THE HAUNTED QUEEN MARY

Halloween is up next so this is a good time to post my Queen Mary photos from 2010! I was too lazy to post it then and only had it on Facebook albums. Better late than never.

The RMS Queen Mary is permanently docked at Long Beach California and reputed to be one of the most haunted ships around.

The ship's maiden voyage started in 1936 as an express transatlantic passenger liner between Southampton and New York. She was converted into a troopship in WWII and became known as the 'Grey Ghost' for her speed and new camouflage colour. In 1942, she collided with her escort ship HMS Curacoa, killing 239 British soldiers. The ship was ordered fullsteam ahead nonetheless and to abandon survivors, many of whom were killed when the giant propellers cut through them. This is one of the reasons why people believed the ship is haunted besides the other deaths onboard. In 1947 she resumed passenger service, and her last cruise was on (get this) October 31, 1967 (Halloween), arriving on Dec 9, 1967 at Long Beach where she has been docked ever since.

You can freely walk the top deck and the next few levels like the hotel corridors, restaurants, lounges. The infamous pool area and lower decks are out of bounds unless on a guided tour. Here are rows and rows of carpeted corridor, it is easy to get lost since they look identical. It is very quiet and your ears may hurt from the silence. The hotel rooms are still functioning so you should be quiet anyhow.

We were there for the Coast to Coast AM 'Ghost to Ghost' live radio talkshow broadcast and for me it was mostly to see a place of interest in California that wouldn't require me to pay. The others wanted to see George Noory lol. Guided tours have a fee so we skipped it and decided to roam as not to make it a wasted trip since there was a small paranormal convention going on, but it was badly organised and we backed out very quickly after they wanted to charge us too much money.

A banquet room. We peeked in, we were curious because it was so dark in there, I had to turn on the flash on the camera.

The bathrooms were nice, just dark and eerily quiet. It had one those annoying eco-lights that would turn off if it determined no noise = no people. We were deep in the ship so that was unsettling.

Deco style bins.

One of the exhibit areas.

Top deck.

One of the views overlooking Long Beach.

Life rafts on the sides.

You know Singaporeans call reversing a car 'Go Stun', actually it came from the phrase 'Go Stern' like the back of the ship.

In case you were wondering, yes we saw George Noory. There was actually a crowd gathering outside the small lobby and you can look through the glass window and watch them chat! And no, we did not see any lady in white!