Hello again Aral Stein Story Club members. I'm Ivy, your host with the absolute most,

and custodian of those strange and spooky tales from the hidden vault of R.L. Stein. Today is a pair

of mini-chilling tales. These ghostly tales story club members might have you battening down the hatches and setting the sails for parts unknown.

I call it two ghost ships.

You can have haunted houses, haunted hotels, and haunted battlefields, all of which we've covered on the show devoted listeners.

But what about haunted boats? Can ghosts ride the seven seas for decades at a time? Here's one maritime tale that

might just prove that chilling theory. Can you believe that a ship with a dead and frozen crew

sailed for 14 years by itself? Yep, it happened long, long ago,

and was reported. On the morning of October 11, 1775, the whaling ship, Harold, discovered a

derelict boat, the Octavius, west of Greenland. It was drifting among the icebergs in the

North Atlantic. Captain Warren of

the Herald called out to the derelict Octavius vessel, but received no reply. Concerned,

Captain Warren and a small group of his sailors took a long boat over to the silent vessel

and boarded her. What they found was terrifying. All members of the Octavius Crow, 28 people total,

were frozen. Most of the crew lay in their bunks, perfectly preserved by the Arctic cold.

The captain was found in his cabin, seated at his desk, pens still in hand, the frozen dead drifting on a sea of ice. Captain Warren studied the

dead captain's log. The last entry was made in 1761, 13 years previous. The ship had left

for China from England on September 10, 1761. Upon its return to England, the captain took

a chance on sailing through the perilous Northwest Passage.

Very little was known about this route at the time.

The Northwest Passage lies along the northern coast of North America, and it's a trade route used by ships to travel from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean via the Arctic Ocean through the Canadian Arctic

archipelago. According to the ship's log, the Octavius' last recorded position was at Point

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