The Queen Mary Dinner and Ghost Tour
On July 22, 2006, my friend, Mary Ann and I arrived at the Queen Mary. (Unfortunately, it was one of the hottest days of the year. The temperature reached 101 degrees on Long Beach, where the ship is docked.)
After checking into our stateroom, we spent a great deal of time touring the ship. They have a self guided tour through most of the ship and we hit parts of that. One or our biggest problems was the heat. Out on the deck, where there was a breeze, it wasn't too bad but some of the display areas were wickedly hot.
The public areas of the ship were air conditioned which was a blessing. I took many, many photos, most of which I won't display here. If you want to see more, email me and I'll send you some.
Okay, I'll put up a few. Mostly because the photos of some of the places we visited on the Ghost Tour are pretty bleak and I don't want you to get the wrong idea about the ship. It's absolutely beautiful. It does look a bit worn in places but it's full of antiques and is a floating antique itself so that's to be expected.
This is the main lobby. I took this photo at 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning so I could get it with no people in the picture. There were people on duty at the desk but I was fortunate to get this shot when no one was at the counter.
This next photo is out on the deck on the water side. I thought a photo of lifeboat station 13 was appropriate.
Here's one of the smoke stacks from an upper deck. Note the shuffleboard painted on the deck.
This is the bridge. If anyone has seen the X-Files episode - Triangle - part of that was filmed here on the bridge.
This bar was resplendent with Art Deco pieces. I took quite a few photos here and didn't even buy a drink. No one complained.
This was just a stairway between decks. These gorgeous glass panels were all over the ship and the deep rich color of the wood was quite opulent.
This small shopping area was on the ship. There was a Scottish Heritage store farther back. I had to wonder how these shops managed to make enough money. There just didn't seem to be that many people shopping. I did buy some post cards here.
Later in the evening, we showed up in our best dress clothes at the Sir Winston, the fanciest restaurant on the ship. After waiting in the bar until everyone was gathered (all 26 of us), they took us into a private room in the furthest reaches of the restaurant. It had floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the dock area. Not the best view, at first anyway, but as the dinner wore on, it grew far more interesting. Erika, the psychic who was on Ghost Hunters when they did an investigation on the Queen Mary, came in and introduced herself. While she was talking, telling us about where we would go, what we might see or hear, the gathering clouds that could be seen behind her began to distract us. The lightening flashes and visible bolts were hard not to gasp at. They continued all through dinner. Later on, Erika told us that this type of weather had never occured during one of her ghost tours. She wondered if it would heighten the activity with all the extra energy in the air or have the opposite effect.
While we waited for our dinners to be served, Erika went around and talked to everyone privately. When she got to us, Mary Ann told her that we'd seen her on Ghost Hunters and decided we wanted to come down and take the tour. (We were the only guests who were not local, which surprised me.)
I was glad that Mary Ann mentioned the show because I didn't know if I'd have the nerve. Erika smiled and said, "Well, we'll just have to avoid room B340." We talked some more before she moved on and Mary Ann and I looked at each other. I pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down the room number. I'd forgotten to make note of it before we left and it was something we wanted to check out.
Our room was B414 which was not far from the infamous room.
After dinner, we had a few minutes to go change out of our fancy shoes and clothes (those of us who were staying on the ship anyway). Mary Ann and I skipped dessert. This gave us more time to find room B340. After quickly changing, we did find the room. The number plate was missing from its spot in the hallway but by process of elmination, we knew we had the right one. I heard voices down the hallway so didn't take any photos at that time.
We met back up with the group and started our tour. Along with the 26 of us, there was Erika, Yolanda (another ship employee and guide), two burly security guards and Jack - another psychic.
We headed out at a brisk pace.
This was one of our first stops. The floor here was the original flooring on the ship. You can still see heel marks from ladies high-heel shoes. Erika told us that one of the things people hear at night and complain about is the sound of ladies high-heeled shoes outside there rooms. This spot was one of the few places in the ship that has not been covered with carpet. (The little boy and his mother stayed with us for the whole tour, even though he had his hands over his ears most of the time. His little sister and his dad left us after the boiler room because she was getting too tired and fussy.)
From here, we ventured into places where most guests are not allowed.
The next real stop was one seen in the Ghost Hunters episode. When we walked in, I turned to Mary Ann and said, "Look, it's the sump pump."
Erika talked about how a young man of 18 had died here in 1966 or there abouts.He'd been crushed by the door as it closed. He often played chicken with it and finally lost. Here's a photo of the doorway; I didn't see the door. It looked like it had been removed years earlier. The bored looking woman near the door is Yolanda, the other tour guide.
The pump turned on while we were standing there, making everyone, including me, jump. The young woman with the red hair in the previous photo squealed in surprise.
Here's the pump.
From here we walked further into the bowels of the ship - down, down, down. We passed a large room that was all set up for a wine competition the next day. Another burly security guard was stationed here and watched us closely as we passed. I wanted to ask him if he'd ever seen or heard anything odd, sitting in this room so far down in the ship all alone, all night long. I don't know that I'd want that job.
