The (Haunted?) RMS Queen Mary

Ghosts on a boat! It turns out that the most haunted hotel in America is a boat! In this episode, learn about the history, the deaths, and the potential hauntings in and because of an art deco ocean liner from the 1930s that's now permanently docked in Long Beach, California: The RMS Queen Mary.

Note: Stick around til the very very end for an important follow-up message! 👻

Transcript

Welcome to I Got Stuck! A catalog of temporary obsessions, with me, your host, Dr. Kelly Reidy, wherein each week, I’ll give you a full report on the latest topic that’s kept me up at night. Things that have let to countless hours of procrastination through googling, asking Jeeves, and navigating the twistiest and turniest of internet rabbit holes. By the way, rabbits often sleep with their eyes open.

Speaking of sleeping with eyes open, I love haunted hotels. I seek them out. I haven’t had any big-time ghost encounters, but I love that, in supposedly haunted hotels, the history (or some version of it) is often really front-and-center. Beats a Holiday Inn any day. And also? I love boats. 

And thus, you can imagine how happy I was to learn recently that America’s most haunted hotel… is a boat! The Queen Mary. It’s a retired ocean liner that’s now permanently docked in Long Beach, California, and has been turned into what Travel + Leisure magazine says is America’s most haunted hotel. 

First of all, let’s talk about ocean liners. They’re giant boats, similar to cruise ships, but historically, they were more often used for transporting people from point A to point B on a regular schedule in lieu of faster methods that we have now, i.e. airplanes. So, like a commuter boat.

That being said, you definitely shouldn’t try to picture the ship version of a commuter train. Definitely don’t think about New Jersey transit right now. Oceans liners could be really fancy. The Titanic was an ocean liner, for example, so you can picture it. Or better yet, just look up some pictures of the Queen Mary from its early days.

The 1930s! Its first voyage took place in 1936. 

Back then, it provided weekly express transportation between England, France, and New York. It carried passengers and mail and whatever else needed to be carried across the ocean. And it was seriously an amazing and super-luxurious boat! It had Art Deco stylings and furnishings, and it even had elaborate carvings on the wooden walls.  

Here’s a quick run-down of its luxurious features: It had several dining rooms, it had a club called the Starlight Club that was only open at night, it had a music studio, swimming pools, dog kennels, a beauty salon, libraries, and it was the first ocean liner to have a Jewish prayer room.

But when World War 2 started in 1939, things changed for the Queen Mary. After it finished its last regular passenger trip, it sat in New York awaiting its wartime orders. It sat there for seven months. Its orders finally came in March of 1940 - the Queen Mary’s job was to travel to places around the world to pick up and drop off soldiers as needed. To use another boat word, it became a troopship. 

A lot of changes had to be made to it before it got put to work. Including but not limited to the following: All the cool decorations and objects were taken out (so no more art deco), all the cool wooden details inside got covered with leather (pretty smart) and the whole ship got rigged up to be magnetically protected (for all you magnetic protection fans, they protected it by wrapping a degaussing coil around the outside.) 

Oh and the outside got painted a drab color called “light sea gray,” for camouflage, and the ship got the nickname “The Gray Ghost.” Very eerie in light of what happened on October 2, 1942.

I mean, clearly, lots of precautions were taken. But on that date, October 2, 1942, just off the Irish coast, something truly horrific happened. 

The Queen Mary was out there traveling, doing its troop transporting, and trying to stay out of trouble. Part of how it stayed out of trouble is that during this time, it was partnered with a much smaller escort ship called the HMS Curacoa (not to be confused with Curaçao). They were under orders not to stop no matter what, because of the danger of U-boats. They were also traveling a zig-zag path for that same reason. 

Sounds like it could be a problem only if there wasn’t enough coordination and planning between the little boat and big boat, right?

Welp, unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. Apparently, they hadn’t worked out which boat had the right of way. Instead of just telling you what happened, I’m going to read a quotation from somebody who was on board the Queen Mary that day:

“I said to my mate “You know she’s zig-zagging all over the place in front of us, I’m sure we’re going to hit her.”

And sure enough, the Queen Mary sliced the cruiser in two like a piece of butter, straight through the six-inch armored plating.”

