The Aeronautical Hall of Halloween Horrors

Sometimes, the unmistakable sound of a lone Merlin engine fills the air in the dark of the night, during snowstorms, heavy showers, fog and in all seasons over residents near the former RAF station at Biggin Hill, Kent. Locals are very familiar with the sounds of the rare engine even though the base was shut down long ago. There have been countless reports over the years where witnesses claim to have heard, and even seen, a lone Spitfire flying overhead. Amazingly, some of these witnesses have been Wartime Veterans, and pilots. Those of us who know the sound of a Merlin, know full well, it is not a sound to be mistaken for anything else. The question is not what engine is producing these sounds, the question is who is flying it.

According to past sightings, the Biggin Hill Spitfire is apparently seen around January, with the 19th your best chance to see the ghostly apparition in flight.

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Reserve Maj. Matt Cook has had hair-raising experiences at the building where he works. He commands the 433rd Combat Logistics Support Squadron at the former Kelly Air Force Base, Texas. He’s heard doors closing and voices when in the building alone.

No wonder. During the Vietnam War, the building was a temporary morgue. And in the late 1970s, a C-130 Hercules crashed into the building, killing the entire crew. A perfect setting for ghost stories. Late one night, the major heard people talking as he walked to and from his office.

“I heard whispered, hushed conversations — like those you hear in church,” he said. But he couldn’t make them out. “Since then, I’ve made it a point not to go back in the building by myself late at night.”

Given the building’s history, maybe restless souls are still lingering about, unsure of where to go. Major Cook said the theory isn’t that far-fetched.

“You never know,” he said. “That’s always a possibility.”

by Louis A. Arana-Barradas
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Herb Robredo didn’t believe in ghosts — until he met one.

It happened on a hot and muggy July night last year. Mr. Robredo and two other aircraft mechanics parked a T-43 training jet on the Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, flightline. He’d been “riding the brakes” inside the plane. Before getting out, he went to check a light that hadn’t turned off in the back of the plane. Halfway there, a blast of cold air hit him. He felt a weird chill. That’s strange, he thought, because the plane’s air conditioning was off.

“My skin told me something wasn’t normal,” Mr. Robredo said. He decided on a hasty exit.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a shadowy figure staring at him. It spooked him. But it was dark, and he thought it was a co-worker who’d hitched a ride. Still, he sensed something wasn’t right. He got goose bumps, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

“There was a man in uniform looking right at me,” he said. “I got this eerie feeling.”

The man was sitting with his legs crossed and his hands clasped around his knee. Confused, Mr. Robredo didn’t want to look straight at the apparition. His heart raced, and he missed most of the stairs on the ladder as he flew off the plane.

“I know what I saw,” he said. “It was definitely a person looking at me.”

Problem is, there was nobody else on the plane. At least not alive.

Was it a ghost? Yes, Mr. Robredo said. His buddy, Mike Monsalvo, agrees. The two maintain the jets used to train navigators. That night, they’d worked on the plane with tail number 1154 — the same as Mr. Robredo’s identification number. Coincidence?

But it was Mr. Monsalvo who first saw the “visitor.” He’d walked through the plane while it was still parked in the hangar. He saw a tall figure standing at a training station, staring at him.

“I swear I saw a man — wearing glasses — glaring at me from a console,” he said. He, too, beat feet for the exit. Mr. Monsalvo blamed fatigue for what he’d seen. And, once outside, he didn’t tell his pal of his experience. “He probably would have thought I was crazy.”

The next day, Mr. Robredo went to order a part for the plane. The man who orders the parts, Allen Kirsh, sensed something was amiss. He asked the normally talkative mechanic what was wrong. Mr. Robredo told him of his encounter. Strangely, Mr. Kirsh had a friend at Buckley Air Force Base, Colo., who’d worked on the same plane. So, without telling Mr. Robredo, he e-mailed his pal to relay the story and ask him if anything strange had happened on the plane. The friend replied that, in 1982, a crew chief died of a heart attack on the plane while on a training flight. The news stunned Mr. Robredo.

“I knew it had to be the crew chief I’d seen,” he said. “Who else could it have been?”

The mechanics know “something’s in the plane.” Is it haunted? Maybe, they said. But neither says it’s an evil spirit. Mr. Robredo believes the phantom Airman watches over aircrews.

