Phantom Vehicles

Phantom Vehicles

Phantom Vehicles are purportedly haunted vehicles (whether it be ghostly automobiles, loud unseen old trains, or possessed old seafaring ships) in various modern and ancient folklores.

Phantom Vehicles refer to the phenomenon related to vehicles that supposedly haunted, more than often operated with no visible driver. The most notable case being ghost cars that emerged in the twentieth century. The nature of ghost cars is neutral because it depends on the myth or legend.

They usually appear on lonely roads, in abandoned streets or within rural places, or even in lonely bodies of water. Sometimes the spirit of the driver is seen, and in others it has no visible drivers but mostly ghost cars appear on lonely roads. These tales can be of various global origin.

In addition of cars, phantom vehicles also take forms of ghosts trains (a locomotive or train that would keep going and they are fully operational but without anyone at the helm) and ghost ships (ghostly vessels such as the Flying Dutchman, or other ships found adrift with crews either missing or dead, such as the Mary Celeste). They also includes vehicles that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, such as the Clemenceau (R 98).

These spectral or possessed vessels that are said to move on their own will continue live on in countless stories for generations to come.

Chronology and History

Ghost Cars

• In 1982, two people in Lanikai, Hawaii reported seeing a mysterious black car which disappeared and reappeared again a second later.
• A 1960s car that had bumper stickers; the witness passed the car but it mysteriously reappeared ahead of the witness's car at several stoplights. Also the witness noticed that the driver was a man in his teens and that he never turned his head and he never moved the steering wheel when the man drove around the "dead man's curve" the witness said.
• 2004, In Cape Town, South Africa, a Renault Mégane sedan mysteriously rolled up an embankment and hit a fence, although the handbrake was engaged and the engine was off. Some say the car was "jumping".
• In the mid-1980s, three people in a sedan reported seeing a gray van heading straight towards them. Then suddenly the van vanished.
• The Curse of "Little Bastard": the 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder in which James Dean died is said to be cursed after the accidents in which it has been later involved.
• In Germany, a car mysteriously started up by itself and rammed a wall.
• In 2000, an eyewitness claimed that an old truck started up by itself and blinked at him as he walked past an old house.
• Early 1980s - a British motorist crashed his car in order to avoid a truck that suddenly appeared coming straight towards him and then vanished.

