“It was gen’lly b’leeved fore and aft that them there footsteps was a warnin’. Hows’ever, the thing quieted down some in a day or two, so nothin’ more was heerd of the walkin’ match down below; but on the third day out, I think it was, we was struck by one of them northers, and in spite of all we could do we was drove ashore on a reef off the Bermudys, where the _Paul Pry_ brought up all standin’, and there she left her old bones. The wreckers they came and took off the crew, and fetched ’em all safe into Nassau. Now if that ship warn’t haunted, I miss my guess. You can’t most always tell about them things, I know; but ef it was skylarkin’, all I’ve got to say is, it was a purty neat job, and don’t you forget it.” There are also places, as well as houses, which have the reputation of being haunted, sometimes through the commission of a horrible crime in that particular locality, sometimes through the survival of some obscure local tradition. It matters not. Once give the place a bad name, and local tradition preserves the memory of it for many generations. Every schoolboy is familiar with the weird legend of Nix’s Mate, a submerged island at the entrance to Boston Harbor, where pirates were formerly hung in chains. Appledore Island, on the coast of New Hampshire, once had the name of being haunted by the uneasy ghost of one of Captain Kidd’s piratical crew. The face of the spectre was said by those who had seen it, or who thought they had seen it, to be dreadful to behold, and the neck to bear the livid mark of the hangman’s noose. Once, no islander could be found hardy enough to venture himself on Appledore after dark. Indeed, such places of fearsome reputation are found all over New England. For example, there is the shrieking woman of Marblehead, a remarkable spook, who at certain intervals of time could be heard uttering the most heartrending cries for mercy to her inhuman murderers. Then, again, there is the legend of Harry Main, reputed pirate and wrecker, who, by means of false lights, decoyed simple mariners to destruction on the shoals of Ipswich Bar, to which for his many crimes the wretch was doomed to be chained down to the fatal spot to which he had lured his unsuspecting victims.[20] Quite naturally these legends mostly cluster about the seacoast, but now and then one is found in the interior. One corner of the town of Chester, New Hampshire, lifts into view an eminence known as Rattlesnake Hill, one rocky side of which is pierced entirely through, thus forming a cavern of great notoriety in all the country round. This cavern is known as the Devil’s Den, and many were the frightful stories told around winter firesides of the demons who, of yore, haunted it, and who, all unseen of mortal eyes, there held their midnight orgies within the gloomy recesses of the mountain.