The chances are very good that captain and crew kept their feet on the shrimper that entire time. This characteristic can be displayed in the reaction I once heard from an islander to Nicole Kidman’s character in the movie “Dead Calm,” as she jumped off a sailboat for a pleasure swim in the middle of a deep blue. “What on earth is that woman doing, man?” he exclaimed, aghast and even a bit appalled. I dare say that there was no jumping off the shrimp boats. No taking of pleasant afternoon swims out on the shrimp grounds for our captain and his crew, no sir.

Something else that islanders have had a deep respect for is ghosts, or rather, “duppies.” Speak to any islander above a certain age and chances are quite good that she, or he will have a duppy story to tell you about. I grew up in French Harbour hearing about these duppies. The stories I’ve heard about more recently have a sort of time stamp on them. They seem to have taken hold of the island imagination up to and including the 1980s.

Of course, this is only my point of view and I’d be happy to be mistaken. One good friend said: “Duppy stories were common when there was little, or no electricity on Roatan. You just don’t hear new ones anymore. People saw things, and they just did not have an explanation for what they saw. More likely than not, they did not go and investigate any further what they had seen, either.”

Duppy stories were common when there was little, or no electricity.

Here are a few stories of Duppies that were circulated back in the day. There was a kind lady who lived in Oak Ridge, who from her front porch one day, in broad daylight, saw a headless man standing at the corner of her neighbor’s picket fence. The next day, while a friend was visiting her; the friend’s daughter came rushing into the house, looking for her mother and very upset and afraid. The friend’s daughter confirmed that she had seen the headless man as well.

Then there was the woman who would catch rides in passenger cars and buses between French Harbour and Coxen Hole in the 1970s. While en route one way, or the other, she would simply appear as a passenger. The driver would look back and, there she was, calmly claiming her seat.

In another duppy tale, sometime in the 1950s, two teenage sisters were paddling their dory back home to Oak Ridge after spending the day in Diamond Rock. At dusk they were nearing Fiddler’s Bight, not far from home. Suddenly, they saw a dark object hovering above the water top and coming in through the Fiddler’s Bight channel heading straight towards them.

There object did not have a discernible shape, though most near to a circle, and the sisters could hear voices coming from it but could not understand what was being said. They began paddling as fast as they could to shore, to “Uncle Emmet’s” house in Fiddler’s Bight. The object steadily gained on them and just as it was about to overtake their dory, vanished.

There is another Duppy story about a fellow who had passed out in his paddle dory and had drifted into this patch of mangroves late one night. Several islanders went to the man and rustled him awake. They brought him to a house and asked what had happened. “Well,” he said, coming slowly around, “I was paddling down the creek and this giant woman suddenly appears. She was standing with one foot on each side of the creek. She grabbed the paddle right out of my hand and beat me senseless over the head with it. My head still hurting, but thank God I’m still living.”