A Ghostly Sailor

One-minute review: Two female college instructors drove to California and returned east. Driving through Kansas farm fields, their car broke down. No cars traveled the road that night. They knew they were going to have to wait until morning for another car to pass their way. They noticed a dilapidated farm house off the road, approached it, knocked, entered when no one answered, and it appeared to be uninhabited. They built a fire in the living room fire place and settled down on a couch to sleep.

Both suddenly jumped up. The door of the house had opened and a young man dressed as a seaman floated in toward the fireplace. The ladies screamed and the young man melted away leaving a piece of seaweed  by the fireplace. The nearest ocean was a thousand miles away. When they left the next morning, one of them put the piece of seaweed, still clammy, into her purse.

Towed to the nearest mechanic, they asked about the house in which they had slept. Seems that Old Man Newton had died and left the farm to his son who had no interest in farming and left to go off to sea, leaving the farm house deserted. When the ladies returned to their college, they gave the sea weed to the head of the botany department. He confirmed that it was sea weed, the kind that was always found on someone who had drowned. Ship records showed that a Thomas Newton had sailed aboard a freighter called the Robert B Anthony that had gone down with all hands aboard.

Famous Ghost Stories. Ed. Bennett Cerf. New York: The Modern Library. Random House, inc. 1944.