Posted on 2008-10-31 03:34:41

The Beast of Kaehlau

St Augustine, Florida, USA, Halloween 1954

Justine Morrow was very busy. She’d organized a Halloween party for the children from her neighborhood, mainly to please her guests, who didn’t celebrate Halloween at home and who were eager to become acquainted with a custom they knew nothing about.

Their guests, the Wingendorffs, were a couple Justine’s husband had got to know during his military service in Germany, and even though he’d returned to the States some five years previously he’d stayed in contact with them. There’d been letters, and the occasional telephone call, and Justine had grown to like them (by report) just as much as her husband did. So it was only natural that, at one point, they’d issued an invitation, and the Wingendorffs had accepted.

So now they were staying with the Morrows for a week – Fritz and Anna Wingendorff with their two children, five-year-old Helga and four-year-old Klaus – before making their way across the States to Los Angeles, from where they’d return to Germany.

Children, no matter what their nationality may be, enjoy dressing up, and so it was hardly surprising that a tiny pirate and a slightly taller fairy princess went trick-or-treating with Mrs. Morrow and her three-year-old twins, and enjoyed themselves immensely. Their trick-or-treat round down the street and back again – for they were too small to go any farther – was the crowning ending of a highly exciting day, and once the children had compared their loot to each other, their mommies took them off to give them their bath and put them to bed.

In the meantime, the men were sitting downstairs, having a drink and discussing the afternoon. Both Bill and Justine Morrow had been surprised to find that Halloween was unheard of in Germany. Even Bill, who’d lived there for almost two years, hadn’t been aware of that, since he’d hardly been in contact with any of the local people except those who worked on the base.

When their wives came down to the patio they too joined in the discussion, and Anna confirmed her husband’s opinion that the Germans did have a different attitude towards the supernatural than was found among English-speaking people. Those who had had an otherworldly experience preferred to keep quiet about it; since they were most likely to be thought insane, and no one wished to be accused of having lost their mind. Which was why, if there were any ghostly goings-on in Germany, people did not talk about them.

“There are some famous local legends, of course, which let us know that our ancestors didn’t quite share the modern beliefs,” Fritz said. “Whether it’s the Dykemaster who was immortalized by Theodor Storm, or the Hohenzollern White Lady – but most people would tell you that those are fairy-tales only, cautionary tales maybe, and those things don’t really exist. Still, every self-respecting country seat used to have its White Lady – what about Kaehlau, Anna? Did you have a White Lady?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Anna replied.

“I can hardly imagine your father putting up with that omission,” Fritz said teasingly.

“He didn’t have to,” Anna said, smiling. “We had something worse to add true distinction to the place. As you said, White Ladies are such a common thing – everyone has one of those. We had a Beast. The Beast of Kaehlau.”

Justine shuddered. “Do tell us!” she begged. “What kind of beast was it?”

Anna hesitated.

“Come on, Anna,” Bill prompted. “Telling scary stories is part of the Halloween tradition. Let us have it! The full story!”

“Very well,” Anna said, slowly. “I will tell you.”

“It must have been at some time during the seventeenth century, during or shortly after the 30-year-war, though there is no record of the event. The legend goes that there were rumors in Kaehlau; rumors of a terrifying kind. The Black Death was coming, people said, or it may have been the cholera; at any rate it was an illness people were terrified of. From the moment the news reached people in Kaehlau they wondered what could be done to prevent the approaching disaster. The easiest thing to do was to ban strangers from the place; but that, everyone knew, was not always efficient; it was known that illness had always found a way to spread. One had to find another way of making sure the disease did not reach Kaehlau.

When people are truly frightened, they will do anything – literally anything – to keep themselves and their loved ones out of danger, and unfortunately this means that they often lose their sense of what is right, and reasonable, and will cease to feel human sympathy for the sufferings of others. Believe me – I’ve seen what imminent danger and distress can make people do; so I can somewhat follow the train of thought that must have occurred to the Kaehlau people in those days. That does not mean, however, that I agree with the conclusion they came to.