We came into a large area that had been converted to use as a large meeting hall. It was originally part of the big boiler room. Erika told us that all the boilers had been removed as part of the agreement to turn the ship into a hotel. This left enormous empty spaces in this part of the ship. Not everything was remodeled though as you can see from the next photo. To get to this part of the ship, we had to walk along a wooden catwalk that was raised over the original floor of the boiler room.
Here we stopped. In the next photo, Erika is standing in front of a door that is chained locked. She said they used to visit this part of the ship but that the spirits there were a little too agressive. We did wait here for quite a while. Some of the guests tried using divining rods with little effect. I could tell that Erika expected something to happen (nothing did) but I wasn't disappointed. At that point, I decided that even if we didn't see or hear anything exciting or other-worldly, the tour through these parts of the ship were well worth the money we paid for the evening.
We retraced our steps out of this area on our way to the cargo hold. We had to climb a little ways up and went through an unused area that had obsiously been a 'haunted house' probably at Halloween time. The walls were coated with black 'blown on' styrofoam and there were fake cobwebs,etc.
I thought we had gone down as far as we could but I was wrong. At this point, we truly began to climb down into the ship. We went through areas that were full of stored antiques from the ship. They were all stacked up and covered with dust from years of disuse. We were told not to touch anything and to be extremely careful to watch our steps as the floor was very uneven. We had to step over raised hatch edges or jerryrigged plywood ramps.
The last part of this journey was down 4 sets of metal stairs. It was at this point that we were informed that the doors were locked behind us so that no one else could enter this part of the ship.
The room at the bottom of the stairs was not all that large, and most of it was taken up by a walled off space that covered the openings to the very bottom of the ship. This in effect, created a smaller room inside the bigger one. There was also one area of the bulkhead that had been walled in. On October 2, 1942, the Queen Mary collided with the British light cruiser Curacoa. The damage to this ship was in this area. That spot was also walled off eating up even more of the room.
In this photo, you can see the outer hull of the ship off to the right. On the left is the 'room' over the opening to the absolute bottom of the ship. At the very back, is the walled in area where the damage occured when the two ships collided. Not evident in the photo, is a hallway between the room over the hold opening and the walled in space. Behind me are the stairs we came down. There is also a space identical to this one on the other side of the 'room'. (I know this is rather dull but it is important to understand what happens in this part of the ship.)
As we gathered in the cargo hold and were all looking around the empty room, I thought I heard voices farther back in the compartment. I really wish I had taken more pictures here but I was distracted by the sounds we were hearing. Erika called everyone's attention to the voices but as soon as everyone got quiet, it became one single voice.
I could really kick myself. I have a video function on my digital camera. It takes tiny videos but has a decent built in microphone. Even though there was nothing to take pictures of, I could have captured the sounds we were hearing. And there was plenty to hear.
As I said, when we first came down the stairs, I heard a conversation from behind the 'room' over the noise of all the tour participants. And it wasn't just people talking but there were equipment noises too, like metal objects clanking together. I wasn't the first down the stairs but I could tell that everyone was with us and had stayed in the area right in front of the stairs to listen to Erika.
After everyone settled down, the single voice was about the volume of someone talking to a person standing nearby. Everyone could hear it. Erika asked us all to focus on the sound and she asked him if there was anything he wanted to tell us. The voice was loud enough but not as distict as it could be. Erika mentioned that she thought it was saying, "Please, help me." I thought it sounded more like, "I'm here." Mary Ann said at one point, she heard, "I'm dying." (Mary Ann also describes the voice as more of a croaking noise.)
At first I was completely freaked out and the urge to leave was nearly overwhelming. I even looked back at the stairway then thought, "What kind of Ghost Hunter would I be if I ran off at this point? Calm down and pay attention."
When my heart settled into a slower beat, I could really focus on the voice. Erika kept talking but I couldn't tell you most of what she said. For the most part, the voice seemed to be coming from the left hand side of the 'room' inside the cargo hold. But after a time it definitely moved over to the right side. Mary Ann and I were not standing together at this point. She was closer to Erika and I was nearer the stairs. Erika had her back to the walled in room. Mary Ann said that from her vantage point, she also heard the voice move over to the other side. She even said that she heard footsteps overhead.
The longer it went on, the less afraid I became. It kept repeating but not with a definite rhythm which led me to believe it was not mechanical. We were 40 feet below the waterline so it wasn't coming from outside. The doors were locked so no one had followed us in there.
At one point, the young woman with the red hair brought our attention to a moving, glowing spot on one of the girders above my head. My first thought, which I said out loud as did a couple of others, was, "It a reflection off something." I looked around and noted a camera in the hands of a woman not far from me. She moved it and so did the spot. "It's me," she said.
I mention this only because during this distraction, the voice got softer. Erika said the reason for this was that we had shifted the focus of our thoughts.
After a while, we moved around to the hallway between the 'room' and the walled in bulkhead. Erika talked about the crash with the Curacoa but I must confess I still wasn't really listening. It seemed to me that the voice was coming from behind the wall that was built between the two bulkheads closing off the front of the ship. I put my ear to the wall and, sure enough, the voice was louder. I tried it again a second time and got the same results. (More about this at the end of my little tale - after the last photo.)
