The Mary Celeste Syndrome

by John Pinkney

  He then conducted research at Oxford University Library. Yellowed documents verified most of ‘Harden’s’ statements about obscure details of academic life. Hoping to learn whether Thomas Harden was a spirit or an undergraduate gremlin, Webster called in the Psychical Research Society.

  Over six months differing teams of experts investigated the case eight times. They were almost equally divided: the sceptics (though they lacked evidence) dismissing Harden as an electronic imposter - and the believers (though they also lacked evidence) calling it the first documented case of a high-technology haunting.

  Spectre Sneaked into a Snapshot

  Reverend Ken Lord, a Yorkshire clergyman, saw nothing unusual when he took six black-and-white photographs inside his small village church.

  Captured by an English clergyman’s camera: a hooded phantasm looming beside the altar.

  But when the prints were developed, one snap showed a ‘phantom monk’ standing beside the altar.

  ‘I can only conclude that the image appeared in the church for a fleeting instant,’ Rev Lord told journalists. ‘Perhaps the camera captured what my eye was too slow to register.’

  The Baffling Biplane of 1913

  Many witnesses, including a BBC sound crew, claim they have seen the image of a 1913-vintage Royal Flying Corps biplane over southern England.

  A brush with the craft and its spectral pilot was described by the World War II Spitfire hero Sir Peter Masefield. ‘I was travelling from Dalcross to Shoreham,’ he told Granada Television. ‘My route brought me close to the abandoned airfield at Montrose. Without warning another aircraft appeared in front of me. It was a biplane of the type used before World War I.

  ‘It flew close enough for me to see the pilot, who was wearing goggles, a leather helmet and an old-fashioned flying scarf. As I watched, the biplane’s upper wing snapped off. The aircraft spun out of control and crashed on the old airfield. I radioed for help then landed on a golf course adjoining the base. I asked golfers to come to the pilot’s aid. We ran to the site of the crash, but quite astonishingly nothing was there.’

  Later that day the knight learned that he had been watching the re-enactment of a tragedy that occurred on 27 May 1913. The pilot he had seen plunge to his doom was Lieutenant Desmond Arthur, whose biplane had disintegrated at 800 metres, then crash-landed before hundreds of witnesses. The date on which Sir Peter witnessed the ‘replay’ was 27 May 1963: exactly 50 years after the young pilot’s death.

  Annually a British biplane pilot re-enacts his dying moments - then ‘vanishes like a blown-out candle’.

  Lt Arthur’s fellow-airmen at the time were in no doubt about the accident’s cause: the base’s slack maintenance procedures, about which they had been complaining for months. But an official inquiry found that Arthur had been killed by his own ‘incompetence’.

  Shortly after the verdict the hauntings began, with numerous witnesses saying they had seen the dead pilot prowling the airbase - and, when spoken to, vanishing like a blown-out candle. One pilot requested a transfer after seeing the long-dead pilot sitting at the controls of his parked plane.

  Officially Recognised

  During the 1930s, for reasons no one understood, the haunting intensified. Newspapers published reports of a phantom biplane flying over the base and breaking up in mid-air.

  In a booklet issued to recruits in 1949 the RAF admitted that the ghostly plane and its pilot existed. A wing commander told journalists that everyone at the base took the haunting very seriously. ‘It’s a tradition here to take special care on May 27,’ he said. That’s the anniversary of the young fellow’s death - and the time when his tragedy is most likely to be re-enacted.’

  Footage ‘Proves’ that Phantoms Exist

  In October 2003 closed circuit security cameras at Hampton Court Palace captured clear images of a hooded, glowing entity bursting through a door [see photo section].

  After studying the film, Hertford University’s Dr Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and expert on hauntings, said, ‘If this is a ghost it’s one of the best images ever. What’s good about it is that it’s not ambiguous…it’s clearly a solid figure, not blurry and not a reflection. Also, it’s doing something that has an effect on the real world: interacting with a door.’