They consulted a local wise woman, who had a reputation for being a witch, and she told them that there was only one thing they could do to keep misfortune away from Kaehlau. They had to sacrifice – a human being. The blood of an innocent had to be shed, and that would mean that Kaehlau was going to be protected. The idea sounded reasonable to the good people of Kaehlau; but since they could not expect anyone to volunteer for a grisly death, nor did they want any of their own daughters to be killed for the greater good, they had to come up with a different method of finding their victim.”

Anna paused, looking at her audience and finding them spellbound.

“In the end, they decided that whichever girl left the church first the following Sunday must be the innocent whose blood was needed to save the village, and so three of those worthy men hid in the churchyard to proceed with their task, once their victim had been identified.

On a remote farm about a mile or so from Kaehlau village, there lived a widow and her daughter, a beautiful girl, some fifteen years of age. It was this girl who, worried about her sick mother, left Church early that Sunday morning, and who was therefore killed and buried in a nearby copse.”

“Good Lord!” Justine gasped. “The poor thing! Her poor mother, too! Did she find out what happened to the girl?”

“Naturally. When the girl did not return from Church, she asked some neighbors to look for her daughter, and they found the fresh grave, and the corpse, and while there were many people who knew the murderers’ names no one spoke up. Everyone was relieved that the human sacrifice had not been their daughter, and was content to be silent. The widow therefore forbade her daughter to be buried in consecrated ground – the girl was not to share her burial place with her murderers, she said – and had her buried right next to the road to Königsberg instead, in the copse where she had died, so that travelers could see her grave and be constantly reminded of the crime that had happened there. The cross is still there – or was, as long as I lived there; it may well be gone now.

She also placed a curse on the people of Kaehlau. They had meant to save themselves by shedding her daughter’s blood, she said, and so her blood must be repaid a thousand times over or she would not rest in her grave. The widow died soon afterwards, and no one thought of the curse any more – it was put down to the natural grief a mother felt at her child’s death, and after all nothing had happened, had there? The plague had spared the village too, the sacrifice had worked. Everything was fine. Until, exactly a year after the murder, the Beast made its first appearance.”

As if on cue, an owl hooted somewhere in the garden, which made the assembled company burst into nervous laughter. Justine made use of the interruption to refill everyone’s glasses, look in on the children and fetch some more salted peanuts from the kitchen. Once she had taken her seat on the porch again, Anna continued her tale.

“The Beast’s first three victims, in the month following the anniversary of the girl’s death, were the murderers; the ones who’d waited for her in the churchyard and killed her. Each of them was found in the copse where the murder had taken place, not far from the girl’s grave, and each of them had their throat cut – though some reports say it was not a cut but a bite - and not a drop of blood in them. Within two years, all the men who had been in on the plot suffered the same fate – they all were found dead in the forest, their blood all gone. The wise woman who’d suggested the slaughter was killed as well. Each of these people died during the month of September. That fact at least can be proved by having a look at the Kaehlau church records. September has always been a busy month when I came to funerals.”

“Perhaps someone wanted to take the Law into their own hands?” Bill suggested. “Bringing the guilty individual – or persons, in that case – to justice?”

“Perhaps – who knows?” Anna said. “But where did all the blood go?”

Justine shuddered. “I can’t feel sorry for someone who went so far as to kill a fifteen-year-old girl,” she said. “But somehow I fear that was not the whole story.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t,” Anna replied. “The Beast of Kaehlau is still around. No one liked using the old road from Kaehlau to Königsberg at night, and in September people stayed away from it altogether. They even built a new road to avoid the forest, but the old one was shorter and therefore people still used it occasionally, making sure they got home before sunset though. We in Gut Kaehlau had no choice but use the old road if we wanted to go either into the village or to Königsberg.

By the time I was born the story about the Beast of Kaehlau was a legend, mainly, though still scary enough to keep us children out of the wood. Passing that cross – and the grave - on our bicycles was some kind of dare, especially after dark. I suppose this was why my mother insisted on us having a governess in the house – not because our village school was bad, but because my mother did not want us to be alone on that stretch of road, especially not in September. She did not say so to my father, though. For him it was quite enough to hear that she didn’t want us taught along with the village children, and he agreed wholeheartedly with that scheme.”

