AN ISLAND GHOST STORY.

Colonist, Volume XLIX, Issue 12014, 15 August 1907, Page 4

AN ISLAND GHOST STORY.

A writer in the .Southern Cross Log tells of a ourious incident which he witnessed on the island of Toga (of the Torres Group), tie says: — "The village where it took plaoe is Christian, but it proves the grip which heathen beliefs have upon the minds of the people, a grip which is not likely to be relaxed for [a long while* seeing it has held them for such* unknown numbers' of years; Let those condemn who have no superstition of their own ! One morning I saw, in the open space of the school enclosure, a number people standing round the grave of the wife of Simon Qalges, the Vanu Lava deacon who worked there Borne while ago. Over the figrave he had placed a cross, of native cement. When I. approached I saw, standing by the crosa, a woman of the village about whose dress was crawling a crab of a kind whose bite, the nafeive say, is severe. The woman handled it without fear and it did not bite her. After a, while she placed it on the ground and it immediatelj retreated into a hole beneath the cross. That evening [some people were sitting in my house telling me ghost stories. After a while one man, who had been to Norfolk Is-. land and had been at school there for some years, said to me, 'Did you see that crab to-day?' Whereupon I asked him the meaning of thfi crowd, and he said the crab was the soul of the" wife of Simon Qalges who had come ,up from l J anoi (Hades). When f she appeared on earth she assumed the- form of the crab 1 had seen. This explained why the crab did not" bite the wo--1 man who handled it. This woman, they told me, was able to hold .intercourse with the spirits of the departed. She saw spiritual beings which others could not. see, and when she saw them her features became changed and her eyes started out. I smiled at these stories and the people |seemed concerned afc my incredulity. 'Alas!' they said, 'you do not believe us.' "