Now, if I were a really good ghost hunter, I would have searched for microphones and asked to see the same space on the floor directly above. But, as you can see from the photo, there is very little electrical wiring in this room. Just enough to light it. And the wiring was all placed on the bottom of the girders so they didn't have to drill through each and every one just to put some lights in there.
Before we left, the security guards opened the doors in the little 'room' to show us the very bottom of the ship.
This was only horrifying in a real life, historical way. We were told that prisoners of war were tossed down in this 'hole' with no mattresses or other comforts. (The Queen Mary was used as a troop carrier during WW2.)
We finally had to move on. As Erika said, "What comes down, must climb back up."
We worked out way back up the stairs, through the storage rooms and finally to the pool. I was excited to see this because every time there is a documentary about how haunted this ship is, this pool is highly featured.
We waved at the webcam. You can see it in this photo above the doorway at the top of the picture. Here's the link. You'll probably have to cut and paste it in to your browser window.
http://www.ghostsandlegends.com/gl/index.php?section=ghostcam
I found all the special effects equipment to be distracting. I guess they fill the pool with mist and project stuff on it for one of the other tours. You can see the nozzles around the sides of the pool as well as a large screen TV. We spent quite a bit of time here.
Sorry about the blurry photo but it's the best one I have of the slide and that side of the pool. Many of my photos were taken in the dark or semi-dark. There just wasn't enough light to see anything in the view finder. This next one I took of a completely pitch black space.
This little storeroom is off to the right of the end of the pool in the previous photo. Supposedly, a number of people have had experiences here or gotten photographs of unexplained orbs, etc. I just pointed my camera into the blackness and hit the button. I didn't know what that room looked like until I got the photos downloaded onto my computer.
In the Ghost Hunters investigation of the Queen Mary, Steve spent some time in the dressing rooms. Erika took us in there in two different groups. We stood in the changing stalls while she told us what she was seeing and asking people who were near those areas if they felt anything. Some people reported dizziness or other sensations. Neither Mary Ann nor I experienced anything there.
As we were leaving, I snapped this picture of the two psychics.
By this time, it was past midnight. We left the pool area through a side entrance but here is a photo of the main entrance.
We stood here talking for a short time but everyone was pretty tired and either headed for their cars or off to bed.
I don't know if we had a haunted stateroom but, even though it was still wickedly hot, I was exhausted and slept soundly all night. I woke up early the next morning (6:30 a.m.) and got up to go take some photos of spots I wanted shots of that would have fewer people in them. My first stop was room B340.
When I got back to B340 and since it was so early, I got much bolder. I double checked that there was no one around and walked down to the recessed door. I noticed that the peephole was missing but that the hole it fit in wasn't plugged. I looked through the hole and saw the MADE bed from the episode of Ghost Hunters. I took this picture by putting my camera up to the hole in the door.
Although, it's tipped a bit, you can see the spread tucked in around the pillow at the head of the bed.
The door was a split door, so I tried to take a picture through that gap. This was the result.
You can see a lamp and the top of the headboard.
It wasn't possible to get as much with the camera that I could see with my naked eye which is too bad.
You know, it occurs to me just now, that I should have tried the door but looking at the photo of the door, it's obvious that the knob and lock have been replaced and reinforced. The knob and lock on our room were probably original to the ship. We had honest to gawd heavy metal keys to open our room (not swipe cards like most hotels).
I bet they've had a lot of curiosity about this room considering the new knob and lock. We also noted that the plate that held the room number was missing and wondered if it had been taken as a suvenior. (Mary Ann tells me she tried the door the day before and that is was indeed locked.)
Shortly after this, we left. I have to say, air conditioning or no air conditioning, I had a great time. I'd do it again but not in the summer! They have very small groups on Fridays, only 6 people and you don't have to go to the fancy dinner. Maybe next time, I'll try that.
I couldn't find a good spot for this photo, so I'll just stick it here. (More following the photo.)
Note: after completing this and posting the link for it on a couple of Yahoo groups, Mary Ann was looking around on the internet for ghost stories about the Queen Mary. She found this more detailed explanation about what happened after the Queen Mary collided with the Curacoa:
"With over 11,000 allied troops on board at the time of the collision, the Queen Mary was forbidden to stop and help the poor sailors onboard the Curacoa, and 338 men lost their lives that fateful day in the cold waters of the North Atlantic.
When the Queen Mary was dry-docked to repair her badly torn hull, the body of a sailor was subsequently found inside. He had apparently been catapulted from the deck of the Curacoa into the gaping hole the collision had created in the hull of the Queen Mary, where he died of exposure at some undetermined point later that night. For his sake, one can only hope the hapless sailor expired shortly after the collision took place."
This gave me chills considering that I heard the voice say, "I'm here" and Mary Ann heard it say, "I'm dying" and that, to me, it sounded like it was coming out of that walled off area where the QM had been damaged by the collision.
More information on this can be found on the site I borrowed the quote from.
http://www.pastlifetimes.net/psychic_phone_readings_ghost_story_queen_mary_ghosts.htm
Cut and paste that into your browser.