  Hampton Court Palace, where a glowing spectre was captured on security tape.

  The Palace, the immense Tudor pile outside London, is the former royal home of murderous Henry VIII. It has been regarded for generations as Britain’s most haunted building. Over the years visitors have reported encountering a panoply of the king’s victims in the brooding corridors - the commonest being his executed wife Catherine Howard, who has been described as roaming the premises weeping.

  But in the opinion of many observers the TV footage offers solid proof for the first time that discarnate entities exist and move about in the everyday world.

  Security guards made the discovery while checking who it was that kept leaving open one of the Palace’s fire doors. Guard James Faulkes said, ‘When we found this astonishing sequence we were all sure at first that it was some kind of joke. But then we looked more closely at this man in a robe-like garment moving from the shadows and reaching for the door handle - and we realised he wasn’t entirely human. His face appears unnaturally white and his edges shimmer. We spoke to our costumed guides, but none of them owns outfits anything like that - it’s very unnerving.’

  Dr Wiseman, known for his relentless demands for hard evidence in paranormal cases, said, ‘I don’t know of any other footage that has so many evidentially positive attributes. But the main thing is that this is a moving film - and moving film is much, much harder to fake.’

  * * *

  Did Amelia Die, or

  Did the Government Lie?

  Pilot Puzzle

  * * *

  According to the history books, courageous American pilot Amelia Earhart vanished in July 1937 while trying to circumnavigate the world in a Lockheed Electra aircraft. Eighteen months after her disappearance the US Government declared her dead. But in the 70 years since the purported tragedy, scores of people have come forward to suggest that neither Amelia, nor her navigator Fred Noonan, perished at all. The adventurers’ fate, say these witnesses, was part of the biggest official cover-up in American history…

  IN NOVEMBER 2006 Robert Wallack, an 81-year-old American war veteran, gave a long self-revelatory interview to his local newspaper. In it he disclosed details of an incident that had troubled him for most of his life.

  Wallack asserted that while serving as a young marine on the Pacific island of Saipan during World War II he stumbled upon startling evidence that the renowned pilot Amelia Earhart had not plunged to her doom in the ocean in 1937 - but had remained alive for years afterward. The clues were packed into a briefcase the marine found in a safe lying in a shattered building deserted by the retreating Japanese. The case’s contents comprised hundreds of documents and letters addressed to Amelia, most of which postdated her presumed death. Among the documents were maps, routes and a passport ‘as dry as a bone’. Wallack, nervously realising that he had retrieved material of national importance, handed the briefcase to a senior officer, who warned him to say nothing to anyone. He never saw the memento of Amelia Earhart again.

  Robert Wallack’s story tallies with the testimonies of numerous other witnesses who have described a mysterious wall of official secrecy and deception surrounding Amelia Earhart’s fate.

  Perhaps the most detailed of these accounts comes from ex-marine Erskin Nabers, who served as a wireless operator on Saipan. On 9 June 1944 he routinely decoded a message from the headquarters of the Pacific Fleet under Admiral Chester Nimitz. Its contents shocked him. The sentence he most vividly remembers read, ‘We have found Amelia Earhart’s plane at Aslito Airfield.’

  Nabers further recalls that when his superior Colonel Wallace M. Greene signed off on the report, ‘he didn’t seem surprised’.

  There was more to come. Sever
al days later Nabers received orders to go to the airfield and guard the Lockheed Electra. When the shift was over he was told to help two fellow-marines roll the aircraft to the end of a runway. They then watched bewildered as a group of low-flying fighter-bombers deliberately destroyed the Lockheed.

  What did all this mean? The unwilling witnesses could not even begin to speculate. All they knew was that Amelia Earhart, the long-lost pilot, was a national heroine. And if this was indeed her plane it should be in a place of honour in a national museum - not a tangle of blackened metal on a remote island.

  * * *

  FOR SOMEONE WHOSE ‘DEATH’ would be discussed and disputed for decades, Amelia Earhart’s life began unremarkably. Born in Kansas, the daughter of a lawyer, she attended expensive private schools before serving as a military nurse, then enrolling at Columbia University’s medical faculty.

