31 Days of Halloween | Day 22: The Queen Mary — The Haunted Ship's Dark History
Haunted American HistoryShow Notes
In 1967, the RMS Queen Mary arrived in Long Beach, California, after more than three decades crossing the Atlantic.
Not long afterward, a marine engineer working deep inside the ship claimed to hear the sounds of tearing metal, rushing water, and screaming men.
He would later connect those sounds to a terrible wartime disaster.
On October 2, 1942, the Queen Mary collided with HMS Curacoa, a British warship escorting her through dangerous waters. The massive ocean liner sliced through the smaller vessel, sending hundreds of sailors into the North Atlantic.
The Queen Mary never stopped.
Today, the ship is celebrated as one of America's most haunted attractions, with stories of drowned children, mysterious figures, haunted staterooms, and the ghost of a young crewman killed by a watertight door.
But how many of those stories are true?
Tonight, we're investigating the real history and alleged hauntings of the RMS Queen Mary, from her days as a luxury ocean liner and wartime troopship to the tragedies recorded in her logs, the paranormal investigators who helped build her reputation, and the Halloween attractions that turned her ghost stories into an industry.
Because the Queen Mary doesn't need invented ghosts to have a terrifying history.
Welcome to day 22 of 31 Days of Halloween
More from Haunted American History
In Savannah, Georgia, ghost stories are everywhere.
On November 13, 1974, a young man ran into a bar in Amityville, New York, shouting that his parents had been shot.
In 1907, a wealthy Boston businessman named Thomas Lawson published a novel called Friday, the Thirteenth.
In 1891, a jeweler in Salem, Massachusetts, began selling a silver souvenir spoon decorated with a witch on a broomstick.
In 1845, a strange fossil bone appeared in the Australian town of Geelong.