The barge of haunted lives

The Barge of Haunted Lives by J. Aubrey Tyson is a mystery-adventure novel with a framed narrative written in the early 20th century. It follows financier-host Hewitt Westfall as he gathers people with “haunted” pasts aboard a lavish, eerie barge to reveal how their fates intertwine, notably a veiled princess, a grim duck hunter, and a fugitive bridegroom. Their stories promise to converge around a sinister thread involving the Rajiid Buddha.

At the start of the novel, a one‑eyed duck hunter, Colonel Canbeck, is surprised in the Long Island marshes by a young woman dropped there by a seaplane; together they board a strangely opulent barge whose salon holds faceless statues, armored suits with skulls, and a mummy. Westfall appears, names the woman as a princess, explains his barge as a refuge for “haunted lives,” and seats a table of guests known only by sobriquets while the woman attends veiled. He announces a series of linked confessions, beginning with the Fugitive Bridegroom, who recounts being cast into the sea after a yacht collision, surviving aboard a fire‑scorched derelict amid bats and an uncanny vampiric visitation, and then being rescued. Back in New York, he falls for Paula Trevison despite a rising dread; they marry and board an ocean liner, as the opening closes on the cusp of their departure and the larger mystery begins to unfurl.