Unsolved Mysteries Wiki
Unsolved Mysteries Wiki
Unsolved Mysteries Wiki
1,945
pages
in: California, 1936, 1967,
and 4 more

The Queen Mary

Edit
The Queen Mary

The Queen Mary

Case File: The Queen Mary
Location: Long Beach, California
Date: 1936 to present
Description: Coming Up

Still from "Unsolved Mysteries" episode reenacting Nancy Anne's encounter with a ghostly apparition of an elderly woman near the pool

Still from "Unsolved Mysteries" episode reenacting Nancy Anne's encounter with a ghostly apparition of an elderly woman near the pool

Case[]

History: The RMS Queen Mary is a transatlantic ocean liner permanently moored in Long Beach Harbor, California, and used as a hotel and museum. On her decks and in her corridors, employees and guests have seen and heard things they cannot explain.
Marine engineer John Smith was one of the first to work onboard the Queen Mary after she arrived in Long Beach in 1967. Part of his duties was to learn the ship's layout and check it thoroughly. His job took him into the remote regions of the ship's bow. Several times over two months, he heard the sounds of metal tearing, water rushing, and men screaming.
Smith was frightened. It sounded like there had been a rupture of the Queen Mary's hull. He went up to the ship's extreme bow section. The sound was there, but there was no water or anything to cause it. He does not believe in the supernatural, but in all his experiences as a marine engineer, he had never seen or heard anything like that.
Years later, Smith read an article about a World War II tragedy. On October 2, 1942, the Queen Mary accidentally collided with a British cruiser, the HMS Curacoa. 337 men were killed when her bow sliced the Curacoa in half. Smith was "shaken up" and overwhelmed. The area where he had heard the mysterious sounds was where the Queen Mary was damaged when she hit the Curacoa. He believes what he heard was what it would have sounded like if he had been in the bow at the time of the collision. But he knew that could not have been possible as it had happened three decades earlier.
Waitress Carol Leyden had worked on the Queen Mary for about fourteen years when she first saw what she believed was a ghost. One December morning, while in the kitchen, she picked up a cup of coffee and took it to a table where a woman was sitting. Carol was fascinated by the woman's 1940s late-afternoon cocktail-type dress. The woman was pale, had dark hair rolled to the side, and had no makeup. The woman did not move. Carol left the table and went forward about ten feet. When she turned around to take another look, the woman was gone.
Former tour guide Nancy Anne feels she is the "last person" who should have had these paranormal experiences because she is a skeptic. One day, while standing on the stairs of the first-class pool area, she saw a woman next to the pool. The woman was in her sixties or seventies and was in black and white. Nancy went down the stairs and around the pillar, expecting to find the woman standing there. But the woman was gone. Nancy does not believe the woman could have gone anywhere without her noticing.
Late one night, maintenance supervisor Kathy Love and a coworker entered the first-class pool deck and heard a little girl giggling and playing. They then saw the pool's water splashing. At some point, the splashing stopped, but the giggling continued. Then, they observed a small child's footprints walking across the floor toward the locker room.
The girl, known as Jackie, allegedly drowned in the first-class pool decades earlier. She has been heard talking and singing children's songs. She has been seen around the pool, holding a teddy bear. She likes to play hide-and-seek with guests in the changing rooms. Other children have also been seen in the pool or on the upper balconies.
Employees and guests have seen figures in 1930s bathing suits and heard people playing in the first-class pool. An older woman in a wedding dress has also been seen in the area. Some psychics have said that the hallway to the pool's dressing rooms contains a "vortex" that allows spirits to come and go from the ship.
Several unexplained encounters have occurred in "shaft alley," an area deep within the Queen Mary near the engine room. Early on the morning of July 10, 1966, during a routine fire drill, eighteen-year-old laborer John Pedder was crushed to death by watertight door #13 in the engine room. The door was closing automatically as part of the drill, and it is believed that he tried to squeeze through it when he died. Some believe he still haunts the area.
Employees and tour groups have heard footsteps, whistling, screams, and other violent noises in "shaft alley." Multiple tour groups have reported seeing a bearded man in blue coveralls matching Pedder's description. He has allegedly asked guests if they have seen his wrench. He disappears when they turn towards him. Some guests have felt him touch their faces and leave grease spots behind.
Nancy Anne had a second experience in "shaft alley." On that day, she was working as a lead guide. One of her duties was closing the tour route and ensuring no one was left behind. At around 5:30pm, while going up an escalator, she turned around and saw a man standing on the step behind her. He had blue, dirty overalls. When she reached the top of the escalator, she stepped to the side to let him go by, but he was gone. She believes he was Pedder.
Senior Second Officer William Stark allegedly haunts the captain's quarters. On September 18, 1949, he drank from a gin bottle, not knowing that a shipmate was using it to store a cleaning solution. He died a few days later in a Southampton hospital.
Stateroom B340 on the third-class deck is considered one of the most haunted rooms onboard. Writer Walter Adamson died of "unknown causes" there in 1948 and has allegedly haunted it ever since. In 1966, a woman staying there had the bed covers aggressively pulled off her while she slept. When she awoke, she saw a man standing at the end of the bed who disappeared into thin air. She also heard someone knocking at her door. A maid also reported that something pulled off the bed covers just after she put them on.
Employees and guests have claimed that lights and faucets turn on and off and toilets flush on their own in B340. Other witnesses have heard various sounds in the room, including footsteps, doors creaking open, scratches, laughter, whistling, and people talking. Some have smelled cigars and perfume.
Employees and guests have heard a baby crying in the third-class children's playroom. It is believed that the baby died on board shortly after his birth. Children have also been heard laughing and playing there.
In the Queen's Salon, formerly the first-class lounge, a young woman in a white evening gown has been seen dancing in the room's corner. Witnesses have seen a tall, dark-haired man in a 1930s-style suit in the first-class staterooms. In the middle of the night, lights and faucets are turned on. Guests have received phone calls early in the morning with no one on the other end. One guest saw a "person in white" walk across her room and through a door. Another guest saw a figure holding a light in front of his bed. The figure slowly backed away until the guest turned on the light. It then disappeared.
