From shadowy sails just visible through the mist to shipwrecks that aren't as still as you'd think ... ghost ships can be quite frightful. Discover all that these creepy ships have to offer.

Have you ever seen something mysterious out on the water? Or heard of an eerie ghost ship that appears suddenly and then vanishes without a trace? Learn about famous ghost ship sightings all over the world, and find out what historians have to say about these spooky vessels.

The most horrific struggle of the American Revolution occurred just 100 yards off New York, where more men died aboard a rotting prison ship than were lost to combat during the entirety of the war. Moored off the coast of Brooklyn until the end of the war, the derelict ship, the HMS Jersey, was a living hell for thousands of Americans either captured by the British or accused of disloyalty. Crammed below deck -- a shocking one thousand at a time -- without light or fresh air, the prisoners were scarcely fed food and water. Disease ran rampant and human waste fouled the air as prisoners suffered mightily at the hands of brutal British and Hessian guards. Throughout the colonies, the mere mention of the ship sparked fear and loathing of British troops. It also sparked a backlash of outrage as newspapers everywhere described the horrors onboard the ghostly ship. This shocking event, much like the better-known Boston Massacre before it, ended up rallying public support for the war. Revealing for the first time hundreds of accounts culled from old newspapers, diaries, and military reports, award-winning historian Robert P. Watson follows the lives and ordeals of the ship's few survivors to tell the astonishing story of the cursed ship that killed thousands of Americans and yet helped secure victory in the fight for independence.

On December 4th, 1872, a 100-foot brigantine was discovered drifting through the North Atlantic without a soul on board. Not a sign of struggle, not a shred of damage, no ransacked cargo—and not a trace of the captain, his wife and daughter, or the crew. What happened on board the ghost ship Mary Celeste has baffled and tantalized the world for 130 years. In his stunning new book, award-winning journalist Brian Hicks plumbs the depths of this fabled nautical mystery and finally uncovers the truth. The Mary Celeste was cursed as soon as she was launched on the Bay of Fundy in the spring of 1861. Her first captain died before completing the maiden voyage. In London she accidentally rammed and sank an English brig. Later she was abandoned after a storm drove her ashore at Cape Breton. But somehow the ship was recovered and refitted, and in the autumn of 1872 she fell to the reluctant command of a seasoned mariner named Benjamin Spooner Briggs. It was Briggs who was at the helm when the Mary Celeste sailed into history. In Brian Hicks’s skilled hands, the story of the Mary Celeste becomes the quintessential tale of men lost at sea. Hicks vividly recreates the events leading up to the crew’s disappearance and then unfolds the complicated and bizarre aftermath—the dark suspicions that fell on the officers of the ship that intercepted her; the farcical Admiralty Court salvage hearing in Gibraltar; the wild myths that circulated after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a thinly disguised short story sensationalizing the mystery. Everything from a voodoo curse to an alien abduction has been hauled out to explain the fate of the Mary Celeste. But, as Brian Hicks reveals, the truth is actually grounded in the combined tragedies of human error and bad luck. The story of the Mary Celeste acquired yet another twist in 2001, when a team of divers funded by novelist Clive Cussler located the wreck in a coral reef off Haiti. Written with the suspense of a thriller and the vivid accuracy of the best popular history, Ghost Ship tells the unforgettable true story of the most famous and most fascinating maritime mystery of all time.

Scary stories in every culture, here are some of the best.

A ghostly schooner glides through the mist off the coast of Maine. A Connecticut lighthouse keeper continues to guide ships to safe harbor nearly a century after his death. Pirate ghosts wander the Rhode Island shoreline in search of salvation. These are only a few of the strange but true stories of New England's phantom ships and the spectral seafarers who haunt the shadowy cliffs and moonlit coves of the Northeast. Tales of ghost ships, haunted lighthouses, and other nautical nightmares are a deeply rooted aspect of traditional Yankee folklore. Some of these legends can be traced to genuine shipwrecks and historical events, while others remain a mystery, shrouded in rumor and lore. However, one fact is undeniable: these terrifying phantoms have been witnessed by countless people over the centuries, from common sailors and fishermen to celebrated scholars and heads of state.

Some people believe that famous pirates, ship captains, and other sailors never leave the ship where they died! Read this book to find out more about haunted ships.