by Joseph Exton
As emergency service workers were searching the area for survivors, they were approached by a smartly dressed man wearing a dark hat who asked if anyone had seen his briefcase?
He wandered off into the darkness before anyone could ask who he was, but rescuers were certain that one of the bodies they recovered from the wreck was the man who had spoken to them. Except that his massive injuries made it certain that he must have died at the moment of impact and could not possibly have been walking around afterwards.
The same figure has been seen a number of times, either wandering close to the runway or in one of Heathrow’s terminals. On occasion he has been seen sitting in one of the VIP lounges, but he disappears if approached.
However, in 1970, staff in the control tower called in Police and security personnel when they spotted a smartly dressed man wearing a dark hat wandering aimlessly on one of the active runways. Police and security staff arrived quickly but could see no sign of the man, despite the fact that incredulous staff in the control tower could still see him, and could see that he was right beside the oblivious officers!
Tenerife North Airport in the Canary Islands was the scene of the worst ever air disaster in March 1977 when a KLM Boeing 747 which was attempting to take off collided with a Pan-American 747 which was taxiing. All five hundred and eighty-three people on board the two aircraft died.
A number of sober and seemingly sincere pilots have reported delaying their take-off from this airport because, despite the fact that they are cleared for take-off, they have seen what appears to be a large crowd of people on the runway, waving their hands as if to warn of danger. In each case, the figures have simply disappeared after a few moments and the aircraft have been able to take-off normally.
And it isn’t just airports that can be haunted, even aircraft sometimes seem to attract ghosts. The stories surrounding one particular Airbus A320 aircraft operated by Belgian airline Constellation International Airlines were so prevalent that the aircraft became known as the Scarebus and some crew members became very reluctant to travel on it.
The problems started when a flight attendant suddenly became ill while performing pre-flight checks on this aircraft. A replacement was found and she was released from duty but, tragically, the woman was killed in a road accident on her way home. Several crew members have reported hearing her scream for help on the aircraft and flight attendants working alone in the rear galley have reported hearing her whisper into their ears.
However, the strangest on-board encounter was reported by a Virgin Atlantic flight attendant on a flight from America to the UK. The flight attendant was working alone in the forward galley, near the stairs on a Boeing 747 aircraft when she was suddenly interrupted by an agitated elderly male passenger.
He insisted that the attendant must pass on a message to another passenger (he specified the seat in which she was sitting). The message consisted of nothing more than a string of numbers which the man insisted the flight attendant write down so she would remember them accurately.
The attendant sought out the female passenger and passed on the message. The passenger looked stunned and produced a photograph from her handbag. Was that the man? The flight attendant agreed that it was.
The passenger told her that the man was dead and that his body was being transported back to the UK in a coffin in the cargo hold of the aircraft. And that a major problem with sorting out the man’s affairs was that no-one knew the number of the bank account in which most of his savings had been deposited...
Chapter 2:
Haunted Hotels
Hotels are a place where you want to be able to relax and take it easy. They certainly aren’t the kind of places where you expect to encounter the supernatural. So, it’s a little worrying to discover that so many hotels around the world have dead as well as living guests...
The Stanley Hotel, Colorado
The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado has the unusual distinction that it not only terrified horror writer Stephen King, it also inspired him to write one of his most popular novels.
King and his wife Tabitha stayed at the hotel in late September 1974. They were the only guests as the hotel was shutting for the winter the next day. That night, King had a nightmare in which his three-year old son was being chased through the corridors of the hotel by a strange entity. He woke up and jotted down some notes which would later become the plot for The Shining.
The Stanley Hotel
Photo: Miguel Vieira
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stanley_Hotel,_Estes_Park.jpg
However, not all guests at the Stanley have been able to convert their unease into a best-selling novel and this is known as one of the most haunted hotels in America.
The Stanley was completed in 1909 and was one of the first hotels in this part of America to have electric lights – the hotel had its own hydro-electric plant to supply electricity to its 140 guest rooms. The hotel immediately proved popular, but several of the guest rooms have a reputation for being haunted.
Room 428 is haunted by the ghost of a man in Cowboy dress. One couple awoke to find the ghost pacing back and forth at the end of their bed, but he left when they asked him to go. Female guests have reported waking to find the Cowboy leaning over them, seemingly about to place a kiss on their heads.
Room 418 is said to be haunted by young children who can be heard giggling, talking and running by guests who stay in this room. Room 418 is also known as a room where there are indentations in the bed, as if someone has been lying on it, even when there has been no-one in the room. Some guests have also reported bed covers being pulled off the bed in this room and the bathroom light switching itself on and off.
Nearby Room 401 is also said to be haunted, though this time by the person who sold the land on which the Stanley Hotel was built. Thomas Wyndham-Quin, the Fourth Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl was never a guest in the hotel when he was alive but a shadowy figure has been seen in this room on several occasions which is presumed to be him due to the presence being accompanied by the smell of the pipe tobacco he was so fond of.
