In the beginning, the ‘Ivan Vasili’ was an unremarkable ship. She was built in 1896 in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian empire, designed to haul freight around the world. The freighter with the length of 238.2 feet, 36.9 feet in beam and 18.3 feet in depth, had an iron plated hull, and wooden decks and superstructure. When launched, the ship was coal-fired powered by a single steam engine with the exhaust smoking through a tall funnel; the ship could carry enough coal to see her through 2,500 nautical miles.

A crew of thirty-nine seamen was enlisted to man the ship, mostly Russian sailors to stoke the boiler fires and maintain the correct order of the ship. A handful of Scandinavian mariners were chosen to see to the course of sailing and the maintenance of the ship’s twin-screw engine and boiler. Captain Sven Anders, a grizzled burly man of the sea was appointed to command the vessel while another burly Swede, a Christian Hansen was picked as the first officer.

The ‘Ivan Vasili’s’ first years were wholly uneventful, unmarked by any oddities or events. The ship flew the flag of Russian East Asiatic Steamship Lines Limited based in St. Petersburg with freight and passenger services between the Baltic Sea and the Far East; cargo and passengers and destined for the return voyage to the Mother Land were picked up at harbors along the route.

Then in the year 1903 the Russian empire began to prepare for the coming war with Japan. The ‘Ivan Vasili’ upon her recent voyage was sent back to the shipyards to be readied as a freighter for the shipment of war material to the Far East. The ship was stripped of her cabins on the upper deck and she received a new boiler, texas deck and pilothouse.

The voyage to the Far East, at first, seemed like any trip made by the ship. Yet, when she coursed through the North Sea and the wind was blowing, shrill and sharp, with the going down of blurred sun. When it was just so dark, the crew on the night watch heard faint hammering sounds coming from the iron-plated hull. Boom, boom went the mallet through the gloom of the night when the ship was so solitary and vault-like.

When the dark of night released the shadows, imprisoned all day, that now closed in and danced eerily on the decks, the captain ordered some of the crew members to search the ship from beam to length and in its depth. Despite their efforts there were no signs to the hammering were found. It carried on till the ‘Ivan Vasili’ reached the breakers of the Atlantic when its last sound was a deep resonant moan that followed the last tap of the hammer at the sound of twelve bells of the night watch.

As the freighter looped around the African coast, the seaman’s mate on night watch saw momentarily a spirit of a ghostly figure covered in rags and holding a large wooden mallet. Other seamen on duty in the gloom of the following nights saw the same apparition; it glowed for a moment and seemed transparent. The swore on a oath that the figure almost looked human but they couldn’t make out any details as it appeared to their sight for a few seconds and disappeared around a lifeboat.

Ghostly specters that crept up from the their hidden places in the dark of night continued to haunt the vessel. When the ship docked for coal at Cape Town, the cook’s mate, a peasant lad drafted to the sea, screamed out in the agony of his voice, “it’s coming after me, it’s coming after me!” He ran berserk along the deck, leaped over the rails and dropped like a dead man into the waters of the harbor. His body was never found in the search as if he never existed.

When the mists rose from the sea during the crossing the fetid Indian Ocean, another of the deckhands in the dark of a hot night suddenly pointed a shaking finger and screamed out, “No, No!” Then most of the crew upon the sound of the screams started to panic, beating themselves and each other, oblivious to their surroundings. In the midst of the frenzy, the spooked seaman jumped overboard and was drowned. After a few seconds, as suddenly as it started, the routine of the freighter returned to normal as if nothing had happened.

The voyage of the ‘Ivan Vasili’ was uneventful till the sight of the Russian military base a Port Arthur, leasehold from China. Then again at the coming of the dusk of evening when the shadows gathered like mustering swarms, the crew suffered another mass panic attack. Another seaman disappeared during the incident, having presumably thrown himself overboard as well. When the men regained their sanity, they collapsed on the deck. It was only through the efforts of the captain and first officer that the ship did not run aground.

After picking up a load of coal from in Port Arthur, the ’Ivan Vasili’ headed to the Russian port of Vladivostok to unload the cargo of war material. There, a dozen members of the crew deserted with cry that the ship was jinxed. “Ghosts, ghosts,” were yelled in their hysteria. The military governor took their reason as a silly notion as they were rounded up and returned to the ship; the seamen were placed under guard till the freighter sailed.