“I bet he did,” Fritz muttered.

“It was common practice among East Prussian landowners to have a governess for one’s daughters, or a tutor for one’s sons. We had a succession of governesses, most of them English or French because my mother insisted on us learning at least two foreign languages,” Anna went on, ignoring her husband’s comment on her father. Everyone present knew what Fritz’ opinion of his father-in-law was.

“One of them, a Miss Campbell, came to stay with us in the year ‘30. There had been some argument about sending us to boarding school instead when our previous governess left to get married, but my mother thought that my sister Maria and I were too young to leave home, and so there was no question of sending Elsa away either. My father didn’t see why he should go to the double expense of paying for boarding school and a governess’ wages. – Anyway, I remember disliking Miss Campbell a great deal. There was something about her I did not like. She was a very pretty woman – my father would not have tolerated a plain one in her position –, well-bred and pleasant-spoken. But she got along too well with my father, if you know what I mean, and I felt that was wrong. I believe children have a way of feeling if something is not quite right; and there certainly was something going on. Why else would Miss Campbell go for long walks, and invariably end up coming back with my father in his car? I didn’t know what this implicated, being a child, but I suppose many people in Kaehlau knew – even my mother must have known, I believe, but there was nothing she could do against it. My father had hired Miss Campbell, and he was certainly not going to dismiss her. My mother grew more and more depressed, and Miss Campbell began to order everyone about as if she was mistress at Gut Kaehlau. She did not go so far as to try and boss my mother around, but there were those who believed that she would, at one point. My father did nothing to stop her. Then September came.” Anna sighed.

“We – my sister Elsa and I - told Miss Campbell about the Beast one afternoon, when she wanted to walk into the village and it became clear that she wouldn’t be back before nightfall. We informed her that, at this time of the year especially, it was not safe to be out on that road after dark. She laughed at us, said we were a pair of silly girls to believe such superstitious babble as that, and went off on her walk. My father had had to go to Königsberg on some business, and so for once he was not on the spot to take Miss Campbell home – or he’d finally grown tired of her and forgot about their assignation, I don’t really know; nor do I care. By dinnertime, my father returned – alone. He had not seen Miss Campbell, he said, and most likely she was staying the night with a friend. Not that she had any, to our knowledge; the people in Kaehlau village had started to look at her askance when she was often seen in my father’s company. We sat down to dinner without Miss Campbell. – Our dining room windows overlooked the drive, and the forest, and just as we were having our dessert we heard a couple of terrible shrieks and screams coming from the direction of the trees. My mother looked terrified, while my father acted as if nothing had happened – he said it was probably just animals fighting, or something of the sort - , and sent us off to bed. Naturally we couldn’t sleep, especially since Miss Campbell still hadn’t returned home, and that fact together with the screams we’d heard led us to think that the Beast had found another victim. We didn’t like her, but that was a thing we hadn’t wanted to happen.”

Anna paused, and poured herself another glass of wine.

“What did happen to Miss Campbell?” Bill wanted to know.

“My mother spent the night with us,” Anna said. “She sat in the armchair, curled up under a blanket, and kept a close watch on us. I did wake up at one point during the night, and heard a noise outside – so I got up and walked to the window. I pulled the curtains aside and wanted to see what was going on, but my mother too had woken up and dragged me away from the window before I could see much. I do remember seeing the figure of a woman in the courtyard outside, a woman wearing a white dress of sorts. It cannot have been Miss Campbell though, as we found out the next morning. She was found in the forest – dead – and some of the old people said that there was not a drop of blood left in her. So I assumed that what I’d seen that night was the Beast on the hunt for more blood – and that my mother stayed with us to keep us safe, and to make sure we didn’t open the window and let it in. After Miss Campbell’s accident - this was what my father and the coroner called it – there was no longer any argument about us being sent to school. My mother was glad to have us somewhere safe, and my father was glad to have us somewhere away from him. So off we went.”

“What a gruesome story!” Justine cried. “Do you think the Beast of Kaehlau is still around?”

