The world of aviation has more paranormal encounters and strange mysteries swirling around it than many of us might think. While most of us are familiar with the Bermuda Triangle, for example, which has seemingly claimed multiple planes over the years. Most people have heard of the MH370 plane that seemingly vanished into thin air in the 2010s, many people are not so familiar with monstrous and beastly creatures that terrorized military pilots during the Second World War, or with aircraft that have seemingly become caught up in strange wormholes in the air and transported thousands of miles in an instant, or even disappear completely before reappearing again, and even planes that manifest in the skies as if they have traveled here directly from a past era. The fact is, the world of aviation is much more mysterious than many of us might be comfortable with.
While there are plenty of aviation mysteries that have taken place in the air (as we might expect), it is perhaps worth our time exploring a side of aviation very much on the ground – airports, or more to the point here, haunted airports, of which there are more than we might expect. In the book Haunted Airports: Ghostly Tales, Unexplained Phenomena, and Eerie Encounters from the World’s Most Mysterious Airports, researcher and author Lee Brickley details just some of these.
Perhaps a good place to start when examining some of these ghostly tales from airports around the world is with one of the world’s busiest and certainly most well-known airports, Heathrow Airport in London. While the airport opened in 1946, it appears that the ghostly activity began to increase following the numerous expansions that have taken place since then.
One of the most interesting, if chilling, of these is a “Crying Child” that has seemingly been witnessed many times. The first apparent sighting of this chilling entity occurred at some time in the 1970s during construction work on Terminal 3. Many of the workers began reporting hearing the sound of a crying child while they worked, which seemed to come from the empty corridors of the terminal. Many of these workers were so convinced by the sounds that they even ventured into the tunnels to search for what they thought was a lost child. The sounds of the Crying Child progressed to sightings once the work on Terminal 3 was complete, with both passengers and airport staff reporting seeing the specter. All described the same manifestation: a young boy of around six years old who was carrying a small, untidy-looking suitcase. While sightings have been reported at all times of day, the majority of these encounters seemed to take place either late at night or in the early hours. Moreover, the Crying Child was witnessed in multiple different locations around the newly constructed terminal, with sightings occurring in the departure lounges, in the baggage claim areas, and, on some occasions, on the tarmac outside the terminal.
Brickley details a particularly bone-chilling encounter with the Crying Child that occurred in the early hours one morning, when the airport was particularly quiet. A female passenger was in Terminal 3 waiting to catch a connecting flight. Suddenly, the sound of a child crying reached her ears. She quickly scanned her surroundings, eventually spotting a young boy holding a suitcase near a set of doors that led out onto the tarmac. The woman immediately stood and headed toward the young child, thinking he must be lost. As she got closer, she could see the boy’s face was “pale and translucent” while his eyes were “hollow and full of sorrow!” Just as she reached out her hand towards him, however, the young boy vanished right before her eyes.
It is thought this recurring apparition is the spirit of a young boy who was involved in a plane crash that departed from Heathrow in the 1960s, although his actual identity, ultimately, remains a mystery. Some paranormal investigators and psychics, however, have claimed to have communicated with the young boy, offering that his name is Thomas and that he was traveling with his family when he met his untimely and tragic end.
While perhaps not as heavily reported, the spirit of the infamous highwayman, Dick Turpin, is also said to haunt England’s busiest airport, who was sentenced death back in 1739 for multiple counts of robbery. It is not known if Turpin committed at least some of his crimes on the land Heathrow Airport resides on today or not, or whether he simply had a hideout of sorts on the land. Many people, though, have reported not only seeing his spirit, but that of his black horse, usually near the main terminal.
A similar ghostly entity to the Crying Child can be found at the Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport in Madrid, Spain, a strange figure referred to by those who have seen her as the Lady in White. And, similar to the crying child of Heathrow Airport, sightings of the Lady in White seemingly began in the 1960s during expansion work at the airport. This strange specter is seen wearing a “flowing white dress and (is) shrouded by an aura of melancholy”, and appears to be in her mid-30s with long hair. The first reported sighting of her was at Terminal 1, with several people seeing her near the departure gates late one evening (again, similar to the Crying Child of Heathrow, who also often appears in the late hours). Many people have reported seeing her since, with most stating that she appears to be “waiting for someone!”
One particularly intriguing encounter with the Lady in White occurred during the early hours of a winter’s morning, when a janitor spotted the ghostly woman standing at Gate 16 staring out onto the tarmac. At this point, thinking the woman was simply a late-night passenger, the janitor approached her to ask if she needed any help. However, before he could reach her, she simply faded away, disappearing into thin air.
Another encounter with the Lady in White featured a veteran commercial pilot, who had landed his plane at the airport late one evening. As he was taxiing it back to the terminal, however, he spotted a woman dressed in white standing out on the runway. He immediately reported what he was seeing to the control tower, fearful he would hit and kill the woman. A security unit was immediately dispatched, but when they arrived, there was no sign of the woman or anyone else.
