When the Ghost Screams

by Leslie Rule

  According to the guides of the Haunted Charleston Walking Tour, there has been more than one sighting of the ill-fated Oldsmobile.

  One family of witnesses was headed home from an outing on a February day when they drove onto the bridge. They noticed an odd, out-of-date, green Oldsmobile ahead of them. The car kept starting and stopping, so the driver decided to pass the strange car. As they began to pass, they were startled by a shocking image.

  Inside the vehicle was a lifeless family, dressed in 1940s fashion. In the front seat were a man and woman, with glazed and sunken eyes. The grandmother and two pale limp children sat in the back.

  The terrified driver slammed on his brakes and allowed the ghostly car to pass him. It drove ahead and disappeared.

  Is the Lawson family still trying to make it over the bridge?

  Why does the car hesitate, stopping and starting so erratically? Is poor Elmer trying to relive that crucial moment that sent his family plummeting to their graves? Interestingly, he seemed to make the same decision he did on that black Sunday, when he passed the car of the startled family.

  Let us hope that the souls of these poor folks have moved on, and that it is only a phenomenon called “a place memory” that witnesses see. The awful picture of five dead in a car may have been imprinted upon the environment, to appear when the conditions are optimal.

  In this case, the witnesses were a family of five, traveling over the bridge in February, the anniversary month of the accident. This may have allowed the witnesses a morbid peek at a grisly snapshot in time.

  After nearly eight decades of service, the old bridge was dismantled, replaced by an adjacent structure, the eight-lane Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Some ghost enthusiasts have speculated that this will not stop the death car from appearing. They theorize that there will soon be sightings of the Lawson family traveling through the air in the space the old bridge once occupied.

  If you are easily frightened and you plan to drive over the Ravenel Bridge, maybe it is best to keep your eyes on the road.

  “Help Me!”

  No one knows the nooks and crannies of the Dundas District Public School better than the custodians. Built in 1929, the Hamilton, Ontario, school is spick-and-span—thanks to the hard-working staff and a ghost or two.

  In the 1950s, five caretakers made a pact. Whoever was the first to die would return to haunt the others. Russell, the custodian who suggested the pact, was a perfectionist in charge of the third floor. He kept it spotless.

  He eventually died and has apparently kept his word.

  An employee who started work long after Russell’s demise was assigned the third floor. One night, he got his bucket of soapy water ready and then decided to go to supper. He returned to find that the floor had been washed. “Russell did it!” his fellow employees insisted.

  The same employee also saw the apparition of a tall man with a big smile. He appeared on the third floor, accompanied by the sound of jingling keys. It was most likely the ghost of Russell.

  But what about the others?

  Who are the five spirits seen on the back stairs? And who paces endlessly during the night? Most disturbing, who is the old woman?

  Two custodians were preparing to leave one evening when they were chilled to the bone at the sound of an old woman’s voice calling from the top of a staircase. “Help me,” the voice cried.

  It is one thing to have the spirit of a helpful cleaner in your midst; it is another when it is a mysterious old woman calling pitifully.

  Perhaps she was a victim of the 1934 train wreck. The dead victims, locals say, were brought to the school, which was turned into a makeshift morgue.

  The Christmas Day excursion train was filled with folks celebrating the joy of the season. Three hundred and ninety-seven passengers were returning to Toronto when the train was signaled to go onto a side rail so that another train could pass in Dundas.

  The Maple Leaf, a Chicago to Montreal train, roared full speed into town. Its signal was green, an indication that the tracks were clear. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the switch, and the Maple Leaf torpedoed into the back of the excursion train. It telescoped into the last two wooden cars filled with people, killing most of them instantly.

  At the horrendous sound of the crash, Dundas residents came running to help. They went into action, pulling the injured from the train, and ferrying them to the hospital. But work was slow because of the darkness.

  The Christmas presents strewn about the track were a grim reminder of what the day was supposed to be. Rescuers tried not to think of the children who would never get to play with the toys that littered the ground.

  The next day, newspaper headlines screamed that fifteen were dead. Thirteen were passengers and two were porters, all from the excursion train. Everyone aboard the Maple Leaf survived.

  The accident was near the Dundas school, and its basement was quickly utilized as a morgue.

  If time stands still for the dead, do those who wander the school think it is still Christmas Day 1934?

  Spirits from the Sky

  It was a black night in December 1972 when a jumbo jet took off from the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York with 176 people on board. They thought they were destined for Miami, Florida, but instead they were destined for doom.

  One hundred and one human beings would make a date with the Grim Reaper before midnight.

  Captain Bob Loft and second officer Don Repo were family men and experienced pilots who did not take the safety of their passengers lightly.

  The massive Lockheed L-1011 had served Eastern Air Lines for four months. Pilots and passengers marveled at the spacious luxury plane, with a tail that rose six stories high and a length that nearly spanned a football field.

  The jet, however, had a few bugs that had yet to be explained to the pilots.

