BERMUDA wasn't known as the Isle of Devils for nothing. "The screams in the night were cahow birds," says taxi-guide Vince Cann. "And the shapes in the bushes were wild hogs. But it took a few days before they found that out."

Admiral Sir George Somers of the wrecked ship Sea Venture <$>kept the legends <\m> started by previous visitors to the island <\m> to himself. Even in 1609, a mid-Atlantic island without human inhabitants would have been suspicious; this one appeared on the maps as "Demonios."

Today, Bermuda is better known as a hangout for honeymooners than poltergeists, and after nearly 400 years of human habitation the "demons'' have been reduced to costumed children on Halloween night. Haven't they?

"Everyone thinks the Unfinished Cathedral is haunted," Mr. Cann says as we cross into St. George's, "but it was left this way because they ran out of money."

The stone skeleton of the church, begun in 1874 "rustles at night with nesting birds" and looks spooky even at midday.

St. George's, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is near the airport and a good place to start a tour of Bermuda, ghost curious or not. Mr. Cann points to the Old Rectory, built by a reformed pirate in 1699 and one-time residence of the pastor.

It's now a B&B and Bermuda National Trust property with a ghost who plays a gentle, if invisible, harpsichord. Bridge House (circa 1690), an art gallery that was once the home of Governors, was named for a long-gone footbridge that led to Hangman's Island where some 20 people accused of witchcraft were executed between 1650 and 1696.

A full-size copy of the Deliverance, built by Admiral Somers' Virginia-bound castaways, sits on the dock. It reminds me to ask Mr. Cann about Bermuda's most famous mystery, the Bermuda Triangle. "Bermuda has more wrecked ships around it than any other island in the world," he says, calling the coral reef and sudden squalls navigators' nightmares. "Diving offshore is a big tourist attraction but the water in the Bermuda Triangle is too deep. What goes down there stays down."

The Bermuda Triangle (aka Devil's Triangle), an area in the Atlantic where ships and aircraft are said to have mysteriously disappeared, haunts Bermuda's tourist industry. Magazine articles and books published in the 1960s and '70s ("the UFO era" Mr. Cann says) cemented a notion that no amount of scientific explanation (methane gas bubbles, magnetic field variation, the Gulf Stream, weather, human error) has been able to dislodge.

Mr. Cann stops so I can buy a copy of a locally published paperback Bermuda's Favourite Haunts<$>. Most Bermudians who share their antique cottages with ghosts simply accept them, he says. On an island famous for its friendly people, it's no surprise that many ghosts seem to be little more than transparent houseguests who create cold draughts or reside on second floors and make midnight footsteps on the stairs.

Alas, Verdmont, the 1710 house-museum of the Bermuda National Trust, has reported no ghosts since 1983 when the original curator died. Before that something was definitely askew in the attic. Visitors reported seeing a woman in 18th century costume and hearing loud and unexplainable thumps. The figure of a tall thin man materialised on several occasions and once appeared in a tourist's photo sitting beside the attic dollhouse.

The owners of Granaway, a guest house dating from the 1700s, are proud of its benign ghosts and the messages they may (or may not) send via a ouija board. The watchkeeper's cottage at Gibbs Hill lighthouse has become a tearoom, but the ghost of a long-gone keeper is said to check the now-automatic beacon.

Noel Coward said he got the idea for his play Blithe Spirit <$>after meeting the ghost of a pretty French stowaway in Bermuda. And The Deep<$>, written and filmed here in 1976 by the late Peter Benchley, was inspired by a Bermuda shipwreck. Mr. Cann says the man-eating moray eel that starred in the movie is safely living at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI) in Hamilton.

Even the famous Botanical Gardens, located on the grounds of Camden, the official residence of the Premier, has a ghost. The shade of an early Bermuda grandee's battered wife walks the paths on moonless nights, presumably bent on revenge.

Perhaps the most famous tale of other-worldly events was by a man who never visited Bermuda. William Shakespeare turned spookiness into literature when he wrote The Tempest, in 1610.

While other islands around the world lay claims, the bard specifically cited the "still vex'd bermoothes". The only vestige is the statue of Ariel at Ariel Sands resort.

I'm still not satisfied. Are there no ever-lingering monks at the 1620 chapel at Heydon's Trust? No spectral pirates still searching for their lost treasure on Mangrove Bay? And what about Gibbet Hill in Flatts? Surely those executed for the wrong reasons still have something to say.

Mr. Cann laughs, but I persist. Where are the ghosts of the prisoners during the Boer War who were buried in graves marked only by numbers? At the end of Crow Lane, Hamilton, the first Bermudiana flower is said to have appeared out of the ashes of slave Sally Bassett, who was burned to death for compelling her granddaughter to poison her owners. A hot day in Bermuda is still called "a regular Sally Bassett Day", and the Bermudiana is the national flower.

Does Sally never return?

Mr. Cann says I have left out the cream-coloured "ghost crabs" found on Bermuda beaches and the variegated Bermuda grass called "Bermuda ghost". When we stop at the Dockyard, built by convicts who spent their nights locked up on prison ships, he says I'll find the "Spirit of Bermuda" is a boat in the Maritime Museum.

Next thing you know he'll say a Bermuda "Dark 'n' Stormy" is only rum and ginger beer. Chilled.