“Just a dedicated crew chief who’s still on the job,” he said.

by Louis A. Arana-Barradas
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The is a well known and much talked about Avro Lincoln bomber at the UK's Cosford Aerospace Museum. Over the years, there have been countless reported sightings of an apparition in and around the Lincoln, and perplexing sounds - some of which were apparently recorded during an overnight vigil inside the aircraft by a BBC reporter and a paranormal investigator.

During the course of the investigation, some of the sounds recorded by the BBC were later identified by ex-Lincoln crews as typical of those that would be caused by flightcrews either going through pre-flight checks or during the course of a flight.

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The Barnoldswick Phantom Bomber

Does a phantom Avro Lancaster bomber haunt the skies over Barnoldswick? In 2004 a flurry of sightings were reported which led to a series of newspaper reports in The Craven Herald.

The Avro Lancaster was the Royal Air Force’s most famous bomber during World War II. Probably best known now for its role in Operation Chastise (the Dambusters raid on the Rhur Valley dams), Lancaster’s flew 156,000 sorties throughout the war and dropped over 600,000 tons of bombs.

An article in the The Craven Herald, January 23, 2004 reported: A visitor to Barnoldswick was astounded to see a large grey aeroplane appear out of the mist near the Rolls- Royce factory - and then vanish. The plane looked as though it was going to hit both her car she and her partner were travelling in, as well as nearby houses, but a second later it had disappeared without trace. Moira Thwaites, a retired policewoman from Nelson, explained that she and her partner Malcolm Spensley, of Gargrave, were travelling towards Barnoldswick along Skipton Road at around 11.20am last Tuesday. As they approached Rolls-Royce's Bankfield factory both said they saw a huge, grey coloured plane - possibly a Lancaster bomber-type with four propellers - emerging silently from the mist to their right. A split second later they were past it, but saw nothing more.

"It was so low I fully expected it to hit us, or at least hit the houses near the Bankfield site," she said. "We both fully expected to at least hear the impact of a crash, but there was nothing. And when we both looked back there was nothing. Whatever it was had vanished."

Mrs Thwaites added: "There wasn't a sound from the engine at all. It was really weird, but we both know what we saw and I just wondered if anyone else had reported seeing anything."

To try and explain her experience, Mrs Thwaites contacted aerial phenomena expert Donald Cooper, president of the Skipton research society SERIUS. He is now eager to hear from anyone else who has seen the same image, or witnessed something similar at another time.

"I spoke at length to Mrs Thwaites," said Mr Cooper. "She is a very sensible and intelligent person who, possibly because of her being an ex-policewoman, is not easily fazed.

"We know from research that `phantom' aircraft have been seen around Yorkshire.

"It is difficult to come up with a reasonable explanation that people can understand. There is a lot of electrical energy and physics that we are not even aware of surrounding the earth and a site like Rolls-Royce itself generates a great deal of electrical energy. Mrs Thwaites is adamant what she saw was a plane, but whether it was something breaking through another dimension or paranormal activity I cannot tell her," he added.

The article was followed up one week later:

The Craven Herald, 30 January 2004 : The mystery surrounding the sighting of an historic low-flying aeroplane near Barnoldswick has deepened. Following last week's story in which a couple told how they saw a Lancaster bomber-type plane on collision course with houses near the Rolls-Royce site at Bankfield, Skipton aerial phenomena expert Donald Cooper was inundated with phone calls from people all over Craven who reported similar sightings. Most told of what they described as a low flying Lancaster-type plane and several said they had seen it the same day as the couple in the story, but in different locations. Others were unsure of the day, but most were uniform in their description of the aircraft in that it was dark grey, with no markings and, although the propellers were rotating, was making no sound. "I must have taken 30 or more calls since Friday from a variety of people ranging from professionals to members of the public, councillors to pub landlords," said Mr Cooper. "Some have even come forward saying they saw something of that description several years ago. In particular one elderly gentleman rang to say he had seen the plane the article referred to. "He also said there used to be an old airfield at Greenberfield Lane (in Barnoldswick) which I didn't know about."Coincidentally, Mr Cooper pointed out that an article had also appeared in a national newspaper last Friday about "time slips", which said there had been many reports of people claiming to have seen World War Two aircraft as if re-running missions, often silently, from 60 years before.

