Ghost Ship

The deep dark halls within the belly of this beast fill with billowing hot steam like the breath of some enormous metal dragon sleeping at the bottom of the sea. The hull creaks and groans under the pressure of a thousand sailors' souls turning over and over, tormented for an eternity, haunted by the memories of lost treasure and of the bright eyes of a sea monster staring at them right up until the end. In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or wispy shapes, to realistic, life-like visions. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a séance. The Ghost Ship, made in 1943, is a black-and-white horror and crime film. The film is about a young merchant marine officer who begins to suspect that his ship's captain is mentally unbalanced and endangering the lives of the ship's crew. The ship's crew, however, believes the vessel to be haunted and cursed. Several mysterious deaths occur. After the young officer files a negative report with the corporation which owns the ship, the captain fires him. But a shipmate, believing the officer to be AWOL, kidnaps the young man and returns him to the vessel. The captain becomes enraged, and attempts to murder the young officer.