Background: In 1930, John Brown & Company began building the Queen Mary for the British cruise line, Cunard White Star Line. She was named after Queen Mary of Teck, grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II. The ship was over 1,000 feet long, 180 feet tall, and weighed 81,000 tons. Between 1931 and 1934, her construction was halted due to the Great Depression.
On May 27, 1936, the Queen Mary took her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York Harbor. During the five-day trip, she was a floating party, a living symbol of luxury travel. She had many facilities onboard, including two indoor swimming pools, a gymnasium, tennis courts, beauty salons, libraries, nurseries, restaurants, clubs, and a hospital.
During World War II, the Queen Mary was converted into a troopship, ferrying 800,000 Allied soldiers to the front lines. Due to her ghostly grey camouflage, she was nicknamed "The Grey Ghost." She carried more troops at once than any other vessel during the war. On October 2, 1942, she accidentally collided with a British cruiser, the HMS Curacoa, which was escorting her to port near Ireland. 337 of the 436 onboard the Curacoa were killed. At the war's end, the Queen Mary transported thousands of war brides and their children to North America.
In 1947, the Queen Mary reverted to her former glory, crossing the Atlantic 1,001 times. She carried an average of 2,000 passengers and 1,200 crew per crossing. She twice held the Blue Riband prize for fastest transatlantic crossing. In her over thirty years at sea, she witnessed four births and at least forty-nine recorded deaths. The first occurred during her construction: on June 4, 1934, construction worker Malcolm Aitken fell to his death from a scaffold.
The Queen Mary transported the titled and elite from both sides of the Atlantic. Several celebrities traveled onboard, including Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Winston Churchill, and Dwight Eisenhower.
By the 1960s, transatlantic cruises had become less popular due to affordable air travel. In 1967, the city of Long Beach, California, purchased the Queen Mary for $3.45 million. On October 31, she left Southampton for the last time. On December 9, she was permanently moored in Long Beach. She was then converted into a tourist attraction, featuring restaurants, a museum, and a hotel. On May 8, 1971, her doors were opened to tourists.
Investigations: In September 1988, Unsolved Mysteries brought to the Queen Mary a team of experts who have spent decades investigating hauntings. Using sophisticated recording equipment, they attempted to verify the witness accounts. Tony Cornell has researched paranormal activity for twenty-five years. Although he is a skeptic, he considers the witnesses sane and sensible. He believes the sightings in the first-class pool area and "shaft alley" could be genuine because they have occurred repeatedly.
While Cornell set up surveillance equipment, Dr. William Roll, one of the world's leading authorities on poltergeists, led a team of six psychics onboard. All claimed to know nothing about the Queen Mary's history or the hauntings. Armed with maps and their psychic sensitivity, they struck off in different directions alone. After the search, they gathered together to compare notes. Though some had nothing to report, others sensed activity that coincided with witness reports.
One psychic heard footsteps and felt the impression of a collision in the Queen Mary's bow. In "shaft alley," another psychic sensed John Pedder's death. She felt a "rhythmical banging," like someone was using a wrench to hit something. She believed someone had been trapped there. Cornell is not sure how the psychics picked up on certain things. However, he notes that they could have read about it in a newspaper.
While Dr. Roll and a security guard were surveying the bow area, they heard two men talking and other unexplained sounds that seemed to come from the bow's lower levels. In thirty years of investigation, this was the first time he had heard a sound that matched what a witness had heard.
Dr. Roll placed a voice-activated tape recorder at the same spot in the bow where the voices were heard. For most of the night, nothing significant was recorded. But the next morning, the tape recorder picked up loud, banging, metallic, and scraping-type sounds for two minutes. Earlier, the bow had been sealed off. The researchers attempted to duplicate the sounds through mechanical means but were unsuccessful. Dr. Roll concluded that there is a physical source for the sounds. He is not sure if it is parapsychological or not.
Some parapsychologists believe the Queen Mary, like all other places, retains memories of past events that some people with psychic sensitivities experience as hauntings.
Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell attributes the hauntings onboard the Queen Mary to pareidolia, floaters in a person's eye, waking dreams, and daydreaming commonly experienced by workers doing repetitive chores. Some skeptics believe the hauntings could be due to an overactive imagination or the power of suggestion stimulated by an eerie location. There is also speculation that the employees have made up the stories either to increase business, scare guests, or get publicity.
Although there are stories of murders taking place onboard the Queen Mary, the ship's historical records show that none of the deaths on board were murders. Most were due to natural causes. Also, although it was claimed that a girl, Jackie, drowned in one of the pools, no drownings were recorded as occurring onboard.
Another debunked story involved a man who allegedly murdered his wife and two daughters in Stateroom B474 and then killed himself. It was claimed that the girls haunted the room. Queen Mary tour guide Chris Perley found no record of the crime in the ship's logs. He discovered that a murder/suicide matching the story did occur, but it happened at the family's home. The only connection to the Queen Mary was that the wife's mother rode the ship home that day and was informed of the tragedy while onboard.
Perley notes that sound travels easily on the Queen Mary because of its thin walls. Conversations can be heard from room to room and sometimes from deck to deck. This could explain the sounds that guests and employees have heard onboard.
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the October 26, 1988 Halloween episode of Unsolved Mysteries along with Tallman House, The General Wayne Inn and Tatum House.
  • The Queen Mary was used to film parts of The Poseidon Adventure.
  • It was also featured on the shows Ghost Adventures and Ghost Hunters. The Atlantic Paranormal Society documented a variety of minor occurrences culminating with footage of a bed being disturbed, but video analysis revealed that their camera was tampered with to create the effect.
  • Some sources state that: 338 or 339 men were killed on the HMS Curacoa; a chef was murdered onboard during World War II; there were fifty-five reported deaths onboard; and Jackie died in the second-class pool.