That was from the account of Alfred Johnson, who was onboard the Queen Mary.

Now I want to read you what the Naval Historical Society of Australia wrote about the collision:

“At the moment of impact, as the Curacoa reeled in the water, many  seamen on deck were thrown into the freezing water. Even as they surfaced they watched in horror as the stern quickly sank, taking with it the men trapped behind the water-tight doors. The for’d section followed soon after, leaving the men in the murky water surrounded by debris, oil and drowned or mutilated bodies. It was every man for himself as survivors clung to floating wreckage. They were about 20 nautical miles off the Irish coast, which, had boats or rafts been launched, would have meant they were within easy reach of safety.”

Ok so it shouldn’t have been a huge huge deal - they just needed to get picked up, right? But remember - both ships were under orders to under no circumstances stop until troops had been safely delivered. The captain of the Queen Mary followed those orders. The Queen Mary left the wreckage of the escort boat it had just sliced in half behind, as the survivors watched in what must have been absolute shock and horror.

The Queen Mary did, of course, report the accident to try to get help out to them, but reports vary as to when the accident was reported.

Some say hours, some say minutes, but the ship had already sunk by the time help reached it, and most of the people had died in the water of hypothermia. At least 239 out of 338 people on board died that night, and some estimates are even higher. 

While I’m sure anybody who was involved in that and survived must’ve not felt great about it, the matter did go to court years later, and the Queen Mary was cleared of any wrongdoing. At one of the hearings, the captain of the little boat, who, by the way, survived! …He was asked if the captain of the Queen Mary made the right decision, and he said “I would say, yes.” So, the Queen Mary was innocent in the eyes of that captain, and in the eyes of the law.

And in fact, during World War 2, the Queen Mary was kind of a hero. Its large capacity and high speed travel were huge assets. Winston Churchill even said that the Queen Mary alone “shortened the war by a year.”

In 1945, when the war ended and its work was over, the Queen Mary made its fastest-ever trip across the Atlantic to get home. How very relatable of it! Between 1946 and 1947, the boat got a major post-war makeover. It was renovated to be art-deco-opulent and colorful again, and air conditioning was even added! Then it went back to what it was doing before, and continued to do so through the mid-60s. 

At that time, airplanes were becoming just too popular. And the Queen Mary was retired in 1967, after completing its one-thousand-and-first trip across the Atlantic and carrying over 2 million passengers in its life as an active ocean liner. 

And where was its final destination? Where is it living out its golden years?

Long Beach, California. The town bought the ship for 3.45 million dollars and planned to turn it into a hotel and tourist attraction, which is exactly what happened. 

It took several years to open, but finally in 1972, the Queen Mary officially opened as a hotel. Yay! Financially, though, everybody involved was losing a ton of money right off the bat and WAY too many vendors and outside businesses were involved. It was essentially a floating money pit.

In 1980, a local millionaire named Jack Wrather signed a 66-year-lease on the boat. Let me tell you about Jack Wrather. Back to 1955, in Long Beach. 

In 1955, Walt Disney wanted to build a Disneyland Hotel on the land he owned in Long Beach but couldn’t afford the actual construction part. So Walt Disney’s workaround was that he leased the land very cheaply to Jack Wrather, and let Jack build the hotel. And built it he did. Walt Disney tried over and over again to buy the hotel back from Jack Wrather when Disney had more money down the road, but Jack never budged. 

I’ll remind you that in 1980, Jack signed a 66-year lease on the Queen Mary. But he died four years later!

So Disney figured “ok FINALLY we can buy that hotel.” So they went to the Wrather Group and tried to buy the hotel, but the Wrather Group said “we’ll sell you the hotel under one condition - you have to also buy the rest of the lease on the Queen Mary.”

And of course, Disney bought the Queen Mary lease. Even though they didn’t want it. 

They tried to make the best of the situation by turning the boat a little mini-theme park. This was 1988, by the way. Part of their mini-theme park was that they had a bunch of themed tours of the boat. One of those tours was called “Haunted Passages.” 