This ghost is said to be particularly welcoming to women guests, who often feel an arm around their shoulder or their hair being stroked. Male guests on the other hand seem to be less welcome and often complain of an oppressive atmosphere in this room.
The Concert Hall at the hotel is also said to be haunted. Sometimes, the sound of someone playing the piano can be heard when the hall is empty. This is claimed to be the ghost of Flora Stanley, wife of the man who originally had the hotel built, who enjoyed picking out tunes on one of the pianos in the Concert Hall.
The ghost of a young girl named “Lucy” is also often seen in the Concert Hall and is believed to be responsible for lights being switched on and off and the sound of melodic humming.
However, the most haunted room in the Stanley Hotel is said to be Room 217, the room in which Stephen King spent the night in 1974. This room has been the location for a number of odd happenings including items being moved around the room, lights turning off and on and even luggage being carefully unpacked and placed on the bed.
The paranormal events reported in this room are often linked to an explosion which happened here on June 25th, 1911. However, there is more than a little confusion about precisely what did happen.
On June 26th, the Denver Times and the Denver Post reported that a maid named Elizabeth Lambert was killed when she inadvertently ignited leaking gas in room 217. The Fort Collins Weekly Courier agreed that the maid was killed, but confidently named her as Lizzie Leitenbergher.
However, the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Rocky Mountain reported the same story by noting that the maid was named Elizabeth Wilson and that she survived the explosion but suffered two broken ankles. All we can be certain of is that something happened in Room 217 in 1911 and that this Room now seems to be the focus of a number of paranormal events.
The Stanley Hotel was one of the fir
st to recognise that having haunted rooms doesn’t discourage guests from visiting a hotel. In fact, quite the reverse. The Stanley Hotel organised Ghost Tours, taking guests to the most haunted parts of the hotel and explaining its history and welcomed investigators from a number of popular ghost hunting television shows including Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures.
The result? People flocked to stay at this historic hotel and often insisted on staying in some of the reputedly most haunted rooms.
Castle Stuart, Scotland
Castle Stuart is sited on the coast of the Moray Firth just a few miles east of the City of Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland. Despite its name, it isn’t really a castle – it’s a Tower House, a common form of fortified house from the 15th and 16th Centuries.
Castle Stuart was built around 1625 and was the home of the Earls of Moray. When a new young Earl inherited the title during the late 1600s, he decided to move to Castle Stuart from his home in London, bringing his retinue of servants with him.
Castle Stuart
Photo: Dave Conner
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Stuart.jpg
We don’t know precisely what happened to the young Earl, but we do know that he stayed at the castle for less than a week and swore never to return. There were rumours of screams in the night, footsteps shuffling along empty corridors and even a sighting of a headless man!
The Earl left the castle in charge of the local factor and suggested that it might be rented out. Several people agreed to rent the imposing castle, but none were able to stay for more than a few days. The problems were always the same: doors opening and closing on their own, footsteps and screams. After this time, the castle was maintained by a team of gardeners and house staff, but none lived on the premises. The East Tower was sealed off from the rest of the castle and allowed to become semi-derelict.
Then, in 1798, a terrible storm ravaged the Moray Firth, tearing the roof off the East Tower of the castle. Workmen called in to repair the damage reported that they had found a secret room within the derelict tower. When they broke into this room, the air was filled with a terrible shrieking and a foul blast of air rushed from the tiny room. The workmen fled and the room was once again closed up and the castle left as a ruin…
In 1977 the castle was purchased by descendents of the original owners who had it restored for use as a luxury hotel with an adjacent golf course. During the restoration several rooms and staircases which had been walled-off and uncovered were rediscovered. The room at the top of the East Tower was restored as the most luxurious bedroom in the hotel with its three distinctive turrets. However, from the very start of its new incarnation as a hotel, Castle Stuart was plagued with stories of strange events.
Lights and other electrical items would switch themselves on and off. Doors would slowly open or suddenly close for no apparent reason. Footsteps would be heard moving along the stone flagged corridors when no-one was there and more than one guest awoke to find a shadowy figure standing beside the bed which would disappear when the light was switched on.
Despite this (or perhaps because of it!) the castle became a popular hotel and even began to challenge guests to spend a night in one of the more haunted rooms. The bedroom at the top of the East Tower seems to have been a particular focus for paranormal events and the hotel’s own website provided the following information for potential guests:
“The Three-Turret Haunted Bedroom at the top of the East Tower is the room where, a long time ago, when the Earl of Moray was looking for someone to spend the night at Castle Stuart to prove to everyone that it was not haunted – he asked the minister at Petty Church to offer a £20 reward. The local poacher, known as Big Angus, was neither afraid of man nor beast and he’s recorded to have spent the night in this room. The next morning, unfortunately they found his body in the courtyard, dead, with a look of horror frozen on his face...”
Castle Stuart is currently closed for another extensive renovation project, but it is expected to re-open soon to offer guests luxury haunted accommodation.