Anna shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “It’s quite likely though. I doubt there are many people left who know the old legend, so maybe the Beast is having a good time now with those who’ve come after us. Who knows? On the other hand, there has been so much bloodshed in the area that maybe the debt of Kaehlau is finally paid off, and the girl is at rest.”

“Let’s hope so,” Fritz said. “That story gave me the creeps and I sure have had my share of terrifying experiences, so I’m not easily frightened. Why didn’t you tell me the story when we met in Kaehlau? I remember driving through that wood…”

Anna smiled. “I might have, had we met in September,” she said. “But it was spring, and I saw no reason for warning you off. Or for telling you stories that might make you think I was an unstable sort of girl – it’s not the kind of impression a girl wants to give the man she cares about. – Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s my turn to look in on the children.”

While Anna was gone, Bill refilled the glasses, and Justine fetched some more snacks from the kitchen.

“Do you have any story to tell us, honey?” Bill asked his wife as she put a tray of canapés – left-overs from the party - on the table.

“Sure,” she said. “Not as scary as Anna’s, I admit, though it was terrifying enough at the time. Just wait till Anna gets back and I’ll tell you.”

Only when Anna had returned and sat down at the table, Justine began her story. “It’s not quite as chilling as Anna’s,” she said. “No one gets killed – though sure at the time some of us thought they would be. But I’ll start at the beginning. The whole thing happened in the town where I was born - a small town in Kentucky, not far from Lexington. I was in my junior year in high school, and I am sorry to tell you that I was not one of the popular girls. I had a strict upbringing; my father didn’t want me to get involved with boys too soon – he said nothing good has ever come of that – and so I was hardly ever allowed to go anywhere. As for dating boys and going out with them on a Friday or Saturday night - that was out of the question; I didn’t even dare to ask for permission. It’s probably no wonder that I met my husband when I was away from home, visiting some relatives.” She smiled. “Not that I have any regrets in that direction.

Since I was hardly ever allowed to go anywhere, I didn’t have many friends – not among the other girls in school and certainly not among the boys – and I was not very happy. I knew the in-crowd of our small town was making fun of me whenever they could, and I so wanted to be one of them! The girls were so pretty and always wearing nice clothes, and their boy-friends were so handsome – I quite envied them. There was one boy in senior year I admired – Tom Hanson – and he too was one of those popular kids.”

Fritz grinned as his friend Bill’s face darkened at the mention of Tom Hanson.

“I take it you don’t like the man?” he asked.

“He was a show-off,” Bill said. “Met him once or twice when Justine and I were courting. Just the kind of fellow I never got along with, and this had nothing to do with Justine. Just felt like beating his face to a pulp whenever I saw him, and that’s the best thing I can say about him.”

“You shouldn’t talk of him like that,” Justine protested. “He’s dead now.”

Bill nodded. “Got killed in France in ‘44.”

Justine handed the plate of canapés to Anna, before continuing her tale.

“I didn’t know then what being in love really was, but if anyone had asked me, I suppose I’d have said I was in love with Tom Hanson. And I’m afraid I made a fool of myself over him – those girls I was friends with knew how I felt about him, and so word got around to Betty Colney, Tom’s cousin – and one of the most popular girls in our school. I guess that was why she suddenly took interest in me – to make me look like a fool, and show me my place.”

“Heavens!” Anna cried. “We did play pranks on girls in boarding school, I admit, but we never singled anyone out when we did. Whatever was done to one girl could happen to any of the other ones as well.”

“Only think” Fritz said caustically. “A Prussian finishing school an egalitarian institution. I wonder if your father knew.”

Justine laughed. “I admit I was fooled at first. I was flattered that Betty and her set took notice of me, and treated me as if I was one of them. I thought it was because I was a good student, and Betty did need some help; she was not the brightest crayon in the box. But I didn’t mind – they were kind to me, and I got invited over to their places, and, the best thing of all, I was allowed to go because my mother felt there was nothing wrong with me befriending other girls and going to their homes. I knew there’d be an end to it if ever my father found out there were boys present as well, but then, some of the girls had brothers, and one could hardly kick them out of the house just because I was visiting. So I met Tom Hanson quite often, and he was nice, and treated me like a good friend – half-flirting, half-serious – and I truly felt as if everything was going well, and was blind to everything that didn’t fit into the picture I’d made for myself. Then Halloween approached, and some of the girls suggested we could celebrate the event at my house. I asked my mother, who had no objection, and said we could have a sleepover at my place the weekend before Halloween – a party during the school week was not to be thought of. The other girls were happy with that, and so that Friday night, after school, we all went to my home, where my mother had prepared all kinds of goodies for us to eat, and I was looking forward to a pleasant evening with my new friends.”

