Have you ever been fishing the surf late at night and felt a sudden chill? Have you ever heard whispers carried by the wind on a totally empty beach? Have you ever seen a figure out of the corner of your eye, only to turn on your light and have it disappear? Every fisherman has, and while most attribute these encounters to the long hours and lack of sleep that comes with fishing the surf, some believe there’s a supernatural explanation.
The long nights, cold winds and Halloween decorations passed on the way to the fishing grounds, make October an especially spooky time on the beaches. Here are a few ghost stories from some of the most popular surfcasting spots in the Northeast to give you something to think about while looking for that big, late-night, fall-run striper.
Canal Creepers
If campfire stories have taught us anything, it’s that you don’t mess with cemeteries. You don’t linger in them, you don’t build over them and you definitely don’t excavate the bodies and move them. Yet that’s what happened as the Cape Cod Canal was being dug in 1909.
The bodies were relocated to the Sagamore Cemetery, which now rests just a short distance from the Sagamore Bridge on the Cape side of the Canal. It’s said that, in the confusion, a number of the bodies were placed under the wrong headstones—another recipe for restless spirits. The Sagamore Cemetery has a reputation among Cape Cod residents for being haunted, with mysteriously moved headstones and whiffs of phantom cigar smoke being the more famous encounters. Occasionally, ghostly sightings are even made along the banks of the Cape Cod Canal.
Cape May Mooncussers
Mooncussers, the land-based pirates who used false signal fires to confuse captains into running aground, are responsible for a large number of the restless souls that wander the Northeast surf. So-named because the full moon made it impossible for them to ply their devious trade, the mooncussers were supposedly active in Cape May, New Jersey, and Chatham, Massachusetts, both areas where nighttime navigation would have been difficult even under the best circumstances. When a ship ran aground, the mooncussers would board it, slay the crew and make off with the loot. The lost souls of those crews are said to still wander the shorelines of these towns, wearing their 18th Century garb, searching for their lost loved ones, and scaring the waders off any surfcaster who happens to be fishing nearby.
Montauk Mysteries
Though not exactly ghostly in nature, the stories surrounding the experiments at Camp Hero near Montauk Point are nonetheless disturbing. They include unintentional time-travel, creatures from other dimensions, and extraterrestrial encounters. Perhaps the most unsettling of the Camp Hero stories are the rumors that scientists at the base kidnapped young men to conduct mind-control experiments. While hiking deep into Montauk’s South Side on fall nights, under the bluffs below Camp Hero, it has occasionally crossed my mind that a lone fisherman would make an excellent candidate for such an experiment, a thought that causes me to quicken my pace considerably.
It’s probably no coincidence that the nights when the spirits seem most active are the nights when the fish aren’t very active at all. Perhaps that’s because when the stripers are biting, the most worrisome thing about encountering a ghost on the beach is that he might tell someone else where you were fishing. Happy Halloween.
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While fishing at night late in October at a popular wade fishing spot in the Canal with my brother. We were fishing swimming plugs and the back wash took my lure towards where my brother had waded out to when a Large striper hit my plug just feet away from my brother. The stripers first maneuver to regain its freedom was to come to the surface in the shallow water and thrash and roll. It only took the striper about 15 seconds to throw the hook sending me falling backwards into the water. My brother comes over to see how I am and says. ” When that fish came to the surface and thrashed, not knowing what it was and again only feet away, I wanted to do the Jesus thing and walk on water.” His heart was pounding thinking it could have been a “Big Shark” needing a midnight snack. We continued to fish but he seemed not to wade out as far for the rest of the night,
I peered out my window that October night. The fog had settled over Eastern Long Island and I could barely see past the window itself. Although I hesitated I still did not let the “soup” deter me from wading into Moriches Bay and fishing that night.
Driving to the Coast Guard station was slow and hazardous. Visibility was zero.
The night was still and the lack of any visible moon lost in the fog gave it a darker than black feel. That coupled with the fact I could not see my outstretched hand began to unsettle me and get my mind to wandering.
