Aviation ghost stories

[Bus429]

Just read an excellent book of aviation ghost stories compiled by the late Jack Currie. Particularly spooky was the story of a Halifax, on approach to a field after a mission, observed to go-around after an apparently perfect approach. The aircraft landed safely on the second attempt but the crew refused to talk about it.
Word eventually got out. Apparently, just short of the threshold (it was a cloudy, dark morning) they entered bright sunlight and below them saw a suburban street containing houses, kids, cars, the lot. Obviously, they had to go around but on the second approach all was normal and they landed safely.
Thirty years later, the pilot, now a senior manager with a manufacturing company, drove past the site of the now redeveloped airfield and.....
It was a housing estate.

[Airbubba]

Here's a famous ghost story from South Florida:

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from http://planecrashinfo.com/unusual.htm :

The crew was preoccupied with a landing gear problem and was trying to replace the landing gear light while on autopilot and in a holding pattern. As the captain got up to help, he inadvertently pushed on the yoke releasing the autopilot. With no ground reference and under nighttime conditions, the aircraft gradually descended until it crashed into Everglades, 18.7 miles west-northwest of Miami . The accident was caused by the failure of the crew to monitor the flight instruments during the final 4 minutes of flight, and to detect a descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground.
After spare parts from the L-1011 were used on other planes, apparitions of the dead captain and flight engineer began to be reported by Eastern employees on the planes using the spare parts. The book and movie "Ghost of Flight 401" is based on this accident.

[pigboat]

Airbubba, I read the book, and a lot of people seem to be convinced that something unusual was happening on some flights after 401 went down. Think it was a hoax, or what? A good friend used to work for Eastern at YUL, and he was a believer to his dying day.

[Genghis the Engineer]

I used to run a hangar with a ghost.

Working on your own there were often footsteps, sounds of doors opening and closing, etc.

Several times this happened when we were doing some severely "secret squirrel" work and the place was surrounded by cameras and motion detectors (and once when we had flooded the place with an unbreathable atmosphere and everybody was wearing oxygen masks).

No idea of the ancestry of our spook, the hangar had a long and interesting history, as did (does) the airfield, but there were no deaths in the hangar in working memory.

G

[PA38]

I once used an aircraft which was kept on the north side of Liverpool, and at night in the dark that was SPOOKY.
There is somthing about old aircraft hangers and the dark!!!!
Not to mention that is where Captain Black was killed, and he is said to haunt the very same hanger.
I only found out later......

[mach78]

Old airport at Liverpool is well known for its ghosts.

[AeroBoero]

Bus ;
Can you give me the Tittle/ISBN?
I have home one from MArtin Caidin - "Ghosts of the Air". Got some pretty chilling stories too. A good book in general.
Why is that ghosts only hang out in the UK?Is there a sort of "pub" for ghosts?


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[X-QUORK]

I vaguely remember a book that my father was asked to proof read, it was called "The Shepherd" and was the tale of a Vampire( the a/c not Dracula ) pilot that got lost in some doggers weather at night. Can't remember exactly how the story went, but it was something like a ghostly Spitfire that shepherded him through the weather to an old aerodrome. The Vampire lands safely and spends the night in a musty old mess before leaving the next day - yes you guessed it, the place had been abandoned years before and he'd witnessed something VERY strange.

Come to think of it, sounds a bit like Wattisham....

[The Guvnor]

Frederick Forsyth also wrote a book of aviation ghost stories - can't remember its name, though.

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:) Happiness is a warm L1011 :)

[PilotsPal]

X-QUORK

Wasn't The Shepherd the title of a collection of short stories by Frederick Forsythe published maybe 15/20 years ago? I remember reading it quite some time ago and I'm sure it was the same one.

[mik]

"The Shepherd" by Frederick Forsyth is the story of a flight from Germany to England undertaken by a young Vampire pilot one Christmas Eve.

Over the North Sea, his radios and compass fail. Running out of fuel, the pilot desperately flies triangles in the hope that a radar station will spot him and send an aeroplane to help him. The aeroplane that arrives to guide him to safety isn't quite what the young pilot expected... (and it isn't a Spitfire, BTW)

One of my favourite aviation stories.