It isn’t just sightings of the Lady in White at Madrid-Barajas Airport that might be of interest to paranormal investigators. There have been multiple reports of sudden temperature drops and cold spots, most often, incidentally, in and around Gate 16. Moreover, electronic equipment often malfunctions with no obvious reason.
While the sightings of the Crying Child of Heathrow and the Lady in White of Madrid-Barajas are unsettling enough, even stranger, more disturbing supernatural entities can be found at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, which has boasted reports of strange, dark figures since it opened in 1998. These figures are often described as shadow-like and are unnaturally fast, often seen racing from one side of the airport corridors to the other. Some of these figures are visible only briefly, while others are much more detailed, with several reports of a “man clad in traditional Malay attire, his face obscured by shadows!” Even more interesting, unlike the sightings at Heathrow and Madrid-Barajas, these sightings occur at all times of the day as opposed to only in the early hours or late at night. Moreover, as well as sightings of strange figures, many passengers and staff alike have reported hearing strange voices seemingly coming from nowhere, with some witnesses even claiming these strange figures have called them by their respective names.
One of the most unsettling accounts to have unfolded at Kuala Lumpur International Airport involved an air traffic controller who witnessed a strange “shadowy figure” simply standing on the runway in the early hours one morning. Thinking the person might be attempting to harm themselves, or even that they might be part of a terrorist organization, he immediately notified the security teams on the ground. However, when they arrived at the location, there was nobody to be seen.
Another report features a group of passengers who were waiting for a late-night plane that had been delayed. As they waited in the departure lounge, they noticed a group of figures seemingly dressed in old-fashioned clothing waiting near one of the departure gates. Most of the group was watching as the strange figures simply faded into nothing before their eyes.
Yet another incident occurred in January 2020, when a passenger named Farah, who had arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport from London and was waiting for a late-night connecting flight to Penang, witnessed something truly strange. As she was walking through the largely empty terminal, she suddenly became aware of “a group of women in traditional Malay attire, their faces obscured by shadows!” Thinking they were some kind of performance group, Farah immediately headed towards them. However, as she approached them, she noticed that the terminal had turned decidedly cold. Of more concern, she could hear a strange whispering sound that seemed to come from all around her. Despite this, she continued toward the group. It was only when she was a short distance away that she noticed the “women were transparent” and that “their forms (were) shimmering like a mirage!” Then, the next thing she realized, the figures were turning to face her, and she could see their faces had seemingly been “replaced by a deep, unsettling darkness!” She instinctively looked away in shock and disbelief. By the time she had looked back only a second or so later, the group of faceless women was no longer there.
We can find similar disturbing goings-on at Hong Kong International Airport, an airport that, coincidentally or not, was built on a one-time fishing village that saw many of the villagers displaced in order to make way for its construction. In the years since, there have been multiple reports of people hearing strange whispers and “fragmented conversations”, with some people even claiming to have been called by name by an invisible presence. While these strange voices are undoubtedly unsettling, they are not necessarily ominous. One account came from a staff member at the airport named Liu, who claimed that when he was alone in the baggage area late one evening, he heard a sudden whisper in his ear telling him to “step back!” He did so without thinking about it. A moment later, a machine nearby suddenly malfunctioned, sending a piece of machinery hurtling to where he had been standing only moments previously.
As well as the unsettling whispering voices, many passengers and airport staff have reported seeing a strange woman dressed in traditional Chinese clothing (thought to be the spirit of one of the villagers). She is almost always seen during the early hours and appears to bring with her a sense of sadness and melancholy. There are also regular sightings of an old man, mostly seen near the check-in desks. He is always seen to be looking for something and in a state of distress. However, when people approach the man to offer assistance, he simply vanishes into nothing. Perhaps most intriguing of all, though, is the apparent manifestation of a pilot who is seen wearing an old-fashioned pilot’s uniform and looking out towards the runway where the planes take off from, “his figure illuminated by the glow of the runway lights!” A particularly disturbing encounter involved one of the airport’s janitors, who was cleaning one of the airport bathrooms when he heard a voice coming from one of the stalls. He went to the door and knocked on it, upon which the strange voice stopped. He waited several moments before gently pushing open the stall door. Although there was no one inside, the janitor claimed he saw a “fleeting shadow disappear” in the second before the door was fully open.