Why, you ask? Because by 1988, the Queen Mary had a reputation for being… creepy and for having at least 50 recorded deaths on board. Before I tell you about the rest of this Disney thing, I want to walk you through a few notable deaths and hauntings. 

This isn’t a spoiler alert because I already told you, but I want to remind you that this does ultimately become a hotel again, and a lot of the reports of hauntings are from hotel guests after that happened.

First up! There’s a part of the boat called “Shaft Alley” that’s the location of Hatch Door #13. The thing you need to know about the hatch doors on the boat is that they closed with a watertight seal. 

One night in 1966, as part of a regular fire drill, the hatch doors were ordered to be closed. At the end of this fire drill, a 18-year-old crew member named John Pedder was found crushed in Hatch Door #13. But he wasn’t dead! He had been stuck in the door for an estimated 5 minutes, and his arms, chest, and pelvis had been crushed. They took him to the hospital area where he pretty quickly died. Nowadays, in that hallway, people report seeing a guy wearing blue coveralls looking for his wrench, and then he disappears! Some people have noticed grease fingerprints on their face after being in that area of the ship, and people sometimes hear unexplained whistling in the area of Hatch Door #13.

Staff and guests have reported hauntings in quite a few other specific locations on the ship, in addition to Hatch Door #13, including a boiler room and one of the old salons, but the first class swimming pool and guest room B340 are said to be the most haunted. 

The swimming pool isn’t in use now, but visitors can go look at it. At least one person died there - a little girl named Jackie. And people report seeing ghosts of a young woman who wears tennis clothes, an old woman in a wedding dress, and a little girl in a blue and white dress. Oh and also, wet footprints are said to appear from time to time even though the pool has been dry and crumbling for decades.

But let’s talk about room B340. This has been called the most haunted hotel room in California, but if you believe that the Queen Mary is the most haunted hotel in America, then of course that would make room B340 the most haunted hotel room in the whole country! It’s been called a paranormal black hole. In 1948, when the Queen Mary was still an ocean liner, a third-class passenger died in the room. Could all that reported paranormal stuff be caused by just one guy who died back in 1948, maybe even died of natural causes?

But here’s the other thing: in the late 60s, supposedly, a passenger on the ship murdered two women. He was caught, and he was locked into his room. There was a guard stationed outside to make sure he didn’t leave, because the police were going to arrest him when they docked in New York the next morning. During the night, the guy started screaming and pounding on the door and saying somebody was in there trying to kill him. Obviously the guard thought the guy was trying to trick him, because how could anybody have gotten in there when he had been standing guard the whole time? So the guard ignored the man in the room, and eventually the guy stopped screaming. When they got to New York in the morning, the policemen came to arrest him, and when they opened the door, they found this guy literally ripped apart, limbs and entrails spread around the room. Killed in a way that had made it pretty obvious that he had not done it to himself! But that’s just one version of the story. Whatever actually happened, people are generally convinced that somebody was murdered around there. Hauntings supposedly started on the very next voyage in that area of the ship! And of course, that’s the area that is now called room B340. 

That’s a pretty crazy story, and probably not a true one, because there aren’t any records or any official sources to be found.  

So what's the actual story of room B340? I want to go back to Disney’s “Haunted Passages” tour that I mentioned before. Like I said, the ship already had kind of a creepy reputation because of the deaths that had happened on and around it. The Haunted Passages tour totally capitalized on all that, and, this is kind of revolting, the promo image for the tour was an image of a see-through John Pedder standing in a boiler room. Remember he’s the teenager that got crushed to death at hatch door #13.

The Haunted Passages tour stopped at known sites of crew member and guest deaths, but the big-deal tour stop was room B340. The room wasn’t being used at the time, so Disney tried to convert it to a mini-Haunted Mansion. They installed audio and visual effects that were triggered when people entered the room. Things like creaky floorboards, faucets turning on, voices, and things appearing in mirrors. But ultimately, the Disney thing didn’t work out, so they gave up their lease and they walked away in 1992. 

When Disney left the Queen Mary, they locked the door to room B340 behind them.

And then, in 2008, Time Magazine called the Queen Mary one of the ten most haunted places in the world. What happened between the Haunted Passages tour days, when it was mostly haunted with A/V effects, and that Time magazine piece claiming it was a top 10 most haunted place in the world?