  As Flight 401 approached Miami, the crew was blindsided by an unfortunate string of events. It began with a faulty warning light and culminated with mismatched readings of the altitude on the pilots’ dual indicators. As the jet cruised on automatic pilot set to two thousand feet, one of the crew attempted to change a stuck light bulb. As he fiddled with it, the sensitive instrument panel was apparently jarred, and the autopilot became disengaged.

  Despite the fact that the plane began to descend, the information was not accurately conveyed. As the jet dipped toward the earth, the utter darkness below offered no clue. The marshy Florida Everglades, swarming with gators and snakes, was cloaked in the shadow of night.

  When Don Repo left the cockpit to check a potential problem with the landing gear, Captain Loft’s indicator falsely assured him that the plane was high in the sky. He could not see the ground rushing toward them.

  At 11:42 p.m. the plane crashed.

  The story could have ended there, as do other aviation tragedies. Though horrible for those who lost loved ones, the fate of Flight 401 would have become a statistic if not for the determined spirits of the pilots who persevered beyond the grave and the writer who told their story.

  The late John G. Fuller was a successful journalist and an admitted skeptic when he stumbled upon the amazing events that occurred in the wake of the tragedy.

  Numerous employees of sound mind and body began to see the ghosts of the pilots killed in the crash. Pilots, flight attendants, and passengers all witnessed the apparitions of Bob Loft and Don Repo aboard Eastern Air Line’s L-1011s.

  In one instance, according to John Fuller, a stewardess approached a uniformed Eastern captain in the jump seat and said, “Excuse me, Captain. Are you jump-seating this ride? I don’t have you on my list.”

  When the man did not respond, she politely persisted, but he stared straight ahead as if in a daze. With another attendant and passengers watching the drama unfold, she finally summoned the flight supervisor.

  The flight captain leaned down to address the other captain, wrote the author. Then he froze. “My God, it’s Bob Loft” he said. There was silence in the cab
in. Then something happened that no one in the vicinity could explain. The captain in the first-class seat simply wasn’t there. He was there one moment—and not the next.

  The most frequent sightings were of Don Repo. One attendant saw the distinct image of his face watching her from inside the luggage compartment. Several others reported that he had materialized near the microwave. Some said that his face stared at them from inside the microwave.

  The materializations sometimes occurred as a warning when there were safety issues with the plane. At least one witness said Don Repo’s ghost actually spoke to him, advising him of a problem. It was as if the pilots had remained to protect the passengers and flight crews from future dangers.

  When they reported the encounters to Eastern Air Line’s management, employees quickly realized it was the wrong thing to do. It was implied that those who so much as believed in ghosts were unbalanced, and their careers were threatened.

  John Fuller’s diligent research revealed that expensive parts of the ill-fated plane had been salvaged and recycled. The L-1011s, which received the recycled parts from the death jet, were the only ones where sightings were reported. Much of the activity centered on the microwave oven, which was recovered from the accident sight.

  Eastern Air Line bigwigs must have realized the connection between the ghosts and the recycled parts, because they systematically and somewhat surreptitiously removed and replaced the haunted pieces.

  When questioned by John Fuller and other members of the media, a spokesman for Eastern Air Lines denied that anything out of the ordinary had occurred on the planes. It was all made up, he contended.

  Though John Fuller managed to interview numerous witnesses to the ghostly goings on, almost everyone spoke with him under the condition of anonymity.

  As a writer of true ghost stories, this bothers me. I understand that the witnesses were afraid of ridicule and concerned for their jobs, but their unwillingness to stand behind their words detracts from the validity of the account.

  I never met John Fuller and have no reason to doubt his words. He was a respected journalist, and he probably deserved his good reputation. But when an author uses so many pseudonyms, discerning readers can’t help but feel niggling doubt.

  Eastern Air Lines is no longer in business. Most of those who saw the ghosts of Flight 401 have likely switched careers or retired by now. If they would come forward and stand behind their testimonies, it would lend authenticity to Fuller’s out-of-print, yet incredible book, Ghost of Flight 401.

  I have made contact with just one person who knows anything about the haunted recycled plane parts. Leslie Cahier’s son worked in a warehouse, which recycled salvaged plane parts. He mentioned to his mother that there was an abandoned microwave there. It sat beneath a tarp, no good use to anyone. Ask if you can take it home, she urged him. It was just the thing for her kitchen.

  When he inquired, the response was quick and chilling. The microwave was not to be removed. It was the very one salvaged from the wreckage of Flight 401, the very one that had prompted the paranormal problems.

  Now, thirty years after the fascinating paranormal incidents related to Flight 401, spirits from the sky still walk among us. One of the latest reports of ghosts wrought from plane crashes comes from Africa.

  Before they were ghosts, the victims were live human beings with the same needs and wants as the rest of us.

  Nkiru Okoli, for instance, was twenty-two years old and expecting her first child. She and her husband, Chukwuemeka, had just finished their honeymoon in Ghana when she phoned her relatives. They had finally arrived back in Nigeria, she told them. They were on the last leg of the trip, about to board a Bellview airliner, Flight 201.

  Nkiru asked her older sisters to meet them at the airport. And she had a special request for her mother: Could she make them yam porridge?