Rather than just being haunted by specific entities or spirits, there is some evidence that the land Hong Kong International Airport resides on is some kind of magnetic paranormal hub that allows all manner of manifestations and apparitions. One such account that demonstrates this was also documented by Brickley and featured a British traveler named Evelyn, who was waiting for a delayed flight when she heard a whisper in her ear telling her to “go home!” She turned around to see who was speaking to her, but much to her surprise, there was no one there. This instruction was repeated several times. Evelyn did her best to put the bizarre episode out of her mind. However, when she discovered a short time later that her father had passed away at around the same time that she had heard the strange whispering, she believed that the voice behind the instruction was none other than her father, or more specifically, his spirit.
Perhaps what makes the bizarre supernatural happenings at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, unique is that, rather than witnesses seeing the manifestation of a person, they have seen the apparent manifestation of an entire plane. Not only is Schiphol Airport one of the busiest in the world, but it also dates back to 1916 when it served as a military airbase. During the Second World War, it served as an air base for the German air force, which had taken over the Netherlands in the early years of the conflict, and it is to when the airport was under the control of the Third Reich that the origins of the phantom aircraft witnessed by many stretch back to.
According to the account, one night in November 1943, a British Lancaster bomber was making its way back to the United Kingdom following a bombing mission over Berlin. It had sustained significant damage during the mission, so much so that the pilot was struggling to keep the aircraft in the air. Perhaps because of the deteriorating condition of the aircraft, the crew mistook where they were, and when they saw lights on the ground, they believed it was the lights of a friendly airfield. By the time they were almost on the runway, they realized it was Schiphol Airport, which was, of course, under German control. German forces opened fire on the stricken aircraft, which plummeted to the ground, killing all the crew.
Whether the strange, phantom plane witnessed by passengers, staff, and pilots at Schiphol Airport is the unfortunate Lancaster Bomber that was shot down at the airport that cold evening in November 1943 or not is perhaps open to debate. The sightings, though, are numerous and stretched out across the decades, and these sightings have a typical scenario that is usually played out. Many of them, for example, have taken place on cold, foggy nights, as if the conditions somehow attract this phantom aircraft. The plane is usually spotted flying dangerously low, with people usually reporting hearing the engines “sputtering” as if it is struggling to stay aloft. Those in the control tower have also heard or seen the plane, and most always look to their radar screens for confirmation of the anomalous craft. Their screens, however, never register it. Just as the aircraft is about to crash into the ground, it simply vanishes into thin air.
During late 1985, an experienced pilot with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Jan Van Der Kolk, was preparing for a short flight from Amsterdam to London. He recalled that it was “just past midnight, and a thick fog had settled over the airport!” He went about his pre-flight checks when he noticed a plane coming in towards the airport at a particularly low altitude. He could immediately see that the plane was an “older model” and that “it was in trouble!” He radioed the control tower but was informed no scheduled flights were arriving at the airport, and they couldn’t see the plane on their radar screens. He continued to watch as the plane descended. However, before it crashed, it simply disappeared. He recalled that, “It was there one moment, and gone the next!”
A similar account comes from a maintenance worker at the airport, Els Van Dam, who was working a night shift and was fixing a faulty light near the runway when he suddenly heard a plane that was “in distress” overhead. He looked up and saw the “outline of an aircraft descending through the fog!” He watched in disbelief as the plane headed toward the runway, describing the event as a “haunting sight!” He recalled that “just as it was about to crash, it vanished into thin air. The noise, the smoke, everything disappeared!”
Here would be a good place to explore other cases of phantom planes, specifically, sightings of these strange ghostly aircraft over Derbyshire in England. Although these strange aerial sights have occurred for years over the skies of Derbyshire, a particular surge of sightings in early 2018 received significant news coverage, with several tabloid newspapers and media platforms dedicating space to covering the sightings.
On the evening of March 26th, between 6 pm and 7 pm, dozens of reports were made to authorities of an “old World War Two” plane flying relatively low to the ground over the Derbyshire region. Reports of these sightings were so widespread that the military was forced to issue a statement that the plane was, in fact, a Hercules C-130 on “training exercises!” However, a look at the reports that came from the public appears to describe a completely different plane to the Hercules C-130, specifically, a Douglas Dakota, a military transport plane that was regularly used by the Allies during the Second World War. Even more intriguing, many reports stated that at the same time of the respective sightings, the sky turned “eerily dark” – unnaturally so. Many of the sightings specifically stated that despite the plane being low to the ground, it appeared to move in complete silence (similar, we might note, to how UFOs are often described). Some reports stated that the plane looked as though it was about to crash to the ground, while others stated that the plane appeared to be in pursuit of something.
After news of the sightings began to circulate around media platforms, a “flood of reports” arrived at the local newspaper of almost identical sightings. One resident stated in a comment on the paper’s social media page that he was sitting in a car on the A38 with his father at around 6:45 pm one evening when “two aircraft flew over us. It was scary; they were so low. They made no sound and produced no contrails!” Another resident from the town of Belper stated the planes went directly over her house, adding that although they were flying very low and were huge, they were strangely quiet.
