As you are no doubt aware, our bustling metropolis was once a quaint, sleepy fishing town. And though our docks have grown with the boom of industrialization and international trade, our rocky shoreline still has ample evidence of our humble beginnings squirrelled away in its many caves and sea stacks.

See, voyages on modern vessels are like a sunlit jaunt through the park compared to the dangers we faced once upon a time. Without conveniences like GPS, combustion engines, or even 'heads' (that's sailor talk for a bathroom, impress your friends with it!) Our forefathers had to use the wind, sun, and stars to move and navigate, a prospect that even at best was hardly an exact science. It wasn't uncommon for a ship to be blown several 'leagues' (three 'nautical' miles which are slightly larger than normal miles) off course. Couple this with Northeast's penchant for heavy fog and pouring rain and you're bound to get some ships thinking they're half a day from sailing into port but truly they're half a minute away from running up against some razor-sharp stone pillar ready to bisect the 'hull' like a machete would a coconut. (The hull is the part of the boat which performs the vital task of keeping the wet out).

The seabeds surrounding our shores are veritable ossuaries, littered with the skeletons of sailing vessels (and crews) of yore. Sometimes, a particularly violent storm or tidal shift will rip one of these cadavers right from Davy Jones' icy grip and fling it, almost mockingly, to shore, temptingly near, but just outside of his grasp.

And so I come to you, dear reader, with a tale of one of the pégase gracieux, an 18th-century French merchant vessel with an intriguing history, a tragic end, and a haunting legacy.

The pégase gracieux was a French merchant vessel that operated in the late 1700s. It mostly sailed up and down the coast, trading goods from (then Spanish) Florida, to the British Colonies, to Canada which in those days was just New France. When the revolutionary war erupted, good old France came to our aid and the pégase gracieux was one of the ships commissioned to smuggle troops and weapons to the revolutionaries.

One of the ways the pégase would do so was by disguising themselves as a British trading vessel to slip through blockades. And the success they encountered was significant, As Easthaven's militia would nary have survived without the supplies provided by the gracieux. Unfortunately, their luck ran out one fateful day and they were sunk by the Redcoats a few miles north of Easthaven. The British would receive their comeuppance when our ragtag militia kicked their lobster-coated 'fannies' (British for ass) right back to their foggy, rainy island, though that can be found in any old history book.

Our tale continues, several centuries later, when just one week ago, a particularly violent storm wrested the pégase from its grave and flung it onto the shoals just offshore of Pebbleway Cove, and it took no time at all for stories of strange happenings to start circulating. Ghosts, seaweed with the strength of iron grabbing and attempting to drag people into the sea, the sound of cannons, the smell of gunpowder...

One particularly manic-looking fellow even whispered of a seastar the size of a bear, which, when agitated, reared up and revealed a drowned human face where its mouth should have been.

Whether this face was a victim or part of the sea star, I could not say, as my source began gibbering into the whiskey I bribed him with.

Needless to say, I was intrigued.

And so I ventured forth, my dear readers, to Pebbleway Cove, my trusty camera primed, ready to finally bring to you, the answer to that long pondered mystery: "Does the supernatural truly exist?"

As I made the 45-minute drive out of town and north up the coast, my anticipation turned the uneventful drive into a heart-pounding race towards the truth, with every lazy curve of the deserted coastal highway bringing me one tantalizing step closer to the truth.

I arrived shortly after midnight. As everyone knows, hauntings, like frat parties, don't truly start until well after curfew. I parked my car in the small parking lot next to the trail that leads down to the shore. As I exited, the familiar scents and sounds of the ocean assaulted my senses, but there was... more to it. The crashing of the waves was accompanied by a strange reedy whistling sound, forlorn and eerie in the blackness. The clean scent of crashing seawater was colored with the heavy mustiness of rotting timber.

My car's headlights, the sole bit of illumination in that inky blackness, revealed a line of police tape. It  seemed that the police wisely wanted to curtail any teenage foolishness before something unfortunate happened on a dare, or perhaps Johnny Law truly believed ghosts and monsters to be law-abiding (and literate) enough to obey the yellow and black command of "POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS"

I deftly dodged the deterrent, descending deliberately to my disturbing destination.

As I clambered down the sea cliff, the night's inky blackness enveloped me, swallowing me with a completeness that must have been very similar to what those poor sailors experienced that night when their ship was dragged down to its grave. With each step, my heart rate redoubled and by the time the path evened out at the coast, it felt like my pounding chest was louder than the crashing wake.

It didn't take long for me to find it once on the shore. The inky black shape of the skeletal ship erupted from the rocky beach like the gnarled hands of Hades himself, crooked in rage at the duty his brother imparted upon him.

As I drew closer to the hulking remains, the scent of rot began to overpower that of the sea and the reedy whistling I had attributed to the many caves in these cliffs grew ever louder.

Allow me, dear reader, to take a moment here to assure you that mine is an ironclad set of nerves. It is rare that I feel anything other than unflappable temerity. My stoicism is legendary, and second only to my drive for the truth. Even so, however. When faced with this hulk of a shipwreck, I admit that my normally imperturbable countenance was very slightly perturbed.

Just a little bit, mind you.
 
I began to step closer, and the whistling grew in pitch and volume. With each step, its intensity grew. From a teakettle in another room to a strong wind outside a window, to an opera singer being murdered during her climactic aria. And then, when I was nary 10 feet away from the nearest spur of gnarled blackness that was the ship's skeleton, I saw something that would change how I viewed the world forever.

A face, sallow and pale appeared amidst the wreckage. And though it was overcast that night, it shone as if it were under a full moon. For just a moment, it stared at me and it seemed as if time froze. The howling of the wind died abruptly and every muscle in my body froze as its eyes, milky white and laden with cataracts, locked with my own.

I stood there, staring at the glowing face for a long second until it very deliberately shook its head. And though its cracked, blackened lips never moved, the words that gesture spoke could not have been clearer:

"No further. You have not the strength."

Entirely unbidden, this thought rang through my mind, and not a moment later, the calm of the instant had passed and the howling sound ripped through the air. And there, where the face had been, hung a single dingy oil lamp, lit and sputtering in the night air. That oil lamp was not there when I descended the cliffs. But as I climbed back up to my car, the light of it burned in the corners of my eyes. The feeling of its heat seared the nape of my neck.

I don't know what I saw that night, reader. Surely some kind of phantasm, though my psychologist assures me it was just a grimy old lamp. I believe that whatever it was, be it a ghost, swamp gas, or an oil lamp, it saved my life that night.

But that's all for now, dear readers. I've been your paranormal pursuer,

Lorenzo Espozione,
Stay dry and keep hunting!