Fuller John. - The Ghost of Flight 401

Published by BERKLEY PUBLISHING CORPORATION

Distributed by

G. P. Putnams Sons

Copyright 1976 by John G. Fuller

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. Published simultaneously in Canada by Longman Canada Limited, Toronto.

Ninth Impression

SBN: 399-11614-1

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Fuller, John Grant, 1913-The ghost of flight 401.

1. Ghosts. 2. Spiritualism. 3. Aeronautics

Accidents1972. I. Title.

BF1461.F84 1976 1331 76-16205

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To Elizabeth

The details of this story are factual and accurate as reported to the author by the people involved, or by many official documents and reports. In a story of this strange nature, however, some people are reluctant to talk. As a consequence, some of the material is not firsthand. Where it is, it is labeled as such, or is clearly evident in the context of the material. In the case of certain Eastern Airlines employees, some of the names have been changed at their request. The names so used are indicated by an asterisk (*) the first time they are mentioned. All other names not indicated by an asterisk are the real names.

I first heard of the ghost of Flight 401 on a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen, in March 1974. The stewardess was friendly and congenial. She told me she had heard one of the strangest stories she ever encountered from a friend of hers, a flight attendant on British Airways. Dead members of the flight crew of an Eastern Airlines plane which had crashed in the Everglades in late 1972, were reappearing as very distinct and solid apparitions in several Eastern Airlines flights. The stories were so vivid, she continued, that they had traveled consistently among crews of most international airlines.

I asked her why the legend of the ghost hadnt been shifted from Eastern Airlines to SAS or other European airlines, where the story would have much more local appeal; most folklore changes robes with the telling of the story. As it is repeated, the details often take on the local fabric of the person telling it Soon only the basic outline remains, to wear whatever uniform the storyteller decides to drape it with.

She was quiet a moment, then said, That thought is very interesting. Perhaps the story doesnt change because it actually happened on Eastern?

We both laughed. She went on with the complexities of serving the delightful Scandinavian food that SAS offers on its flights. What intrigued me about the story was that it had traveled across the airlines such a distance, and that it maintained an identity with a specific type of plane and a specific airline like Eastern.

At that time, I was working on an extremely difficult book to research. It involved a serious accident in a nuclear power plant near Detroit and the dangerous implications of nuclear power proliferation throughout the world. I had no time to think about a ghost story, however intriguing.

About a year later, I was riding on an Eastern jet from San Juan to New York. Half-joking and half-embarrassed, I asked the flight attendant who was serving the meal if she had ever run into the story of the apparitions. She appeared shocked.

That's not funny, she said. It happened to me. I had an experience in the lower galley Ill never forget.

I apologized, saying that I didnt mean to take it lightly, but that I was curious about it because the story had traveled so far. I asked her to tell me more about it.

The attendant was busy at the time, but returned later after she had finished serving the meals. Of course there are many stories going around, she said. But my experience happened before I knew about any of them. It was in late February 1973, about two months after the crash. I was in the lower galley. I felt this presence there. It was eerie. I know it sounds ridiculous, and its really impossible to describe. There was definitely a presence there, even though I didnt see any-oneas some of my friends did later. The temperature of the whole galley literally became freezing. Ill never forget it.

She was visibly upset in recalling the incident. By the way, she added. I spoke impulsively. Please dont mention my name about this. She went on to say that soon afterward, she began hearing that flight-crew members were directly encountering full-scale apparitions of one or two members of the flight crew who had been killed in the Eastern jumbo jet that had crashed. She had felt that her experience might bring some helpful information to the Eastern authorities, vague as it was.

She went to her supervisor and explained what had happened. Instead of being interested, her supervisor told her that she knew a psychiatrist whose wife was a flight attendant,

who understood all the problems the girls might develop on the job. Perhaps a visit wifh the psychiatrist might be helpful?

I was never so furious in my life, the stewardess continued. I have never experienced anything like that before or since. Later I learned that any crew members who reported any of the incidents that followed have been referred to the company shrink. So very few will talk about the story anymore. A lot of them feel theyll be fired or laid off.

It was many months before I finally succumbed to looking into the details of the incredible story. When I did, an intricate web of circumstances began forming, among the most baffling I have ever encountered.

The result is a ghost story. It deals with the question of life after death. It is hard to believe, even if you have an inclination to believe in ghosts. It is a ghost story that has happened not in a dark castle or a Victorian mansion, but in a most unlikely place; a modern jumbo-jet airliner.

There are two opposing forces that confront a ghost story. One of them is an attitude of total skepticism; the other is an attitude of total uncritical acceptance. Neither is healthy.

There are certain concepts that both schools of thought can accept. We are born and we die. During that space of time, we observe, we feel, we think, we communicate. We really dont know where we came from, or where were going. It is hard even to guess. It is almost axiomatic that there is knowledge beyond our own perception; history has shown that. Our pool of knowledge has grown over the years. While the total is vast, there is still more to be learned. We are born to explore, to try to find what is around the next bend in the river.

Carl Sandburg once said that death is simply part of life. If it is, it is a legitimate area to explore, even if it is difficult. The tools for exploring it are limited and fall into the hands of theologists, philosophers, and parapsychologists. Only the last have made attempts to find hard, rational evidence to any extent. Only recently has parapsychology been admitted to the discipline of science, as demonstrated by its acceptance into the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

If death is part of life, then it is of overwhelming importance. The fragility of life and the durability of death remain a dominant theme. The story of Flight 401 symbolizes both, not in a mood of despair, but of adventure and exploration.

J.G.F

It is impossible to meditate on Time and the mystery of the creative passage of Nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.

Alfred North Whitehead

I have been conditioned all my life to think that there are no such things as ghosts. They were merely vestigial remnants of ancient superstitionsuitable for Hamlets father and a Halloween rompand that was about it. When I returned to the United States in April 1974 from the European research for my book on nuclear power development, I was swamped by a massive television and radio tour on a book of mine that had just been published. The tour would take me all over the United States for interviews on a pressing schedule of one-night stands. It would be spread over a period of eight or nine weeks, right on the heels of the two-month trek on the nuclear story. During this time, I would be trying to complete as much as I could of the nuclear book research.