Apparitions

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Story 1.

Ghosts of Flight 401

During previous episodes, we have explored several tales involving vehicles which have become closely associated with the paranormal.

In this story, we will finally be adding an aircraft to the list of allegedly haunted transports as we retell the tale of the ghosts of Flight 401.

With the rain hammering against the windows of the cramped cabin, the mood was tense amongst the passengers on the plane.

All were keen to escape the miserable winter conditions Albany was being subjected to, eager to begin the four-hour flight to the warmer climes of Miami.

But so far, there had been no indication that their journey would be commencing any time soon, with a refuelling issue already delaying their departure by over an hour.

The stewardess began a headcount of the passengers for the third time, having still failed to reach the correct number.

Finally, having identified the discrepancy, she made her way across to a row of seats at the front of the cabin, where a solitary male figure was seated.

As she approached, she recognised that he was attired in the uniform of a fellow Eastern Airlines employee.

leading her to assume that this was likely a favour arranged by one of his fellow pilots.

But when she asked this man what his plans were, he stared straight ahead, completely ignoring her.

After several more failed attempts at communication and becoming conscious of the growing unease of her passengers, the stewardess had reluctantly called for her supervisor.

Even he could not elicit any response from the unknown traveller, whose gaze had remained fixed at a point on the cabin wall directly ahead of him.

Deciding to raise the issue with the flight crew, the supervisor hurried off to the cockpit, apologising as he led the captain to the seat in question.

But the moment he caught sight of the lone passenger, the captain's eyes immediately opened wide in disbelief.

The contents of the coffee mug he had been holding only moments before now emptied carelessly onto the cabin floor.

The face of the man he had known so well seemed to softly dissolve into nothingness, as if carried away by an imperceptible breeze.

A man who had died almost a year to the day prior to this encounter, one of the many victims of a disastrous air crash, which had occurred at the very same destination they were now waiting to fly to, in the exact same model of aircraft they were now standing in.

At approximately 11.30pm on the 29th of December 1972,

Robert Marquis and Ray Dickinson had been relaxing on an airboat deep within the Florida Everglades.

The pair were regular nocturnal visitors to the area, enjoying little more in life than some fishing and a few beers, with nobody else around to disturb them.

But not long after their arrival at their chosen spot, situated roughly 19 miles to the northwest of Miami Airport, any hopes they had held for a relaxing evening were immediately dashed.

Startled by a deafening roar, the two men witnessed an enormous trijet airliner suddenly thundering out of the cloudy skies above.

They watched in growing horror as the aircraft continued to lose height, showing no signs that it was under a controlled descent.

Moments later, the inevitable occurred, with the jet's port wing making contact with the swampy ground beneath it at a speed of over 220 miles an hour.

Almost immediately, it began to break up into much smaller fragments, pulling the rest of the aircraft down hard in the same direction.

Seconds later, the undercarriage and engine on the wing in question broke apart.

as the main fuselage followed close behind.

The airliner's cockpit and main cabin disintegrated almost immediately upon impact, with only the tail section remaining remotely intact as it split away from the rest of the plane.

But thankfully, there was no explosion.

The plane's remaining fuel and other chemicals simply leaked into the swampy waters around it, rather than igniting.

Markey and Dickinson immediately powered headlong into the chaos, pulling survivors from the water and hauling them to higher ground.

It would be due to their efforts and the cloying swamp water that sealed otherwise serious wounds that enabled just under half of those who had been aboard to survive the crash, albeit sustaining a variety of horrific injuries as a result of broken bones and severe chemical burns.

The investigation into the disaster took little time in identifying the cause, with the surviving crew members and flight recorders painting a terrifying picture of the plane's final moments.

The Lockheed TriStar designated Flight 401 had been in service with American Airlines for six months at the time of the disaster.

During that period, it had regularly made the return trip between JFK and New York and Miami's International Airport without any significant issues.

