Haunted Heartland – Michael Norman

They had been exchanging ghost stories all evening and one man had just finished telling his own. “Hah,” snorted the chandler whose nautical supply shop it was. “You’re a sorry dog. You were drunk, and the spirits you’d taken made you see other spirits!” Everyone laughed except for one man, the oldest sailor in the bunch. He had been listening in silence. Presently he tamped out his pipe and threw one leg over the anchor stock he was sitting on. “Well, I saw a ghost once,” he began, refilling his pipe bowl.

“I saw it as plain as ever. The captain of the schooner I was on and the man in the waist both saw it too. And there wasn’t a drop of liquor on board.” His audience quieted; they knew this old man always spoke the truth. “It was a little over ten years ago. I was before the mast then. It was the opening of the season, and I was in Chicago. I heard at the boardinghouse that some men were wanted on a three-masted schooner called the Erie Board of Trade.

The boys gave her a pretty hard name, but they said the grub was good and that the old man paid top wages every time, so I went down and asked him if he’d got all the hands aboard. He looked at me a minute, and asked me where my dunnage was. When I told him, he said I should get it on board right away. “The Board of Trade was as handsome a craft as ever floated on the lakes. As I came down the dock with my bag under my arm, I had to stop and have a look at her.

The old captain saw me. He was proud of her, and I thought afterward that he rather took a fancy to me because I couldn’t help showing I liked her looks. “I was in her two round trips. The last trip up was the last on the lakes. Not but what times were pretty good up there. We were getting two fifty a day for the first trip out and another two bucks the last.

Haunted Heartland was first published in 1985 in a hardcover edition by Stanton and Lee, and then in a 1986 mass-market paperback edition by Warner Books. Barnes and Noble Books reprinted the book in hardcover in 1992. Second edition copyright © 2017 by Michael Norman All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any format or by any means—digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.

Rights inquiries should be directed to [email protected]. Printed in the United States of America This book may be available in a digital edition. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Norman, Michael, 1947 June 29- author. Title: Haunted heartland / Michael Norman. Description: Second edition. | Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, [2017] | Original edition published in 1985 by Beth Scott and Michael Norman.

| Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2017010433 | ISBN 9780299315146 (pbk.: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Ghosts—Middle West. | Parapsychology—Middle West. Classification: LCC BF1472.U6 S36 2017 | DDC 133.10977—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010433 Some stories in this book were previously published, in different form, in Haunted America, Historic Haunted America, Haunted Heritage, Haunted Homeland, and The Nearly Departed: Minnesota Ghost Stories and Legends. In some stories, names and locations were changed to protect the identities of those involved.

Some scenes have been added for continuity or dramatic interest. These are ghost stories, after all. And ghosts are notorious for not leaving behind traces of their comings and goings. ISBN-13: 978-0-299-31518-4 (electronic) OceanofPDF.com To the memory of Beth Scott, my coauthor for the first edition.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: b258c6ccb3bff669
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,092,811 bytes (3.903 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9780299315146, 9780299315184
• Pages: 341
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 600.06 minutes
• Total Words: 120,012
• Total Characters: 691,541
• Average Words per Page: 351.94
• Average Characters per Page: 2027.98

Most Frequent Words

one (539), house (423), said (316), time (260), back (249), night (239), old (237), ghost (231), man (221), years (195), room (192), two (185), later (184), door (178), home (176), first (167), woman (164), found (163), family (161), never (159), new (156), day (151), told (148), saw (148), even (147), light (142), heard (138), young (134), around (133), thought (131), like (129), story (123), death (122), took (122), long (121), another (119), went (117), knew (115), something (111), many (110), still (110), away (109), men (109), seemed (108), way (107), little (107), now (106), floor (106), bed (106), left (105), came (104), several (103), life (103), frank (100), turned (100), next (100), across (99), called (99), see (98), late (98), moved (97), died (96), made (93), window (93), looked (93), morning (92), perhaps (90), father (90), haunted (88), white (88), place (88), find (87), got (87), seen (85), early (85), small (84), people (82), near (82), someone (81), stories (78), three (78), nearly (77), girl (76), yet (76), known (76), work (75), open (75), along (74), body (74), head (74), although (73), nothing (73), york (73), also (72), wife (72), city (71), mrs (71), office (71), lived (71), lake (70).

PDF Download