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#but also the wreck of the titanic is a grave we should leave it be
fandomsandfeminism · 1 year
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So we have now surpassed the 96 hour "best case scenario" amount of oxygen point (if they had been alive and didnt just implode, they arent alive anymore), and I just keep thinking everything about this story, and really the story ABOUT the story, is fascinating.
Like, the situation itself has that incredible blend of tragedy voyeurism and schadenfreude that adds a level of absurdity. (The Logitech controller, the camping world lights, the fact that they probably didn't have their shoes). The way this story touches on issues of deregulation and tragedy tourism and billionaire hubris and a condemnation of wreckless start up mindsets. How much money has been spent looking for them, how much the tickets cost - the extreme absurdity of all of it.
But also the WAY this story has been covered. I keep seeing this compared to the horrific disaster in the Mediterranean this week which killed over 500 refugees and the disparity in the coverage and interest. And yeah, I think the issue is that the disaster in the Mediterranean is transparently horrific- it is a terrible tragedy, the result of systemic and complex geopolitical issues that are complex. So many people, and the weight of that is just so big. It's not funny. It's just awful.
The Ocean Gate Titan thing? It's a simple narrative that was obviously avoidable. It feels like a movie with REALLY obvious themes. It's been covered like a movie. It's been dragged out and every single possible update, the viral video of the tour of the sub, the possible noises detected by sonar, the whole side story about the billionaire step son going to the Blink 182 concert- the cast is so small and the level of abstraction away from normal people and their lives? Makes it feel completely unreal and so it can be consumed like the newest HBO miniseries.
Even now, we are getting updates on how they could stretch the oxygen out longer- like a fan theory prediction of the next episode. Like a headcanon for the season finale. (Oh God, do you think AO3 has fics yet?) Tiktokers making videos about plot holes (why not attach a tether to it?). Discourse over whether it's problematic to say one thing or another about it.
It reminds me of how it felt when the Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal, but with the added "oh my god, the OCEAN ate the rich" and Logitech Playstation controller jokes.
I'd put money on implosion. These men have been dead since Sunday. It's likely that we won't actually know for a long time though, if ever. But the way this story was covered is worth contemplating.
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so theres a lot of posts going round about the titanic wreck and the missing submarines; all of them that ive seen have made very good points about how shoddy the submersible seemed to be and how the company decided to wait eight hours before reporting it, and how this is a play stupid games, win stupid prizes for the ultra-wealthy who paid like 250grand a ticket for this thing.
but what i havent seen any posts about is how the titanic wreck is a gravesite and this tourism is disturbing the graves of over 1500 people.
sometimes its kinda hard to remember that those on the titanic were real people; it was over a century ago, the story has been romanticised in so many ways (like the movie), theres conspiracies theories galore that cloud everything with misinformation, but at the end of the day, those who died were real people.
do you want their names? heres a list of them; its a long read. and for fun, heres another site where you can see photos of the children and babies who died aboard.
their bodies are long gone and their lives long forgotten. all we have to remember them and honour them is the wreck itself. its all we have of them and it is their gravesite. its their tombstone.
caitlin doughty/ask a morticians video on the great lakes discusses the topic well, and why we should leave these shipwrecks alone because again, they are the gravesites of all the souls who died aboard those ships. we rarely have bodies to recover so we really are left just with the wreck.
and what really upsets me about titanic tourism is how the majority of those who died that night were not the ultra-wealthy rich folks you might picture when you think of ocean liners.
61% of the first class passengers survived
42% of the second class passengers survived
24% of the third class passengers survived
24% of the crew survived **
the majority of those who died that night were regular folk; not to be cliche, but they were just like us. titanics wreck is not only a gravesite for over 1500 people, its also a majority working class gravesite.
and look at us now. look at what were doing. the ultra-wealthy can pay the equivalent of peanuts to them to disturb a mass gravesite of the exact kind of people they exploit today to hold onto all their wealth. 
its easy to point and laugh at these dumb idiots in their playstation controller submarine, seemingly held together with super glue and duct tape, but its also important to remember that what they were doing was simply disturbing a gravesite for fun. though the company does research, these guys werent down there to conduct research, they were there so they could brag about it to their friends. its like “climbing mount everest” while your sherpa does all the work.
if you cant tell, i have a lot of feelings about this. shipwrecks and ocean liners are one of my special interests and im currently building a (beginner’s) model of the titanic, for fucks sake. but i would never go down to see that wreck because its a fucking gravesite and we should not be disturbing their final resting place.
