Traveling by air is one of the safest ways to get where you need to go and sometimes the only way. Every year, there are millions of flights in the world that take off and land safely without incident. Despite Hollywood’s big-budget depictions of deadly plane crashes, flying is the safest mode of transportation. The odds of a plane crash are one for every 1.2 million flights with odds of dying being one in eleven million. The chances of dying in a car or other traffic accident are one in five thousand. Yet, because of their terrifying, and tragic, nature, plane crashes would seem like a natural setting for ghosts—in some cases, even angels.
In July 2012, the Daily Mail website reported a former FBI employee who claims she saw angels guarding the site of the deadly terrorist crash of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. Lillie Leonardi was a liaison between the authorities and the families of Flight 93 victims and was at the crash site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. When she arrived, she was assaulted by the strong smell of burning pine trees and jet fuel, and amid the otherwise eerie silence of the scene, she saw angels floating in the mist over the crash site. Others witnessed apparitions and heard phantom cries at the site afterward, and in some of the locations where security services operated nearby, chairs and other objects began to move on their own. The ghost of a woman was reported wandering about the site only to vanish when approached.
AIRPLANE MYSTERIES
FLIGHT 191
Other crash sites are home only to the mourning ghosts of the dead such as the site of American Flight 191. It was May 25, 1979, when Flight 191 lost parts of an engine upon takeoff. It flipped over on the runway and burst into a fireball, killing the crew and passengers on board and two ground crewmen who worked at the Courtney-Velo Excavating Company, located in one of the old hangars. The captain, Walter Lee, was experienced with DC-10s and had been flying them for over eight years. His first officer, James Dillard, and flight engineer, Alfred Udovich, were also experienced. But they couldn’t keep the plane upright.
Flight 191 out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport lost its left engine, crashing next to a mobile home park and killing 273 people, including two on the ground.
Afterward, people reported seeing white balls of light dodging about the crash site, and many who lived in a mobile home park near the site claimed that someone was knocking repeatedly on their doors and windows, yet when they went to look, no one was there. A few residents who opened their doors upon hearing the knocking claimed they were met with a distraught person asking for help to get to a connecting flight or find his or her luggage, and a man walking his dog in the area met a young man who smelled of jet fuel who claimed he needed to make an emergency phone call but then vanished into thin air. Motorists driving along roads past the crash site often reported floating lights and shadowy figures and at certain times the temperature will suddenly drop, and they can hear screams echoing in the empty field.
Paranormal research groups flocked to the site with various equipment to measure activity and reported the crash site as highly active with EVP coming through that when asked about the flight engineer, a voice came back with “almost made it” and “need power.”
FLIGHT 401
Perhaps the most famous crashed plane site is that of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, which crashed in December 1972 into the swamps of the Florida Everglades. Of the passengers, 191 died on board, many drowning in just eighteen inches of water, unable to move, and seventy-five people survived. During the long search and recovery mission, people in johnboats on the swamp water claimed they heard the cries and moans of the survivors, except when they got closer, there was no one in the water. The ghosts of Captain Robert Loft and flight engineer Donald Repo haunt other Eastern Air Lines flights. They were seen sitting in the cockpit of other L-1011 flights by several crewmembers.
In the months following the crash, dozens of reports came in of ghostly sightings by colleagues who once knew the pilots. Many of these sightings had more than one witness. The captain and crewmembers of another plane saw Captain Loft in the cabin and tried to initiate a conversation with his ghost, but he vanished. One flight attendant reported seeing the face of Don Repo staring at her from inside an oven door in the galley kitchen. The oven had been salvaged from the wreckage of Flight 401. Other members of the flight crew came to see, and they all heard Don Repo’s voice say, “Watch out for fire on this airplane.” A fire broke out the following day in the galley.
First class passengers on a number of flights would witness Don Repo standing before them still in uniform before vanishing into thin air before their eyes. Another documented report had three crewpeople try to communicate with an apparition of Don Repo that appeared in the lower deck. He was clearly identifiable but vanished without speaking.