  But her ideas about a career changed radically on the day she accompanied her father to a stunt-flying exhibition in Long Beach, California. The spectacle of flimsy biplanes performing what to her were extraordinary feats inspired her to enrol next day for flying lessons. She proved so proficient a pupil that within six months she was able to buy her own yellow Kinner Airster biplane, which she named Canary, On 22 October 1922 she flew to an altitude of 14,000 feet, setting a world record for female pilots.

  Pilot Amela Earhart: did she perish - or remain elusively alive?

  Amelia’s daring, combined with her exceptional beauty, quickly made her a celebrity in the United States. Following Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, a business consortium offered her the chance to become the first woman to make the perilous trip. The Fokker F-7 - with the relatively inexperienced Amelia travelling as a mere passenger - left Newfoundland on 17 June 1928, landing in Wales 21 hours later. When the crew returned to New York they were greeted by a ticker-tape parade. Passenger Amelia Earhart was the star. Detractors complained that her looks were the only reason - but her solo feats would soon prove them wrong.

  Publisher George Putnam was quick to cash in on Amelia’s popularity - contracting her to write a book and endorse such products as luggage, pyjamas and cigarettes. (The fact that she was a non-smoker troubled no one.)

  To her credit Amelia proved to be more than a mere creation of the nascent public relations industry. In 1929 she flew third in a women’s air race - and two years later set a literally breathtaking world altitude record of 18,415 feet in a Pitcairn autogyro.

  Unable to resist Amelia’s glamour and audacity, George Putnam proposed - and despite reservations on her part they were married on 7 February 1931. Biographer Susan Butler suggested that the real love of Amelia’s life was Army Air Corps pilot Gene Vidal, who would become the father of writer Gore Vidal. Her attitude to the union with the devoted Putnam was arguably revealed when she called it ‘a partnership’ with ‘dual control’. In a wedding eve letter to her future husband she wrote, ‘I want you to understand that I will not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me - nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.’

  Marriage made no difference to Amelia’s continuing embrace of danger. In 1932, age 34, she became the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic - receiving the Congressional DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) for her effort. She also set several speed records - and in 1937 made her first - failed - attempt to circumnavigate the earth.

  Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan chose Oakland, California, as their starting point for a second attempt at the record. Their aircraft was a Lockheed Electra, financed by an assortment of universities and commercial organisations. The partners announced that they would travel by the long 47,000-kilometre equatorial route. Many observers doubted that Amelia was sufficiently skilled to make such a difficult trip. But she quietly dismissed such objections. She had amassed world records and honours enough to armour her with bravado - perhaps too much of it.

  On 20 May 1937 Amelia Earhart set out on her journey into the unknown.

  An Exhausting Odyssey

  Over the subsequent six weeks Amelia and Fred dominated headlines as they crossed South America, the Atlantic, Africa, India, Burma, Thailand and the then-Dutch East Indies - finally arriving in Lae, New Guinea. Here, their energy drained by what editors were already dubbing the longest aeroplane journey in history, they tried to rest, in preparation for the final, most dangerous leg of the flight.

  Amelia knew, as her Lockheed rose above the New Guinea jungle, that the next task, roughly 5600 kilometres ahead would be exceedingly hard to complete. To refuel, she would have to land on Howland Island, a tiny rock-speck in the ocean. She had been warned that even on the calmest days, this Lilliputian land-mote was almost impossible to see.

  Happily the US Coastguard was on-hand to help. The USS Itasca stood off the miniature island’s coast, prepared to offer radio guidance. But the prospect of easy communication was slim from the start. Radar would not be in use until World War II - and the Lockheed’s only link with the helpers was a battery-powered radio transmitter. Amelia and Fred were at two further disadvantages: neither had learned Morse Code, and the island they were seeking, barely visible in the finest weather, was obscured from view by heavy clouds.