All three of her flight crew were veterans of the airline industry, having logged thousands of hours of flight time, and on this trip, an additional technical officer also happened to be present.

But as the TriStar lined up on approach to land, the first officer reported that the green light, which would indicate the landing gear was down, had not illuminated.

Not knowing that this was the result of a failed light bulb and unable to get the indicator to work, Captain Bob Loft and engineer Don Repo had quickly headed down to the avionics bay.

As Loft had been hurrying from the cockpit, he ordered First Officer John Stockstill to put the TriStar into a holding pattern and to activate the autopilot.

But as Stockstill had gone to do so, he inadvertently placed the plane into a slow descent, which the newly engaged autopilot would maintain from that point on.

As a consequence, whilst whilst his colleagues were visually confirming the landing gear had in fact descended, Stock still mistakenly believed that he was cruising at a steady altitude.

The audible alarm designed to warn the flight crew that they had fallen below 2,000 feet went unnoticed as Repo had not been seated at his post to hear it.

With no lights nor features visible from the darkness of the swamp below, It was not until the last minute that Stock still realised what was happening, prompting him to cry out in terror.

But it was already too late for any form of corrective maneuver,

and the first officer was killed almost instantly as the plane barreled into the ground below.

Captain Loft would die shortly after impact, trapped in the wreckage of the avionics bay, and Don Reaper would last only a few hours longer before succumbing to his injuries in a nearby hospital.

Of the flight crew, only the accompanying technical officer survived, along with eight of the plane's ten stewardesses and 67 of the 163 passengers.

Due to the lack of any explosion, it was deemed viable by the owners to recover some of the plane's working parts and distribute them amongst the rest of their fleet.

And it was during the first months of the surviving crew and salvage components of Flight 401 making their way to other aircraft that unnerving events began to take place.

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during the summer of 1973

a senior vice president at american airlines was due to fly down from new york to the company headquarters in florida

His status guaranteed luxury travel on company aircraft.

Upon arriving at his flight, the executive naturally made his way through the plane's interior to the first-class cabin.

Settling down into an unclaimed seat, he was then joined a few minutes later by a uniformed pilot from the airline, who asked if it was okay to occupy the seat next to him.

As more passengers boarded behind them, The two men chatted about the company for a few minutes, whilst the vice president had tried to put a a name to the face of the pilot.

It was only when a casual reference was made to the incident which had taken place the previous year that he had suddenly realized that he was speaking to Bob Loft, the deceased captain of Flight 401.

In a heartbeat, a flicker of understanding seemed to pass across Loft's face.

as he promptly disappeared right before the eyes of his fellow passenger.

The vice president quickly hurried from his seat, demanding to be allowed off the aircraft, which caused something of a scene amongst the passengers and crew as he exited.

Weeks later, an identical incident was then reported.

A female passenger, having been discovered in hysterics, subsequently claimed that she had just seen a ghost.

again describing how a uniformed pilot had sat down next to her and began engaging in conversation for for a short time before blinking out of existence during mid-sentence.

The woman involved later went on to identify the person she had seen as Captain Loft, when his image was included amongst several photos she had been shown.

Over time, rumours of further increasingly bizarre incidents started to circulate.

around the close-knit airline community.

During one flight aboard a TriStar travelling between Atlanta and Miami, the flight crew were disturbed by a persistent knocking sound coming from somewhere inside the cockpit.

Eventually, the flight engineer was able to pinpoint the sounds as emanating from the aircraft's hellhole, a cramped maintenance base situated directly beneath their feet.

With the captain's permission, The engineer had opened the small hatch, only to instantly recoil in horror.

He later reported that as he had shone his torch down into the darkness below, he had seen the face of fellow engineer Don Repo staring back up at him.

A short time after this, a company mechanic claimed that he had been working alone in a hangar on an aircraft when he was joined by a fellow engineer whom he did not recognize.

