The following story is true.
Ship of Screams
This past weekend my friends and I went to Big Bear to relax and check out some Halloween festivities. It is a tradition that started 6 years ago.
Every year we look forward to one or two haunted houses that the locals put on, one of them being at someone’s house which we found on Craigslist which made it exponentially terrifying, but that is another story.
This year we were told about the “Ship of Screams” which was a ferry named Miss Liberty on Big Bear Lake which they turned into a haunted house. It was advertised at my timeshare and was even in the newspaper. After eating Mexican food at a local cantina, we piled into my car and headed unsuspectingly into a tale of sheer terror…
I drove to the marina where it was said to be docked, but the marina was behind a closed, locked gate. Everything was dark. We drove around the coastline looking for where it may be, finally ending up where we started. There was a bar beside the marina and we drove to the other side of the bar as we debated who would go in and ask about the haunted ship.
When we got to the other side we noticed a solitary man in the marina on the other side of a fence next to a garage working on what we could only guess was “boat things”. Grace, a young red head with a fun sense of humor, said, “Let’s ask him,” and called out to the man from the window. Not completely hearing her the man put down some things he was working on and came closer to the fence. “Oh, great,” I said, “looks like we’re disturbing him.”
We asked him about the haunted boat and he mentioned that event happened last year. Now everything was closed and dark. “You can go down there and look at it yourself if you want. Do you have a flashlight? Go over to that gate and I’ll let you in.”
“All right! This is what it’s all about!” I exclaimed as I backed up my car.
My timid yet beautiful girlfriend, Angela, was not so thrilled. “No, I don’t think we should…” she protested several times, I believe with the help of Grace as well.
He hit the button to open up the gate. We drove in and as the mechanical gate screeched to a close behind us we got a better look at the man. He was about 6 feet tall, a stout man of about 250-300 pounds, and had a long, scraggly biker goatee. As if he wasn’t menacing enough, we noticed he was wearing gloves and was holding a drill which he intermittently revved as if it was a nervous habit. “Zzzzz! Zzzz!”
“Just go all the way down to the end of the dock. You’ll see a van. Park anywhere.” Zzzzz! Zzzzz! “Undo the chain and check it out… just don’t get hurt or it’ll be my hide. Heh, heh.” Zzzz!
As I drove down the dark, winding, marina we seemed to hold our breath. We got to the end and saw the old, parked van. The girls began to protest again. I was tuning them out and knew that Jeff, the other guy with us, was probably doing the same. Jeff is a handsome, raven haired young man who is so skinny, I once remarked when I grabbed the side of his rib cage, "I feel like I'm taking a book off the shelf!"
At first we didn’t see the boat, but as I turned my car, we could see it about 200 feet in the distance, dark and spooky, only faintly illuminated by my headlights.
Leading up to it was a long rickety walkway. With a little coaxing, we decided to undo the chain and check it out on the stipulation that I would leave my car lights on. Creeeeeeeeeeek! Creeeeeeek! The walk way and boat were making unsettling noises. The light from our iPhones reflected in the windows making it hard to see inside. Even I was getting a little disturbed.
After another little debate about getting on the boat, we got on and climbed the stairs to the deck on top. “What if the guy comes back?” “What if the car lights go out?” I noticed a spider but didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to give them another reason to chicken out.
Going down another set of stairs we were in the front of the boat and there were two doors. One was locked but the other was ajar. I cautiously peeked my head in and entered. It was a sort of small basic kitchen, but in the light of a cell phone, any room looks creepy.
There was one solitary closed door. “Open the door, Jeff,” I said as I held the light. I have to admit, I was getting a little spooked. Jeff approached the door… reached for the handle… Suddenly a voice was heard down the walkway.
“You’ve got the car lights on! That’s cheating!” The man was a dark silhouette standing in front of my car. All of our hearts sunk as he began down the walkway. Grace thought for sure we were dead. Angela was silently praying for our safety. “That door is open because they want me to fix it…”
All of us went up the stairs and went to the first stairwell to wait for him to come up. Grace looked over the side. “You guys, where did he go? I don’t see him. Where did he go?” Just as she was saying this he appeared behind us out of nowhere! Again, in dark silhouette still holding the drill!
There was an open window by him and he instructed Jeff, who was the closest, “Reach in there and grab that rope…” Jeff’s mind flashed with visions of pulling the rope only to have some sort of trap cut off his arm, but not wanting to refuse, he reached into the window…
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMPPP!!!! The ferry’s horn sounded loudly, the girls screamed, I laughed with delight because I figured out what he was doing.
He went on to turn on the lights and show us around the boat and told various stories about things they’ve done to it, how part of the boat came from a ship that was wrecked in Hurricane Katrina, and what some of the scary scenes were like at the “Ship of Screams”.
Things were a lot lighter now, but he still held his drill - zzzzz! zzzz! - and we gently made our exit when he told us about a time he was walking on the dock and heard something in the dark about his size jump into the water, so he got his 45 pistol. Wait, this guy has a gun?
All in all, he was a friendly guy and he took down our names so when we come back we can get a free ride on Miss Liberty. At least, I hope that’s why he took our names…