  What followed on that morning of 2 July was a black farce of misunderstandings and crossed or missed messages between ship and plane. Amelia radioed several times that she was off course, but the Itasca could not get a bearing on which side of the island she might be. In her final message Amelia announced that she was changing her signals to 6210 kilocycles. The ship’s operator desperately radioed back that he could not reach her on that frequency. Assuming that her skimpy knowledge of emergency protocols had led her into error he tried numerous other frequencies - but with no result.

  The US Navy spent two weeks and $4 million searching for the Lockheed over a vast area of island-speckled ocean. The searchers’ principal assumption was that the plane, its fuel exhausted, would have plunged into the ocean. But no trace of wreckage or of the two adventurers was found. Neither was there any evidence that the Lockheed had come down on land. That, at least, was the American Government’s story - a narrative that was widely accepted for eight years and more. But then, after World War II ended, new and occasionally persuasive alternative scenarios began to emerge.

  The Many Fates of Amelia Earhart

  A consistent conjecture, the subject of several books, was that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had secretly appointed Amelia to spy on Japanese territories in the Pacific, whereupon she and Noonan crashed, were captured and executed. This theory gained such currency that it became the theme of a movie, Flight for Freedom, starring Fred MacMurray and Rosalind Russell.

  Like a Chinese whisper resonating around the globe, the rumour fed on itself, with the film providing a principal source of belief for millions. But there was also external evidence which suggested the spy theory might have some basis in fact. Amelia’s supposed ‘great love’, the pioneering pilot Gene Vidal, was a favourite of Roosevelt’s, who appointed him to a high position in his administration. The press had occasionally run pictures of Amelia’s own social meetings with the president. Also widely reported was a statement from an American ‘radio ham’ who said that in July 1937, at age 15, he had briefly picked up a distorted message from a woman, claiming to be Amelia Earhart, saying her plane had crashed and that she needed help. The woman then screamed that Japanese soldiers had entered the cabin - after which the transmission went dead. This hectically coloured and coincidence-crammed account created considerable disbelief.

  But in a book published in 1966 CBS reporter Fred Goerning published a rather more convincing variation on the story. He interviewed more than 200 islanders who claimed to have seen Amelia Earhart, and her plane, on Saipan during the Japanese occupation. Most witnesses believed the Japanese had questioned her for several months before killing her.

  In 1987 the American journalist Buddy Brennan interviewed an elderly Saipanese woman who said she
had seen the imprisoned fliers. Cabrera Blas said that after a forced landing on the island, Amelia and Fred were captured as spies, marched into town and jailed. They were held in the prison for several weeks, after which the woman was blindfolded, placed on a motorbike, driven out of town, executed, and buried in an unmarked grave. The Hearst newspaper chain reacted to this claim by despatching Thomas McCown, a Berkeley anthropologist and forensic expert, to the island, where a skeleton had been dug from a seafront grave. Were these the remains of Amelia Earhart? They were not.

  One of the US veterans who had served on Saipan actually identified the alleged executioner. Thomas E. Devine was a member of an army postal unit on the island. In a book, Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident, he includes a letter from a Japanese woman, Suzuki, claiming she is the daughter of the soldier who obeyed an order to kill the captive Amelia Earhart. After the Allied victory he became a chief of police in Japan.

  In 1992 an American supermarket scandal sheet alleged that it had ‘sprung’ the 95-year-old Amelia living in geriatric luxury in the South Pacific. This report was a variation on a rival paper’s earlier claim (1989) that Amelia and Fred had been secretly repatriated to the United States and were now living, within walking-frame distance of each other, in Boston.

  Many similar fantasies have been published as fact. But the only alleged events which seem worthy of serious study are those which involve Amelia’s briefcase and the people who say they saw her, with Fred Noonan, and their plane, on Saipan.

  For understandable reasons of national security, the US Government is secretive about many matters. But its 70-year silence in the face of overwhelming testimony from its own war veterans, its own media and the people of Saipan is difficult to understand.