The story did not end there and in 2006 the bomber was back.

The Craven Herald & Pioneer, Friday 24 February 2006: Two years after it vanished off the local radar, the phantom bomber of Barnoldswick has returned. In January 2004, a retired policewoman and her husband reported seeing what looked like a Lancaster bomber flying impossibly low over the Rolls-Royce site at Bankfield.

Eerily, the craft made no noise and the two witnesses were so shocked by what they saw that they almost crashed their car.

Soon after, a Skipton aerial phenomena expert was inundated with phone calls from people all over Craven who reported similar sightings.

Most described what they saw as a low-flying Second World War bomber, grey in color and with no markings. Several said they had seen it on the same day.

And this week, another man called the Craven Herald to say he had seen exactly the same thing flying towards the site of a small airstrip in Barnoldswick – which is rumoured to have been used for an emergency landing during World War II.

The resident of Sackville Street, Skipton, who asked for his name to be withheld, said: "I didn't think anything about it at the time - it wasn't until I remembered the reports in the papers from two years ago that it clicked.

"I was standing on the canal bank near Gargrave on Saturday and I saw what looked exactly like a Lancaster at around 400 feet. It didn't seem to be making a sound and it was heading north towards Gargrave and the Greenberfield strip where they sometimes fly microlights from."

At the time of the original sightings, it was suggested that RAF training flights involving large propeller-powered aircraft such as Hercules transporters could be to blame.

However, the 70-year-old man said: "I saw them duringthe war so I know what they look like - this wasn't a modern plane."

It was also suggested the reports could actually be flights of historical aircraft or commemorative events organized by Rolls-Royce, but there is just one flight worthy
Lancaster left in Europe - based at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire.

A Rolls-Royce source confirmed the company does own and fly a Spitfire, but it is much smaller than a Lancaster and its last flight in the Barnoldswick area was on October 1 2004. However, she added that RAF training and memorial flights in the area were quite common and could well fly over or "salute" the Bankfield site because of its aviation connections.

Aviation enthusiast Donald Cooper said the reports followed a familiar pattern and could tie in with theories of "time slips" - supposed replays or images of events which have taken place in the past - and could be connected with energy fields around industrial plants.

After an appeal in the Craven Herald in 2004, one man came forward to say he remembered a Lancaster making an emergency landing near Greenberfield Lane in Barnoldswick, adding that the Army and police quickly sealed the area
off to prevent curious locals getting a better look.

Another caller believed a landing strip had been reinforced with cork to make it a suitable site for heavy wartime aircraft to use in an emergency.

Mr Cooper said: "Lancaster bombers make a hell of a racket, but all of these people say they are silent. Was there a Lancaster that landed there during the war or did one try and didn't make it?

"I've shown all the witnesses I've spoken to pictures of modern RAF Hercules aeroplanes and they say it wasn't what they saw.

"They are quite different aircraft - the Hercules' wings are much higher in the fuselage and it only has a single tail-fin, whereas Lancasters have two. Besides, the RAF can't go below a certain altitude due to aviation regulations - especially not over a town of 10,000 people."

He added: "I'm keeping an open mind, but I have to believe the witnesses who all seem to be balanced, professional people and not people coming out of the pub after one too many."

Mr Cooper also has a cutting from a 1956 edition of the Craven Herald which shows a plane landing in Barnoldswick to deliver engineering components to Rolls-Royce.

Author: Ian Topham
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Our family flew to California for a vacation. One week later, we boarded the very same aircraft for the return flight to Phoenix, but sat in different seats. Suddenly, my daughter, who had been suffering chills, got colder and colder. She had already slipped on a heavy sweatshirt purchased for just that purpose, and I wrapped a Mexican blanket we had gotten at Knott’s around her—but, she got steadily colder. The attendant brought a blanket, and helped me wrap my daughter up like a cocoon, but, it didn’t help. It seemed forever before we landed at Phoenix. It took several hours for her to warm up. What was odd was that the rest of us, my three granddaughters, my brother and myself, as well as the other passengers, were perfectly comfortable the whole trip!

About three weeks later, my brother flew to Ontario, California on business, taking the same plane. He sat across the aisle from the seats we had occupied, and witnessed the lady sitting in the same seat my daughter had, beg for blankets–more blankets, please! She was freezing, although her husband and son on either side of her were rather warm, and said so.