It is worth returning to the suggestion from the military that what had been seen over Derbyshire by residents had been a Hercules transport plane, while being misleading, might not have been a complete untruth. We might recall, for example, that while some witnesses reported the plane being completely silent, others reported that they could hear the faint sound of engines. Not always widely reported, though, was the fact that some witnesses reported seeing two planes – one that was completely silent, and one that appeared to make a noise. What’s more, it was this second plane that appeared to be “giving chase!” Might we ask if the military did indeed scramble a Hercules plane on the nights of reports of “ghost planes”, not only in an attempt to pursue these aerial anomalies, but also to use this military plane as a way of dismissing the many reports from the public?
Of course, if there is any truth to the notion that the military was attempting to suppress or even cover up sightings of these apparent ghost planes, we might ask why they would be interested in such matters in the first place. History tells us that, generally speaking, the military only takes an interest when it comes to defense or the possibility of weaponization. So that would mean the military either sees these ghostly planes as some kind of threat, or there is something in the mechanism of their appearances that the military can somehow translate into a technology that, in turn, will be turned into some kind of weapon.
What is interesting is that the region where these ghost planes are spotted – planes that are aircraft that were utilized during the Second World War – is that this region is home to over 50 plane crashes involving these 1940s aerial vehicles, with these crashes resulting in over 300 deaths. These reports have come from all over the Derbyshire area, as well as the Moors of the Peak District, and the Howden Moors, which border Yorkshire.
Perhaps one of the most interesting sightings occurred one evening in April 1995, when a local man, a retired postman, Tony Ingle, was walking his dog on the moor. Suddenly, he noticed a huge shadow fall over him, causing him to look upward. There, directly overhead, was a 1940s-style plane moving at an altitude of around 50 feet. Strangely, although he could see the movement of the huge propellers, no sound came from the aircraft, and it moved silently. As he looked on, the strange plane suddenly turned downward, eventually going out of Ingle’s sight, appearing to crash in a field behind a large hedge. Ingle rushed over to the field, but much to his shock, he found it empty. There was no wreckage, no flames, no anything. Interestingly, though, his dog, despite having walked in this field many times before, refused to do so now, and would not do so again.
Some of the strangest encounters have unfolded over the Ladybower Reservoir in the Upper Derwent Valley. And that is perhaps not a surprise, as multiple aging pieces of aircraft wreckage remain in the area today. Back in the Second World War, this region was used as a training and testing ground for Allied forces, and during this time, many aircraft, as we mentioned earlier, crashed to the ground. Two of these crashes happened in the final weeks of the war, between May and July 1945, and both were on routine training missions at the time.
We should perhaps not be too surprised, then, to discover that there are many sightings of “World War Two-era” planes in this region, usually of Lancaster Bombers that circle above for several minutes. On some occasions, these planes will suddenly drop and “swoop” over the area before disappearing. There is an encounter on record that was similar to Tony Ingle’s that we examined earlier. However, when the plane crashed to the ground on this occasion, the witness heard and felt a powerful explosion, before seeing flames and smoke rise high into the air. When they arrived at the crash site, however, the fire and smoke were nowhere to be seen, nor was any wreckage.
As we mentioned earlier, following the news coverage on the ghost planes, a surge of reports came from the public, some of which are particularly interesting. A local resident named Chris Pryce, for example, claimed that she was driving along Sheffield Road at around 2 pm on June 17th, 2013, with her husband when a “large aircraft” suddenly appeared in front of them, rising from the valley below the Millstone Inn car park. The aircraft appeared to be banking in an attempt to gain altitude, eventually disappearing from their sight into the valley. A few moments later, as the couple’s car reached the junction, they each looked into the valley, thinking the aircraft might have crashed. However, much to their shock and bewilderment, the plane was nowhere to be seen. The witness continued that her husband had offered that the aircraft appeared like a “World War Two Dakota and was the color of khaki green!” She also stated that despite the aircraft being so close to them and so low to the ground, they couldn’t hear any sound at all coming from it.
Another resident, who stated her name was Caroline, claimed that she and her sister had “seen a ghostly plane” at Calver on three occasions. Each time, it was an “old war-type plane with propellers turning but totally silent!” One of those sightings was during the day, and the plane flew so low that it was “practically touching the roof of the Eyre Arms pub” before it went below the level of the houses into the valley. Caroline and her sister saw the ghost plane again, this time one evening. Once more, it was flying particularly low and was again completely silent. On this occasion, though, the sisters could see the bright navigation lights of the aircraft. The final sighting occurred when Caroline was on her own. This time, the plane appeared directly over the top of her and was no more than 30 feet from the ground as it banked to the left. Caroline pulled her car to the side of the road in order to watch the strange aircraft, but when she returned her focus ahead of her, the plane had simply disappeared.
