The Ghost in the Tower: An Episode in JacobiaReed, Earl H. (Earl Howell)
Science
The Ghost in the Tower: An Episode in Jacobia
Reed, Earl H. (Earl Howell)
Ghost stories; Haunted places -- Fiction; Michigan -- Fiction; Michigan, Lake -- Fiction; Water towers -- Fiction
“One night Kinisi and I were alone in the belfry. Out in the moonlight
we saw Sidi ben Musa, Red Beard, Morgan, Teach and Kidd, lined up
among the tombstones in the church yard. They appeared to be making
unfamiliar movements. I asked Kinisi what he thought they were doing
and he replied that they seemed to be kicking themselves, and that they
had been acting that way every night for a week. He thought that, like
the robins in autumn, they had flocked and were preparing to migrate.
“These shades, who, in life, had been relentless highwaymen of the
seas--blood bespattered, remorseless, steeped in murder, arson, theft
and unnamable crimes--the heels of whose boots had dripped with
human gore on a thousand decks--held their spectral hands aloft and
were aghast when they realized the pitiful inconsequence and puny
achievement of their futile careers.
[Illustration: “MY OLD TOWER IN HUNGARY”]
“There was a big storm one night and we never saw them again. The
valiant and hardy little band may have drifted out over the
sea with the heavy off-shore wind and rolling mists, and may now be
peacefully haunting the scenes of their former tame profiteering and
modest killings, where spiritual life is not as strenuous as we found
it in the twentieth century Gomorrah that we contemplated from the
belfry of Trinity.
“Kinisi wanted to stay with Waters for a while longer, but I had had
enough of modern money centers. I left one night in a freight car
that was loaded with light wines and moving westward. Although it was
marked for Atchison, Kansas, I had no difficulty in turning it up into
Michigan, to where I seemed impelled by some unaccountable instinct. I
may say incidentally that many wandering freight cars with spirits on
board are now being diverted over strange routes by ghostly direction,
and much of the present freight confusion is due to that cause. That
was several years ago, and, so far as I know, the car is still at
Benton Harbor.
“I drifted along the lake shore and around in the hills for some
time, and one night I was amazed to see what looked like my old tower
in Hungary. I promptly decided to haunt this place, after I had
investigated it, on account of the old associations it brought to mind.
It was impossible for me to go back to my old tower, for things have
changed so much in Hungary that I would take no comfort there, so you
see I have turned over a new leaf and here I am.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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