The attendant recognized my brother, and quietly told him she was convinced there was something wrong with that particular seat because anyone who sat there–man, woman or child–complained of being cold, but had no explanation.

Story submitted by: Winona Wacker
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The legend of Clubfoot

Location: Binbrook - Former Binbrook RAF base.

The nickname given to an Australian worker on the base who blew himself up trying to sabotage a Lancaster bomber during World War Two was maybe a bit too unkind. What, or who, many believed to be Clubfoot, was seen for years after his death in many separate sightings walking around on the perimeter road.

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There have been numerous reports from former RAF Base, Montrose. A World War I trainee died while out on his first solo flight. Following the crash, his ghost was reported to have appeared in the base commander's room three times, before the room was locked up by the military, and not been used since. The ghostly crew member was also seen flying around in his biplane, up until the end of the Second World War.

A phantom RAF Officer was also seen around the base during the latter years of WW2. It was thought that he was killed when a mechanic with a grudge tampered with his aircraft's engine. The strange events continue to this day with continuous reports that an old radio set at the heritage centre continued to pick up Second World War transmissions, including Churchill speeches.

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Astronaut Donald "Deke" K. Slayton (on right) and 1st Lt. Ed Steinman (on left) beside a Douglas A-26 bomber in the Pacific Theater of Operations during the summer of 1945. While the exact location is unknown, the photograph was most likely taken on Okinawa. 1st Lt. Slayton was one of only two NASA astronauts to fly combat missions during World War II.

Deke spent a year in Europe as a B-25 pilot with the 340th Bombardment Group, completing 56 combat missions. In 1944, he returned to the United States for a year before being assigned to Okinawa with the 319th Bombardment Group. As part of the first group to fly combat with the A-26 aircraft, he flew seven combat missions over Japan. Slayton logged more the 6,600 hours of flying time, including 5,100 in jet aircraft. He was named as one of the seven Mercury astronauts in April 1959 and was scheduled to pilot the Mercury- Atlas 7 mission, but a heart condition prevented him from flying. After years of work as the Coordinator of Astronaut Activities and Director of Flight Crew Operations, he was again declared fit to fly in March 1972. Three years later he participated in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project as the Apollo docking module pilot. While he did not fly again, he continued to work for NASA until 1982 in a variety of capacities. He died on June 13, 1993.

He enjoyed piloting racing planes and he died doing what he loved. His date of death is very important for reasons that will be obvious to you. He died at home at 3:22 a.m. on June 13, 1993 and this was witnessed by his wife and daughter. Now here is where things get really strange. The plane that he loved to race turned up in the sky above John Wayne Airport in California on June 13, 1993 at 7:57 a.m.. Even though he died in Texas and there is a time difference, there is no way that he could have been piloting the plane, since he was already deceased. Well I guess by now it must be obvious that you think that somebody else was at the controls? I know that I would have to think that this was the obvious explanation, since the plane wouldn't be flying itself.

There is a problem with this idea however. The problem is one that is insurmountable. His plane was very distinct and had huge numbers painted on the fuselage. It was also a very noisy play which made many people look up as it flew and many of them noted the registration and type of plane. The Federal Aviation Administration sent a letter of citation against the registered owner and pilot of the plane stating that the noise level was above the allowed amounts. The family upon receiving this letter immediately contacted the FAA and told them several interesting facts. The first one of course was that Slayton could not have been piloting the plane since he had died before the incident.

Another interesting fact was that the plane had been put into an aircraft museum in Nevada, before the date of the fly over and the engine had been removed. The plane had been seen taking off from the airport, but the FAA was informed that the plane never had an electric starter and therefore it required somebody on the outside of the plane to help get it going. The many witnesses that had seen the plane were interrogated many times by different agencies and local pilots, none of them wavered in the identification of the plane.

The plane performed maneuvers over the airport that day and climbed suddenly into the clouds and was never seen again.

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Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, operated by a four-month-old Lockheed L-1011-1 Tristar (the tenth example delivered to the carrier) carrying 163 passengers and 13 crew members, left New York's JFK Airport on Friday, December 29, 1972 at 9:20 p.m., en route to Miami International Airport. The flight was under the command of captain Robert 'Bob' Loft, 55, a veteran Eastern Air Lines pilot ranked 50th in seniority at Eastern. His flight crew included first officer Albert Stockstill, 39, and second officer (flight engineer) Donald 'Don' Repo, 51. A company employee—technical officer, Angelo Donadeo, 47, returning to Miami from an assignment in New York—accompanied the flight crew for the journey.