Of course, we can’t look at aviation mysteries without briefly exploring the bizarre aftermath of Eastern Airlines Flight 401. On the evening of December 29th, 1972, Pilot Captain Bob Loft and Second Officer Don Repo were piloting Flight 401 when it came crashing to the ground in the Florida Everglades. Both Loft and Repo, as well as 99 other people onboard, were killed in what was one of the worst commercial air disasters in United States aviation history.
It appeared that some kind of systems malfunction had caused the crew to be temporarily distracted, leading to the crash. In the moments before they lost contact with the plane, the control tower heard First Officer Stockstill suddenly announce that, “We did something to the altitude!” Loft expressed immediate concern at this before Stockstill is heard to ask, “We are still at 2000 feet, right?” A moment later, communication was lost, and the aircraft had crashed full speed into the ground.
Investigators eventually managed to establish a timeline of events and a fuller picture of exactly what happened that fateful night. It appeared that a systems problem had gotten all of the crews’ attention and, for reasons uncertain, led to increased movement in the cockpit. During this movement, the autopilot, which had been set to maintain an altitude of 2000 feet, had been knocked in exactly the right way to disengage it. Even worse, the system didn’t register that the plane had lost altitude by 500 feet. It was only when they then dropped their altitude purposely that they realized they were not as high up as they thought they were, by which time, it was too late to react.
In the months that followed the deadly crash, many passengers and staff on Eastern Airlines flights began seeing two of the dead pilots, Bob Loft and Don Repo. An unnamed flight engineer, for example, was performing pre-flight checks on an Eastern Airlines plane when Don Repo appeared right in front of him. Not only that, Repo informed the stunned engineer that he had already performed the pre-flight checks.
Another account came from a flight attendant, who saw someone in an Eastern Airlines uniform on the galley, appearing to be repairing an oven. She immediately went to the serving flight engineer to report what she had seen and to ask who this other flight engineer was. To her shock, she was told that he was the only engineer on the flight. The attendant, however, was certain of what she had seen and described the “other engineer” in great detail. She was later shown photographs of Eastern Airlines employees, eventually picking out Repo as the man she had seen, even though she was not aware at the time that he had passed away several months earlier.
Yet another encounter involved an anonymous female Eastern Airlines passenger, who left her seat temporarily in order to find another flight attendant, as one of the flight attendants had sat down next to her, clearly unwell. She returned to her seat with a flight attendant, and both women looked on in shock as Don Repo, sitting in the chair next to hers, simply faded away and vanished into thin air.
Without a doubt, one of the most unsettling and thought-provoking encounters concerning Flight 401 occurred several years after the tragic crash, in the mid-1970s. On Flight Tri-Star 138, Eastern Airlines flight attendant, Faye Merryweather, was performing her usual in-flight duties when she suddenly spotted Repo’s face in the over door of the plane’s kitchen. She did her best to remain calm, backing out of the room as she went to find another member of staff. She returned to the kitchen with two other flight attendants. All three of them saw Repo’s face in the oven door, with one of the flight attendants even having worked with Repo years earlier, and as such, was able to positively identify the dead pilot. Then, things turned even stranger – and unsettling.
As the three of them stared at the face in the oven door, all three of them suddenly heard Repo’s voice stating, “Watch out for fire on this plane!” A short time later, during the last part of the flight, the aircraft began to experience trouble with one of its engines and had to make an emergency landing. A fire in the engine had caused it to malfunction. Had it remained airborne, the flight could have been another disaster. Interestingly or not, the section where the three flight attendants had witnessed Repo’s face in the oven door had been made from recovered parts from Flight 401.
Arguably, one of the most credible claims of ghostly sightings connected to the downed Flight 401 came from the Vice President of Eastern Airlines, who stated on record that he had been traveling in First Class when he began speaking to what he thought was one of the pilots on the flight. That was until the “pilot” disappeared right before his eyes. When he arrived at his destination, he immediately sought out a picture of the dead pilots of Flight 401 and was shocked to see that the man looked identical to Bob Loft.
Incidentally, sightings of Bob Loft and Don Repo continued right up until the closure of Eastern Airlines in 1991. It is also interesting to note, whether it is of consequence or not, that the two spirits were never seen together on the same flight. Perhaps a reason for their repeated and seemingly calculated appearances over the years can be found in an encounter of an anonymous Eastern Airlines captain, who claimed to have seen Repo only moments before he was about to board a flight he was piloting. The dead man, or at least his spirit, told the captain that, “There will never be another crash (on an Eastern Airlines flight). We will not let it happen!” Was this determination what kept the spirits of Repo and Loft boarding Eastern Airlines flights? Or perhaps it was a sense of guilt at their mistake, having caused the crash in December 1972. Or might it have been that the energies of both men were somehow contained within the salvaged wreckage of Flight 401 that was then repurposed on other Eastern Airlines’ aircraft? Whatever the truth, the ghosts of Flight 401 is one of the strangest, most thought-provoking cases on record, and one that appears to very much suggest there is indeed some kind of existence after death.
