I understand cocaine use was prevalent back then.

Scotty

"Joe" wrote in message
oups.com...
*A Weird Blue Glow*

Late one night in October, 1864, a Confederate blockade runner,
under
the cover of fog, 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. Over coming 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,
the
Pride, that sank off the Galveston Island in 1821 or 1822. She
was seen
again in 1892 in the same waters with the same crew.

Joe