The Queen Mary

I've been to the Queen Mary on several occaisions, and encountered more
than one of the phenomenon aboard.

The most accessible haunted area is near door 13 in the engine room,
where a young man was crushed trying to escape a fire. He was only 17
and had lied about his age in order to get the job. We've heard knocking
from the pipes around the door on more than one occaision, once it
progressed in a circle all the way around our group. Another time, two
of our group saw a bright light with smoke in front of it as with a
fire. The woman also felt heat from the doorway, when she touched it. We
had not informed them of the haunting before.

Another of the accessible haunting areas is the front desk of what is
now the hotel portion of the ship. Sightings include a mysterious woman
in white who will be sighted walking until blocked from view by a pillar
and never coming out from behind. Also, a couple has been seen walking
down the hall to either side of the main entry to the first class rooms,
but are never seen in the hallways themselves.

Some other areas that you have to take the behind the scenes tour to get
to include the engine room number 2. Many stowaways died every time they
would fire up the boilers to leave port, and sometimes a feeling of vast
despair can be felt on the catwalk and sometimes also on the
shuffleboard deck above. Also, I've noticed that when I'm there, the
room feels much larger than it is. I can also occaisionally feel the
ship sway, which it doesn't do now that it's moored.

There are several hauntings related to the pool, including two different
children, one girl who asks after her mother or her doll, and a boy. The
girl is thought to have been a precocious child from third class who
liked sliding down bannisters and was doing so when the ship hit a swell
and pitched so that the bannister went straight down and she hit the
wall, breaking her neck. There have also been complaints about a smell
that would be from when the ship was in use to move troops during WWII,
and many of them were triple bunked in the pool itself, and many of the
soldiers were prone to seasickness. The third is a 'vortex' that is
located in the hallway of the changing rooms. It has been featured on
tv, and it's location was once confirmed by an employee, who correctly
moved the chair back to the position where the psychic from the tv show
had placed it. The position of the vortex is almost directly beneath the
revolving door that was originally used as the entrance to the pool
area. My group encountered something in this area when we went through
it. I and the guide had gone around rather than going in, while my
husband, and our two friends went through the hallway. About a minute
later, (it only takes about ten seconds to get from one end to the
other) I looked in and saw the three of them. My husband was almost all
the way through, one friend was in the middle, where the vortex is, and
the third was just behind her. When I pulled back from looking, our
female friend screamed and the three of them hustled out of the hall. My
husband said that he had looked and seen three people behind him at
about the same time I had looked in from the other side, and he had
assumed that I was with them (I hadn't told them I wasn't going through
with them). The woman with us told us that at the site of the vortex,
she couldn't move and tried to scream but couldn't, then felt a touch on
her shoulder, screamed, and they came out of the hallway. The other man,
her boyfriend at the time, had followed behind them and when she stopped
moving, he was going to nudge her forward, and that's when she screamed,
when he touched her shoulder. He saw when I looked in to see what was
keeping them, and he also saw three others in the hallway, thinking that
our guide was one of them. Both my husband and he described the mystery
person as about 5'6" with medium length, curly hair.

The girl at the pool is also commonly seen around the third class
stairwell, near the door to the old nursery.

We once took the ghost tour, four years ago, Halloween, and they no
longer have that tour, which is a shame.

It included all of the places mentioned above as well as two others. One
is for to the fore of the ship and is characterized by a man screaming
for help and sometimes just by his moaning in pain. This comes from
during WWII. The ship wouldn't publish it's sailing patterns to avoid
possible attack from German submarines. During one of these trips
heading to Europe, the Queen Mary hit another, much smaller ship,
broadsiding it. The other ship was cut nearly in two by the force. The
Queen Mary itself sustained little damage. When the ship reached port,
it was sent to dry dock to repair the hull, the outer section of which
had been badly torn. When the drained the water, the found the body of a
man who had been thrown through a hole torn in the hull above the water
line from the other ship and had died of exposure. Many techs who work
in that area don't like to go alone, or at night.

The other is a cabin. For this one, the guide turned out the lights of
the room and just used her flashlight. She had the entire group enter
(there were eight of us) and closed the door. While she told us the
story of the room, I could feel the ship swaying heavily and actully had
to catch my balance at one point. The story behind the room is that
during one crossing, a man checked in at the desk, and his luggage was
stowed. That night he asked one of the stewards if they could find a
female companion for the night and gave the steward a small wad of
bills. The steward found a willing companion and she and the passenger
retired for the night. The next morning when the man didn't come to the
dining room for breakfast, the steward knocked at his room. After
receiving no answer, he fetched the head steward who opened the room.
The walls and bed were covered in the blood of the woman, who had been
murdered. A check of the registrar revealed that there had been no
passenger assigned to the room, and when they looked for his luggage,
there was none to be found, even though many people remember it being
checked and stowed. I was distinctly uncomfortable during the telling,
and almost panicky by the time she turned the lights back on.

by andara