Before we move on, it is also worth our time quickly examining another, lesser-known ghostly aerial encounter that occurred on a Virgin Airlines flight, when a flight attendant approached a gentleman standing in the plane’s galley to see if he needed any help. The man named a woman, who was a passenger on the flight, and asked the attendant to pass on a message. The message was simple – just to tell the woman that he was OK. Although she was a little confused, the flight attendant sought the woman out and passed on the message as she had been asked. The passenger appeared equally as confused and then reached into her purse and retrieved a photograph. She showed it to the flight attendant and asked her if this was the man she had spoken to, to which the flight attendant agreed. The passenger then went on to state that the man in question had recently passed away, and his coffin was in the cargo hold of that very flight.
Without a doubt, one of the most unsettling and disturbing aviation encounters, if we are to believe the incident to be true and not just an urban legend for a moment, occurred somewhere off the coast of San Diego, California, in the summer of 1939. John Keel relayed the encounter in his book Our Haunted Planet, and Jerome Clark also documented the incident in an article in Flying Saucer Review years later.
Both reports agree that the story begins with a United States military cargo plane leaving the runway at Marine Naval Air Station in San Diego, destined for Honolulu, Hawaii. The flight progressed as normal, to begin with. Then, around three hours after leaving the mainland United States, the control tower in San Diego received several sudden and panicked distress calls from the aircraft. Then, of even more concern, the cargo plane went completely silent. The control tower frantically tried to reestablish contact, but all efforts proved unsuccessful. As the perplexed and distressed staff at the control tower tried to come to grips with the surreal situation unfolding around them, the bizarre events took an even stranger twist.
Much to the surprise and even disbelief of those at the naval base, the sight of the cargo plane appeared in the distance as it made its purposeful approach to land. From the control tower window to the runway itself, shocked personnel watched as the aircraft touched down on the ground in what was a perfect, textbook landing. Emergency services vehicles were already approaching the runway, and within moments had surrounded the plane, and a moment after that, a security unit gained access to the aircraft. None of them were prepared for the scene that would greet them.
It became quickly apparent that all of the crew were dead. Each of them was seemingly killed following an attack from something monstrous, with each having a huge, gaping claw-like wound on their torsos. As the unit looked around the interior of the aircraft, they could see similar carnage, with large sections appearing to have been clawed apart. Interestingly or not, all of those who touched these ravaged parts of the plane’s interior developed a strange, unknown skin infection in the days that followed. There were, though, further, even stranger discoveries awaiting the unit in the cockpit, inside which both the pilot and co-pilot were discovered dead with identical injuries to the crew of the plane. Each had a .45 automatic weapon in his hand, and each had several empty shell casings around them on the cockpit floor, suggesting they had been firing at some unknown assailant in their final moments.
There were several other thought-provoking details and unanswered questions that plagued the security unit, as well as the superiors they would ultimately report to. Why, for example, was there a strong sulfur-like smell present throughout the aircraft, particularly so in the cockpit of the plane? Even more perplexing was just how the plane had managed to land in the first place. Had one or both of the pilots remained alive long enough to guide the aircraft back to the runway? Such a suggestion appeared unlikely. Who, or what, then, ensured the plane landed back at the military air base? And above all else – who, or what, was the attacker, why had they killed all onboard, and where had they disappeared to?
What is perhaps particularly interesting about this alleged account is that, at least according to research at the time, the incident could well be one of gremlins, real-life gremlins – strange creatures who many in the aviation industry believed sabotaged their vehicles while in flight. And there is ample evidence of this public belief, as well as many accounts on record from pilots and crew who claimed to have had encounters with these strange and menacing creatures.
The first known recorded mention of these bizarre “gremlins” was in an article in The Spectator newspaper in the United Kingdom in the early 1920s, which stated that, in 1918, the Royal Air Force had “detected the existence of a horde of mysterious and malicious sprites” who had been responsible for several mischievous acts mid-flight. Arguably, the first documented encounter unfolded in 1923 when, after ditching his plane in the waters off the English coast, a British pilot claimed that a “tiny creature which had followed him aboard his plane” caused such havoc that he had no choice but to abandon his aircraft.
Without a doubt, however, it was during the years of the Second World War when the vast majority of gremlin reports surfaced. In fact, the Ministry of Defense took reports of the sightings extremely seriously, with some even suspecting these strange creatures were somehow connected to German forces. Eventually, as the Americans entered the war, British pilots realized that their American counterparts had seemingly encountered the same creatures, and moreover, following the end of the war, Allied Forces discovered that German pilots had reported aerial incidents with what appeared to be the same entities.
