Queen Mary was a transatlantic ocean liner that began its maiden voyage on May 27, 1936, and sailed to the United States on October 31, 1967, 31 years later, permanently docked in Long Beach, California, becoming a tourist attraction featuring restaurants, museums, and hotels. Since it was moored, several employees and guests have claimed to have seen ghostly figures on the ship and heard mysterious sounds. Let's take a look at a few of the supernatural sightings.
"I was here for about 14 years when I first actually saw what I thought was a ghost," waitress Carol Leyden describes, "I was already here for 14 years when I first saw something I thought was a ghost," waitress Carol Layton describes. "I was in the work area and I picked up a cup of coffee, walked over to the table and found a lady sitting there. I was mesmerized by her skirt, which seemed to be wearing a 40's afternoon cocktail dress. She had black hair, curled up on both sides, and no makeup. She looked very pale, but I never saw her move. I left the table, climbed to about ten feet high, and turned around, because I wanted to look again, but there was nothing there anymore. ”
Nancy, the former tour guide on the boat, recalled: "I was a tour guide at the time, which meant my job was to pay attention to the tourist routes and make sure there were no one left behind, and when I turned around one time I found a man standing on the steps behind me, he was wearing blue overalls and dirty. When I stepped to the side to let him through, he wasn't there, and he seemed to have mysteriously disappeared. I don't believe other people's ghost stories, I only know what I see, I only believe what I see with my own eyes. ”
"One day, I was standing on the stairs of the swimming pool and out of my right eye I saw a woman, probably in her sixties and seventies, dressed in black and white." Because nancy Anne, the previous cruise guide, also said she had seen this, so I went down the stairs and went around the pillars, hoping to find her but soon when I turned around I couldn't find her, it was just a matter of seconds, and she couldn't have left there so quickly. ”
There are many more ghost stories about this ship, and it is believed that these ghosts are those who died on the ship or once lived on it. After the ship arrived at Long Beach in 1967, engineer John Smith was one of the first people to work on the ship, and over the course of two months he heard several times unusual noises at the bow of the ship, where there should have been nothing, much less unusual sounds. He described the sounds that sounded like metal tearing, the rushing currents of water, and the sounds of people screaming as if the hulls of ships had cracked. He had the courage to investigate, but could not find anything that could cause those strange noises.
Because the Queen Mary was converted into a troop carrier during World War II, she was mainly responsible for transporting Australian and New Zealand soldiers to Britain. Years later, John heard about the ship's tragedy in World War II. After being converted into a warship, the Queen Mary accidentally collided with a British cruiser named Kurakoya, who cut Kurakoya in half, and unfortunately more than 300 people died in the accident. John believed that what he heard was the echo of the disaster, and that the area where he heard the sound was the area damaged in the collision.
Other witnesses described other incidents. Late one night, pool caretaker Kathy Love and her colleagues heard mysterious noises near the pool, as if it were a little girl playing nearby, playing in the water and giggling, and after the splashing stopped, the laughter continued, and she claimed to have seen a small child's wet footprints across the floor into the dressing room. Apparently, the ghosts on board were still enjoying their time on board.
Tourists and crew witnessed a number of various apparitions on board, and there were even reports of at least 150 ghosts aboard the Queen Mary, but at least one ghost stemmed from a non-violent accidental death. Deep within the ship near the engine room was an area called Shaft Alley, where a man named John Pedder was crushed to death by a watertight door during a routine fire drill in 1966. Legend has it that the ghost of the firefighter often haunts the area, and tour crew members and crew claim to have encountered it there.
The Queen Mary made her maiden voyage on 27 May 1936, and during the five-day transatlantic journey, it was like a floating party of luxury, a symbol of the luxurious travel of the Gilded Age. After being converted into a troop carrier during World War II, she was called the "Grey Ghost" due to her ghostly grey disguise. After the war, it returned to its former glory. The ship crossed the ocean a total of 1,001 times, and in its more than 30 years of maritime career, it witnessed at least 4 births and at least 49 recorded deaths, and in 1967 it retired to Long Beach for permanent docking.
In September 1988, Unsolved Mysteries organized a team of paranormal experts to investigate the Queen Mary, using sophisticated recording equipment to try to verify eyewitness accounts, including two researchers, Dr. William Rolle and Tony Cornell, both of whom had conducted years of paranormal research. Cornell set up surveillance equipment in Shaft Lane, while Dr. Roll led a team of psychics on the ship, and all six psychics claimed they knew nothing about the ship's history or ghost events before coming here.
With maps and their psychic sensitivities, they explore alone in many different directions. After that, they got together to exchange ideas. A few psychics found nothing, but most felt a great deal of abnormal activity, even in good agreement with eyewitness reports. One of the psychics sensed the collision that had taken place. In Shaft Lane, a psychic claimed to have felt the tragedy of 20 years ago, and the psychic also felt the rhythmic tapping of a wrench.
While surveying the bow area, Dr. Rolle heard an unusual sound that he could not explain, and he and a security guard heard the voices of two men talking, seemingly from the lower level of the bow. He placed a voice-activated tape recorder in the bow area. Nothing was recorded for most of the night, but in the early morning, for two full minutes, the tape recorded unwanted sounds, including loud crashes and unexplained noises. The bow front end was closed early on, and the researchers tried to create a sound similar to the one recorded, but they never found a way to replicate it.
In 2008, the Queen Mary was named one of the "Top Ten Haunted Places on Earth" by Time magazine, but surprisingly, the ghost legend did not scare the tourists, but instead stimulated their curiosity and interest in the ship' exploration, and the merchants used the courage of tourists to develop rooms dedicated to experiencing paranormal events.
One of the most famous is the B-340 suite in the third class of the B deck, this suite was originally three third class, transformed into a large suite, because it is a third class, it is not luxurious, simple basic furniture and furnishings, but this room received more haunted complaints, such as footsteps, faucet automatic switch and toilet self-flushing, etc., which once led to the closure of this room. But the new operators who later took over did not think so, and instead decided to use the paranormal phenomenon that occurred in the room as a gimmick to open the haunted experience at a price of $499 per night, attracting interested travelers to experience, and the staying guests will receive a ghost package with even ghost hunting equipment inside.
The ghost story of the Queen Mary, though loud and colorful, was once a bubbling away, but Science and Reason writer Jon Champione criticized the haunted tours as "a cynical use of space," saying that the Queen Mary was not haunted, that he knew why there were so many ghostly legends, and that someone had put a lot of effort into promoting the ship as a "haunted attraction, and that they had worked to explain some connection between events and history while preserving the ship's true history. Jonicelle, a researcher at the Investigation Center, attributed the ghostly incident of the Queen Mary to an illusory psychological image caused by subjective feelings, as well as a fantasy caused by the repetitive work of hotel staff such as hotel staff.
The vessel was currently decommissioned in May 2020 due to the pandemic, when the Eagle Hospitality Trust, the operator of the Queen Mary, filed a motion with the Federal Bankruptcy Court on March 9, 2021 to auction its lease, but after the bankruptcy court auction, there were no bidders for the lease, so eagle Hospitality Trust agreed to exchange the lease agreement to Long Beach, which regained control in June 2021. To maintain and maintain Queen Mary's operational capacity, the Long Beach City Council voted to hand over the ship and property to the Seaport Board. After this series of changes of hands, only when the epidemic ends as soon as possible, the ship can reopen and continue the previous legend.