There are plenty of theories about this, but of course the one that I find most interesting is a very very weird one. It’s called the “egregore” theory. 

Basically the idea in this context that if somebody says enough times that a place is haunted, and if enough people then believe it’s haunted, it will actually become haunted. Greg Newkirk is a paranormal researcher who explained all this to the SF Gate. 

He said that “he’s seen cases where people have put so much intention and energy into thinking a place is haunted, that it eventually becomes haunted by an ‘egregore,’” which he said is “a thought form created by ‘decades of emotions pumped into a specific place or thing.” 

Another paranormal researcher seconded this theory and added that the specific details surrounding the supposed ghosts on the boat add extra energy to the egregore. They say that since, for example, people can specifically focus on the image and story of that eviscerated man in room B340, rather than just feeling like “oooh this place is creepy,” that somehow that specificity makes it more haunted and manifests more ghost energy. 

Like I said, the ship became a hotel again after Disney sold it. Since its most recent renovation, the hotel has begun providing things in room B340 to encourage this whole “egregore” thing: there’s a Ouija board, tarot cards, ghost-hunting equipment, pictures and written stories of ghosts, and printed on the bathroom wall? …directions for getting ahold of Bloody Mary. She used to terrify me when I was little. I mentioned earlier that B340 has been called a paranormal black hole - that was stated by somebody that was discussing this egregore theory. An article in Crescenta Valley Weekly has a fun take on it: “If the tales are true that unbridled psychokinetic thought-energy would charge the room to cause manifestations of nomadic spirits, that, to me, is even cooler than a haunt. But whatever happened in the room to give it its spirited beginnings, there is real activity in there now.” Apparently lots of guests have relatively recently reported ghostly things happening in that room - covers being pulled off, clothes hangers rattling (but it’s a boat so I don’t know about that one), people have reported seeing an apparition at the foot of their bed, hearing footsteps, and people knocking on the door throughout the night… but another thing I read is that groups of people will and come knock on the door to B340 in the middle of the night to try to talk to ghosts. So maybe a different type of spirit is responsible for those.

And if you’re now fired up about visiting the Queen Mary, you’re in luck! 

The ship closed temporarily in May 2020 because of covid, and while it closed, the city of Long Beach hired a firm to assess it. And uh oh, they learned that it was about to sink! 23 million dollars worth of repairs had to be done, and urgently, in order to save it. There were fundraisers, even all the way over in Scotland where the ship was from, and with contributions from a wide variety of sources, the ship was saved! 

And the Queen Mary re-opened to the public in 2023! Most of it, at least.

Room B340 is currently closed, and I’m not sure why. But, it will officially reopen on September 13, 2024 - which is ten days from when I’m recording this episode! So now’s the time! Call them today! Yes, call them.

Because here’s the most haunting part of all: if you’re interested in booking room B340, you can’t do it online - you have to call on the phone to inquire!

And I wanna say, I know ghost stories aren’t everybody’s cup of tea. They’re definitely mine, though! 

And regardless of whether or not you believe in ghosts, you have to admit that the Queen Mary has a pretty haunting history that starts at least as far back as when it chopped its own escort boat in half and left everybody to die. Maybe now it’s only *actually* haunted by bad decor and overpriced boat food, but there’s only one way to find out!

And this is where I’ll leave you. And I’ll leave you with the strong suggestion to please try to convince me to go stay on the Queen Mary because I really want to but I’m too scared! 

Until next time, stay curious, don’t zig-zag, and look out for watertight doors!

Ok I’m jumping back in here with an update: after I finished recording this, I got brave and called the Queen Mary to ask about room B340. Here’s what happened: I had to go through several menus of robots, but I eventually spoke with a very friendly very human person, who told me that yes, the room is reopening, BUT it won’t be available for overnight stays. The silver lining is that the room will be available for tours, and self-guided tours are free with a room reservation. So what I’m hearing is that hotel guests can go into that room whenever they want.. and then return to the safety of their less-haunted room when they get too scared. Which actually sounds kind of ideal to me.