Stopping what he was doing for a short time, he began to converse with this unidentified colleague, the conversation eventually touching upon the rumours surrounding Flight 401.

It was at this point that the stranger's features had suddenly grown grave and fixed the mechanic with a piercing stare.

In slow and deliberate terms, he had stated that neither he nor his colleagues would ever allow another Eastern Airline TriStar to come to any harm again before he faded away, leaving his parting words for the anxious witness to pass on to his superiors.

The mechanic also confirmed that the disappearing figure he had conversed with was indeed Don Repo, causing significant dismay amongst his employers.

As these paranormal reports continued to circulate throughout the company, the directors quickly encountered challenges in their attempts to contain their spread.

Employees began refusing to travel on airliners that utilise components supposedly recovered from Flight 401.

They were concerned that the crew members who had died flying that aircraft might return from the dead and pay them a visit.

In the end, it was the events which would take place aboard Flight 903 later that year that would finally force the company directors to take action.

The aircraft in question was another of the airline's Lockheed TriStars and was travelling along its usual route between JFK and Mexico City.

One of the stewardesses aboard, Faye Merriweather, had been doing her rounds when she looked up for a moment to see the face of Don Repo peering in at her through a window.

Suppressing every urge in her body to scream out in terror, Meriwether rubbed her eyes several times, hoping that the apparition would simply disappear.

But it was only when she called upon one of her colleagues that the image of the dead engineer finally faded away.

Before disappearing from the window, however, the second stewardess caught a quick glimpse of Repo's face, whom she knew from having served on previous flights with him.

A few minutes later, as she sat in the galley trying to calm her nerves, Meriwether had suddenly heard a disembodied voice warning her to watch out for the fire on the plane.

In a panic, she hurried to the cockpit and told the flight crew what had happened, but they were unable to find any trace of such a danger on any of their sensors.

It was only on the return trip back to JFK that the TriStar's starboard engine suddenly began to smoke, with a serious fire developing and spreading out along the wing.

With the crew already somewhat on edge from the ghostly prediction issued by Meriwether during the previous flight, they were quickly able to extinguish the blaze and land safely.

But upon doing so, they had requested to know whether their aircraft was carrying any of the parts that had been salvaged from Flight 401.

With such demands having now spread throughout their fleet, the board was forced to accede to the wishes of their employees.

giving orders that every part of the doomed airliner be identified and removed from sister aircraft, to be taken away and destroyed, ensuring they could never be used again.

In the aftermath of this act,

there were no further reported sightings of either Bob Loft nor Don Repo on any aircraft belonging to Eastern Airlines.

And the promise made by Repo to the engineer he had appeared before also seemed to be fulfilled.

as no Eastern Airlines TriStar was ever involved in another incident, right up until the point that the company finally closed its doors in 1991.

The tale of the ghosts of Flight 401 remains one of the most famous ghost stories in modern times, so much so that the events were depicted in a TV movie filmed in 1978.

With the large number of people involved, an official investigation, and written reports regarding the encounters, it is difficult to argue that the events in question did not take place.

As is usual in such circumstances, over the years there has been significant pushback to the suggestion that witnesses were indeed encountering ghosts of the dead flight crew, with commentators arguing that the rumours essentially willed the apparitions into existence.

As people began to anticipate seeing them during flights, one could suggest that perhaps their minds were simply responding to a pre-planted suggestion, or even manufacturing false memories as a means of managing the uneasiness they were experiencing.

But many of those involved were skilled and experienced professionals, highly qualified in their fields with no history of making spurious claims.

It is of course possible that the stories were created or exaggerated by some Eastern Airlines employees as a means of forcing the company to remove the salvaged parts.

But then that would not account for the experiences of passengers who maintained that they had no prior knowledge of the events, reporting what they had seen completely independent of the airline employees, genuinely terrified by their own encounters.

Regardless of the evidence or lack thereof in physical terms at least, It seems that once the last remnants of Flight 401 had been laid to rest, so were the spirits of her crew.

