I Stayed On The World's Most Haunted Ship (Queen Mary)

for decades the queen mary has attracted tv shows ghost hunters and tourists in their millions i stayed on board the ship before the pandemic and i've been doing a lot of research recently into the history of the ship i'm glad that i didn't know everything i know now when i was on board or i might not have stayed there at all she's currently used as a floating hotel in long beach california and her future remains uncertain at the moment they're estimating that they'll need around 300 million dollars to spend on renovations the ship has had many owners and operators and disney even tried to run the ship at one point but it never happened built in 1936 by cunard white starline she was designed to sail across the atlantic she was 15 longer and 28 wider than the titanic and she was the fastest ship to ever sail across the atlantic for the first few years of her life she happily sailed across the atlantic she would carry celebrities movie stars politicians even winston churchill but unfortunately those happy first few years didn't last very long the queen mary was very luxurious at the time of her launch she had five restaurants on board which may not sound like much compared to today today the world's biggest cruise ship symphony of the seas has 23 restaurants on board but for the time for the 1930s she was an incredibly exciting ship everyone wanted to be on their ship during these early years for the ship three passengers and one crew member did die on board but none of these deaths have gone on to become the ghost stories that the ship is famous for it wouldn't be until about 10 years later that the first accidental death would become famous as a ghost story in 1939 the queen mary's happy time sailing across the atlantic came to an end thanks to world war ii she was converted into a troop ship and her bright colours were painted grey she was nicknamed the grey ghost we don't know if soldiers died on board during the war because records weren't really kept and burials at sea were pretty common the queen mary was designed to carry around 2 000 people at a time and during the war she could carry up to 16 000 troops so i think it's likely that at some point some deaths happened on board most of the ghost stories that are told on board the queen mary aren't to do with the troops and aren't to do with world war ii with one big exception in 1942 the queen mary hit and sunk a ship called the hms curacao she was a navy ship and she was actually escorting the queen mary at the time of the accident at the time of the accident the queen mary was carrying around ten thousand troops and she was doing a zigzag pattern to try and avoid submarine attacks both the hms coracoa and the queen mary thought that they had right of way and the queen mary went straight through the hms kurakoa a man who was on board called alfred johnson said that they sliced the cruiser into like a piece of butter straight through the six-inch armor plating the hms curacao split completely into two and it's estimated that over 300 people died in that accident there are some people that say that in the bow of the ship you can hear screams you can hear noises based on this accident with the hms kurakoa i have to say i think this is the least likely ghost story on the ship and the stories that happened later those ghosts are much more likely to be haunting the ship in my opinion i don't know if i personally believe in ghosts but i don't know that ghosts that died somewhere else could haunt a ship that they weren't even on board that seems a bit far from me it took a year for them to refit the ship after the war and she was ready for service again in 1949 one of the most notorious deaths to happen on board the queen mary happened it was second officer w.e stark who managed to poison himself on board amazingly the fact that he poisoned himself isn't actually the worst part of the story he went and he drank something that he thought was gin and it actually turned out to be some type of acid it said that he realized almost instantly that he had drunk the wrong thing that he had drunk some acid when he realized that he told his steward who told him you have to go to the doctor to get your stomach pumped and he refused by all accounts he was laughing he was joking he really didn't think that it was as big a deal as it was he died three days later of carbon tetrachloride poisoning and he is said to still haunt the ship if you stay on board the queen mary the queen mary does offer a lot of different ghost tours on board she has been voted one of the top 10 haunted places in the entire world perhaps some of the best tours i didn't do any of these because i'm too scared to be quite honest with you but perhaps some of the best tours happen at night time they do tours where you can do paranormal investigations with paranormal investigators and there's even one event where you can dine with the spirits dine with the spirits not die with the spirits how they schedule the spirits to show up for dinner i have no idea but it certainly sounds interesting the queen mary really has taken this idea of being a haunted ship and run with it the most haunted room on board according to the queen mary is b340 this room was actually closed to the public for 30 years but it is open again now and you can stay in that room it'll set you back around 500 because everybody wants to stay in the most haunted room