Ghost Ships

• Undated: The Caleuche is a real ghost ship which, according to local folklore and Chilota mythology, sails the seas around Chiloé Island, Chile, at night.
• 1738 onwards: The Palatine Light, a ship who lost half her crew running aground off Rhode Island, possibly being lured there and pillaged by the locals. Said to appear every December.
• 1748 onwards: The Lady Lovibond is said to have been deliberately wrecked on Goodwin Sands on 13 February and to reappear off the Kent coast every 50 years.
• 1775: The Octavius, an English trading ship returning from China, was found drifting off the coast of Greenland. The captain's log showed that the ship had attempted the Northwest Passage, which had never been successfully traversed. The ship and the bodies of her frozen crew had completed the passage after drifting amongst the pack ice for 13 years. (Status: Unsubstantiated).
• 1786 onwards: The Ghost Ship of Northumberland Strait, a burning ship seen regularly between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.
• 1795 onwards: The Flying Dutchman, a ship manned by a captain condemned to eternally sail the seas, has long been the principal ghost ship legend among mariners and has inspired several works.
• 1813 onwards: After the American schooner Young Teazer was sunk in an explosion during the War of 1812, a burning apparition known as the "Teazer Light" has been reported off Maine.
• 1840: The schooner Jenny was discovered after spending 17 years frozen in an ice-barrier of the Drake Passage. Found by Captain Brighton of the whaler Hope, it had been locked in the ice since 1823, the last port of call having been Lima, Peru. The bodies of the seven people aboard, including one woman and a dog, preserved by the Antarctic cold, were buried at sea by the crew of the Hope, and Brighton passed the account on to the Admiralty in London. The Jenny is commemorated by the Jenny Buttress, a feature on King George Island near Melville Peak, named by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1960.(Status: Unsubstantiated).
• 1855: HMS Resolute was discovered drifting off the coast of Baffin Island. It had been one of four vessels from Edward Belcher's search expedition for John Franklin that had been abandoned the previous year when it was trapped in pack ice in Viscount Melville Sound. The ship drifted some 1,200 miles (1,900 km) before it was found, freed from the ice.(Status: Historically attested).
• 1858 onwards: The Eliza Battle, a paddle steamer that burned in 1858 on the Tombigbee River in Alabama, is purported to reappear, fully aflame, on cold and windy winter nights to foretell of impending disaster.
• 1872: The Mary Celeste, perhaps the most historically famous derelict, was found abandoned between mainland Portugal and the Azores archipelago. It was devoid of all crew, but largely intact and under sail, heading toward the Rock of Gibraltar. While Arthur Conan Doyle's story "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" based on this ship added some strange phenomena to the tale (such as that the tea found in the mess hall was still hot), the fact remained that the last log entry was 11 days prior to the discovery of the ship.(Status: Historically attested).
• 1878 onwards: An apparition has been reported where the HMS Eurydice sank off the Isle of Wight. Witnesses include a Royal Navy submarine in the 1930s and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, in 1998.
• 1880: The ship Seabird, under the command of John Husham, grounded itself at Easton's Beach, Rhode Island. She had been returning from a voyage to Honduras and was expected in Newport that day. The ship was abandoned in sight of land and drifted off course. The only living thing found on the ship was a dog.(Status: Unsubstantiated)
• 1882: The Iron Mountain riverboat ship sank in 1882 near Vicksburg after running aground.
• 1884: The Resolven was found abandoned between Baccalieu Island and Catalina, Newfoundland and Labrador, with its lifeboat missing. Other than a broken yard, it had suffered minimal damage. A large iceberg was sighted nearby. It has been claimed that none of the seven crew members or four passengers were accustomed to northern waters and it was suggested that they panicked when the ship was damaged by ice, launched the lifeboat, and swamped, though no bodies were found. Three years later, Resolven was wrecked while returning to Newfoundland from Nova Scotia with a load of lumber.(Status: Historically attested).
• 1917: Zebrina, a sailing barge, departed Falmouth, England, with a cargo of Swansea coal bound for Saint-Brieuc, France. Two days later she was discovered aground on Rozel Point, south of Cherbourg, without damage except for some disarrangement of her rigging, but with her crew missing.(Status: Historically attested)
• 1921: The Carroll A. Deering, a five-masted cargo schooner, was found stranded on a beach on Diamond Shoals, North Carolina. The ship's final voyage had been the subject of much debate and controversy, and was investigated by six departments of the US government, largely because it was one of dozens of ships that sank or went missing within a relatively short period of time. While paranormal explanations have been advanced, the theories of mutiny or piracy are considered more likely.(Status: Historically attested).
• 1928: The København was last heard from on December 28, 1928. For two years following its disappearance sightings of a mysterious five-masted ship fitting its description were reported in the Pacific Ocean.
• 1931: The Baychimo was abandoned in the Arctic Ocean when it became trapped in pack ice and was thought doomed to sink, but remained afloat and was sighted numerous times over the next 38 years without ever being salvaged.(Status: Historically attested).
• 1933: A lifeboat from the 1906 wreck of the passenger steamship SS Valencia off the southwest coast of Vancouver Island was found floating in the area in remarkably good condition 27 years after the sinking. Sailors have also reported seeing the ship itself in the area in the years following the sinking, often as an apparition that followed down the coast.(Status: Historically attested).
• 1947: The Ourang Medan is said to have been found adrift off Indonesia with all of its crew dead. The boarding party found the entire crew "frozen, teeth baring, gaping at the sun." Before the ship could be towed to a home port, it exploded and sank.(Status: Unsubstantiated).
• 1955: The MV Joyita was discovered abandoned in the Pacific. A subsequent inquiry found the vessel was in a poor state of repair, but determined the fate of passengers and crew to be "inexplicable on the evidence submitted at the inquiry".(Status: Historically attested).
• 1959: A ghost submarine was found floating without a crew in the Bay of Biscay off northern Spain. It was later discovered that the empty sub was being towed by another vessel and the chain had snapped.(Status: Historically attested).
• 1969: The Teignmouth Electron was found adrift and unoccupied in the Atlantic Ocean. Investigation led to the conclusion that its sole crewmember, Donald Crowhurst, had suffered a psychiatric breakdown while competing in a solo around-the-world race and committed suicide by jumping overboard.(Status: Historically attested).
• 2003: The High Aim 6 was found drifting in Australian waters, 80 nautical miles (150 km; 92 mi) east of Rowley Shoals, with its crew missing. The derelict was subsequently scuttled.(Status: Historically attested).
• 2006: The tanker Jian Seng was found off the coast of Weipa, Queensland Australia in March. Its origin or owner could not be determined, and its engines had been inoperable for some time.(Status: Historically attested).
• 2006: In August the "Bel Amica" was discovered off the coast of Sardinia. The Coast Guard crew that discovered the ship found half eaten Egyptian meals, French maps of North African seas, and a flag of Luxembourg on board.(Status: Historically attested).
• 2007: A 12-metre catamaran, the Kaz II, was discovered unmanned off the coast of Queensland, northeast Australia in April. The yacht, which had left Airlie Beach on Sunday 15 April, was spotted about 80 nautical miles (150 km) off Townsville, near the outer Great Barrier Reef on the following Wednesday. When boarded on Friday, the engine was running, a laptop was running, the radio and GPS were working and a meal was set to eat, but the three-man crew were not on board. All the sails were up but one was badly shredded, while three life jackets and survival equipment, including an emergency beacon, were found on board. A search for the crew was abandoned on Sunday 22nd as it was considered unlikely that anyone could have survived for that period of time.(Status: Historically attested).
• 2008: The abandoned 50 ton Taiwanese fishing vessel Tai Ching 21 (Chinese: 大慶21號) was found drifting near Kiribati on 9 November. The ship had suffered a fire several days previously, and its lifeboat and three life rafts were missing. No mayday call was received, and the ship had last been heard from on 28 October. A search of 21,000 square miles (54,000 square km) of the Pacific Ocean north of Fiji by a US Air Force C-130 Hercules and a New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion found no trace of the Taiwanese captain (顏金港) or crew (18 Chinese, 6 Indonesians, and 4 Filipinos).(Status: Historically attested).
• 2012: The Ryou-Un Maru, a Japanese fishing vessel swept away by the March 2011 tsunami, was found floating adrift towards Canada after nearly a year at sea, no crew believed to be on board. The vessel was sunk on April 5, 2012 by the United States Coast Guard.(Status: Historically attested).