Their desire to ensure that no other person share in their fate having been fulfilled, and allowing them to move on to a place of peace.

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Story 2

The Curse of Clapham Wood

Previously, we have explored numerous instances of supernatural activity witnessed at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, many of which are directly connected to Castle Ring, the remnants of an Iron Age fort at the heart of that region.

This week, we journey to another such site, located 200 miles away in southeast England, known for similar disturbing occurrences.

Join us as we delve into the curse of Clapham Wood.

The small village of Clapham is located on the outskirts of the coastal town of Worthing in the English county of West Sussex.

Historically, Clapham has led something of an unremarkable existence.

Aside from a brief mention in the Doomsday Book, it was largely overlooked, with no remarkable events to distinguish it from countless other villages which dot the surrounding countryside.

However, this would change during the 1970s and 80s, following several suspicious deaths and mysterious incidents which would take place near the village.

Some of these occurred in the vicinity of Chanktonbury Ring, an Iron Age heritage site that sits eight miles to the northeast of the settlement.

Others transpired within the heavily wooded area lying between the two locations.

which would be the site of no less than four suspected murders.

Crimes for which no person would ever be arrested nor imprisoned, and would remain unsolved to this very day.

The first of these tragic occurrences was reported during the summer of 1972 and involved a local police constable by the name of Peter Goldsmith.

The former soldier was based at Staining Police Station and had arrived for work as normal on the morning of the 6th of June.

His shift that day had been unremarkable, and upon its completion, the officer had changed back into his running gear and then set off for home.

Several hours later, when Goldsmith had still not arrived back at his house, he was reported missing by his family, prompting an immediate and wide-ranging search.

Over the next few days, using a helicopter and up to 10 tracker dogs, a team of 30 police officers combed the route between the police station and the constable's home.

Despite having varied and expanded their search parameters several times, these officers were unable to find any trace of their absent colleague.

It would not be until six months later, on the 13th of December, that the remains of the missing officer were eventually found.

A dog walker discovered his body lying alongside a path which led out from Clapham Wood in the general direction of Chanktonbury Ring.

This would lead to awkward questions being asked of those who previously searched for him and had reportedly combed the same track and its surrounding area several times over.

The officers in question maintained that the body of their colleague had not been there at that time.

and must have been placed there after the search operations had wound down.

With the body of Peter Goldsmith having been too badly decomposed for the coroner to determine a cause of death, little further investigation into the matter was undertaken.

Three years later, another local resident would suddenly disappear under similarly mysterious circumstances.

Leon Foster was a retiree who had told his wife he was going out into the woods that bordered the village as part of his daily exercise routine.

As with PC Goldsmith, he too then failed to return home, but on this occasion, the body of the missing man would be discovered much quicker than before.

Three weeks after Foster had disappeared, a couple who were out searching for their horse stumbled across the body of an unidentified male.

The clothing worn by this badly decomposed corpse would eventually identify it as that of the missing pensioner.

But the pathologist who later examined the cadaver noted how there was no way for him to realistically determine a cause of death.

The rate of decay was far in excess of what would have been expected for a body that had only been missing for a period of three weeks.

This wording in his report would take on a somewhat haunting connotation, with the discovery of a similarly degraded body in November of 1981.

Workers from the Wilton estate unexpectedly happened upon the naked body of a deceased female whilst out acting as beaters for an annual pheasant shoot.

It was eventually surmised that the woman was likely Jill Matthews, a patient suffering from mental health issues who had walked off into the woods six weeks prior.

But once again, the doctor who had completed her post-mortem commented that he could not account for the advanced degree of decomposition.

With the weather during the previous weeks having been unseasonably mild, no extreme conditions had been reported in the local area.

Only weeks before this, the authorities had been stunned to receive a letter from a Canadian tourist who claimed to have discovered a fourth body lying in the woods.