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myhauntedsalem · 4 years
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The Titanic and the Paranormal
There are many supposedly haunted places in this world, and most of us may think that these spectral forces gravitate towards dilapidated old houses or scary forests in the middle of nowhere. We have this image of what haunted should be, and most often it all comes down to a place or thing with a tragic history and death orbiting it, through whatever means producing these alleged haunted phenomena. The seas also have plenty of this, and there is perhaps no greater tragedy on the ocean than the deadly sinking of the now infamous Titanic. Here thousands of people died a horrible death, and it should go without saying that this doomed vessel has generated its fair share of strange phenomena over the decades.
When the RMS Titanic set out on its maiden voyage it was considered to be a grand wonder of engineering and the pinnacle of passenger liners, unparalleled in opulent luxury and comfort for its time. A British ship operated by White Star Lines and designed by the architect Thomas Andrews, the RMS Titanic was the largest ship on the seas at the time, just about the largest ship ever, and had the most cutting edge technology and facilities ever seen on a passenger liner. The colossal ship was fitted with all manner of bells and whistles, including fancy radio transmitter equipment, and it was actually one of the fist ships ever to start using the new SOS distress signal, which would replace the signal CQD (come quick, danger). The imposing ship featured revolutionary safety features for its time, including an ingenious system of interlocking compartments and remotely operated watertight doors, among others, and when it inexorably set out from Southampton to New York City on its very first voyage the Titanic was widely touted as being wholly unstoppable and “unsinkable.”
When this behemoth of a ship departed on April 10, 1912, under the command of a Captain Edward Smith, it was to much joyous fanfare and publicity. The Titanic departed with over 2,200 passengers, many of them some of the wealthiest people in the world, and others were emigrants from all over Europe eager to go off to start a new life in the faraway, promised land of the United States. It was a truly historic event, demanding attention, and at the time no one would have thought anything of the fact that despite its advanced safety features it was woefully short of lifeboats, with only enough to carry around 1,178 people under ideal conditions. After all, the lifeboats were just a formality, right? Surely nothing could ever sink the mighty Titanic. Or so they thought, and the rest is history.
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic was making its way through the Atlantic at high speed around 375 miles from the coast of Newfoundland in the early hours of morning when it struck an iceberg that promptly robbed the ship of its popular title of “unsinkable.” Many of the watertight compartments that had been hailed as groundbreaking technology immediately were smashed wide open, and the crippled giant began to sink at a steady rate. In the ensuing panic and chaos, the problem of the lifeboat shortage became painfully apparent, and many of these had the added problem that they were difficult and time consuming to launch. Indeed, many of the scant lifeboats went out into the frigid seas only partially loaded, leaving others to their impending doom. Eventually the gargantuan ship broke apart and plunged down below the waves with an estimated approximately 1,500 people still aboard.
When the another ship called the RMS Carpathia came to the ship’s aid, it was able to rescue around 700 of the survivors, with the rest disappearing down into a watery grave to rest at the bottom down in nearly 13,000 feet of water, where the ship remains to this day. Indeed, for decades the exact location of the wreck remained a mystery in and of itself, with it not being discovered until 1985. The sinking of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst, most tragic maritime disasters in history, and at the time it shocked the world. Since that fateful morning, the Titanic has gone on to become one of the most famous ships to ever ride the seas, and has been the subject of countless films, books, and documentaries. It is by far one of the most well-known wrecks in the world, and it is perhaps no surprise that it has drawn its fair share of tales of the paranormal as well.
