Spooky story: What happened to Mary Celeste?

Ahoy, random readers! Tonight, I am telling you a real spooky story. 😱

It is about a "ghost ship", discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores Islands on December 4th, 1872. It was called Mary Celeste, and she had left New York City for Genoa on November 7th. The captain of the Canadian brigantine Dei Gratia spotted her and ran it inch by inch with his binoculars, without a soul in sight. It looked like a ghost ship. It swayed in a zig zag way, just with the jib and fore-end. The other sails were folded. The Dei Gratia changed course to check for people aboard the Mary Celeste. When her sailors finished their climb up the ladder and reached the deck, they found everything quite disturbing from the start. The charts were scattered on the ground as if they had been thrown into the air. The belongings of the Mary Celeste's crew were still in their cabins along with her cargo of denatured alcohol. What was not was the only lifeboat on the ship.

So, what had happened to Mary Celeste? Why was her in good conditions, and yet was deserted and with no sign of her crew? Well, there are many theories about it, but here is mine.

I hope that you like it; if you have a theory of your own, don't be afraid to tell me in the comments section!👻

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It is a beautiful bright day in New York. It is 1872, and my colleague Mathew and I are hidden behind some bog boxes full of alcoholic drinks, inside the cargo hold of the enormous ship Mary Celeste.

            Do not misunderstand us—we are not pirates, but scientists. Our intention is to steal some papers from Morehouse, the captain of this vessel, and then we will leave this place. We won’t harm anyone if they let us do our job. Perhaps you may think this is what a pair of disgusting thieves would do… but it’s for a good reason. The papers Morehouse possesses are extremely valuable, as they contain very important information for Science. However, if the ship gets to its destination, Genoa, that information will get to a Chinese rich businessman called Wang Lei, who will then destroy it. He’s the owner of many factories in the British Empire and invested a lot of money in other companies, which made him have a large fortune. And, for some reason, he does not want the papers to be shared to the rest of the world. I can’t tell you what they contain, because I don’t know that. I’ve just been given orders from my superior, who explained me that, if I knew, Wang Lei would set me as a target to kill and I would me in extreme danger.

            A few hours after Mathew and I remain unseen by any member of the crew, we hear someone shouting from the deck:

            “We are now far away from land!! We have a strong wind coming from north, so change the direction of the sails!!”

            My colleague and I look at each other. No words are needed: now that we are distant enough from the coast of New York, it is our turn to start moving.

            We make our way upstairs quietly, until we get to the deck. The crew is calm and completes its chores with diligence. I see a woman and a little girl, too. Mathew and I run towards the captain’s office making the least noise possible, because we do not want anyone to notice we are here. When we get inside the room, the captain is not sat at his wide wooden desk. I think that I saw him before, giving some orders to his first mate. In any case, we just look in every drawer and shelf, making a mess because of the very little time we have for searching. Fortunately, we find something that seems like what we have been asked to look for. They are four or five yellow-coloured papers, filed inside a lacquered envelope. There is nothing else more ‘important-looking’ here, so we suppose that this is what we need and get out of here. I was beginning to feel nervous.

            Outside again, we go to some shade and hide behind some big barrels full of liquor. Then, we decide that our best way to run away is by taking a lifeboat. We find one in the bow. However, when Mathew is about to jump on it, a sailor sees us and shouts, alarming the whole crew, including the captain. In a second, they are all surrounding us.

            “Who are you intruders?!? And why do you have that envelope with you, huh?!? Who gave you the permission to touch it?!” asks the captain, angrily.

            “And to enter your chamber!” adds his second mate, shaking his head with discontent.  

            “If you are going to give this to Wang Lei, then you must not know the importance of it”, I say. “Do not worry, captain, we will give it to the right person!”

            When I say the last word, the entire deck goes as quiet as a graveyard. Then a sailor asks what I am taking about to Morehouse, and the rest begins to do the same thing. The captain looks at me in a horrified face, and then at his crew. He does not want his men to understand what I meant, maybe because he had lied to them, but now he is forced to explain, and I see that he is struggling to find words. 

            All of a sudden, a man makes his way to the middle of the circle, where Mathew and I are standing. I recognise him as a member of Wang Lei’s minions, which do the dirty work for him. He shouts something to Morehouse, and then takes a gun out of his pocket and shoots at him before he can respond in any way.

            And then, everyone panics.

            Some men take their guns, but they are bleeding on the floor long before they can reach their weapons to fight the assassin, because he’s too fast. I see people falling, including the woman and child which I after identify as Morehouse’s wife and daughter.

            Mathew, who is next to me, enters in shock and kneels on the floor, his hands wrapping his head. I do not have time to comfort him, because I am so horrified that I can’t even move.

            When Lei's minion has already murdered the whole crew, he begins to drag each of them by their feet and throws them, in turns, to the ocean—he wants to make it seem like nothing happened, and the crew, its captain and his family just had suddenly disappeared. However, the blood drops on the wooden floor will not go away so easily. In any case, his face expression remains impassive, as if lives do not mean much to him.

            Afterwards, he walks towards poor Mathew and I. There is nothing I can do to resist from him taking the envelope containing the information. When he looks at it, he smiles for the first time—it is the most horrible smile I’ve ever seen.   

            Mathew and I watch him heading to the lifeboat before he shoots at us too.