A Weird Blue Light

A Weird Blue Light is a story about a ship crew who encounter a ghostly pirate ship. The story appears in More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.



The Story
Late one night in October, 1864, a Confederate blockade runner slipped by some Union gunboats at the entrance to Galveston Bay in Texas and made it safely to port with its cargo of food and other necessities.

Louis Billings, the master of the small vessel, was getting ready to weigh anchor when he was startled by a shriek from one of the crew. "A strange, old-fashioned schooner with a big black flag was rushing down at us," Billings said later. "She was afire with a sort of weird, pale-blue light that lighted up every nook and cranny of her. "The crew was pulling at the ropes and doing other work, and they paid us no attention, didn't even glance our way. They all had ghastly bleeding wounds, but their faces and eyes were those of dead men.

"The man who had shrieked had fallen to his knees, his teeth chattering as he gasped out a prayer. Overcoming my own terror, that was chilling the very marrow of my bones, I rushed forward, shouting to the others as I ran. Suddenly the schooner vanished before my eyes." Some say that it was the ghost of Jean Lafitte's pirate ship Pride that sank off Galveston Island in 1821 or 1822. She was seen again in 1892 in the same waters with the same crew.