Weirdness seems to have hovered around the vessel even before it was even launched. According to an April 12, 2012 Associated Press article, in 1898 the American author Morgan Robertson wrote a novella called Futility, which features in its first half a ship called the Titan, and which besides the similarity of the names of the vessels displays a wide variety of spooky, seemingly prophetic details and uncanny parallels between the fictional Titan and the real Titanic. For instance, both were nearly the same size and could go the same maximum speed of over 20 knots, and both of the ships were deemed unsinkable and were subsequently sunk by hitting icebergs, in mid-April no less. In addition, both lacked enough lifeboats to save all of the passengers, and even the novella’s opening sounds as if it could easily be talking about the Titanic, saying:
She was the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men. In her construction and maintenance were involved every science, profession, and trade known to civilization.
When Futility was first released, it was met with a resounding lack of interest, due to the fact that it is actually not seen as being very good, and Robertson was mostly considered a bit of a hack. The book itself mostly devolved into an improbable tale of survival for the alcoholic protagonist, with Titanic historian Paul Heyer saying of Robertson and his work, “He’s not exactly a great literary stylist. Moralistic tone, implausible situations, poor character development. The only saving grace of the novella is intriguing information about the ship and her fate.” Indeed, it was not until after the historic disaster that the book got any sort of fame or recognition at all. Considering all of these eerie details in a book written years before the real Titanic set sail, in the wake of the disaster it did not go unnoticed, and Robertson was widely hailed as having prophesied the sinking of the ship with some sort of precognitive abilities. This has been explained away by skeptics as being pure coincidence, as Robertson was an avid writer on ships and the sea and Heyer has said of this:
He was someone who wrote about maritime affairs. He was an experienced seaman, and he saw ships as getting very large and the possible danger that one of these behemoths would hit an iceberg.
Whether Robertson was really psychic or not is unknown, but what is known is that this is just the beginning of the weirdness surrounding the Titanic. Considering the sheer loss of life and the traumatic circumstances of the disaster, along with the fact that hundreds of these bodies were never recovered and remained lost at sea, it is perhaps no surprise at all that the very wreck of the Titanic is said to be haunted. There have been numerous reports of ships passing the area of the Titanic’s resting place off Newfoundland seeing glowing or flickering orbs of light both above the water and darting about beneath the waves. This phenomenon is reportedly often accompanied by inexplicable radio interference, and even submarines passing the area of the wreck have apparently had such interference, as well as phantom SOS signals that seem to come from nowhere.
One ship that was passing the site of the wreck even had a sighting of a ghostly apparition said to be a victim of the RMS Titanic. In 1977, the liner SS Winterhaven was passing through and on this evening Second Office Leonard Bishop was showing a passenger around the ship who seemed to be absolutely obsessed with every detail of the vessel. As the tour went on, Bishop noticed that besides this intense interest in his ship there was something off about the quiet, soft-spoken man he was guiding around, but he wasn’t sure what at the time. After the tour, he did not remember seeing the man again, but the strange aura of something not quite right made him memorable, and Bishop would not forget the mysterious stranger’s face. It would not be until years later when Bishop by chance saw a picture and claimed to know the man in it, much to the shock of the person who had showed it to him. It turned out that unbeknownst to Bishop the picture was of Captain Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, who would have been long dead during their tour.
The ghost of Titanic captain Edward Smith actually seems to get around, as he has been reportedly seen from time to time on other vessels passing the area of wreck as well, and he is even said to haunt his childhood home in Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, England. The previous house owners, Neil and Louise Bonner, rented the house out for over a decade, and they say that there had been numerous reports from tenants over the years of paranormal activity at the house. Banging, whispers, and other anomalous noises were common, as well as roving colds spots, inexplicable floods in the kitchen, and most shocking of all a full-bodied spectral apparition of Smith himself seen in the bedroom.
