ONE OF THE MORE DISTINCTIVE WAYS TO DIE in the 19th century was to get knocked into the sea by a dangling sheet of blubber. Blubber—or whale fat, which was melted down to oil and was pretty much the whole point of whaling—was stripped off its owner by floating the corpse alongside the ship and peeling it like an orange. As the blubber and skin were pulled from the body, they were hoisted high over the deck and cut into massive 12-foot-long chunks that were lowered through the hatch of the blubber room, to be cut down some more. Though the decks were slick with oil and the fat swung wildly when seas were rough, blubber-related deaths were an uncommon occurrence.

Which makes ghosts of blubber-processing crewmen pretty rare. Nonetheless, people have been saying they've seen one in the blubber room of the Charles W. Morgan. The Morgan, the last wooden whaling ship in existence, is berthed at Mystic Seaport, a maritime museum in the form of a make-believe whaling port—Williamsburg by the sea—in Mystic, Connecticut. For months, tales of a blubber-room spook have been rivaling Ken Lay for dead-guy press coverage. Fox News aired a story about him, as did CNN and the CBS Evening News. Tonight, a crew from Good Morning, America and a reporter-photographer team from The Boston Globe are showing up.

The draw—along with the alleged ghost, of course—is the loaded-for-bear presence of the group of energetic ghostbusters who started the whole thing. The Morgan mystery comes to us courtesy of the Rhode Island Paranormal Research Group (TRIPRG—the T standing for "The"), a club of after-hours ectoplasm enthusiasts who volunteer to check out mysterious happenings at people's homes and other locales. The group's founder and director, 49-year-old Andrew Laird, and seven TRIPRG members are descending upon the Morgan to try and document the greasy wraith with their technology-laden kit. The media will be here to watch them, and the Mystic Seaport public-relations department will be here to watch the media.

TRIPRG says they've received some 40 letters and e-mails from tourists describing spooky experiences belowdecks on the Morgan. Three of the correspondents—writing independently from Tucson, Arizona; Albany, New York; and London within a span of a few weeks—described seeing a six-foot-tall ghost in 19th-century clothing, hanging around and smoking a pipe in the blubber room. Why visitors to a Connecticut tourist attraction would report their experiences to a Rhode Island ghostbusting group is an additional mystery (like most states, Connecticut has its own spirit-tracking outfits), as is TRIPRG's refusal to share the letters with the media.

I spent a year covering paranormal research for my last book, Spook, and I know better than to expect anything solid to come of TRIPRG's outing. But, like most people who know better, I still harbor a nagging desire to see or hear a ghost. Because if you see one, then maybe one day you'll be one, and that's a nicer prospect than just being dead.