At his direction, the remains of the Reverend Harry Snelling were then located and recovered for further examination by the local police.

The retired clergyman had been reported missing three years prior to this, after heading off on a lunchtime ramble through the woodland near his home.

Once again, the officers who had previously overseen the search for him found themselves being summons to explain their actions.

The body of the dead priest had apparently been found lying out on on open ground which they had previously searched, with sniffer dogs and thermal cameras having seemingly failed to find any trace of him.

These were issues for which the search teams could offer no logical explanation, besides an unknown third party having, for some reason, moved the remains back into the heart of the search area long after their actions had been concluded.

For this reason, many local residents believe the remains of the neighbouring hill fort could be hiding a dark and murderous past, which has forever cursed the ground it sits upon.

Whilst originally constructed as a military installation by Iron Age tribes, artifacts found at Changtanbury Ring have suggested the site was used for other purposes.

Items of pottery and foundation walls have revealed the existence of at least two Roman-era shrines, which were also built at the same location.

Rumours of arcane rituals historically carried out at these temples have posited theories that some of these may have continued up to modern times.

During the 1970s, the police were called to investigate a series of incidents involving local pets reported to have gone missing within the boundaries of Clapham Wood.

The first of these occurred in 1975, when a chow chow owned by the Love family slipped its lead whilst on a walk and ran off into the surrounding brush.

Given the relatively small 47-acre size of the woodland, the family were confident they would soon be reunited with their beloved companion.

But despite a significant amount of time spent searching for the three-year-old dog, it was never seen again.

Then, the following week, a local farmer by the name of Cornford reported that his border collie had managed to escape.

Despite having always been an obedient animal, it too disappeared into the heart of the woodland, never to be seen again.

Several weeks later, a dog walker named Rawlins lost track of her golden retriever for just a few minutes.

only to later come across the animal in a state of extreme distress.

Having rushed it to the local vets, she was informed that her pet was now inexplicably paralysed from the hips down and had seemingly gone blind.

Many tests were carried out, but nothing was found which might have explained the dog's affliction.

Local historian Charles Walker later claimed to have proven that all three animals had been abducted and tortured by a cabal of local devil worshippers.

even going as far as to show reporters underground lairs that had been dug by these Satanists and alleging he had met met one of them in person for an interview.

The anonymous figure he spoke with claimed the dogs had been sacrificed to Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft.

Dating back to 1228, this same entity is also referenced in the text of a story relating to the woods, which describes how a local landowner named Robert LaFalconer failed to obtain a petition he desired from the local parson.

In anger at being denied his request, he is said to have invoked the name of the goddess in order to curse both the priest and his parish.

It is this story that some believe has resulted in strange and sinister supernatural occurrences being reported at Chanktonbury Ring by those who have stayed there overnight.

In 1966,

Members of a motorcycle gang attended the local police station to report having been attacked whilst they were camped out at the location.

The group had taken their girlfriends up to the site and then made a rudimentary camp in which they intended to stay for the evening.

But at roughly 2am,

their conversation was suddenly interrupted by a loud and forlorn howling sound emanating from the nearby woodland.

As the group turned to try and identify the source, they could make out a solitary silhouette moving slowly back and forth along the tree line before them.

This figure would occasionally cry out or shriek as if in pain, but would then retreat further into the trees if any of the group tried to approach it.

As they did so, the men stepping outside of the boundaries of the ring would suddenly double up in severe agony, with shooting pains lancing up and down their bodies.

Whatever had affected the bikers then began to spread to the rest of their group, with some experiencing severe migraines and others succumbing to heavy vomiting.

Eventually, as the menacing figure before them continued to stalk back and forth, the group fled for their motorbikes and headed away from the site as quickly as they could.

The writer Robert MacFarlane records having slept out at the site during the 1990s, only to suddenly and unexpectedly be roused from his slumber by a shrill sound.

As he strained his ears to figure out what it was that had awoken him, he suddenly heard a piercing scream in the skies above.