  It was October 22, 2005, and Nkiru’s family was excited about seeing her. Nkiru was a joyful person, and everyone was looking forward to watching her open her wedding presents, which waited, wrapped in pretty paper with shiny bows. She and Chukwuemeka were deeply in love, and there was so much to celebrate.

  Meanwhile, another passenger, Remilekun Olaniyan, was preparing to board Bellview Flight 201, which her husband had begged her not to take, pleading that she instead wait until Monday. But she was in a hurry to reach her destination and stubbornly refused to change her plans.

  And passenger Linus Sabulu, president of the National Association of Nurses and Midwives, had participated in the association’s Nigerian conference and was so eager to return to his family, he made plans to take Flight 201, despite the fact his wife suggested he could stay over one more day and return home on Sunday.

  The flight was full, and some travelers were frustrated when they were told that they could not board, that there was simply no room for them. They had no idea how lucky they were.

  The 117 passengers who boarded Flight 201 on October 22 were mostly Nigerians, with one American and one Frenchman among them.

  It was a stormy Saturday night as the Boeing 737 gathered power and rose into the sky, leaving the Labos airport behind. The twenty-four-year-old plane was bound for the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Soon after takeoff, the pilot issued a distress signal.

  It was a hopeless cry for help.

  Flight 201 crashed in the remote village of Lisa, killing all on board. The plane had been traveling at a tremendous speed and was buried on impact.

  When TV crews arrived, they broadcast the horror for the world to see. The airplane that had been given a clean bill of health seven months before was now reduced to twisted chunks of metal. Luggage was ripped to bits. No one had had the faintest chance of survival.

  Relatives of the victims went into shock. They could not believe their loved ones were dead. And, it may be, the victims themselves did not know that they were dead. Residents of Lisa began to see them.

  The village of Lisa is thirty miles north of the ill-fated plane’s takeoff. The tragedy that put them in the news also wiped out their electrical power when cables were severed by the aircraft. But it was the haunting that was reported in the Saturday Independent on November 5, 2005.

  Village council secretary Apostle Sikiru Lasisi told a reporter that he and a family member had witnessed the ghost of a victim walking past their home. “We live in fear when it gets dark,” he said, “because the spirits of the victims in the plane crash keep roaming the whole village….”

  Another resident, Aremo Olubode, told the reporter that many women and children there were so frightened of the ghosts that they no longer slept in their own homes, opting instead to stay with relatives in neighboring villages.

  Disembodied voices were heard at night, especially on the path that led to the crash site.

  While most of the villagers respected the dead, a few heartless criminals had looted the plane, stealing valuables from the lifeless passengers before a recovery team could locate the crash site. Some wondered if the blatant disrespect could have riled the spirits.

  The cries of the ghosts and the sight of wandering souls disturbed residents to the point that they lived in terror. “The situation has gone so bad that we no longer have the guts to walk at night, and if we do, it is usually in groups. If you doubt me, please spend a night with us here and experience what we go through every night,” Aremo challenged the reporter.

  As of this writing, the villagers have yet to have their power restored. There is no word on the status of the ghosts. Let us hope that they have come to terms with their deaths and have moved on to a peaceful place.

  Who knows how many tragic travelers are trapped in the nightmare of their doomed airplanes?

  A horrible crash in Reno, Nevada, is yet another one for the books.

  It was about one a.m., January 21, 1985, when Galaxy Flight 203 took off from what is today known as the Reno-Tahoe International Airport. The chartered flight held sixty-five passengers who were headed to Minnesota. Many of them had enjoyed a weeken
d of gambling in Lake Tahoe during the Super Bowl Sunday weekend. Tragically, the plane crashed in a field, shortly after takeoff.

  Seventy passengers and crew members lost their lives.

  The lone survivor was a seventeen-year-old Minnesota boy who was thrown free of the burning crash. He was found still strapped in his seat.

  Today the area is covered by retail stores and parking lots. Let us hope that the spirits of the accident victims have been able to move on. That was not the case in the hours following the crash.

  Paranormal investigator Debby Constantino spoke with a member of the recovery crew, who was on the site immediately after the crash. As he worked on the grisly task, ghosts of the dead wandered aimlessly through the wreckage. “He wasn’t the only one who saw them,” said Debby. “He said nearly everyone there witnessed apparitions.”

  Earthbound Accident Victims

  Candid Camera

  Employees of the Belfast print shop can’t help but jump when they hear the frightened shrieks. But they know there is nothing they can do to help. The screams of the Irish teenager make the tiny hairs on their arms prickle. The poor girl has been dead for nearly a century.

  In 1912 when Helena Blunden took her last breath, the sixteen-year-old could not have imagined the technology of the future. If she had lived a normal life span, one day she would have embraced inventions such as televisions and microwave ovens, and, perhaps, even cell phones and computers.

  But when fate literally threw an obstacle in her path, these things were years from being introduced to the world. The day Helena died, no had ever heard of a “ghost cam.”

  What would Helena have thought if she had known that one day millions of eyes from around the earth would be trained on the place her life ended?