“This sure doesn’t sound all that scary so far,” Fritz remarked.

“Not to you,” Bill replied with a grin. “Personally, I think having a house full of teenage girls is a scary thought.”

“Surely no scarier than a boys’ night out,” Justine retorted. “I’ll get to the frightening bit in a moment. – Kentucky has had its fair share of action during the American Civil War, and one battlefield – the site of a minor skirmish, though some hundred men were killed in that fight – was not far from my home.
The story goes that a group of Confederate soldiers had decided to spend the night there, and that the man who was in charge of keeping watch had fallen asleep. So early the next morning, when a troop of Yankees came their way, they had an easy job with them. The Confederates did put up a fight, of course, but it didn’t help them much - as I said most of them were killed in the fight. Others, like the guard who’d been on duty, were taken prisoner.
However, the sentry was so horrified with the consequences of his mistake that he hanged himself on the same day. He had slept that night, but he has found no rest ever since – he guards the field where his comrades died, and anyone who comes near the place and does not show proper respect for the dead will make his acquaintance – and probably won’t like the experience. This guard will never sleep again.

So far, so good. Naturally, we were sitting in my room later that night, and telling each other ghost stories, and the Sentry played a major part in the stories. There was always someone they knew, or someone one of their relatives and friends knew, who had encountered the Sentry in one way or another. I, even though the memorial for the dead soldiers was only a short way away from our house, had never had any ghostly experiences in the area. My mother looked after the memorial, decorating it with flowers and lighting candles on the anniversary of the fight, and while she’d taught me to respect the dead she’d also taught me that they were nothing to be afraid of, and that there was no such thing as ghosts. The dead passed on to wherever they belonged, she said, and that was that. So, when Betty asked me if I’d ever seen the Sentry, I told her I hadn’t, that I wasn’t afraid of him, and that I didn’t believe in ghosts.

‘So you wouldn’t mind going to the memorial and getting one of the flowers there?’ Betty asked me, and I said I didn’t.

‘I’d like to see that,’ Betty said, and the other girls laughed. So I got out of bed and got dressed again, took a flashlight from my bedside table and walked out into the night. What I didn’t know was that they’d already planned the whole thing – sending me on that battlefield and then giving me the fright of my life.”

“Just the thing good friends will do,” Fritz commented.

Justine laughed. “An opinion the Sentry shared, obviously. – It was rather cold, and pitch-dark, but there was a candle burning at the memorial that showed me the way. At first, I walked rather quickly, but the further I got away from the house the slower I got, especially when the flashlight went out all of a sudden. All the stories I’d been told came back to my mind, and while I still didn’t believe anything was going to happen I began to feel pretty uneasy. I couldn’t see much around me – as I said, it was pitch-dark – and I groped my way forward, always keeping my eyes on the light in the distance and trying hard not to notice anything that was going on around me. I tried to shut out the noises I heard, and did my best to find rational explanations for them, but the farther I got the more nervous I grew. I began to say the words of the Lord’s Prayer in my head, reasoning that a prayer had never hurt anyone. That way, I reached the memorial, where my mother had placed a wreath of flowers at the foot of the stone marker, and bent over to take one of the flowers from the wreath.

‘What are you doing here?’ someone asked me. I jumped, turned around, and in the light of the candle I saw a young man, not much older than myself, but I didn’t know him even though I was acquainted with everyone about my age in the area.

‘What business of yours is that?’ I asked him.

‘More than you think,’ he said. ‘So what are you doing here?’

There was nothing threatening about him, he appeared … concerned about me, as far as I could tell, and that’s why I told him, I suppose. I told him that there were those girls, with whom I wanted to be friends, and that they’d dared me to come here at night and bring back a flower from the memorial to prove I’d been there, and how happy I was to be finally accepted in their circle and how I didn’t want to mess things up. He listened, and then said, ‘You really ought to find out who your real friends are.’