In addition to the hauntings of the wreck site and the home of the Titanic’s captain are the numerous hauntings that seem to revolve around artifacts and relics from the wreck, and museum collections with such items tend to be magnets for inexplicable ghostly activity. One of the more active of these is the “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition,” at The Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which houses a large array of over 300 items from the sunken ship and is ground zero for a whole plethora of unexplained phenomena. Visitors and staff alike supposedly frequently report strong feelings of being watched or followed, as well as disembodied voices or footsteps, or being poked, prodded, or pushed by unseen hands, in addition to sightings of shadowy apparitions lurking in the halls and corridors. The attraction’s artifact expert Joe Zimmer seems to be particularly tormented by these wayward spirits, claiming that he constantly experiences having his hair or clothes yanked on or his name whispered when no one is there, and he says he has even heard phantom music playing.
One of the more well-known of the apparitions of the Luxor exhibit is apparently the ghost of Frederick Fleet, who was the lookout on the RMS Titanic who had spotted the iceberg that sank the ship and had warned the crew. Although Fleet was one of the survivors of the tragedy, he would forever have feelings of guilt afterwards, and this plus the death of his wife in 1964 drove him to commit suicide by hanging himself at his home in England. Fleet’s spirit has been reported as haunting the Promenade Deck of the exhibition, although why this ghost should appear all the way over in Las Vegas remains unclear. There is also the apparition of a young woman in a black old-fashioned dress and with her hair in a bun who is regularly seen on the premises.
A strange incident with a ghost allegedly happened on the very opening day of the exhibition, when a photographer was getting ready for the event. He claims that as he was setting up he was surprised to see a woman in period clothes come walking down the grand staircase, which was odd because as far as he knew, no one else was supposed to be there and he had not seen anyone else arrive. Thinking that perhaps it was an extra dressed up in period clothing for the purpose of the grand opening he asked her if he could take her photo on the staircase, but she did not say a word, merely standing there in an apparent trance before vanishing into thin air.
Some of the strange incidents at the Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition have apparently been caught on film and audio as well. One example is a strange sequence of events concerning a photo of Bruce Ismay, who was the chairman and managing director of the White Star Line. One morning the staff opened the exhibition to find the photo inexplicably lying on the floor of the entryway and carefully propped against the wall, reportedly still pristine and undamaged. Baffled by how the photo could have possible gotten there during the night, surveillance footage was reviewed, which showed the photo appearing to shake on its own before being taken down and put against the wall as if by unseen hands. Paranormal investigators to the exhibit have captured orbs of light and shadowy images as well, and there have been several EVP recordings made of what appear to be the voices of Titanic victims.
Another collection of Titanic pieces that seems to be haunted is the Titanic Aquatic exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium, in the United States, which also has intense paranormal activity similar to what has been experienced at the Luxor exhibit, including ghost sightings, strange noises, period music from nowhere, and phantom hands grabbing, nudging, or pulling clothes or hair. Spookiest of all is a creepy ghostly old lady who is said to dwell within a replica of one of the Titanic’s cabins in the exhibit, and is not shy about suddenly appearing to startle visitors before blinking away again. Paranormal investigator’s and the Syfy Channel’s Ghost Hunters have examined the exhibit and found definite signs of paranormal activity, as well as made recordings of EVP phenomena at the site. As to why these ghosts should latch onto these relics from the Titanic, Dianna Avena, founder of Georgia Paranormal, has said:
It just makes sense that, especially with the Titanic exhibit, there would be residual paranormal energy. When you have a strong emotional imprint, there could be some energy attached.
Perhaps the strangest tale of a haunting related to the Titanic has to do not with any artifact from the doomed ship, but rather a replica of it. Retired architectural draftsman Wyatt Jason Moore, from Portsmouth, Virginia, managed to painstakingly build a 200 lb. model of the RMS Titanic over the course of 9 years and an estimated 17,368 hours of work, which was an ambitious project he became obsessed with after watching the 1958 film A Night to Remember. He began studying numerous old photographs of the Titanic, incorporating every detail he could into his grand vision, and he found himself spending hours and hours a day toiling away on his creation.
