THE PARANORMAL

 THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401’.

On December 29th, 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401, was preparing to land at Miami Airport, after a flight from New York. The aircraft, a L1011 and only 4 months old and the 163 passengers and 13 crew members had been in good mood. As the cockpit crew began the landing procedures, several pieces of equipment began to malfunction. This led to one of the pilots, Don Repo, climbing down into a 'hell hole', to try and fix an apparent faulty landing wheel. Whilst the crew were distracted by the chain of faults, they didn't realise that the autopilot had disengaged itself and the plane was slowly veering towards the swamps of the Florida Everglades.

The plane crashed into the swamp at 227 mph, resulting in the deaths of many passengers and crew. Amazingly, some of the parts of the stricken plane were reusable and were placed into other L1011 aircraft.

As the weeks and months passed, odd occurrences began to happen on some of the aircraft with parts from Flight 401. In 1973, a year after the crash, a vice president of Eastern Airlines was heading down to Miami. As a VIP, he was allowed on board the plane first and made his way down to 1st Class seating. As he did so, he noticed a Captain in full uniform and went over for a conversation. After a while, it dawned on the VP that he was actually talking to Bob Loft, a pilot who had perished on Flight 401. As he realised this, the apparition disappeared in front of him and he ran off the aircraft terrified.

Slowly, across 1973, various reports began to emerge from cabin crew about eerie sightings and events aboard L1011 aircraft. One full crew approached their cabin, to see Captain Bob Loft again, sitting in a pilot's seat. They spoke to him for a while before he vanished into nothingness. The crew ran and refused to fly that day. Various engineers working aboard L1011 aircraft encountered apparitions, including Don Repo who appeared to a pilot and told him that he didn't need to worry about anything going wrong, because 'they' would make sure another L1011 never crashed again.

During a flight from Atlanta to Miami, severe knocking sounds emerged from the 'hell hole' section of the plane at 39,000 feet. When the flight engineer opened up the hatch, he was astonished to see the floating face of Don Repo staring up at him. Various stewardesses reported icy chills suddenly appearing on board the planes. One stewardess working alone, watched a 'cloudy ball of light' form in front of her, whilst working on catering. By now she hurriedly pressed an elevator button but it seemed to take an age. By the time it did arrive, the ball of light had formed into a shape the size of a basketball. In the middle of the shape, a clear, three-dimensional face, complete with steel-rimmed spectacles, was staring at her. She later recognised the face as that of Captain Don Repo.

By now, many stewardesses and crew had witnessed something odd on flights, but Eastern Airlines decided to get tough on anyone spreading rumours, as so many crew were now sharing stories about full-figure apparitions. The policy of the company became that anyone reporting this stories would be immediately sent for psychiatric evaluation, with the probable loss of their jobs.

However, despite the warnings of the aircraft company, the events continued and now passengers and airport staff began to witness apparitions. A Captain sat next to a woman on a flight, engaged her in conversation and then disappeared. A catering crew ran screaming from a grounded plane, after seeing a man in a Captain's uniform form out of thin air and stare at them. When each of these witnesses was shown a book of different photos, they all picked out the face of Don Repo. Flight 903 had just taken off from JFK Airport, en route to Mexico City when one of the stewardesses, Fay Merryweather, looked out of a window and saw the face of Don Repo staring back at her. She calmly went to get another stewardess and she also saw the face staring back. An eerie voice said 'Watch out for fire in this plane'.

On the return journey to JFK Airport, a starboard engine began to malfunction and quickly caught fire, although the aircraft landed safely. Over time, many crew simply refused to fly in any aircraft which had parts from the doomed Flight 401. Also, secretly and quietly, every part of the fallen plane was removed from every L1011. When this happened, the apparitions ceased and were never seen again. The prediction from the ghostly Don Repo was also true though and no L1011 ever crashed again. In his fascinating book, 'The Ghost of Flight 401', John G. Fuller made a full investigation into the ghostly sightings, including apparently contacting deceased pilots from Flight 401 in a seance.

There was also a movie made of these events in 1978 starring Ernest Borgnine as Don Repo and a young Kim Basinger.