When it comes to people from the afterlife, the human imagination, as a rule, draws old medieval castles and Gothic Victorian mansions. However, ghosts can, figuratively speaking, keep up with technological progress, mastering, say, large sea vessels.
Liner giant
The transatlantic liner "RMS Queen Mary" was built by the Scottish shipbuilding company "John Brown & Company" in the first half of the thirties of the last century, when the world was seized by the economic crisis. The colossal ship had a length of 310.7 meters, a width of 36.1 meters, a height of 55.2 meters, a displacement of 81,237 tons and a capacity of 160 thousand horsepower. The steering wheel of this giant alone weighed 150 tons. Equipping the liner required the use of 6437 kilometers of electric cable and over 30 thousand lamps. The Queen Mary's crew was 1,035 people, and the passenger capacity was up to 15 thousand people.
The ship boasted a main dining saloon that eclipsed many of the royal palaces in size. Velvet, silk and the noblest woods were used to decorate the premises of Queen Mary. The ceilings and walls here were decorated with sculptures, tapestries and paintings, making the interior of the ship more like an art gallery. It is not for nothing that the liner was named in honor of Maria Tekskaya - the wife of the British king George V.
Queen Mary, a giant even against the backdrop of the legendary Titanic, completed its maiden voyage on June 1, 1936. The whole world recognized that it was the most advanced and grandiose transatlantic liner at that time, incorporating all the traditions and innovations of world shipbuilding. Later it turned out that this was the last "great liner" that was able to compete with passenger aircraft.
In August 1936, the ship made its sixth voyage, during which it crossed the Atlantic Ocean in less than 3 days and 21 hours at a speed of 56.72 kilometers per hour. This record was broken only in the fifties.
Promotional video:
Sunset "Queen Mary"
When World War II broke out, the Queen Mary stopped transporting civilians and was adapted to transport troops. In order to make the ship less visible to enemies, it was repainted from black-white-orange to gray. The liner served in the British army until 1947, after which the military returned it to its former owners, and the ship again began to serve the United Kingdom - United States line.
However, with the development of air traffic between Europe and North America, sailing on liners has ceased to be as popular as before. The terrible war forced many people to reconsider their attitude to luxury, making cheaper and faster air travel for most travelers much more preferable and rational.
Every year, the number of people who wanted to cross the Atlantic in four days instead of flying it in a few hours was rapidly declining. The swims of the half-empty Queen Mary stopped paying off. The craftsmen of "John Brown & Company" equipped the ship with swimming pools and turned it into a cruise ship for a while, but this did not help - in particular, because cruise ships were in great demand on the route running through the Panama Canal, however, "Queen Mary" did not could walk on it because of its exorbitant dimensions.
In 1967, the ship made its one thousand first voyage, and this was the end of its ocean service. "Queen Mary" was bought at the price of scrap metal by an entrepreneur from the American city of Long Beach and installed at the local dock, providing restaurants, a museum, a cafe, a hotel and a ballroom. To this day, it is one of the city's most popular tourist attractions, and not just for entertainment. Among the one and a half million people who visit this place every year, there are many who wish to see something supernatural here.
Death on the liner
Not everyone knows that the once glorified superliner who made many successful trips also has dark sides of the past. This information, hidden from the ears of ordinary people, will seem to many to be unsightly, ominous, or even truly terrifying. The fact is that "Queen Mary" is responsible for many deaths, and it is believed that the spirits of all these dead are still walking around the ship, which is today a kind of amusement park.
Already during the launch of the ship on the water, on September 26, 1934, four workers died on the shipbuilding berth. “A very bad omen,” the experienced sailors sighed. Many other deaths followed.
Surprisingly, the luxurious and amazingly beautiful transatlantic liner for some reason has turned into a real Mecca for suicides. Here bankrupt businessmen, gamblers who owed the mafia, husbands left by their wives, and ladies with broken hearts were constantly thrown overboard. Among those who wanted to commit suicide, it became accepted to purchase a one-way ticket to the "Queen Mary", laying hands on themselves in the middle of the Atlantic. Those who did not crash into the water, as a rule, froze in icy water, bringing their plans to the end. If you believe the rumors, translucent human silhouettes throwing themselves over the side of the liner, which has already been at anchor for a long time, can be seen here to this day.
When the war began, things got even worse. Once a ship transported 16 thousand soldiers across the Indian Ocean, which exceeded the permissible limit by a thousand. There was no ventilation in the premises, and the military, packed in their cabins like herring in a barrel, began to die from lack of oxygen. According to one surviving eyewitness, it was a real nightmare, as every seven minutes a soldier died on the ship. When the liner arrived at its destination, the number of passengers dropped by several hundred. Shortly thereafter, Queen Mary was nicknamed "The Gray Ghost" - not so much because of its camouflage paint, but because of the ship's habit of taking human lives.
Once, during the Second World War, several dozen German and Italian soldiers were transported from England to the United States on the Queen Mary. The prisoners were only seventeen or eighteen years old. Naturally, they were isolated. When the cell was opened the next morning, they were all dead. Young people preferred mass suicide to captivity. According to the captain of the liner, he was shocked to the depths of his soul that these boys did this. Rumor has it that since then, the ghosts of these young soldiers with their hands and throats slashed have been seen aboard the ship.
In 1942, the Queen Mary was attacked by a Nazi submarine and forced to abruptly change course. As a result of this unexpected maneuver, the liner at full speed cut into two parts the military cruiser "Curacao" following alongside. The cruiser sank, taking with him into the abyss more than three hundred people. After that, on "Queen Mary" began to periodically hear a loud noise, indistinguishable from the tragic collision with the "Curacao".
The ghosts of "Queen Mary"
The first reports of immigrants from the other world appearing on "Queen Mary" began to arrive back in the late thirties, and in the post-war period, phantoms did not live on the ship at all. Many experts argue that this was the reason for the withdrawal of the liner from service in 1967. People not only refused to sail on this ship - they were openly afraid of the angry ghosts of people who died due to the fault of this fateful ship.
American psychology professor Peter James became interested in the devilry on the liner after he personally encountered a ghost here in 1991. A man in an old-fashioned captain's suit approached the scientist on deck. The stranger, who had an unnaturally pale complexion, greeted James politely and suddenly disappeared into thin air, going over the nearest bulkhead. The shocked American told the guide about this, and he said that at this place the then captain of the ship, named Stark, was indeed found dead at one time.
It is noteworthy that Queen Mary has exactly 365 cabins - as many as there are days in a normal year. And in each of these rooms you can find something that defies logical explanation. If you add in all the devilry happening outside the cabins, it becomes clear that "Queen Mary" is one of the most densely populated places not only in America, but also in the whole world.