‘I know who my real friends are,’ I protested, and he laughed.

‘We’ll see,’ he said, and then added, ‘But you’ve no business to be out alone at this time of night, and in a place like this. You’d better go home quickly, and don’t look back.’

“There was something in the way he’d said ‘Don’t look back’ that made me realize there was something strange about him. He’d asked me what I was doing there, but – why was he there, one night in late October, close to midnight? Then I became aware of something cold going past me, and he was gone, and I found myself by the memorial for the dead Confederate soldiers, all alone.

‘Where are you?’ I cried, but there was no reply, and so I made my way back to our house, taking care to follow his advice and not to look back. I’d gone a couple of hundred yards, I suppose, when suddenly someone started screaming behind me. I recognized Betty’s voice, and then – Tom shouting. From the sound of their voices, they were scared of something, and I confess I didn’t turn back to help them but ran as fast as I could, never stopping until I’d reached my home. In my room I found Annette, one of the girls, all by herself, and when I asked her where the others were she told me the entire story. Betty, once we’d fixed that day for our party, had planned to send me to that place and follow me to give me the fright of my life. Tom would then appear as some kind of knight in shining armor, and they’d tell everyone in school how I’d nearly wet myself with fear and fled into Tom’s arms. Annette hadn’t known anything about their plan until I’d left, she said, and when they’d told her what it was she’d refused to come along. ‘There are some things that just aren’t done,’ she said.”

“So did this Annette turn out to be the one true friend?” Anna asked.

“In a way she did. She’d thought it was a cruel trick to play on anyone, and besides she admitted she hadn’t quite felt like going to the battlefield herself, so she’d stayed behind, at the risk of being excluded from their group of friends for good. She asked me if I’d seen anything, and I told her that I hadn’t, apart from a young man. She asked me what he’d looked like, and I described him – noticing that I could remember much more about him than I could reasonably have seen, in the light of a single candle. And then it struck me. His clothes. He’d worn a uniform – a grey uniform. I must have met the Sentry.

I didn’t tell Annette so, but somehow she guessed. We both wondered why the Sentry had done nothing, apart from telling me to leave and not look back, which was pretty harmless. I think there are two ways of explaining it – he may have known it was my family who took care of the memorial and the battlefield, and that I wasn’t being disrespectful to his dead comrades. Or it was the prayers I’d said – that they’d protected me somehow. I like to believe it was the first reason. I don’t think there is anything evil about him.”

“Did you ever find out what happened to the other girls – and Tom Hanson?” Fritz asked.

“They arrived at my parents’ house half an hour later – the girls, that was – their clothes torn; and they were in no fit state to talk about what had happened. Later, Annette got it out of them nevertheless. They said that something dreadful had chased them across the entire battlefield, and when Annette asked them what that dreadful thing had been they said it had been the apparition of a Confederate soldier – that is to say, the apparition wore the uniform of a soldier, but with a skull grinning at them from under his hat, and … there’d been a terrible rotting smell, too. He drew his saber, and they ran away, thinking he was going to kill them – only he followed them, and kept close behind them until they reached the safety of Tom’s car.”

Fritz whistled. “This looks to me as though he took great care to frighten people if he meant to do so. Apparently he didn’t mean to frighten you”

“No; that’s why he told me not to look back,” Justine said. “Needless to say, the next morning I got the girls to walk over to the memorial once again, and we placed some more flowers there and apologized. I felt it was the right thing to do. – I haven’t seen the Sentry ever since, but I must say I’m quite happy with that state of affairs. I still put down flowers at the memorial whenever I visit my parents, though.”

“So she does,” Bill agreed. “And I don’t blame the poor chap for scaring a crowd of youngsters who’d nothing better to do than playing a mean trick on a young girl. He was guarding the place as well as Justine. Some spirits are very protective, I think.”

Fritz nodded. “True. They convey warnings, too, as in the case of the one I met.”

“You met a ghost?” Bill asked. “In spite of your talk about the down-to-earth Germans?”