As I walked up the road from parking lot to waters edge the sad fact of my location came into mind. This was the road that all the Flight 800 wreckage came up. This was the road that all those poor souls bodies had come to.
I shook the tragedy from my mind as I entered the dark swirling water. Ever so slowly I waded out to chest level and proceeded the hundred yards to my spot.
As I arrived I prepared to fire off my first cast when I turned to my right coming face to face with a man no more that three feet away. We looked at each other and screamed simultaneously. They must have heard us for miles. When we regained our composure we had a good laugh. After we introduced ourselves we began to fish. I asked him what he thought of the fog . “I actually enjoy it quite a bit,” he said. I then asked him if he was from the area. When he didn’t reply I turned toward him. But he was no longer there. I fled the water that night. And I never fished there again.
Wow, man. Fact or fiction, this syory gave me the willies for sure!
*story
FACT.
Wow!!! Great story
I remember back when we use to fish the old Jamestown bridge late in the season a lot spooky stuff clouds of fog that seemed to follow one nite something tapped me on my shoulder I turned an there was nothing there. A lot of stories that had seen a ghost of a woman running down the bridge it was definetly something paranormal Goin on
I have on many occasions heard a pulling drag with no one else around me..never really scares me,i just figured its a fisherman who passed getting in on the bite.
I arrived at the mouth of a local tidal river one late fall evening. When I got there, there were several others fishing the out going tide. One by one they began to leave as it became past the tide and the light faded. It was a very dark and moonless night, but the water was flat and still. I was fishing my long rod, as I usually do, and kept my timing by the sound of the line going through the guides. With the incoming tide I had to be aware of my location relative to the out flow of the water so I wouldn’t make a miss step and go for a swim.
Being there alone, I got got and uneasy felling listening the the gentle sound of the water against the shore. My night vision was now active and after several casts I looked out over the water at my rod tip. All of a sudden the head of a large seal popped up a rod length away and scared the living bejesus out of me. Knowing there was a seal there and the frightening and sudden experience of having it pop up out of nowhere, I called it a night and returned to the car to see if I soiled my waders.
My dad used to tell a story of drinking with some of the Coast Guard guys who manned a lighthouse on Long Island Sound called Execution Light. When we fished out there you could see rings attached to a rock that was only visible at low tide. The story is that pirates were chained to that rock at low tide and left to drown. The guys who manned the light, back in the day, claimed they could hear screams at night when the tide was coming in.
On a moonless Oct. night I was fishing the boulder field at the base of Steep hill on Cranes beach with my 12 yr. old nephew. To say it was dark would be an understatement. We were standing next to our rods when out of blackness a bat landed on the bill of his baseball cap. Scared the crap out of us.
Great stories!
I’ve heard voices while fishing the canal. The voices ask me if I brought any cold beer!
Many years back, fishing the full moon on Halloween night on the last bridge on 7 Bridges Blvd, it was common to fish with the generators running so we could have lights to draw the bait fish in. The tide was running extra high so we had to park on the higher ground as the road would flood and the wind was howling around 15 / 20 mph. To keep warm we all were fishing only one side of the bridge with our hoods up for protection. Around midnight we all felt a large bang on the old wooden bridge which shook it to it’s core. We grabbed onto the rail thinking that it would collapse but it held. After about the third bump we ran over to the other side to see what was causing the problem. It turned out to be an old style dory with the oars extended and flying a 13 star American flag and dragging a rope but nobody was in it. We thought we might try grabbing it but it got under the bridge before we could and sailed across the flooded marches. As it left us we could have sworn that we heard a cackle or was it just the wind? We all looked at each other and wondered. We checked the next day to see if there was any boats were reported missing, but no report had been made. I continued to fish that same bridge for the next 5 years and that same incident repeated itself for 3 of the 5 years. To this day I still have not been able to trace down any background on the incident.