Three Sailors

Thousands of people go missing every year. Some are found and others are not. This particular case still baffled the New Orleans cops to this day. Three sailors had vanished during Civil War times. No one really knows what happened to them. They didn’t come home to their families and they left nothing behind. Many guesses about what happened to these men still float around the police stations. Even the younger officers want to know the fate of the sailors. However, one fact remains common: the men were last seen heading to China House.

Many didn’t remember what the names of the sailors were. One might have been named Mark. Information about them was missing or incomplete. There wasn’t any pictures of these men, but the police had to guess that they had to be at least eighteen to early twenties. Anyway, this incident took place during the Civil War. The police guessed about in the middle of said war. They were still trying to piece together what they were doing in New Orleans at the time. Their ship was believed to be destined to sail towards Boston. According to the last log of the journal by the captain, the ship got caught in a storm and ended up docking in Louisiana. About thirty people ended up lost at sea that night. Mark and his two companions were the only ones to have been recorded to have ended up in New Orleans.

Gaps still remained in their story. How did their ship get way off course to New Orleans? How did these men survive? What caused them to out to China House? No one else was with those sailors that night. Not many people could remember three men passing through town in the dead of the night. Some of the young ladies did, but it was only a passing fancy. Back then, nobody thought much about China House. The stories hadn’t caught wind just yet. At the time, the house was abandoned. Nobody even thought about moving into it for six years. With all of the ugliness of war around it, the house still managed keep its beauty. The neighbors didn’t think about how it managed to keep in good shape. They just figured it was maintenance people taking care of China House in the middle of the night.

The night that the sailors disappeared, things around China House were different. Lights were in the windows that night. The men didn’t notice that the other houses were pitch black around the town. The police debated on whether or not it was raining on that night. Mark happened to look up in the darkness and spotted the dim glow dragging them in.

“Look!” he shouted. “There’s help! Maybe we can ask someone there.” That was how one theory went. The young police suggested a few others, but did they really make sense so far? Anyway, Mark and the other two sailors walked into the house for whatever reason. It wasn’t clear if it was Mark or one of his buddies saw Camilla’s ghost hanging from her willow tree. It would me since given that Christian had abandoned the house six years prior to this story.

The men went inside only to find the house abandoned. Very little furniture remained inside. In fact, the wall looked freshly painted. At first, the sailors weren’t sure if they such stay in the house.

“Is anyone even here?” one of the friends asked. Mark insisted that they stayed, however. The reasons weren’t exactly clear cut. The police predict that the sailors explored the house for anything that could possibly help them get to Boston. The further details became hazier from there. The police, young and old, couldn’t stop spilling out endless theories about what happened next.

It’s been figured that a ghost lured them inside and killed them. Yet, why would such a thing happen? Was the house cursed even then? If so, who did it and why? Was it the curse that led Christian to hang his common-law wife? Was it the curse that led the slave to overpower Lucas and kill him? Maybe the curse made the three sailors vanish into thin air. Even the hardcore skeptics had questions about this case. The science couldn’t begin to answer their burning questions.

Mark and his friends’ bodies were never found. The front door had drag marks deep into the wood. However, no other footprints were on the floor. Those sailors didn’t even leave a hair behind. This missing persons’ case kept adding details that didn’t make sense. Scratches on the wall above the railing. Nobody could tell how old they were or who made them. The same was said about the supposed blood stains on the ceiling of the attic. Some of the police speculated that it was old paint or oil. Nothing else looked out of place in the house.

The next day, an apparent gardener entered the yard to start on his rounds of daily work. He didn’t even notice a thing as he got straight to work around the empty house. Nobody noticed the sailors were gone until towards the end of the Civil War. Ever since then, everyone was trying to find out what happened to those men. What could see what happened to those young men? Maybe they met up with three more buddies and got killed in the process. Maybe the ghosts killed them and dragged their bodies into hell. More of the locals believed the latter story of the house's curse. How else could they explain the lack of bodies or trace of the missing men?

This changed years later with fresh eyes. A rookie in a present-day New Orleans noticed more deep-colored stains on the wall near the empty kitchen. Now, the only clue left that the men were ever in the house was blood stains on the wall. However one more question still remains: Who made China House? How long had it been around? Was it really cursed?