Sunday July 25, 2010
Bob Davis
(of
Planet Paranormal Investigations),
set up an aboard dinner and post-midnight investigation to celebrate the fact that the Queen Mary is allowing actual investigations again.
Apparently when ownership changed hands, the new ones were rather reticent about paranormal investigative groups and/or sole investigators.
Initially the dinner was to be from 8pm to maybe 10pm Saturday evening, then the investigation would be from that midnight until pretty much to whenever.
It turned out that the management shifted the schedule... we would only have from 1am to 4am
(obviously after they'd accepted the pre-payment).
During dinner across from
Joe Ruffulo
I sat with Bob and at my left,
psychic
Liz Johnson
with her husband James.
Liz was able to sense that at an empty table behind our immediate seating position was sitting a ghost.
James quickly took a photo and got the same sort of glowing orb as showed up in the
behind the scenes photo
in the USC student film
The Maiden and the Princess.
James proceeded to take a few other shots, and the same orb shifted position.
This was not a "dust orb" one could just dismiss
(as so many paranormal investigators do);
this one had colour, visible striations, and surrounded by the same apparent aura as in the The Maiden and the Princess photo.
James kept photographing, as the Orb moved position as though annoyed its surveillance of us had been noticed.
With the schedule shift, creating after our dinner a massive multi-hour gap before we would be able to start, Liz and James and I wandered the ship, James related some of the aspects of the ship he's learned in his numerous visits.
We also retrieved his mint condition 1950s radio frequency detector from their cabin
(the very same cabin I'd had when I was there three months earlier, the evening of April 30th [see below]...).
We headed back and joined the main group just before 1am, at which time I also met
Joe Mendoza
of the group
3am Paranormal.
The plan was first to visit the pool, then the boiler and engine rooms.
As we approached the pool area, Bob had us be silent as sometimes the famous little girl ghost Jackie can be heard simply
(and audibly)
talking or singing to herself.
On entering the pool area it was quickly obvious there were
(living)
people already in there, long after hours.
Our security guy went to shoo them out, only to learn it was a private tour group via one of the higher muck a mucks of the ship, who refused to concede
(meaning also the ship's refusal to honour our contract that from 1am, we "had the pool," as it were).
Forced to back down, we waited outside in the main area of the ship at the pool area entrance, soon deciding that logically
(and legally),
we could insist our time be extended to compensate for the delay, we decided it'd be practical to hit the boiler and engine rooms first, giving the pool area a chance to Settle Down once the stuck-up woman's group had vacated.
We quickly headed down and in the old boiler room it seemed Really Quiet; the Sensitives in the group deducing what ghosts might have been down there seemed to back off on our approach, watching and waiting, perhaps for us to leave.
In the engine room, Bob and Liz and all tried getting famous Johnny to make known his presence.
It was Sensed he was on the second level, but our security guard warned the group of a motion sensor alarm that were it to go off, he'd be unable to stop it.
As Liz has "met" Johnny previously, she sat on the stopped escalator steps and he approached her and began fiddling with her hair at the back of her head
(not that such activity was visible).
Seemingly distant whispers were deduced as water moving through pipes, but some seeming actual voice/s were also heard
(not by me; nothing clear enough to discern as a voice anyway).
Bob called on Jackie in case she was visiting the room, urging her to follow our group back to the pool as we headed out.
At the pool, it still seemed as though the Queen Mary ghosts were off on a summer vacation somewhere.
No amount of requests yielded any audible response/s.
In the dressing rooms, Joe used a new gadget he'd acquired: an infra-red strobe light.
Invisible to the human eye, it lit the area for his video camera in a way that were an anomaly to pass by, the strobe would catch it, analogous to someone moving across a regular bright-light strobe light: a "frozen frame" in real time.
At one point Liz and another Sensitive woman
(Cordelia?)
checked the balcony, their having "seen" two children running along the perimeter, predictably vanishing without further sighting/s.
By 4am the majority of the group was understandably exhausted; my own feet and legs in substantial ache-mode.
Suddenly James called Bob up to the balcony near the exit.
He'd audibly heard something like a child's squeal, and playing back his recorder, sure enough a clear happy squeal of a young girl could be heard.
As were the rest of us, Bob was astonished he'd not heard it if it was audible and not an EVP.
We called it a night and wondered if anything might come up on any of our recording/s.
I knew I had a lot of audio recordings through which to go.
I knew the first Blue Line north left the Transit Mall at 5am, and as local Joe Mendoza said his farewells with his wife Rebeca, I was too tired to think straight enough to request being dropped off in or near downtown... as I was unaware that like Terminal Island, the area on which is the Queen Mary has no way off
(or on)
for late-night, technically stranded pedestrians, and the first free shuttle would not be starting until around 6am.
Group photos were taken, and we said our good-byes, and I looked forward to the next investigation which hopefully would be more generous with activity that this one seemed.
Click on photo for full image
In the Engine Room
Outside the pool
Looking down at the pool
James's photo of the Orb
moving about behind Liz during
the pre-investigation dinner
Next to Liz at the pre-investigation dinner
(James is taking the photo).
At the pre-investigation dinner
The Queen Mary, after hours.
In the Boiler Room.