The Hotel Savoy, Mussorie, India
The small town of Mussorie in Uttarakhand state in northern India remained relatively unknown until 1900 when a railway line was built to nearby Dehradun. This area, high in the mountains and overlooking the Himalayas to the north, had always been popular with the British colonial rulers in India as it offered respite from the stifling heat of the plains.
With the coming of the railway, Mussorie was transformed into one of the most popular holiday locations in India and quickly became known as "the pleasure capital of the Raj".
The luxurious Hotel Savoy was opened in Mussorie in 1902 and became the place to be seen. Providing 50 rooms in a wooden building featuring English Gothic architecture, the Savoy was located on a hilltop overlooking the town and offered guests the Imperial Dining Room and the splendour of the ornate ballroom.
Emperors, Kings, queens, princes and Maharajas stayed at the hotel and, until 1911, it was known mainly as the centre of social life in the area. However, in 1911, the first of a series of mysterious deaths took place at the hotel and it began to acquire the sinister reputation that it has today…
In 1911, a British woman, Frances Garnett-Orme, arrived to stay in the hotel. Garnett-Orme was a 49 year old spiritualist who believed that she was able to contact the spirits of the recently dead. She travelled to the hotel with her companion, another British spiritualist from Lucknow, Eva Mountstephen.
The two women held a number of séances at the hotel before, in the early summer, Eva Mountstephen travelled back to Lucknow on business. While she was away, the body of Frances Garnett-Orme was discovered in her bedroom at the Savoy. The room was locked from the inside and an autopsy discovered that she had been poisoned with prussic acid. Initially, suicide was considered most likely, but, sensationally, Eva Mountstephen was arrested and charged with her murder.
In the event, the prosecution was unable to provide any evidence to support the notion that Eva Mountstephen had somehow administered the poison to Garnett-Orme even though she wasn’t in the hotel at the time, and the case was dropped. No-one else was ever charged with the murder of Frances Garnett-Orme and the case became briefly well known, especially amongst the British community in India.
The famous writer and poet Rudyard Kipling was a frequent guest at the Savoy and he became fascinated by this case. He even wrote to his friend Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes and an ardent spiritualist) and suggested that he might be interested in investigating the case? Doyle didn’t have the time, but he did mention the story to a young acquaintance of his, a woman who was looking for a story she could use to write a first novel.
She became intrigued and wrote a best-selling novel inspired by events at the Hotel Savoy – she was Agatha Christie and the novel was The Mysterious Affair at Styles where she also introduced one of her most famous creations, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (the story is transplanted to England for the novel, but the architecture of Styles Court is clearly inspired by the Hotel Savoy).
However, the death of Frances Garnett-Orme wasn’t the last mysterious demise associated with the Savoy. Soon after, the doctor who had performed the autopsy on her body was found dead of strychnine poisoning in another locked room in the hotel – the case was never solved.
In 1951 a hotel employee was found hanged in one of the guest rooms. The case was adjudged to be a suicide though the young man was newly married, seemed happy and had no obvious reason to kill himself.
In 1956 another employee was found hanged in another vacant guest room. Once again this was adjudged to be a suicide, though the young woman was also newly married and had no obvious reason to kill herself.
With such a history of murder and unexplained deaths, it’s not surprising to find that the Hotel Savoy has a reputation for being haunted. Several hotel guests and a number of members of staff have reported seeing the figure of a woman in white in
the gothic corridors, on the grand staircase and even on the hotel roof. Those who have seen the apparition at close hand say that she seems lost and confused, leading some people to suppose that this is the ghost of Frances Garnett-Orme and that she is still looking for the person who murdered her more than one hundred years ago.
A team of Ghost Hunters recently spent time at the Hotel Savoy and recorded an EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) which seemed to include the voice of a woman whispering and singing softly.
Other ghostly happenings at the Hotel Savoy include the sound of footsteps walking along the hotel’s empty wooden corridors, doors opening and closing of their own accord and the sound of music heard from outside locked and vacant guest rooms. This hotel is now recognized as one of the most haunted places in India and many guests come to the gothic splendor of the Hotel Savoy in the hope that they will encounter one of the hotel’s ghosts.
In a bizarre coincidence, less than ten years before construction work began at the Hotel Savoy in Mussorie, India, a Savoy Hotel was also being constructed in Missouri in the USA.
Even more strangely, the Savoy Hotel in Kansas City Missouri was also the scene of several mysterious and unexplained deaths and is also said to be haunted by the ghosts of these events...
Chapter 3:
Haunted Bars
Bars and pubs are places where we go to enjoy the company of friends in convivial surroundings. However, given the number of bars around the world which are haunted, it seems that it’s not just the living who are attracted to these places and it’s not just behind the bar that you will find spirits!
The White Hart Inn, Edinburgh
Photo: Nicholas Mutton
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_White_Hart_Inn,_Grassmarket_-_geograph.org.uk_-_973303.jpg