Arguably, one of the most unsettling of these gremlin encounters featured an American pilot who was serving over Europe during the conflict. He is named only as LW in the report, and on the night in question, was piloting a Boeing B-17 aircraft when an unsettling noise that appeared to be coming from the engine got his attention. At the same time, his navigation equipment suddenly began to malfunction, which caused him to automatically run a check of all his equipment. It was as he was doing so that he spotted a monstrous creature looking in at him through the cockpit window, seemingly clinging to the outside of the aircraft. This creature, he later recalled, had pointed ears, green skin, and glowing red eyes, as well as “razor-sharp teeth” that lined its mouth. Then, things turned even stranger.
To his further shock and disbelief, as he was watching this strange creature, a second identical creature appeared, this one on the nose of the aircraft. For a moment or two, he was in shock before he snapped back to attention. He immediately put the plane into a dive before leveling off again. He repeated this several times, eventually causing the creatures to lose their grip and fall from his aircraft, presumably to the ground. By the time he had landed his plane, he had decided to keep it to himself. However, after hearing several other pilots speaking of almost identical creatures they themselves had witnessed, he reported what he had seen to his superiors.
One-time aviation expert with both the British and Australian aviation industries, John Laming, researched and documented many encounters with gremlins involving pilots during the Second World War. One of the most interesting of these occurred in August 1944 and involved Captain Wikner, who was delivering an Avro Lancaster Bomber to an unidentified air base in the United Kingdom. However, as he was approaching his location, his engines suddenly cut out. Due to his extended experience in the air, Wikner was able to guide his plane to an emergency landing at the next available air base. As soon as he touched down on the runway, however, his engines roared into life once more. The tale, though, took a further twist once the plane had come to a stop. For reasons that were never explained to him, Wikner was suddenly taken off the mission, and another pilot replaced him in taking the plane to its final destination. Even stranger, the plane was kept under armed guard for the duration of its stay at the base.
Another equally intriguing encounter documented by Laming occurred two years earlier in 1942, as pilot Chris Jarrett was guiding his Lancaster aircraft over northern France, returning from a bombing mission to Germany. However, and almost identically to all of the wartime encounters we have explored here, without warning, the plane’s engines suddenly failed. Now, with a considerable amount of fuel remaining and with all of its bombs still loaded, the plane began a straight descent towards the ground. Realizing there was nothing he could do, Jarrett activated his ejector seat, landing on the ground just in time to see the aircraft disappear over a hill before a mushroom cloud of flames appeared where the plane had vanished.
It is interesting to note that while there are many records of engine failures during the Second World War, seemingly particularly so with Lancaster Bombers, it is suspected that the total number, unofficially, is much higher, and that the word among the pilots and other Allied air force personnel was that these mysterious creatures – gremlins – were to blame.
It is perhaps also interesting to note that many of these incidents occurred during reconnaissance flights and, as such, at particularly high altitudes, leading to some suggesting that these colder and much more pressurized conditions at such altitudes might have played a part in the respective witnesses’ encounters.
Whatever they were, reports of these menacing and mischievous entities slowed dramatically in the years following the Second World War, eventually stopping altogether. Although we should once more note that, at least according to some researchers, the reasons for this could very well have been due to strict orders behind closed doors to no longer speak of such encounters. Indeed, the truth about “real-life gremlins” might never be fully known.
According to an article in the March 24th, 1975 edition of The Deseret News, at some point in the early 1970s, a commercial airliner, along with the crew and passengers, “skipped” forward in time for 10 minutes as it was preparing to land, something that “has never been satisfactorily explained!” According to the report, National Airlines 727 was approaching Miami, Florida, and was being tracked by Air Traffic Control when it completely vanished from radar.
As was standard procedure, as soon as the aircraft vanished from radar, the control tower put out an emergency call to all other aircraft in the area for them to attempt to visually locate the missing plane. Because of the suddenness with which it had vanished, the control tower feared it might have exploded or plummeted into the waters off the Florida coast. With this in mind, pilots and crews were asked to look for signs of any wreckage in the water or on the ground below. None of the pilots in the region could see any sign of the plane, nor did any of them have it on their radars.
Then, 10 minutes later, the plane suddenly reappeared – both on the radar and visually. Even stranger, it was in the exact same location as it had been 10 minutes earlier when it had vanished from radar. This meant – as unlikely as this scenario would be – if the plane had somehow simply been cloaked and was simply “invisible” to radar and even the naked eye, it would have traveled a considerable distance in 10 minutes. Stranger still, during the 10 minutes it was missing, several aircraft, including search and rescue planes, had flown through the exact airspace where the airplane had vanished and reappeared. It also became apparent to those in the control tower that the crew – and almost certainly the passengers – were completely unaware that anything untoward had taken place.