Results: Unsolved - In 1988, the Walt Disney Company purchased the Queen Mary and started the "Haunted Passages Tour," which focused on the ship's hauntings. They reportedly wanted to turn her into a "cruise ship" version of the Haunted Mansion. One stop on the tour was Stateroom B340, where Disney added faces behind the mirrors, false floorboards, eerie sounds, and rigged faucets that went off on their own.
Since the broadcast, the hauntings aboard the Queen Mary have continued. One day in 1989, three employees went to clean the Mauretania room. Once inside, they encountered a man sitting in a chair on the dance floor. He refused to move and stared intently at them. When they called security, he disappeared into thin air.
In 1991, psychic Peter James visited the Queen Mary with a film crew and met with the spirit, "Jackie," in the Royal Theater. He instructed her to meet him in the "other" pool. He went to the first-class swimming pool and recorded a ten-minute conversation with her.
In December 1992, the Queen Mary was closed due to financial issues. In February 1993, it was reopened by the RMS Foundation, Inc. Since then, ownership has been passed through several groups. In June 2000, a new interactive attraction, "Ghosts: Legends of the Queen Mary," was opened onboard.
In 2001, an employee had an experience in the "Mayfair Room." At around 5:30am, he noticed that the room was frigid. He felt someone brush against the back of his chair. He then saw a white figure walk across the room and through a closed door.
In 2008, Time magazine included the Queen Mary among its "Top 10 Haunted Places." Sadly, in December 2011, a twenty-six-year-old woman fell to her death from the ship. In October 2012, author Devlin Westbrook and his assistant stayed on board. While walking on the lower levels, his assistant noticed several cold spots. Later that night, someone touched her on the shoulder while she was getting ready for bed.
In 2017, a report describing the Queen Mary's deteriorating condition was released. In April 2018, the ship rented out Stateroom B340 after leaving it closed for years. In May 2020, the ship was closed again due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2023, she was reopened.
In October 2024, magazine editor Julie Jordan stayed on the Queen Mary with two friends. Several motion sensors in their room were triggered, even though no one was nearby. At dinner, Jordan looked through a window into a locked, empty room and saw a shadow move to the right and then walk away from the window.
The Queen Mary continues to operate several haunted attractions, such as "Haunted Encounters" and "Grey Ghost Project" tours, seances, and paranormal investigations. The tours take a fact-based approach to the legends, using information from the ship's logs.
Links:

Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.