When it comes to ghosts, the imagination is usually drawn to ancient castles or ominous wastelands. But it turns out that ghosts go quite side by side with technological progress and can, for example, master large and modern ships.
A GIANT AMONG THE GIANTS
Ocean liner "Queen Mary" was built in the first half of the thirties of the last century, in the midst of the global economic crisis. The gigantic vessel with a displacement of 81,237 tons had a length of 310.7 meters. The steering wheel alone - the largest in history - weighed 150 tons. It took 4,000 miles of electric cable and over 30,000 light bulbs to equip the liner.
The ship had a main dining saloon, which was not inferior in size to the halls of the royal palaces. The finest types of wood, silk, velvet were used for the decoration of the salon and other premises; the walls and ceilings were decorated with paintings, tapestries and sculptures. The liner was named after the wife of King Edward VII.
The first flight to New York of the newest superliner, far eclipsed by the size of the legendary Titanic, ended on June 1, 1936. At the same time, alas, he was one of the last great transatlantic liners to incorporate into its design all the best that the world shipbuilding had accumulated by that time. During the sixth voyage, in August 1936, the Queen Mary set a record, crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 3 days 20 hours and 42 minutes, at an average speed of 30.63 knots (56.72 km / h), and became winner of the Atlantic Blue Ribbon prize. This record was broken only in the fifties.
With the outbreak of World War II, Queen Mary was adapted for transporting troops and repainted gray. In 1947, the liner was returned to its previous owners and again began to serve the UK-USA line. However, with the development of air communication between continents, sailing on liners, which took too long, was no longer as prestigious as before.
With each passing year, fewer and fewer people preferred a week of sailing across the Atlantic to a few hours by plane. The maintenance of the liner has ceased to pay off. There were attempts to use the Queen Mary for cruises, but it did not have swimming pools, as on more modern liners. The pools were somehow made, but they did not solve the problem. Modern liners went on cruises through the Panama Canal, and Queen Mary could not pass through it due to its exorbitant size.
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And so in 1967, having completed its last, 1001st voyage across the Atlantic, the Queen Mary completed its ocean service. At the same time, the Californian city of Long Beach bought the old liner at the price of metal and put it in the dock as a tourist attraction. The 310-meter hulk remains there to this day. Queen Mary has a hotel, restaurants, cafes, ballrooms and swimming pools. The liner is visited by almost one and a half million people a year.
ONE-WAY TICKET
However, behind this ceremonial, full of victories and accomplishments, the story of the superliner hides another, hidden from prying eyes, unsightly and sometimes ominous. They say that the old ship is literally teeming with ghosts.
It all allegedly began with the fact that already during the descent of the ship, several workers perished on the slipway. Then there were other deaths. During flights across the ocean, elderly passengers were dying from heart attacks, bankrupt businessmen, abandoned husbands and deceived girls were thrown overboard. In England and the United States, it has become fashionable to buy a one-way ticket to the Queen Mary to take their own lives in the middle of the Atlantic.
No relief came with the outbreak of World War II.
The superliner carrying the troops could take 16,000 soldiers in one flight, who were stationed there very cramped. During one of the flights in the Indian Ocean due to the lack of ventilation and an epidemic on board the Queen Mary began a real pestilence. According to an eyewitness, "the soldiers died one by one every seven minutes, as they were like herring in a barrel." The total number of deaths on this flight alone was several hundred.
On one of the return voyages from England to the United States, several dozen Germans and Italians were loaded onto the Gray Ghost, as the ship was nicknamed for its unusual camouflage coloration. An eyewitness recalls: “The prisoners were 17 years old. They were isolated and placed in a cell on Deck B. They chose to commit suicide rather than be prisoners of war. " The story of the mass suicide of several dozen boys-prisoners is one of the most terrible secrets of "Queen Mary".
In 1942, following an anti-submarine zigzag convoy, the liner was attacked by a German submarine. Changing course abruptly to avoid the torpedo, the ship at full speed cut the Curacao troop transport following alongside. The transport, cut by the stem of the steel giant, quickly sank, taking more than three hundred people into the abyss.
Since then, at night all over the ship from time to time, many began to hear the sounds of that terrible collision - some muffled echoes, the splash of water and cries for help. The seascape writer Vlad Vilenov notes that the nickname received by the liner during the war years, the Gray Ghost, is only a statement of the fact of the presence of real ghosts on it.
In the post-war years, Queen Mary began a series of deaths in swimming pools. Over-drunk passengers in the bar climbed into the deck pool and drowned there over and over again. Small children left unattended also drowned. Three dozen people died, after which the pool was drained.
But the most incomprehensible things happened to the passenger cabin number 13. This cabin on the Queen Mary was located at a watertight bulkhead, equipped with a powerful ratchet door. It is not clear how, but this ratchet at various times crushed to death two passengers from cabin No. 13, and several more people were left crippled.
AREA OF GHOSTS
The first reports of ghosts on the Queen Mary appeared in the late thirties of the XX century, but in the postwar years they literally died on the liner. This allegedly also served as one of the reasons for the early decommissioning of the liner. There were not many who wanted to travel the world on a ship filled with ghosts.
The current director of the Queen Mary Museum, M. Wakner, said in one of her interviews that she personally never met ghosts on the ship, unlike many of her colleagues. She said:
“In the marketing department office, many people saw a man in black. It appears suddenly and disappears just as quickly. People came to see if they could do something to help this man, but he disappeared. In our office, there were also many cases of mysterious opening and closing of doors in the absence of wind and closed windows. The staff on the ship noticed some strange phenomena: they saw the heads, legs and faces of people dissolving in the air, dressed in old-fashioned outfits.
American psychologist Peter James became interested in the Queen Mary phenomenon. It began with the fact that in 1991 he just came there with a friend on an excursion. And so during the excursion "Ghosts: Myths and Legend" Queen Mary "James saw the first ghost.
A man in a captain's uniform with an unnaturally pale face approached the psychologist from nowhere. The unknown introduced himself to James, and then disappeared at the nearest bulkhead. The shocked psychologist said to a friend: "This man who just came up to me said that he was Captain Stark and here his body was found."
Ten seconds later, the guide, pointing to the place where the stranger had disappeared, said: "Here is the place where Captain Stark was found dead!" As it turned out, Captain Stark was found dead with a bullet in the head many years ago during one of the flights. It was officially announced that Stark committed suicide, but what happened to the captain of the liner in reality remained a mystery.
Since then, Peter James devoted all his free time to studying the secrets of the ghosts of "Queen Mary". He visited the old liner more than a thousand times, stayed overnight in all 365 rooms of the ship-hotel and wandered at night along the many kilometers of corridors. The painting that opened before him, Peter James was simply shocked.
He ended up claiming that Queen Mary is the most haunted place I have ever explored. It was like I was in a ghost world. This ship is ranked first in the world for the appearance of ghosts."
Victor BUMAGIN
