Is the Queen Mary Haunted? The Ship's Ghost Stories

The RMS Queen Mary, the former Cunard ocean liner now moored permanently as a hotel in Long Beach, California, is better known today for its ghosts than for its Art Deco interiors. Staff and visitors regularly report things they cannot explain, and the ship is said to be home to more than 150 ghosts.

The reports cover most of the usual list: lights switching on by themselves, knocking on cabin doors, voices and laughter with no one there, whistling, sudden cold spots, figures that vanish, and people who say they were touched.

In 2008 Time magazine named the Queen Mary one of the most haunted places in the United States, and the ship has since appeared in a long run of ghost-hunting and paranormal television shows. It is often described as the most haunted hotel in the country.

Is it haunted, or is it marketing?

Anyone booking a visit will notice how much of the ship's offer is built around its ghosts. The Queen Mary's website has listed at least four paranormal tours, including the Grey Ghost Project, the Haunted Encounter Tour, the Paranormal Ship Walk and the 57 Ghost Seance, alongside a smaller number of tours about the ship and its history. Around Halloween the ship goes further with its Dark Harbor event.

That leaves a fair question for any visitor: is the ship haunted, or has its owner found a good way to sell tickets? The hotel's own marketing doesn't hide the connection. Chris Wilmoth, its marketing director, told Travel + Leisure that the ship's history lets it offer "unique and authentic experiences", from night tours and ghost investigations to overnight stays in its most haunted stateroom, B340.

The Queen Mary's history

The Queen Mary was built for the Cunard-White Star Line and launched by Queen Mary herself on 26 September 1934. For more than three decades she carried passengers across the Atlantic, and during the Second World War she served as a troopship carrying soldiers. She was retired in 1967 and sold to the City of Long Beach, and a few years later she reopened as a floating hotel where guests sleep among the original wood paneling and small portholes.

A ship with that much history has its share of deaths. At least 49 people are said to have died aboard since her maiden voyage, and ghost sightings have been reported in many parts of the ship.

The places on board with the most reports

Stateroom B340

The stateroom's reputation goes back to before the ship became a hotel. A British third-class passenger, Walter J. Adamson, reportedly died in the room in 1948. In 1966 a woman staying there said she woke to find her bedspread pulled off and a man standing at the foot of the bed. She screamed and called a steward, and the man was gone.

Guests since then have reported knocking on the door in the middle of the night and bathroom lights turning on by themselves. Housekeepers have reported running water in the bathroom of a room that had been empty for days, and bedspreads pulled off just after the bed was made. The room was closed to guests for years and has since reopened for anyone who wants to try a night in it.

A function room, 1989

In 1989 two women were sent to clean one of the ship's function rooms before a VIP event. They found a guest sitting quietly in a chair in the middle of the dance floor. A third woman came in to help, noticed the guest staring at her, and asked them to leave. As the staff began to call security, the guest disappeared in front of all three of them.

The Mayfair Room

The Mayfair Room was once the ship's beauty salon and is now office space. In 2001 a member of the accounting team came in early, at 5:30 in the morning. She sat down at her desk and felt unusually cold. Later she felt something brush the back of her chair, though no one was there. A few minutes after that she saw a transparent white figure walk across the room and through the door.

She grabbed her keys and left the office until her coworkers arrived.

The first-class swimming pool

The first-class pool, with its lighted fountain, mother-of-pearl ceiling and detailed mosaics, was one of the ship's grandest spaces. It is no longer used because of problems with California regulations, but it is one of the most reported spots on the ship.

Visitors describe a young woman in a tennis skirt who walks down a staircase and disappears behind a column, a woman in an old-fashioned wedding dress walking past the pool, and a young boy in a suit who appears out of a cloud of steam with a girl in a blue and white dress, then vanishes.

Boiler Room 4

Several people have reported seeing a young girl here, sometimes sucking her thumb and sometimes holding a doll.

Door 13 in Shaft Alley

Watertight door 13, in the part of the ship known as Shaft Alley, was the scene of a fatal accident in 1966. During an order to close the watertight doors of the engine and boiler rooms, an 18-year-old crewman from Yorkshire was caught in hatch 13 and crushed, with his arms pinned to his sides.

He was freed and taken to the ship's hospital with crush injuries to his arms, chest and pelvis, and was given morphine, but he died soon afterwards.

Visitors to the area report being followed and hearing whistling. Some describe a bearded man in blue clothes, resembling the dead crewman, seen out of the corner of their eye. Others say they met an engineer wandering the corridor who asked whether they had seen his wrench, and who was gone when they turned back to look.