The flight was routine until 11:32 p.m., when the flight began its approach into Miami International Airport. After lowering the gear, first officer Stockstill noticed that the landing gear indicator, a green light identifying that the nose gear is properly locked in the "down" position, did not illuminate. This was discovered to be due to a burned-out light bulb. The landing gear could have been manually lowered either way. The pilots cycled the landing gear but still failed to get the confirmation light.

Loft, who was working the radio during this leg of the flight, told the tower that they would abort their landing and asked for instructions to circle the airport. The tower cleared the flight to pull out of its descent, climb to two thousand feet, and then fly west over the darkness of the Everglades.

The cockpit crew removed the light assembly and second officer Repo was dispatched into the avionics bay beneath the flight deck to check visually if the gear was down through a small viewing window. Fifty seconds after reaching their assigned altitude, captain Loft instructed first officer Stockstill to put the L-1011 on autopilot. For the next eighty seconds, the plane maintained level flight. Then, it dropped one hundred feet (30 m), and then again flew level for two more minutes, after which it began a descent so gradual it could not be perceived by the crew. In the next seventy seconds, the plane lost only 250 feet (76 m), but this was enough to trigger the altitude warning C-chord chime located under the engineer's workstation. The engineer (second officer Repo) had gone below, and there was no indication by the pilot's voices recorded on the CVR that they heard the chime. In another fifty seconds, the plane was at half its assigned altitude.

As Stockstill started another turn, onto 180 degrees, he noticed the discrepancy. The following conversation was recovered from the flight voice recorder later:
Stockstill: We did something to the altitude.
Loft: What?
Stockstill: We're still at 2,000 feet, right?
Loft: Hey—what's happening here?

The jetliner crashed at 25°51′53″N 80°35′43″W25.86472°N 80.59528°W
The location was west-northwest of Miami, 18.7 miles (30.1 km) from the end of runway Nine Left (9L). The plane was traveling at 227 miles per hour when it flew into the ground. The left wingtip hit first, then the left engine and the left landing gear, making three trails through the sawgrass, each five feet wide and more than 100 feet (30 m) long. When the main part of the fuselage hit the ground, it continued to move through the grass and water, breaking up as it went.

In all, 77 had lived through the ordeal—69 of the 163 passengers and 8 of the 10 flight attendants survived the crash, with 99 initial fatalities. Of the cockpit crew, only Flight Engineer Repo survived the initial crash, along with technical officer Donadeo who was down in the nose electronics bay with Repo at the moment of impact. Stockstill was killed on impact, while Captain Loft died in the wreckage of the flightdeck before he could be transported to a hospital. Repo was evacuated to a hospital, but later succumbed to his injuries. Angelo Donadeo, the lone survivor of the four flightdeck occupants, eventually recovered from his injuries and died on October 4, 2004.

Over the following months and years, employees of Eastern Air Lines began reporting sightings of the dead crew members, captain Robert Loft and second officer (flight engineer) Donald Repo, sitting on board other L-1011 (N318EA) flights. The aircrafts involved in the sightings were discovered to have been serviced using the recovered parts of Flight 401. These parts were salvaged after the crash investigation and refitted into other L-1011s.

The reported hauntings were only seen on the planes that used the spare parts. (Even though some parts were salvaged and re-used to maintain other airplanes in Eastern's fleet, the accident resulted in the total hull loss of N310EA and it was written off.) Sightings of the spirits of Don Repo and Bob Loft spread throughout Eastern Air Lines to the point where Eastern's management warned employees that they could face dismissal if caught spreading ghost stories. While Eastern Airlines publicly denied some of their planes were haunted, they reportedly removed all the salvaged parts from their L-1011 fleet.

Once the original parts belonging to Flight 401 were removed, the ghostly crew members were never seen again...

Source:Wikipedia
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An aircraft is never still in darkness to those who listen intently past the drone of the engines; there is a whispering in distant chambers. There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.

From all of us at Sierra Hotel Aeronautics...Eat, drink and be scary!

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