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environment. I The case clearly suggests that "belief' follows rather than precedes personal
experience of such occurrences. Other examples confinn the view that rational thinking is
nOt lacking behind traditionally-sanctioned phantom phenomena, whether they be lights,
ships, or other. They verify that the "phantom"··the supernatural--is idcnlified as such on
the grounds of its contradiction of fundamental natural laws:
She was goin' like the devil and not a draft of wind.... Uncle Saul said,
"thai was, she had to be the Flying Dutchman."2
About thiny years ago I was coming back from Bonavista around 11
o'clock at night on myoid horse. "T was about December mOnlh and
everything was dark. dreary and covered in snow. All of a sudden the
horse became startled. his ears cocked back. his tail stuck out, and he
started going very fast When I looked to my right, I saw a train with one
light shining on it coming down the track. It really startled me, but within
a few seconds it vanished before my eyes. I knew it was a ghost train,
because it was impossible for a train to go on tracks that were completely
covered in snow. Besides, no train ever travelled on those tracks, that
hour in the night. ...3
Folksong collector Elisabeth Greenleaf, likewise, reports:
The phantom ship has been seen at different points along the coast and is
regarded as a warning of a heavy gale. Sometimes it is seen as a small
boat, called a punt, rowed by two men. Stephen John Lewis said in
response to my inquiry, "The sperrit punt? Yes, I've seed it meself.
Sometimes people has seed it close enough to count the buttons on the
men's coats. But I never seed like that. It was about a quarter of a mile
away, and it was a boat where it was not possible for a boat to be. flow
many was in·to it? Well, I couldn't tell ye that. It was a dull daY··:lI1d it
grew duller. There was men in a little dark boat, rowing away from the
land, and it was not possible for them to get back, yet we never heard of
anyone was drove off, so it was a sperrit boat. Thai boat have been seen
from cape to cape on this coast. I suppose this can't be so, but I seed it
just the same."4
Whatever the veracity of these ghostly experiences, their interpretation, as for
experiences of supernatural assault, is traditional: like their land-based counterparts, the
spirits of seamen lost at sea haunt the location of their death:
I Diane Goldstein, "Modern Rationalism and the Structure of Supernatural Personal
Experience Narrative," a paper read at the 4th SIEF Congress, Bergen, June 191h-23rd
1990, forthcoming in the proceedings of the conference, vol. 2.
2MUNFLA ms 79-729, p. 16.
3MUNFLA ms 73-5, p. 7.
40rccnlcaf. Ballads xxxii.