on the most haunted ship and when you stay there they give you things like a ouija board and a crystal ball i'm glad i didn't stay in that room i didn't stay there no one very popular place on the ship where everybody visits regardless of if you're doing a ghost tour if you're just doing any tour on board you will visit the infamous door 13 located within the engine room in 1966 an 18 year old crew member was crushed to death in that watertight door and many people report that they see a man wearing overalls walking around that space and people report that they hear knocking coming through the ship if you knock where the door is you're supposed to hear a knock back if you're in an engine room you're probably going to hear bangs and clanks and stuff anyway so whether that's a ghost or it's just engine noise i don't know but i think it's interesting that they actually took out that door when they refurbished the ship to make it into a hotel this 18 year old crew member's death was logged in the death list for the ship i have the full list on emma cruises.com but many of these other ghost stories are not logged at all it is reported that a young girl drowned in the first class pool on board the queen mary and then another lady in her 50s or 60s also haunts the ship many people have reported hearing children playing in the pool and seeing wet footsteps by the side which is really creepy considering the pool hasn't been open for decades if you do a ghost tour on board the queen mary you will get to the door of the pool but nobody is allowed to go in that area due to safety reasons the pool was built in this really cool art deco style and it has remained largely unchanged over the years apart from really falling into a state of dilapidation you wouldn't want to go near that pool anymore there's tires falling off and it it is quite dangerous the queen mary did have a very similar pool for second class guests we don't really do the kind of classes of guests in the same way on modern cruise ships anymore but back in the 1930s that was a big thing the second class pool was completely removed when it was turned into a hotel and now the space where the pool is is part of the museum so who knows when i was on board the ship and i was in the museum i may have been standing where the second class pool was i don't know the first things that i noticed when i stepped on board the ship were the crazy carpets for a star and also how much wood there was on board there's so much real wood on this ship apparently 50 different types of wood were used when they made the ship and six of them are now extinct that's how how long ago the queen mary was built which makes just the wood of this ship interesting in itself if you're into extinct wood types i also really noticed the kind of musty smell on board they have done a lot to look after the ship and they do refurbish the internal areas but it is from the 1930s it has kind of got that old place smell it's definitely like going back in time staying on the queen mary is really strange because it's an interesting mix of modern and also really old they of course have to have modern safety standards you will find modern things that you'll find hair dryers in the cabin but also you're very aware that your ownership that was built in the 1930s is very different from any any modern cruise ship i've ever been on we had a family cabin which had portholes that you could actually open a little bit you're not able to open any portholes on any modern cruise ships the titanic did have portholes that opened and a lot of people say that one of the reasons that the ship sunk so fast is everyone opened their portholes to see what was going on and it flooded the ship faster so you won't find that on any modern cruise ships but on the queen mary you can still open the portholes which i found pretty cool there are 347 first-class staterooms that are rented out as hotel rooms on their ship you can't say in any second class or any other places on board you have to be first class which is fine by me it is very strange staying on the queen mary because she is a modern hotel but also she has been around for donkey's years your british ism of the week is donkey's years donkeys just means a really long time if you hadn't seen somebody in a long time you might say that you hadn't seen them in donkeys and donkeys it just means a long time the company that runs the queen mary filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 and they have agreed to surrender the lease early this isn't the first time that the operators of the queen mary have gone bankrupt this also happened in 2005. i imagine is a very difficult business model yes she's an amazing hotel but at the end of the day she is a very old ship that needs a lot of maintenance she's become very important though to long beach into california so in 2021 long beach have taken back control of the queen mary which has given her new hope of a new life so fingers crossed she will be okay i was born decades too late to cruise on the queen mary but i'm very glad i got to stay there just for the night i have cruised on board the queen victoria and you should watch this video next to learn why it was unlike any cruise that i had ever been on before or any crews that i've been on since

Channel: Emma Cruises

Views: 194,495

Keywords: queen mary, rms queen mary, haunted ship

Id: CeUtPcv8ZNw

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021