A relaying of the account also appeared in the book Real Time Travel Stories From A Psychic Engineer by Martin Ettington, and he detailed that as the aircraft came in to land, the captain was instructed to land the aircraft on an isolated runway – one that was specifically designated for “security risks and special situations!” The plane came to a stop, and moments later, it was boarded by security forces. They quickly rounded up the passengers and the crew and took them to a specific section of the airport, one completely separate from the rest of the airport’s passengers. To say the passengers were confused would be an understatement, not least because on their way to the airport building, they were surrounded by emergency response vehicles and heavily armed airport police.
Eventually, the head of airport security arrived where the passengers and crew were being held. He stated that their plane had “disappeared into thin air for 10 minutes”. He later took the captain back out to the plane and stated that he “might want to take a look at your clock!” When the captain did so, he could see it read 9:20 am. He quickly compared this to his wristwatch, and it too read 9:20 am. However, when he looked at the clocks on the airport walls, they all read 9:30 am – exactly 10 minutes ahead. Or, put another way, they (the passengers and crew) were exactly 10 minutes behind everyone else. Ultimately, by this point, the crew and passengers were more than aware that something truly out of the ordinary had taken place, even if they didn’t know what that something was.
Ultimately, the account is one that remains open to debate as to its authenticity. On the one hand, there is documented evidence that something strange did indeed take place, but on the other, there appear to be very few facts to back up the account. However, while it is easy to conclude that the reasons for this are due to the incident being more urban legend than fact, it could be a sign that the encounter has been, for the most part, successfully suppressed. One person who suspects that there could be to the account than it merely being a tall story is researcher and author Martin Caidin, who wrote of the encounter in his 1994 book Ghosts of the Air: True Stories of Aerial Hauntings. In it, he wrote that, “Federal investigators and officials of National (Airlines) couldn’t get into that jetliner fast enough” following its landing. We might ask, what exactly might that have been? Just what did authorities know or expect to find? The incident remains a complete mystery.
Perhaps a good place to end our look at some of the most bizarre mysteries in the world of aviation is with a similar encounter that took place three decades later, in November 2009. However, on this occasion, a plane, crew, and passengers didn’t simply vanish and then reappear several minutes later but were transported thousands of miles away in seemingly no time at all. And even more remarkably, at least according to some commentators and researchers, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland was responsible for this anomaly, an unintentional consequence of it being restarted and generating a time warp or time wave.
While we should perhaps treat this incident with a pinch of salt, it is intriguing nonetheless, not least as the claims do appear to match other strange goings-on around the planet at the time, including a huge power blackout in South America that appeared to have “emanated from the mysterious Bolivian Andes region called Tiahuanaco” where the Gateway to the Sun resides, a monument said by some people to be a gateway or portal to another world, no less. These events, as an online report offered, were also the result of an “anomalous event” connected to the Large Hadron Collider.
The report continues that “time waves” – sometimes referred to as “gravitational waves” – which cause “fluctuations in the curvature of spacetime!” Moreover, according to the report, scientists at CERN noticed that “their testing was distorting Earth’s magnetic field,” which resulted in a time wave spreading around the planet. When this time wave erupted, an Iberworld Airbus A330-300 (flown by Air Comet as Flight A7-301) was approaching Santa Cruz in Bolivia and was preparing to land. It seems their plane was right in the path of the time wave, and “instantly and mysteriously,” they found themselves over Santa Cruz in Spain – over 5000 miles from where they had been only seconds earlier. As they didn’t have enough fuel to travel back over the Atlantic Ocean, the plane landed and spent the next 17 hours in Spain before setting off to Bolivia once more, arriving there almost 24 hours later than they had been scheduled to.
In the days and weeks following the report, there appeared to be some questionable statements and actions from those connected to CERN. For example, shortly after the alleged transportation of the Airbus, the Large Hadron Collider was suddenly shut down, with an official reason for this being that a “bird had dropped a piece of bread on outdoor machinery at the facility!” As we might imagine, some people simply refused to accept this explanation, insisting that the sudden shutdown was because of what the LHC had opened. When CERN’s Director for Research and Scientific Computing, Sergio Bertolucci, stated that CERN scientists had discovered a “previously unknown natural phenomenon” that could lead to an “extra dimension,” those researchers saw this as proof of the claims of unintentional timewaves.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the Airbus encounter of 2009 is just one of many strange, bizarre, and often disturbing encounters from the world of aviation. And the encounters we have explored here are but a small number of the many bizarre anomalous events from the aviation community on record, and this is without even considering the many cases of planes that have gone missing without a trace over the decades. The fact is, the world of aviation, potentially at least, is often one of the most mysterious and thought-provoking communities on the planet. And we might expect, as humanity advances, so will the world of aviation, and with those advancements will almost certainly come more mysteries for us to collectively grapple with.