Fritz grinned and shrugged. “I wasn’t talking about myself when I told you that Germans generally don’t tell or believe in ghost stories. But you mustn’t forget I’m an old sailor, and … some strange things happen at sea, you know.”

"You wouldn't know, probably, about the Klabautermann, Bill, being in the army, but we seamen are very familiar with them."

"What are Klab...whatever you call them, Fritz?" Justine wanted to know, curious.

"Klabautermann. Either friendly water sprites or prank-playing demons, depending on who you talk to," he explained. "However you think of them, though, they only appear to people of a doomed ship - and I've seen one!"

Justine gasped, but Bill chuckled. "Evidently it wasn't that doomed, or you wouldn't be here to tell the tale. What happened?" Even Anna moved her chair closer, and Fritz recalled that he had never told her this story. Had never told anyone this story.

"It was during the war. Strange things were happening on my ship, and the men were distracted, making mistakes of their own and starting to talk. Now, we're a superstitious lot in the first place, but this went beyond that. There were weird noises in the mess room, and things were getting moved around a lot in the galley, driving the cooks mad."

"Things were being moved?" Anna frowned.

"Pots that had been left in one spot in the galley were found stacked up in the mess the next morning; utensil drawers were rearranging themselves overnight, that sort of thing. It was puzzling, but it was also starting to get on my nerves. I had enough to worry about without a Klabauter on board. Not only were the stories getting wilder by the minute, but there was the underlying fear that one of the men would actually see it, and then we were all doomed."

"What did you do?" Justine asked.

"I decided that someone real was playing these tricks, undermining morale, and I sat up in the mess one night to discover the prankster. Just as I suspected, nothing happened. But the men were encouraged by my vigil, and so I sat up the next night, and the next, just because the gossip was abating. On the fourth night, however..." His voice dropped, and they all leaned in to hear him.

"On the fourth night, a man with flaming red hair and a beard, dressed in yellow, appeared suddenly in front of me." He explained that Klabauters were reputed to wear yellow and woollen caps. "I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was keeping an eye on me. Said I was in grave danger the next day unless I took his advice. He told me we were going to be attacked, and what I was supposed to do to save the ship and crew.”

"'Who are you?' I demanded, and the sailor grinned. 'I'm Störtebeker, your granddad many times over,' he said. I knew someone was playing a trick on me, surely, and I stood, reaching out to grab the man and expose him, when he vanished between my fingers."

"Of course I do," Fritz said. "And I'll get to that in a minute. Evidently you aren't the only one with illustrious ancestors."

She grinned. "Infamous is more like it."

"I want to hear about the ship!" Justine insisted. "What happened the next day, Fritz?"

"The next day, we were attacked. Americans," he added, winking at Bill. In some places, enmity between countries might still exist, but he and Morrow had managed to get along just fine. Their mutual love of beer and sports might have had something to do with that. "Took a hit in the starboard hull, too, but I followed Störtebeker's advice and no one was in that area, so we had no casualties. We were also standing by to patch up the hole until we could make port, and the ship was saved. That time, anyway. I've never told anyone this story, until now," he said softly. "Even my men wouldn't have believed me, although they were glad the nonsense stopped in the galley. So, instead of being committed, I was decorated." He grinned.

"Now, tell them about Störtebeker," Anna insisted. "You will like this story, too," she assured Justine. "It says a lot about Fritz, really."

“Klaus Störtebeker was a leader of a group of privateers back in the late 1300's called the Vitalienbrüder, or Victual Brothers.”

"See?" Anna said wryly, and the Morrows laughed.

Fritz ignored her. "The Brothers were first hired during a war between Denmark and Sweden, to fight the Danes and bring provisions to Stockholm, which was under siege. They must have liked what they were doing, though, because after the war they continued to capture merchant vessels and called themselves the Likedeelers, or 'equal sharers.' Störtebeker came to attention after the Brothers were kicked out of Gotland, where they had built a stronghold for their ill-gotten gains. They continued to terrorize the seas, until they were captured by Simon of Utrecht, and taken to Hamburg for trial.