Ghost Trains

• Silverpilen (Silver Arrow) is a Stockholm Metro train which features in several urban legends alleging sightings of the train's "ghost". (Status: Folklore).
• The St. Louis Ghost Train, better known as the St. Louis Light, is visible at night along an old abandoned rail line in between Prince Albert and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. Two local students won an award for investigating and eventually duplicating the phenomenon, which they determined to be caused by the diffraction of distant vehicle lights.(Status: Folklore).
• A phantom funeral train is said to run regularly from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, around the time of the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's death, stopping watches and clocks in surrounding areas as it passes.(Status: Folklore).

Other Media

Haunted or spectral vehicles, including cars, became famous thanks to the arrival of popular culture and so many people were inspired by this phenomenon in cinema, literature and the TV.

Ghost Cars

• Christine: The titular car is a possessed red 1958 Plymouth Fury vintage vehicle accompanied by the spirit of her previous owner Roland D. LeBay.

Ghost Trains

• In Enid Blyton's 1948 Famous Five book Five Go Off to Camp, mysterious "spook trains" are exposed as a cover used by criminals. The story was subsequently adapted for television and radio.
• The beginning of the 1997 direct-to-video comedy-drama fantasy film Casper: A Spirited Beginning is set on a "death train" bound for Ghost Central Station.
• In the 1996 Hey Arnold! episode "Haunted Train", the protagonists hear of the "legend of the haunted train" and head for the abandoned train station where it is said to appear - and the train that pulls up to the station at midnight matches the description. However the story turns out to be (partially) false, the train in question was a relief worker train for a local steel mill which spawned the unfortunate myth. The conductor insinuates that the story has caused trouble in the past. However at the end of the episode as the kids are being driven home, off in the distance from the car the real ghost train is seen by the audience, with the phantom engineer singing while sitting on the cowcatcher as the train travels down the tracks.
• In the 1989 film Ghostbusters II, Egon, Winston and Ray, while exploring the underground tunnels of New York City, encounter the ghostly apparition of an NYC Central locomotive that derailed in the 1920s, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people.
• The video game Final Fantasy VI features a ghost train that transports the spirits of the dead to the afterlife.
• A visual novel called Train of Afterlife follows the story of a girl called Wind, who awakes up aboard a mysterious train that is carrying the dead. With Wind are five passengers whom the player can interact with; one of them, however, is soon revealed to have had something to do with Wind's past. The game was released on January 13, 2012, and produced by Zeiva Inc.

