Ghosts And Planes
Sure we have all seen those ghost hunting shows on television, but how many people know that there are supposed hauntings and just plain bad luck connected with airplane crashes? Airplane crashes have been going on since airplanes were first invented. Even the Wright Brothers plane crashed, taking a life. The very first person to die in an airplane crash was Thomas Selfridge. He was flying a Wright Model A when his right propeller failed. Orville Wright was seriously injured in the same crash. The accident took place in 1908. Selfridge had two distinctions, he was also the first military person to be killed in a plane crash. While interesting, this has nothing to do with airplane hauntings or strange events. I would just like to mention one other fact before I get into the plane hauntings, there have been many teams killed in plane crashes. Here are just a few, The Bulgarian rhythmic gymnastics Women's team in 1978, the Cuban National Fencing team (24 people), the entire basketball team of the University of Evansville in 1977 all 29 of them. The Marshall University football team was wiped out in a crash in 1970 when all 35 lost their lives along with 8 coaches and 25 boosters. Uruguay's Rugby Union team lost 24 members in 1972. I could go on but I only mentioned these team loses because it seems to me that the sites of these crashes might be fertile grounds for investigations by paranormal investigators. Now let's get on with it. Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 has achieved fame of sort since it was the very first wide body plane to ever crash. The crash took place on December 29, 1972 and the plane went into the Florida Everglades. The plane was a Lockheed L-1011 and 101 people died. It is said that the crash was caused by a crew member failing to perform his task, which was to monitor flight instruments when a indicator came on that indicated that the landing gear was malfunctioning. At that time the crash was the deadliest that ever happened in the U.S. There are many stories about parts being used from the crashed plane in other planes that then had paranormal activity.
Lockheed L-1011. Depiction of crash. The airline that owned the crashed L-1011 was Eastern Air Lines. Reports started to come in that some of the dead crew members from the crashed plane were appearing on another L-1011. As if that was not strange enough, that was the plane that got some of the parts from the crashed L-1011. The spirits of two members of the cockpit crew of the original plane that crashed were being seen on the second L-1011. It got so bad that Eastern Airlines threatened its employees with dismissal if they spread these stories. Movies were made about these events and that made the CEO of Eastern so mad that he almost sued the producers of the 1978 movie, “The Ghost of Flight 401”. On what basis the law suit would have been made would have been interesting to see.
Huey Helicopter There is a helicopter on the floating museum, the USS Hornet aircraft carrier that is claimed to be haunted. The copter saw the death of a gunner. I believe this was in the Vietnam War, but I could be wrong. Anyway, the museum worker states that he hears voices and noises coming from the copter and sometimes sees the image of a man in uniform falling out of the copter. Haunted helicopters are not the only things that can not be explained. I bet you didn't know that sometimes people report hearing airplane sounds over old abandoned airports when there are no planes in the air. There is an old airfield in Britain named West Malling Airfield. It is claimed that some visitors have reported a very low flying propeller plane, not because they could see it, only because they could hear it. This always happens at the same time and on the same dates. There was an old World War II plane at Cosford, in England. It was an American Liberator. Employees kept reporting that they could hear whispering coming from inside the plane. It was also reported that sometime the planes radio would ring out with distress messages. The plane was empty. An Airman tells a story about a particular plane that had a history of strange occurrences . He was working late one night and he heard noises coming from inside this empty plane. The noise stopped, but about one hour later it started again. Another time 2 airmen were repairing the same plane when they heard people walking around. They could hear footsteps go from the tail to the latter to the upper deck, and back, but no one was there. Another time the steering yokes came back on their own and pinned an airman back into the co-pilot's seat. He had to push the seat all the way back and slide out. When he did, the yokes slammed forward on their own.
Antarctica If someone were to ask you what continent had the most ghosts per capita, what would you say? If you said Antarctica, you would be correct. Not only are there abandoned building there, there are even abandoned airplanes. Are there any haunted planes in the South Pole? I can't answer this question, but there are certainly enough around the world to make up for it, if there aren't. It seems that there are some people that believe that installing parts form a crashed plane where there had been fatalities, can either be bad luck, the continuation of a curse, or a conduit for the paranormal. It is actually quite interesting to see how many planes have been connected with ghosts. There are even ghost planes that have been said to have appeared and then disappeared. It seems to me that a true paranormal investigator would like the chance to investigate the site of a fatal plane crash and especially one that involved a lot of people. |