The cargo was unloaded, and the freighter set sail for Hong Kong, becoming once again a floating nightmare for the crew and officers. When the shadow stole from its retreat in the dark of night and showed them in the likeness of form from a thing that might have been, the crew experienced three more episodes of mass hysteria. After each incident when the shadow had possession of the seamen, a crewman committed suicide by plunging into the depth of the waters.

Then, when the light of the harbor of Hong Kong was sighted, the captain saw a mocking shadow armed with a wooden mallet and in the fright for his life jumped overboard from the flying bridge to the depth of the sea into the arms of gods.

Once the ship docked in port of Hong Kong, most of the crew deserted to the cry of terror, ‘jinx’, ghosts’; all swore they would never set foot on its decks. Only the first officer, Christian Hansen and the five loyal Scandinavian seamen remained aboard.

Christian Hansen attained the command of captain. He recruited additional crewmen, and the ‘Ivan Vasili’ headed to Sidney Australia with a cargo of goods from China. This time there was smooth sailing with no incidents, until the night before the ship arrived at the port of Sidney. Then when the twilight released the shadows and closed within the officer’s quarters Captain Christian Hansen shot himself.

The dock lines hadn’t even been secured to the wharf at Sidney harbor when the entire crew, save the boatswain, a Harry Nelson a wry Australian, jumped ship and deserted. There was wrangling at the payment of wages due, but no matter how many threats of forfeiture of pay, not one seaman returned to ‘Ivan Vasili’. Then, with Harry Nelson’s help a captain was found who wasn’t afraid of ghosts.

But it took another four months before they could find a good complement of a crew as the word on the haunt of the vessel spread amongst the seamen along the dockside. All spoke in fear to the name of the freight ‘Ivan Vasili’ and called out when asked to sign on, “the ship is jinxed. T’aint worth my salted soul to step on her decks!”

Even watchmen to the docked ship were hard to come by as one after another quit their post with the claim of seeing a spirit walking the decks with a mallet in his rough hands. Those that were picked simply dropped their lantern and skirted away when their eyes met the sight of some eerie spirit. “Ghosts, ghosts!’ were the words that trailed them.

Finally, after much effort and the promise of higher wages, a new crew was found. The ship was loaded up with a cargo of baled wool and then steamed for San Francisco.

The vessel had hardly been underway when the dark of night through the mists released the shadows. When those shadows brought into the mind a face from the past, from the deep dark gulf the crew suffered another terrifying episode. Two of the stokers ran berserk from the boiler fires and had to be confined by the brute strength of the fellow crewman. The next day, early in the misty dawn, the captain shot himself. Near mutiny nearly arose as the rest of the crew refused flatly to steam to San Francisco.

Then with the help again of Harry Nelson, now the first officer, and those of the crew still sane and without the visions of ghosts, turned the “Ivan Vasili’ towards the harbor of Vladisvostok. Upon their arrival at the port, the entire crew, Harry Nelson included, left the ship and refused to return to her haunted deck. Not a single mariner could be found to sail the ship, no matter how high a salary together with a bonus for signing on and sailing with the ‘Ivan Vasili’.

Not even a good Siberian watchman could be found to go the rounds about the ship and to protect its cargo of wool, much less to spend a night aboard. Eventually a salvage crew was found brave enough to remove the bales of wool and reship them to Australia. But the freighter ‘Ivan Vasili’ rotted on its ropes becoming a derelict at the harbor for years to come.

Yet, during this time, not a soul tried to figure out why that ship was haunted; only rumors abounded and parlayed in gossip. One rumor that held fast was that the ghost that haunted the ‘Ivan Vasili’ was a workman from the port of St. Petersburg who was trapped within the iron hull during the renovations of the ship, and his spirit was seen as it sought revenge for his entrapment.

After years rotting at the pier, in 1907, the freighter ‘Ivan Vasili’ was towed out to sea at the dark of night for a final time, and set ablaze. All the sailors looked on from their boats and the stevedores watched from the dockside at the funeral pyre that glittered the rough waters. They cheered in a flight of fancy and toasted the demise of the doomed ship with bottles of vodka.

When the wind was blowing with gusts and the waters of the empty sea churned in its fury. When it was just so dark and so tumultuous, the seaman from the tugboat that had pulled the “Ivan Vasili’ out of the harbor on its last trip swore when the ship was set ablaze a ghostly figure with a heavy mallet in its hands was seen on the deck through the smoke and flames. Just before the ship went down to its graveyard, a terrifying scream, more animal than human, could be heard for the burning wreckage.