Initially believing this to have been a bird, he was chilled to his very core when the scream had sounded again directly above him, recognising it as that of a human female.

For the next 15 minutes, a dark humanoid form swooped through the skies above, howling in an apparent mixture of sorrow and rage.

At one point, it seemed to part itself into two separate masses that screeched and screamed in an identical manner until they collided and were once again joined together.

Then the two entities were gone.

rising up into the heavens and leaving the lone witness behind in their wake, with only the memory of their pitiful cries for company.

Of course,

no story of haunted or cursed woodland would be complete without at least some accounts of bizarre lights witnessed in and around the area.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the unexplained deaths of the four people found within Clapham Wood have been linked to reported UFO sightings from around the same time period.

One evening during the summer of 1967,

a local resident named Paul Glover was walking with a friend across Clapham Downs, when they caught sight of a strange aerial object.

Both witnesses would describe this aircraft as being completely black, shaped like a large boomerang, and remaining completely silent as it moved through the skies towards them.

A minute later, After it had passed directly over the pair and was now heading away from them, this large vessel then disgorged two smaller craft.

Neither of the watching men could make out the exact shape of these objects, which presented very differently from their originator, instead resembling masses of pure bright light.

These two shining orbs cannoned around the skies below the larger craft for several minutes, at one point seeming to transfer a smaller dark object between one another.

Having by now drifted further away from the witnesses, several more lights then appeared until there were six in total, which darted about before all, then disappeared.

Five years later, a telephone engineer driving home one evening along Findon Road was startled to see a strange light circling above his vehicle.

Bringing the van he was driving to a halt, The engineer peered up into the night sky, suddenly realizing the source of this light was a large glowing disk.

This object had initially been hovering quite close to the road, but immediately increased its altitude as the van it was apparently stalking had halted.

Continuing to circle slowly above him, the unknown flying craft then began to emit a series of bright beams of light, strobing the encompassing woodland.

This bizarre and haunting light show would continue for several minutes before the object then shot off at incredible speed.

Five more years would pass by with no additional UFO sightings until August of 1977 when one final incident would take place.

A witness named Dave Stringer had gone out for a nighttime walk in the woods, only to catch sight of a strange light shining through the trees directly ahead of him.

Coming to a halt, Stringer waited and watched as the unknown light source gradually increased in intensity and then began to rise up through the forest.

Moments later, a disc-shaped object roughly the size of a family car appeared directly above the tree line, emitting a soft pulsating glow as it did so.

The speed at which this craft was moving began to increase rapidly until it was shooting vertically up into the sky above the woods.

At once it disappeared from sight inside a much darker and imposing mass that had now emerged from the clouds above it.

A looming and half-hidden larger craft then moved back into the clouds it had emerged from, disappearing completely.

There are a stark number of parallels between the shocking events that have taken place in the vicinity of Clapham Wood and those reported at Cannock Chase.

Both locations feature heavily wooded areas which are largely undisturbed by human activity and are situated in close proximity to the remains of Iron Age hill forts.

Theories in relation to the mysterious incidents which have been reported in rural Staffordshire centre largely upon modern-day conspiracy theories and extraterrestrial visitors.

But this is largely not the case for Clapham Wood, where events appear to evoke a much older period in history, imbued with a distinctly more supernatural aura.

Did past events at the Chanktonbury Ring unleash an ancient evil, which continues to inflict pain and suffering on the local populace many years into the future?

Do the stories surrounding Hecate and witchcraft provoke the manifestation of sinister spirits and malevolent supernatural entities?

Or is it simply a case of one or more disturbed individuals following a dark path?

As both human and animal deaths continue to be reported within the bounds of this idyllic part of southern England, it appears that either theory might well be true.

It appears this particularly haunting mystery, unlike many which we have previously examined, continues into the present day and may yet yield the evidence needed to solve it once and for all.

Bed Times for

Cease.