Ghost Ships

Literature

• 1798: A "skeleton ship" crewed by two spectres features in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
• 1838: A Dutch brig is mentioned in "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" by Edgar Allan Poe, her crew dead, the flesh ripped by birds.
• 1897: The Demeter, found derelict with its captain's corpse tied to the helm, is featured in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
• 1913: The Abel Fosdyk papers, an apocryphal explanation of the fate of the Mary Celeste, were presented as a true account by A. Howard Linford of Magdalen College, Oxford, the headmaster of Peterborough Lodge, Hampstead's largest prep school. The story appeared under the title Abel Fosdyk's Story in the monthly fiction magazine Strand Magazine, which had invited its contributors and readers to suggest possible solutions to the mystery of the Mary Celeste.
• 1937: "Three Skeleton Key", a short story by George Toudouze about a ghost ship infested with sea rats, was originally written for Esquire magazine. It was adapted for the dramatic radio program Escape in 1949 by James Poe and was also broadcast on the Suspense radio drama series in the 1950s.
• 1965: The Ampoliros, the Flying Dutchman of space, is mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune.
• 2001: The Flying Dutchman plays a key part of Brian Jacques' series Castaways of the Flying Dutchman.

Films

• 1935: The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (also known as The Phantom Ship) offers a fictional explanation for the events leading up to the discovery of the most famous of abandoned ships.
• 1943: The Ghost Ship tells of mysterious deaths among the crew of the Altair, for which it is suspected the insane captain is responsible.
• 1952: Ghost Ship is set aboard a yacht haunted by two murder victims (the previous owner's wife and her lover) whose bodies have been hidden under the floor.
• 1980: Death Ship is about a lost Kriegsmarine prison ship haunted by the evil spirits of the dead crew. It now roams the seas for new victims, picking up survivors to abuse and kill after it sinks their ships.
• 2001: The Triangle has the tagline: "60 years ago, the Queen of Scots vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. Now four friends have found the unthinkable... or has it found them?".
• 2001: Lost Voyage is a supernatural thriller about a group of people exploring the SS Corona Queen, which has emerged from the Bermuda Triangle after 30 years.
• 2002: Ghost Ship is about the Antonio Graza, an Italian ocean liner lost at sea 40 years earlier, and now boarded by a salvage crew who soon encounter the ghostly apparitions of murdered passengers.
• 2003: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl had the Black Pearl as a ghost ship. Its sequels Dead Man's Chest (2006) and At World's End (2007) feature another ghost ship Flying Dutchman.
• 2009: Triangle is psychological horror film about a group of friends on a yachting trip who discover the derelict ocean liner Aeolus.
• 2017: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the 5th film of the Pirates franchise, featured the franchise's third ghost ship known as the Silent Mary.

Videogames

• 1992: In the Mortal Kombat fighting videogame franchise, the soul-stealing sorcererShang Tsung's Nethership (often referred to as a ghost ship in centuries past) is used to traverse the Lost Sea to his island for the fabled titular fighting tournament as well as years later to the Celestial Portal to travel between realms. The Nethership is thought be based on the seafaring old ship of the demon ferryman who carries the souls of the fallen to the dreaded Netherrrealm.

Gallery

A Ghost Train.

Ghost Ships.

Ghost Ships.

Phantom Ships.

Phantom Ships

A Ghost Car.

Trivia

• Ghost Cars are generally associated with evil forces, although the mythology of ghost cars also recounts events in which the entities or forces that dominate ghost cars are positive, and non-violent forces that seek a quiet existence or transition as shown in the 1996 made-for-TV comedy/fantasy movie with the titular kind teenage ghost reuniting with both her beloved Winter Formal boyfriend Johnny Angel and her dearest grandfather in his 1950s car on the waterway within her old Washington hometown of Willow Valley, on their way to heaven, after she succeeded in finding her family's deed for the town to a 40 year-old unaffordable $25,000 balloon payment and having heard on TV news which in turn save the whole town with the help of the teenage boy Zach Sands and his little sister Terri.