Eventually, the CEO of Eastern Air Lines, Frank Borman, issued a letter to all crewmembers demanding they stop telling ghost stories for fear it would hurt business. But the stories continued out to local reporters, book authors, and even Hollywood came calling, producing a television movie called The Ghost of Flight 401. Ironically, it was the vice president of Eastern Air Lines who later reported having a conversation with a captain who he thought was in command of the aircraft he was on. He was able to identify that man as Captain Robert Loft.
On an even creepier note, ValuJet Flight 592 crashed just two miles north of the Flight 401 site in May 1996, killing all 110 people on board.
B-29 GHOSTS
Castle Air Museum in Atwater, California, is reportedly haunted by the former crewmember of one of the B-29 donors used to build the one now on display in the museum. Workers locking up late at night would see lights coming from inside the plane and someone sitting in the cockpit dressed up like a crewmember. The museum is part of Castle Air Force Base, and the B-29 in question is known as Raz’n Hell. According to a 2003 story for the November 2003 Merced Sun Star, Castle Air Museum executive assistant Karen Machen claimed the haunted museum’s B-29 bomber might be home to the ghost of a man named Arthur.
AIRPORTS
DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Usually we associate plane crash sites with ghostly activity, but there are airports with their fair share as well. Denver International is the biggest international airport in the United States, and dozens of employees and flyers have reported paranormal activity in the expansive facility. There is a rumor, of course, that the airport was built upon Native American burial grounds and that this might account for the numerous hauntings, which allegedly began after the airport staff played Native American chants on the loop bridge that connected Concourse A and the Jeppesen Terminal Building. In 1995, tribal leaders were brought in to do a special ceremony to put the spirits at rest. Visitors continue to report cold spots, the feeling of hands pushing or touching them, and having their luggage moved and knocked over when no one was nearby.
One specific ghost is that of Luis Jiminez, who haunts a sculpture on a hill just south of the airport that he died while creating in 1992. His ghost is said to show up in pictures of the thirty-two-foot-tall, illuminated sculpture, which is of a cobalt blue, red-eyed mustang horse nicknamed “Blucifer.” The sculpture project was plagued with issues from the start, culminating with the horrific way Jimenez died, trapped beneath the 9,000-pound (4,082-kilogram) sculpture when it fell from the hoist, landing on top of the artist. Jimenez bled to death on the spot before help could arrive.
The airport is also home to a number of apocalyptic conspiracy theories thanks to the presence of underground tunnels that some claim are meant to house people during the end of the world and the strange artwork found on the walls of the buildings depicting unusual scenes of war and the fight between good and evil. Some visitors have complained about the dark, sinister Nazi and Masonic symbols they claim are hidden within the artwork and the airport’s connection to the New World Order.
MR. TIBBLE
Sacramento Airport in California is said to be haunted by the ghost of Mr. Tibble, a man who died in October 1982 while awaiting his flight in the gate area. Because he had died sitting, the plane boarded and left with him still waiting until a flight attendant discovered him and tried to wake him up. He may have been Derek Tibble, who indeed died there while waiting for a flight to New York City, so at least this story has some truth to it. His ghost is now said to haunt the same gate, often found sitting in the same chair he died in.
HEATHROW’S RESIDENT GHOST
London, England’s Heathrow Airport is one of the busiest in the world and the third largest in terms of passengers (73.5 million annually) who pass through. Many of those have been lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to witness the ghost of Dick Turpin, a legendary highwayman who went on a robbing, killing, and raping spree in the 1730s. He was known to be narcissistic and was always bragging about his horrific crimes. Even when he was captured and was about to be publicly hanged, he bowed to the audience and grinned. He was clearly a psychopath and became a legend, even a folk hero or a Robin Hood-type hero, despite the awful things he did (which seemed to have been forgotten as his legend grew).
Turpin’s ghost is seen all over London at various locations but mainly at Heathrow, where passengers and airport employees claim he lurks about wearing a black overcoat and tricornered hat. He is mostly seen at night and can be heard shouting and screaming, even barking and howling like an animal. Employees claim he breathes down their necks while they work, and he has been accused of phantom pinching, scratching, and shoving. In 2004, an airport employee was dragged by her hair across the ticket counter in front of witnesses, according to one report.
Notorious eighteen-century highwayman Dick Turpin seems reluctant to leave his beloved England, even in death, and apparently favors being around Heathrow Airport.
Yet, no one knows for sure why Turpin chooses to continually haunt Heathrow. Maybe he just likes annoying and terrorizing large crowds of weary travelers.
Another Heathrow ghost is the “Man with the Briefcase,” a spirit who appeared after the 1948 crash of a DC3 Dakota from Belgian Airlines while it was approaching the runway. As emergency personnel were dealing with the casualties and injured passengers, a man suddenly appeared asking for his briefcase. He then vanished into thin air, but his body was later recognized by rescue crewmembers. He is often seen around the airport now carrying his briefcase, but some witnesses report they can only see the lower part of his body! Perhaps the most frightening sighting of the man with the briefcase occurred in 1970 when air traffic controllers contacted the authorities to complain about a mysterious man carrying a briefcase out on the runway. When approached by police, the man, who was detected on radar, was not there. The air traffic controllers insisted they could see him, but the police on the ground never found him.
ARCHERFIELD AIRPORT
Australia’s Archerfield Airport is located south of Brisbane in Queensland and was once the primary airport for the bustling city of Brisbane. It was used as a Royal Australian Air Force station during World War II. On March 27, 1943, an airman was asked to fly to Sydney on a C47 Douglas Dakota. The airport was shrouded in a thick fog, but the crew knew they needed to get their bounty to Sydney and attempted takeoff anyway. The airman was piloting the plane filled with radio equipment and components when it took off and promptly veered off course from the fog, then rolled and crashed into some trees, ending up in nearby swampland. All thirty-two on board were killed. Afterward, a man in a RAAG uniform and cap, holding a deployed parachute, was witnessed by several people at the airport. He would smile and wave as they passed by. The general manager of the airport revealed that the ghostly sightings could be related to the fact that the airport was built upon a small cemetery called “God’s Acre” where the original landowners, the Grenier family, are buried. The cemetery still exists and is maintained by airport employees. The ghost of a teenager on a horse seen around the airport is attributed to the son, Volney Grenier, who died in a horse-riding accident in 1859.
Other reports out of Archerfield tell of phantom aircraft seen at the airfield, unexplained lights, objects moving about on their own, and groups of ghostly figures wandering in the hangars at night.
ASIAN AIRPORTS
The Philippines was once home to the bustling Sasa Airport in Davao City, which is now a refuge for the homeless and for a nearby engineering project. Witnesses hear the moans and cries of people throughout the night, possibly the ghosts of those who died in a deadly bombing in March 2003 that took the lives of twenty-one people. Apparitions are a regular appearance inside the airport.
Thailand is no stranger to haunted airports. Suvarnabhumi Airport has several shrines on-site to protect the area from the presence of evil spirits. It was built upon the site of a sacred burial ground that was known as Nong Nguhao, or Cobra Swamp, and one security expert allegedly was possessed by a demon while searching for explosives at the airport, and the demon commanded a shrine be built. Many of the airlines that use the airport have their own rituals to drive away evil spirits. The Airport Authority of Thailand organized prayer sessions by bringing in ninety-nine Buddhist monks to chant and perform rituals to protect passengers and crewmembers. Crewmembers and passengers have seen spirits all over the airport and hear phantom coughing, choking, and chanting. The ghosts are blamed for a number of strange accidents and are said to be malicious.
HAUNTED HANGAR
On Thursday, May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg German passenger airship caught fire and crashed as it attempted to dock with a mooring mast at Lake-hurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. Thirty-five people on board and one man on the ground died. The disaster made the nightly news with radio reporters giving live, eyewitness accounts of the disaster as it happened. Though the tragedy occurred over eighty years ago, ghosts at Hangar 1, which was used as a morgue during the disaster, continue to lurk, and people report the strong sensations of negative energies present.
Phantom footsteps come from the rafters above, and shadowy figures can be seen in the building. Locals won’t go there after dark because of the negative juju.
TARMAC GHOSTS
A frightening story is told by a pilot of a horde of ghosts that would appear on the runway at Tenerife Airport in the Canary Islands. In March 1977, a KLM plane collided on the runway with a Pan Am 747, killing 583 passengers and crewmembers. Pilots and air traffic controllers at Tenerife would often later see large numbers of figures on the runway, waving as if to try to stop the planes from taking off. Are they the ghosts of the victims of the deadly crash?