The Shrieking Woman
Category:
TALES OF PURITAN LAND
Source:
Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land
During the latter part of the seventeenth century a Spanish ship, richly
laden, was beset off Marblehead by English pirates, who killed every
person on board, at the time of the capture, except a beautiful English
lady, a passenger on the ship, who was brought ashore at night and
brutally murdered at a ledge of rocks near Oakum Bay. As the fishermen
who lived near were absent in their boats, the women and children, who
were startled from their sleep by her piercing shrieks, dared not attempt
a rescue. Taking her a little way from shore in their boat, the pirates
flung her into the sea, and as she came to the surface and clutched the
gunwale they hewed at her hands with cutlasses. She was heard to cry,
Lord, save me! Mercy! O, Lord Jesus, save me! Next day the people found
her mangled body on the rocks, and, with bitter imprecations at the worse
than beasts that had done this wrong, they prepared it for burial. It was
interred where it was found, but, although it was committed to the earth
with Christian forms, for one hundred and fifty years the victim's cries
and appeals were repeated, on each anniversary of the crime, with such
distinctness as to affright all who heard them--and most of the citizens
of Marblehead claimed to be of that number.
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