The end result was a lifelike replica of the famous ship, accurate right down to each individual stairway and hall. When his masterpiece was finished he decided to take some photos of it and that was when strange things began to happen. As he took his photos, he could hear anomalous noises coming from the massive model sitting in his home, and later mysterious entities began to appear in his shots. He would say of one of the startling images he took:
I couldn’t make it out until I looked at it very carefully and I found it was a bald headed man with a handle bar mustache, and I said to myself, what’s he doing there?
In addition to this creepy ghostly man were a spectral man and woman looking out of another porthole just above the lifeboats. At around the same time as these events, Moore says that doors around the house began to mysteriously slam shut or open even when no one else was there, but he says he is not scared of the entities, he just thinks they are lost souls, saying “Maybe it was someone that was aboard the Titanic that found a new home for himself.” Skeptics have been quick to point out that the photos are nothing more than a reflection and trick of light, but Moore insists that the portholes on his model don’t feature glass. Moore has tried to sell the haunted Titanic model on Craigslist, but found no takers, perhaps because of the exorbitant $263,000 asking price, but he hopes that a museum will take it at some point. They might as well, because it seems any museum with genuine paraphernalia from the actual Titanic is haunted anyway.
The fate of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst seagoing tragedies of all time, and it seems somewhat fitting that it too should have its own odd tales of ghosts and hauntings. It is an aspect of the tragedy that does not get much coverage but is nevertheless still out there, lurking in the shadows. Does the fateful sinking of this once glorious vessel and its rusted, decomposed remains infused with the paranormal just as any old haunted house would be? What is going on with these rumors and scary stories? These are perhaps mysteries that we will never really understand, confined to the dark just as the hulk of the Titanic lies sitting down in the murk beyond the light of day.
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thanksjro · 5 years
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Eugenesis Part Two, Scene Five: (I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight feat. Prowl’s Lack of Empathy
You know that super intense battle we were reading about last part? Where Grimlock got killed and Bumblebee was stabbed onto the front of a wrecked ship while the last line of Earthen defense was fighting one of the greatest threats in the galaxy?
Fuck you, it’s time for more OC-based pseudo-romantic tension.
As promised, Quark is going to see Rev-Tone again. He brought boardgames. He peeks into the specialized isolation room they’ve got Rodimus.
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Fuck, it’s Throwback. Why are you still here? You’ve served your purpose, go away.
Throwback just got back from his pan-dimensional testing- Perceptor wants to make sure he wasn’t going to cause some sort of rift in space-time just by existing. Can’t say I blame Percy for that one, seeing how the entirety of the Marvel comic run went in that regard.
Some nurses take Throwback back to bed, where he immediately and fortunately falls asleep. Quark goes over to Rev-Tone and starts setting up a game of full-stasis (space chess). They chat about what’s happened, Rev-Tone whining about how bored he is being stuck in the medi-bay. Quark says that Rev-Tone could just leave if he wanted to seeing as he’s nearly back to his old self, both he and Roberts seeming to forget that his legs are still off.
The two’s conversation dies off, as they see Red Alert, fresh from being un-exploded, being walked to a bed by First Aid. They, and everyone else in the ward, start clapping, showering the poor man with applause. This probably isn’t the best thing to be doing, guys, seeing as he- in his eyes, at least- just failed to keep the Prime safe from harm. This was the biggest job of his entire career and he blew it. This all probably just reads as sarcastic to him, and makes you all look like a bunch of jerks.
In a brief aside back on Earth, Bluestreak’s spotted a dozen troop-ships full of Quintesson cannon-fodder. They all land and Sharkticons start pouring onto the scene.
Meanwhile, Nightbeat’s ready to show the High Council what he’s sussed out from the security footage. Most of High Command isn’t even there, but he still puts on his game face, breaking out the footage and going through it beat by beat. It’s revealed what’s happened to Thunderclash; in the aftermath of the explosion, a mysterious stranger teleported onto the scene and whisked him away.