[AeroBoero]

One of the stories in the book I have talks about a group of 12 DB-7 Boston (or Havoc) that were ordered a bomb raid over German defences. The air marshal heard the engines of the planes coming back and ordered to have the crew report to him and went to wait them in the office.He heard the planes land. Cut engines and the vehicles arriving in operation. The men opened the door and close. He talks to them....only three crews....tell them to write the report and sign and relieve them of duty - by suggesting a drink - and they went out the room.
After a while the aide (books term) of the marshal entered the office and tried to tell him of the losses and the marshal says he know all...three back , nine lost. The aide says that is not correct. They lost all the bombers....the marshal tought of a joke and showed the signed reports.....the aide didn't believe...but all the planes were lost on mission...no one survived.....but the reports were made....
Don't have any dates , know was early in the War , but it was(is) a hell of story!

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[This message has been edited by AeroBoero (edited 15 September 2000).]

[Fen Tiger]

The airport which I used to work at some year's back apparently had numerous ghosts which by legend haunted the airfield. In my time there I never actually saw anything but there were certain areas which I felt uncomfortable in even in the middle of summer in the daylight.

The marshals claimed to have seen things on occasions and one of my contractors saw a fireman in old style uniform one evening near the fire station.

The experience of working there is one I won't forget.

[Fen Tiger]

[This message has been edited by Fen Tiger (edited 15 September 2000).]

[Skycop]

The ATC tower at RAF Linton-on-Ouse had an "atmosphere" that many people including myself had noticed.

Sometime after I left the station (late 70's) a "presence" was scaring some particular members of the ATC staff. A medium was brought in and he was supposed to have made contact with the spirit of an airman (not a flyer) who had been killed some years before, near the tower. The station records were searched and it was discovered that an airman had been killed by a heavy vehicle as he crossed the peri-track. I remember a TV documentary recalling the tale.

Oo-er!

[Skytrucker87]

I was under the impression that the story of the vampire was written by Richard Bach - perhaps I'm wrong. I occasionally am.

[Skytrucker87]

Yep I was wrong abject apologies !

The Shepherd [UNABRIDGED]
by Frederick Forsyth. Audio Cassette (April 1993)


(Available from Amazon)

[Idle Power]

Skycop, I remember the TV programme about RAF Linton on Ouse - it was quite a few years ago though. I think the guy that got killed was crushed by a fuel bowser in the 40s or 50s. Isn't England spooky!

[Vmike]

I picked up a book at a boot fair a whilwe ago called 'The Airmen Who Would Not Die' by John G Fuller, the same guy who wrote 'The Ghost of Flight 401'.

It's all about the ghost of a First World War pilot, one John Hinchcliffe, who disappeared over the stormy Atlantic one dark night in 1928. A few years later, he appeared in a seance to warn the crew of the newly-completed airship R101 not to take off for India because of undiagnosed structural weaknesses.

They delayed the take-off for a while, but then went anyway - and crashed into a hill in France, killing all but six of the fifty-four people on board.

Spooky.

[Flypuppy]

Fredrick Forsyth compiled a selection of short stories into a book titled "Great Flying Stories"
http://www.whirlnet.demon.co.uk/forsyth/flying.jpg
It includes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Roald Dahl, Len Deighton, Edgar Allan Poe and H. G. Wells. It also includes his own classic flying story, The Shepherd. The styles used include science fiction, horror and detective fiction.

The Shepherd's aircraft was a Mosquito, btw.

[AeroBoero]

And what about that jetliner years back in MIA (if I'm not wrong)that dissapeared from radar for 10 minutes or so....and then reapeard? Anyone knows more about this?
(And before anyone say....I'm not a X-files fan/watcher :) :) )

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[mustafagander]

Vmike,
The man you refer to is, IMHO,Captain Walter George Raymond HINCHLIFFE DFC, born 10 June 1894 died 14 March 1928 enroute Cranwell - New York.
At the time of his death he had logged over 8000hrs, more than any other pilot at that time.
I have a bound set of his log books - interesting reading for those of us interested in early airline ops especially KNILM (KLM's predecessor) and various British companys.
I've also read "The Airman Who Would Not Die". Eerie for me, given my friendship with the Hinchliffe family.