"Legend has it that Störtebeker offered a chain of gold long enough to enclose the whole town of Hamburg in exchange for his life and freedom. However, Störtebeker and all of his companions - it was said there were 73 of them - were sentenced to death and beheaded."

Anna and Justine looked at each other and shuddered.

"The most famous legend of Störtebeker, though, comes from the execution itself. He asked the mayor of Hamburg if he would release as many men as he could walk past after being beheaded. The mayor agreed, Störtebeker lost his head, and his body got up and walked past twelve of his men before the executioner stuck out a foot and tripped him."

The ladies rolled their eyes at each other, but Bill laughed. "And this fellow was an ancestor of yours?"

"That's what he said. My mother had the same flaming red hair, you know, so it's plausible. Who knows if the execution story is true, though? At least now you know why I laughed when Klaus insisted on wearing a pirate costume today – it must be in his blood. And that is also why his name is Klaus.”

They all digested that information for a few minutes, Fritz taking a few thoughtful pulls on his beer, when Bill sat back with a grin and looked around the patio at each one of the others.

"St. Augustine is an old city, as far as America is concerned. It was founded in 1565 and has been in the hands of the Spanish, the British, Americans and yes, even pirates." He and Fritz grinned at each other. "Of course, the lighthouse you see in the distance has helped those aboard ships since 1824. Some say the place is haunted, and I have to believe it. In fact, there is a story about a bunch of pirates who died and are buried behind it, but my own personal experience did not include pirates."

Justine shivered and pulled her light cardigan sweater more tightly around her.

"You know I have a wholesale and retail meat business," he said to the Wingendorffs, who nodded. "And recently I was delivering an order to the lighthouse. It's not on the regular route, the lightkeeper only orders on occasion, and when he does, I usually drive over to Anastasia Island with what he wants. This time, no one was around. I knocked at the door - the lightkeeper lives in a house there - but there was no answer. At first, anyway. While I was standing there, I heard the giggles of little girls from around the side of the house." He looked intently at his audience.

"The lightkeeper doesn't have any children. I figured then that the kids were neighbors... Until I saw one of them peek around the house. She was wearing an old fashioned blue dress with a bow in her hair, and she was smiling at me. With a wave, she did not disappear back around the house, but walked through the porch railing toward me, and then disappeared. Now, make of that what you want, but the story goes that in 1873, when the second lighthouse was being built, the man supervising the construction had five children. They all lived here with him. There was a rail car of some sort that ran from the house to the ocean to ferry supplies and back and forth, and they liked to ride in it. But one day, something happened, and the car dumped them all in the water. Two of the children were saved, but two of the supervisor's daughters, and another girl, were drowned. Some say they are still there." He emptied his beer and got to his feet.

"There is talk of automating the lighthouse soon, so it's possible that all that will be left of the old place will be its ghosts."

Just then, there was a rustling in the trees behind them, even though the night air was still and muggy, not unusual for Florida in late October. Patchy fog had rolled in from the Atlantic, giving the back yard a ghostly pallor all its own.

"What was that?" Anna asked, looking around her. The rustling continued, and Justine came half out of her chair.

"A spirit?" Bill asked, his lips trying not to twitch into a smile.

"The Beast of Kaehlau, taking offense at your storytelling?" Fritz teased his wife. She swatted him ineffectually with her hand.

"There's something out there," Justine whispered.

Bill shrugged. "Probably just Elizabeth... We're right around the corner from the old city gates, and she's the girl people see playing nearby. Stories have it that she died in the 1821 yellow fever epidemic and is buried in the Hugenot cemetery across the street."

"Something is out there, I tell you," Justine insisted, her voice rising with her anxiety.

"Or it could be Judge Stickney. He supposedly scours the cemetery, looking for something, possibly his teeth. He has been seen in the trees overlooking his grave." The tree rustled again, as if in reply.

"Bill" Anna admonished him, although she was looking about almost as nervously as Justine.

"Or maybe it's... Ack!" Something flew at Bill from the tree, and he yelped and covered his face, only to look up in surprise when everyone else laughed. There, sitting on his patio table, was a black cat. It looked at him once, winked, and then disappeared into the shrubbery.