These seasoned scalawags are quick to weigh anchor. They pivot their awkward craft on a ghostly zephyr that propels them on an intercept course towards their prey. Boarding their mortal victims’ boat they strip it of its booty and gear and then scuttle it, sending its crew to the deep. The only clemency the inhuman pirates offer is an offer to join their band in immortal death as “systema skeletale.” But signing on means a painful initiation by the ravenous alligators and piranha that follow the ship. These ghoulish marine predators are quick to strip their prey to cold eternal bone. 

As the eastern sky lightens in anticipation of daybreak, the skeleton crew returns to the damp dark hold of their barge. The holes they tore open, as well as sail and flag, mysteriously fade and disappear. Sunlight brings a peaceful scene without evidence of the night’s terrifying activities. And deep inside the hull the demon sea wolves, with their newly captured mates, slumber until another full orb appears on a cold October night. •SCA•