Then Chromedome walks in carrying a corpse.
Actually no, Emyrissus isn’t dead just yet, which is honestly kind of bullshit, seeing as we just got an incredibly poignant death scene out of him. I know he’s got important information to give the Autobots, but it still feels a bit cheap to let him live at this point.
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Prowl, you can’t just deny someone medical attention like this. 
The last thing Emyrissus does is finally reveal what he saw at Darkmount- Quintessons. Then he passes out. Chromedome’s a little shell-shocked, seeing as he’s still covered in the guy’s blood, but nobody cares about that right now. Prowl tells him to get to work communicating with everyone to be on the lookout for Quintessons, and Chromedome leaves, presumably to do his job and also maybe cry a bit.
War is hell, y’all.
Nightbeat brings up the point that maybe they should tell the Decepticons about what’s going on, just so they aren’t trying to fight two enemies at once. They probably don’t even have the troops to handle just one threat right now. Prowl disagrees, saying that the ‘Cons wouldn’t believe them, and also giving them a call would be the equivalent of rolling out the welcome mat and setting off fireworks.
Chromedome calls to tell Prowl know that he’s done what was asked of him, though he can’t actually reach Autobot City. He’s not sure why.
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…Holy shit, Prowl. Are you sure you’re supposed to be a good guy? No wonder IDW Chromedome hates him so much.
Prowl and Perceptor come back after a moment, having decided that now is the ideal time to tell Nightbeat why he was transferred to Iacon.
Wow, what a brutal few pages we’ve just been subjected to. It feels like Part Two really ramped things up, doesn’t it? That good ol’ rising action. Speaking of action, let’s get back to the battle on Earth.
Up in his warship, General Rodern is pissed. He really wants to see the titan, but it just isn’t happening. He orders half of the fleet to perform a ram-raid on the city. Now, I looked up what a ram-raid is exactly, and well:
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Yeah, that might work.
Down below, Ultra Magnus is fighting off Sharkticons with Death’s Head and Wheeljack. They still can’t get in touch with Cybertron, but Wheeljack’s got an idea- use the space bridge.
And down below that, Mindwipe’s feeling hella aftershocks from the battle above. The city’s on its way to collapsing, and he can’t get in touch with Magnus. Well, that’s just great.
OH-KAY, back to Nightbeat’s plot-thread; Apparently his mission, should he choose to accept it, is quite the doozy. After fumbling around with their words for a bit, Prowl and Perceptor just decide to show him the footage.
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Hey, so this is a wormhole. A wormhole that was made when Throwback came back to this universe, and can traverse space and time based on you just wishing really hard about where you want to go.
Goddammit, Throwback’s plot-relevant. I’m so mad. Rodimus is going to be mad too, if he doesn’t die, because this is basically a time-machine, and he spent pretty much all of 2009 destroying those.
Originally- y’know, back before Rodimus was one foot in the grave and Thunderclash was still around- Nightbeat’s mission was going to be a simple data-collection trip, and then he would shut it down. Now, things are a bit more complicated.
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ARE YOU  F U C K I N G  KIDDING ME
THIS SHIT AGAIN
ROBERTS YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE BETTER THAN THIS
LET SPACE JESUS REST
Sweet baby Jesus, this is infinitely worse than how I was expecting this section to go. I was thinking we’d finally gotten to the mechpreg portion of this little romp, but instead it’s more  of Optimus Prime’s friggin’ undead body shambling through the franchise. Let his soul rest, for god’s sake.
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nomanicsdak · 5 years
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New Post has been published on https://manicdak.com/unfinished-business/
Unfinished Business
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We are back! Not months and months later for once! Right now, I am questless, so it’s time to search out some more exclamation points and question marks! I find a temple of Posiden which is right next to some dudes practicing thier long jump, which is more like a hop. Are they training for the Olympics perhaps?  I also find the wreck of the Argo in this area. You know, the ship Jason piloted. I do not find any golden fleeces here, just the guard that is chasing me around. After I collect all the treasure from Posiden’s temple, I run directly into the neighboring bandit camp.
