Sunday, October 19, 2014

Five Spooky Titanic Facts

April 15, 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic.  While the story of the doomed luxury ship has been in the headlines for the past century, there are also stories of another kind: Ghost stories. Just in time for Halloween, check out these spooky stories about the Titanic.



* In the aftermath of the Titanic tragedy, search and rescue teams recovered 328 Titanic victims and temporarily brought their bodies to the Snow & Co. Funeral Parlour in Halifax, Nova Scotia. According to Encompass Magazine, the funeral home is now the Five Fisherman Restaurant, and the original pulley used to hoist the Titanic cadavers to the building's upper level still hangs in the wine room ceiling. Today, bizarre occurrences such as glass flying off a shelf and cutlery falling to the floor when no one is near are common occurrences at the restaurant. Manager Gary MacDonald has said of the building's ghosts: "You must acknowledge them or they will pull stunts."
* In 2008, the Atlanta Constitution Journal published a story about the Georgia Aquarium after the "Titanic Aquatic" exhibit was featured there. Several aquarium volunteers reported strange encounters as they worked on the exhibit, which featured hundreds of Titanic-related artifacts. The aquarium staff brought in paranormal investigators, who determined that the Titanic exhibit was indeed a spirit dwelling.
* According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in the 1990s a San Francisco man named Jaime Rodriguez claimed that he was being haunted by a ghost, before finding that a Titanic survivor once inhabited his apartment. But former tenant Dr. Henry Washington Dodge was not considered a Titanic hero. While Dr. Dodge claimed that he called out for women and children to take a spot in the lifeboat that housed his wife and son on that fateful night, he inevitably climbed into the boat and endured public scrutiny for the rest of his life. After undergoing a lawsuit and a financial beating, Dodge sunk into a depression and committed suicide in his San Francisco apartment in 1919. His ghost appeared in the apartment every summer for years, and always in the same spot.
* Legendary socialite Margaret "Molly" Brown survived the Titanic sinking, but her former Denver home is said to be the site of some unusual happenings. According to a blog on Mysterious Colorado, paranormal oddities occur regularly at Molly Brown House Museum in Denver, including furniture disturbances and alleged sightings of the ghosts of Molly and her husband James Joseph Brown. Sightings of Molly's mother in an upstairs window have also been reported, as well as mysterious smells such as Mr. Brown's tobacco and his wife's favorite rose-scented perfume.
* The Daily Mail has revealed the house in England where the Titanic's captain was born also has a haunting history. It may come as no surprise that the childhood home of Captain Edward John Smith has been riddled with mysterious floods and unexplained icy chills, as well as ghostly sightings.

Ghost Hunters takes a look at the Titanic:




No comments: