I feel like I should know a little bit more history on the Queen Mary, but I saw it was on the top ten list of like the most haunted places.
It is correct, and it is true. I began to hear breathing, very faint. At first, I really thought I was hearing things, but it became louder and louder, and I could finally feel the breath going down the back of my neck.
Have you ever seen anything?
I've seen glimpses of the corner of my eye. I look down the alleyway that I've just been walking down, and there's nobody there. You know, there's no place for them to go.
Hello everyone, I hope everyone is getting ready for Halloween tomorrow. I definitely am. I can't wait for you guys to see my costume. I'm not going to tell you what it is, so check it out tomorrow. Okay, Halloween is definitely one of the spookiest times of the year, and I'm here for it. As some of you may know, I'm really interested in ghosts, spirits, and the paranormal, so I thought it could be very interesting to explore some
of that. On today's episode, We're going to be speaking with someone from the Queen Mary in Long Beach, where I'm from. He's going to fill us in on the ship's haunted history. So, without further ado, this is Cheekys and Jill. Here with me today is Commodore Everett Hort. He's also a historian who has been with the Queen Mary for more than forty years, which means he's probably seen and heard a lot of strange things.
On the ship, which I'm excited to hear about. Welcome, Commodore. How are you.
Oh, I'm doing very well today. How are you doing?
I'm good.
You look amazing. I wish people could see what you know your your uniform.
I love it.
Oh, thank you, thank you very much.
That was great. I'm so excited.
I'm excited to have you because I was born in Long Beach and I feel like I should know a little bit more history on the Queen Mary.
But that's what we have you for.
So I'm going to learn along with my listeners. I've been there before. I just don't know all of the hardcore history. So before we get into the haunted stuff, I would like you to just give us like an overview on the Queen Mary, Like how did it end? Up in Long Beach. All that good stuff.
Well, the Queen Mary was designed all the way back in the late twenties to operate along with a sister ship across the North Atlantic route. It would be the first and only two ship express service ever and the ship would serve for thirty one years and warn peace. It, along with its sister, the Queen Elizabeth, helped shorten World War Two by up to a year by its ability to safely carry troops across the North Atlantic for the
build up of Normandy. Oh and of course, by the sixties but jet aircraft taking over the skies and a more efficient way to travel. The Queen Mary used a thousand tons of oil every twenty four hours. That's about thirteen feet to the gallon if you wanted to pay the fuel bial And so the que Nard Lione optingly ship off because of her magnificent reputation and war and peace, they decided that it would go to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder was Long Beach, who was looking
for an attraction in a maritime museum. And so that's how the Queen Mary came to Long Beach and moreover became the face of Long Beach.
Yes, okay, shout out to Long Beach, all right. I love that.
I mean, that's the main reason that Long Beach wanted the ship was because they wanted a basically a landmark for Long Beach.
Exactly, an icon And there's never been a ship that's fit as iconic as the Queen Mary, unless perhaps it's the Titanic for a completely different reason. But the Queen Mary was one of the greatest success stories of any
ship in living memory. I mean, if you think about how many people the Queen Mary has actually touched, some two point two million peaceful passengers, eight hundred and ten thousand, seven hundred and thirty military personnel in the war here in Long Beach since opening in nineteen seventy one, we've seen in excess of fifty six million guests to come through the ship.
You really know your stuff.
Well, I've been hanging around a long time. So why my hairs great?
How long have you been there at the Queen Mary? How long have you been working there?
I've started the Queen Mary on Valentine's Day in nineteen eighty one, and the Queen Mary is a lifelong dream of mine since I was a little boy.
You are so awesome. Oh, gonna want to hug you right now. I love that.
I love to hear when people are so passionate, like you probably go to work just happy and so excited every single day.
Well, I'll tell you, I never I never cease to get a thrill when I drive up and there she is floating so majestically and her custom made birth, and she's just the proudest ship I've ever seen in my life.
Oh, that is so beautiful. That is so beautiful. I love that.
And now, I mean, since we're talking about it, since you know so much about the Queen Mary, I've heard so many things. I believe I went years ago. It was like a it's like a haunted dinner. I don't remember. It was years ago. So I mean I saw that on Time magazine. It was on the top ten list of like the most haunted places. Is that correct?
It is correct? And it is true?
Oh, it is true, okay, because I didn't know if it was like real.
They raised in the South where I was raised, if you mentioned paranormal or supernatural or ghost or anything like that, they'd break out the rock, salt and holy water and fix you about it. So I say that because I came to California not believing in any sort of ghost or anything like that. And for the first four or five years working here, I crawled in every nook and cranny of this ship, and to no avail, nothing happened. A security guard told me a couple of months after
I started. He says, you know, the shit was haunted. While I took it as an insult that something I had loved my entire life, you know, was different, but I didn't understand. I didn't understand what different was. And I can tell you though, that after about I think about four and a half years, it was I was giving some VIPs a tour of the boiler rooms and we were walking along the tank tops and the boilers and engines except for one engine room have been removed.
So when you get all the way forward where the valley is, there's one watertight bulkhead that goes from keel to the main deck, and that's called the collision bulkhead. And I was just explaining to my guest how the Queen Mary had accidentally rammed a British cruiser in World War two and split it in Hanat and killed three hundred and thirty eight of the cruiser's crew, and I began to hear breathing on the opposite side of this steel bulkhead, and it was very fainted, for I really
thought I was hearing things. We had just enjoyed the Sunday brunch in the Queen Mary, and so I'd had a few emosas, and I thought I might be feeling the effects, but became louder and louder, and I could finally feel the breath going down the back of my neck. And it was at that point my guests looked at me and said, maybe we better go up topside. And you should have seen three adults clamber up ten decks and sit under a lifeboat and look at one another
and wonder what just happened to them. But that was only the first and it became often after that. I heard the breathing several more times after that. As a matter of fact, I still here breathing. Sometimes it's a long, slow, sort of Darth vadery kind of you know, oh my gosh, I know. Sometimes they call your name, stop it right now, and sometimes they touch you. I mean, I've been different parts of the ship and just to tap. One time, I was in my office. In my office that was
really my dressing room. I can put my feet up for you know, a few minutes after lunch and rest in which I had done, and I had a VIP coming at two o'clock and I was I've just fell into a deep sleep, what can I say? And something tapped me on the shoulder and I woke up, and I knew my office was locked and no one had keys to it but me, But so I was pretty well awake after that, and it tapped me again on
the shoulder. Oh well, had that not happened, I would have missed my appointment, and that would have been a very bad show for myself and the ship. But this is not a malevolent place. It's very benevolent. When you come across the Gangway and the Queen Mary, you feel the strongest aura of the purest form of history, and I mean the people that shape the world that we live in today. On the lights of the world of Hollywood, royalty, heads of state, the royal families of Europe and Japan
and other nations, the Shaw of Iran. They were all traveling in this ship in the sea, going days as well as the common folk. I mean, you know, the Queen Mary was a three class ship. You had first class, cabin class, and tourist class, so it was a real mixture of humanity. And a lot of people have asked me what do I think is the ghost and they say, well, did anyone die here? Well, of course people have died here. People have been dropping dead all over the world since
time began. That means every freeway, every intersection, every hotel is probably full of them. But my explanation for the enchantment of the Queen Mary is a little bit unique, and I fashioned it toward my own feelings. But I'll share with you for what it's worth. If you think about the amount of labor and human spirit that it
took to construct the ship. Four thousand Scottish shipwrights pounding rivets in ten million album one at a time, bathing the interiors with fifty six exotic wood veneers from all over the British Empire. Another thirty thousand vendors from around Great Britain, providing anything from textile, silverware crystal art. Thirty seven artists would contribute to the Queen Mary's interiors. So
and then the spirit of the passenger. I don't know if you've ever been at sea in a ship, but when the ship leaves the pier, you become totally dependent on the ship. She is your mother, she is your sustainer of life. And so much life has been through this ship, you know, the fifty six million people here, the two point two million people in peacetime. The gis So I feel that as human beings, we go and we leave a little bit of ourselves as we go.
And I think that the ship, being put together with so much human will and love and zeal and that really matches everything that we have inside us, and I think that it picks up a little bit of all of us. So really the ghosts are all of us and the ship herself.
Yeah.
I love the way you just stated it. It just made me see it in a completely different light. Instead of saying it's haunted, it's enchanted. I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, it's They're probably people that love the ship just as much as we all do, and they never wanted to leave, so it's not necessarily they're trying to scare you. I mean, like, for instance, whoever woke you up was like, hey, you're going to miss your appointment. They're actually loving exactly.
That was a friend indeed that day.
I know you have felt things, you have heard things.
Have you ever seen anything like I've never seen a ghost, but I have had my share of moments where I've heard and felt that breathing that you're talking about before, But I've never seen anything.
I've seen glimpses ei the corner of my eye, and usually it's a person that just goes by me quickly and I don't really focus on it, but it was in my peripheral vision. And then I'll look around and of course I look down the alleyway that I've just been walking down, and there's nobody there. You know, there's no place for them to go.
Yeah.
I have seen them a few times, captured in videography. A good friend of mine used to work for E Television and he had a variety of the finest cameras in the world. And in twenty eleven he came down and my wife and some friends we were going through the dressing rooms in the pool, which the paranormal researchers insist is a vortex into another universe. Oh, I don't know, but I can tell you this we were walking through and it's a very narrow alleyway and the little dressing
cubicles are on each side of the alleyway. It was dark, but I could see the room from the pool room shining through at the end of the hall, and my friends in front of me with his camera, walking very slowly, and all of a sudden, he grunts, he goes oh. He said, I think I need to go check my blood sugar. I feel dizzy, and I said, okay, yeah, we'll catch up to you later. Well, he called me about twenty minutes later. He says, you got to come
see what the camera's shot. And so my wife and I went to his cabin and he replayed it for us, and a very tall, dark figure walked out of a steel wall at the end of the alleyway, turned toward us, and as it comes closer, you can see the darkness getting bigger. Then the pyrus said, the camera goes black. You hear him grunt, and then it's light again. Oh wow, look right through us.
Oh my god.
There's a legend crazy. And I'm not able to prove this because I read it in a book and I've never found it in any of our records. But there's a legend that there was a night steward that liked to get off work and he usually got off his watch around two am, and he was friends with one of the pool attendants, and so the pool attendant would leave the key stashed in a special place where he
could go in and take a steambath every night. Well, one night he went in and he turned the valve too many revolutions, and he got way too hot in there, and he had a stroke and died. And so when the morning watts came on, they found him in a very well done condition. And so, you know, goodness is to say, I mean, maybe that was that was this chap that allegedly passed away in there. I don't know.
Yeah, but oh my goodness, book commodore, you don't seem like scared at all. I mean, do you have you ever felt afraid? Do you walk around the ship all alone when it's dark or I don't know, I feel like you're just not scared.
Well I'm really not. But if I do get creeped out, I'll go to another area. And I do get creeped out occasionally, it's possible to do that. I was during the pandemic, especially I was here a lot when you know, there was no one else in the ship. There's just the security staff outside. And in the afternoons, the you know, the managing director and his team would leave and go home. Well, I was. I was in the archive working and I
was reorganizing and filing photographs, historic photographs. And at the top of the stairs, I've got the whole area wired down there where everything is. I can hear if somebody comes through a door, I know if I know how many steps there is between that doorway and down to where I am. Anyway, I heard the door open up there and it closed, and there's a landing halfway down, and I heard the footsteps go to the middle landing
and they stopped. I'm expecting to see them walk past this room where I'm in, and fortunately there's a fence on it that I keep locked so people don't spook me. And the footsteps never continued. They didn't go back up, the door didn't open or close, they didn't come down and walk past me. So after about five minutes, I was really starting to get wigged out, and I opened the chain link gate and I walked to the stairway and I looked up and there's nobody on the landing.
So I walked all the way up to the door that I heard them come through, and it was locked from the inside.
Oh wow, oh my gosh.
But are there parts of the ship that you feel are more enchanted, let's say, than other parts that where you're like, oh, you think about it twice.
Well, you know, naturally, it's harder to notice things like that when you're in a really populated area of the ship because the ship's you know, her daily organism of passengers and visitors. Everyone is enjoying themselves, so you don't notice it. But if you get down like into the boiler rooms, it's usually very quiet down there, or where the archive is, where my dressing room is. Down there, it's very very secluded, and you could die down there and then nobody find you for a month.
What the heck?
Just kidding?
Have people left to people that started working at the ship, but the Queen Mary and then just said, you know, this is too much, I'm leaving.
We've had a couple of people that it was overwhelming for them. The story of Cabin B three forty I think in the forties, a fellow died of natural causes in that cabin. And then in the sixties there was a night steward that answered a call for a lady passenger that was awakened by a man who pulled the covers off of her bed and dropped him at the foot of the bed. And then you know, when she flicked the light on, he was gone, Oh my god. And so the steward came in says, madam, no one's
come or gone from your cabin all night. And so that particular cabin B three forty in the mid eighties, there was a housekeeper that went there and she cleaned the room, and she was finished except for putting the towels in the bathroom. And her maid cart was right outside the door, so no one could have gone in or out without her seeing them. And when she gets back in to put the towels up, all the covers are pulled off the two beds and wadded in the floor at the foot of the bed. And so she quit.
Yeah, I'm sorry. I would have done the same thing.
I would have been like, you know what, as much as I love you, Queen Mary and I appreciate you, I'm sorry. That's what I commend you, and I admire you for the love and the passion that you have for this ship because I don't know.
I just I don't know if I could do it.
Well, you could, because all you have to remember is they can't hurt you unless you fall running.
Has anyone ever come to the ship to try to get rid of, you know, the spirits in any way, because you know they have rituals and things like that. Has anyone tried.
Not that I know of, but I'm sure they probably have.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like if they're not bothering, I mean, they're kind of scaring you. They could freak you out, keep you out a little bit. But that's what my mom would always say. She's like, you know what, you got to be afraid of living people because they can really hurt you, these ghosts or spirits or souls. Someone told me don't ever follow them if they tell you come and you start following, Like, don't do that. But I mean, I guess if you see it that way, you're right.
My mom, she's right, You're mama so wisely.
Yes, right, yes, yes she is, yes she is well.
But you know, I just don't let them unnerve me. I love the Queen Mary so much and her indigenous magic is so compelling to me that it's really a feature. And over the years, the paranormal activity has really become a golden rivet for the ship, if you will, Yeah, because it captures people's interest that would not normally visit the Queen Mary, and especially a lot of youngsters. You know that they're not as enthralled with history as somebody
like myself might be. But maybe if they come here on a paranormal hunt or something like that, then they might hear some of the history of the ship, and they do quite often, and they come away with a different view of the Queen Mary and what it means. It is meant.
Yeah, in this short conversation, that's how I feel. I feel.
I feel like I've always loved the Queen Mayor because, like I said, I'm from Long Beach, but now speaking to you, I see it in a different way.
So I thank you for that.
And now that we're talking about paranormal like tours, tell us a little bit more about some that you guys have, like, for instance, the Gray Ghost Project.
Yes, the Great Ghost Project is going to be a new paranormal investigation. And when I say that, it means that our master investigator and illusionist, Aiden Sinclair will be leading these investigations. And Aiden is very gifted spiritually, and he also does a show on board with us as well in the Revenant Room. So and it's a seance, but he goes back and he contacts, you know, some of the some of the spirits in the ship. And he's a really fascinating and talented man.
That sounds very intriguing.
Yes, and you know there's a difference between us giving you a tour and telling you ghost story or having someone that's really a psychic going on an investigation with you.
Definitely that sounds very very interesting to me. I mean, is it's something that you guys just do around like Halloween or is it all year round?
It's gonna be all year round, Friday through Sunday.
Okay, perfect, Okay, So I really I need to go. I haven't been to the Queen Mary in so long. I'm so sorry. Queen Mary, forgive me, but I love you. But now speaking to you, Commodore, I definitely I have to go visit it. And I think everyone that's listening as well. I just I see it in a different light. And I loved how you just changed the perception for me, which is it's enchanted. It's a beautiful piece of art, and there's so much history. So I just now I'm
not necessarily afraid. Now I'm just going to be like, you know what, they can't hurt me anyways. I'm gonna enjoy myself.
You should. The Queen Mary is meant to be enjoyed. And as I said, she was one of the most popular ships the world has ever known. And her last captain used to say, I knew him well. I used to visit his home in England. His name was John Treasure Jones, and he used to say that Queen Mary is the closest thing to a living being that I
have ever commanded. She even breeds. And you know, in the day that the ship was launched, the hull the hall was finished and launched into the River Clyde in Scotland, King George the fifth made some very remarkable comments in his speech that day. He said, may she no longer be a number on the books, but a ship in the world, alive with beauty, energy and strength, and may she carry the peoples of the nations to come together
as students and leave his friends. Today we have the happy task of sending forth on her way, this stagliest ship now in being. And he all but spoke the soul into the Queen Mary. And someone else spoke that day, and they weren't up in Scotland with the launching and the royal family and the two hundred fifty thousand guests. She was a very humble lady and lived in London, but she was a psychic. Her name was Lady Mabel Ford esque Harrison, and on that same day Lady Mabel
said these words. Most of us will be gone when this takes place, but the ship called the Queen Mary will know her greatest fame and popularity when she never sells another mile or carries another fair paying passenger. Fifty six million people since the Queen Mary's propellers have turned a revolution. So I think that was that was quite on insight.
Yes, definitely. I love that.
I am so happy that I was able to speak to you, and I love listening to you because I feel can you transmit the love that you have for the ship, and it makes me want to love it even more. So I want to thank you, and before I let you go. I just want to know what are your plans for Halloween night?
Oh? My plans for Halloween night? Well, I'll probably be on the sofa waiting for the little trigger treaters like everyone else.
Nice. Yep, that's what I like to do, to be honest. When I was younger, I'm like, Okay, I want to go get candy. Now I'm like, you know, I'm gonna sit down and enjoy some television and drink some cocoa or maybe I don't know, have some wine and give everyone some candy.
Here you go. A great Halloween, Yes.
A great Halloween exactly. Well, thank you so much, Commodore. It's been such a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you for your time and for your insight and all the history that you have given us. And I hope you enjoyed our conversation as well.
Oh I certainly did you know? My wife will be glad that we had this conversation because she won't have to hear about the Queen Mary when I get home from work tonight because I got to talk it out.
Oh, it's amazing. We'll tell her, I said, hello, sure will. Thank you, Commodore. I'm sending you a big hug and hopefully I see you there soon at the ship.
I'll be looking for it.
All right, sounds good, So you guys, thank you for listening, los kiro Mucho, and I will catch you on the next episode. Okay, do you need advice on love, relationships, health emails? I'm so excited to share with you that my Cheekys and Chill podcast will have an extra episode drop each week. I'll be answering all your questions. Just leave me a voice message first nine Monday.
All you have to do is go to speak.
Pipe dot com, slash Cheeky's and Chill podcast and record your questions.
I can't wait to hear from you.
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