Don’t Bite Me!!!
Pause. Why are bandit’s setting up camp mere feet from a guard filled temple??? Well, these bold bandit’s team up with the guard’s chasing me, and it’s all a recipe for desyncronization. It doesn’t help that I keep hitting the button for calling Ikaros instead of the one for my sword. On the second go round, I’m succeeding, but trying not to kill any precious attack doggos. Luckily I don’t have to, because a wolf shows up to dispatch half the bandit camp and thier little dogs too. Thank you, wild doggo.
Just as I reach Korinth and some person in a camp with a timed quest—I open the quest screen to discover that I am not done with the brother’s post-quest meetups. Tim also wants to meet me apparently. Well, he should have said so with words instead of sidelong glances. I guess we can do a quick backtrack and “spar” with him. Hopefully that is not some sort of double entendre, but I also learn that thier questline is called A Brother’s Seduction, so— 
Shark Hunter Was Here
Before I have to fight anybody, even if it ends up being romantic fighting, the game beseeches me to please! please! replace my gear with better stuff from my inventory, so let’s do that. Then, I have to steal a fishing boat with a bunch of sharks strapped to it, Old Man and the Sea style, because Tim is on some rocks in the middle of the water.
Okay, well, I can do hearts dialogue with this guy too, but I do not choose that, since I already did with Lykinos and it just doesn’t feel right. We’re just going to fight instead! The backstory here is that he used to spar with his dad on this rock out in the ocean, and he still comes there to be sad. He doesn’t seem to actually want to spar, so we’ll see how this goes.
Update!: So he has PTSD for sure. After Alexios beats him in the sparring match, he is clearly having flashbacks to some sort of trauma. He thinks he is going to lose control and murder me, and — Oh, god — timed choices. Crapness. Does it even matter, or am I going to truly cock thins up if I pick the wrong ones? I end up talking him down from the ledge in any case.
 We get to also have a heart to heart. Turns out he did once lose control and murder a fellow during battle. Yikes, dude. That was why he was discharged from the army. He hid this from his dad, so he could make him proud. I comfort him until he feels better and then we stare stoically into the sunset, thinkin’ about all the murder we’ve perpetrated I presume.
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It is Assassin’s Creed after all.
After this, the game informs me that I should check up on the bros back at their house, so I guess we’ll do that. I get back on the sharkboat and paddle my way back to shore. When I get there , the place is trashed and Lykinos is crying in a corner. Dammit. The bandits abducted Tim. I have to go rescue him now! 
Seriously, eff these bandits. They’re all going down! You want money, so leave all the money on the table and steal Tim?? 
Off I go to a new area of the map and the bandits are holed up in some giant fortress. I run around getting them all first, because I learned the hard way that they’ll just kill the prisoners that you free if you let them out before all the bandits are gone. 
When I let Tim out, he doesn’t want to go because there are still bandits??? Some of the dudes I let out of cages are running around and they kill the last one that I didn’t find right as I arrive, and finally we get a cut scene of Alexios calming Tim down.
Top Bad Guy
Hey, remember when I was wondering if there was a bigger loan shark? I found him. The actual bandit leader, not all the guys I just assassinated shows up. As it turns out, dear old dad was not only hitting up the loan sharks, but he was working for them as a smuggler too. One time he took money from them for gambling and they killed him for it. They never got the money back, so that’s why they’re hassling my boys. I should probably just stab these shady ne’er do wells , but instead I pay for the debts myself!
Lykinos makes his case
Tim makes his case
Once that is done, the boys thank Alexios and then start fighting over him. Tim never thought he would see happiness again like when he is with Alexios, and Lykinos thinks we’re soulmates. Oh, boy. Lol, I get options to choose one or the other, or neither. I choose neither, because—and I repeat, my heart belongs to the cute country doctor and/or the man-ho of Greece, Alkibiades.  The bros are both super disappointed and walk away. Sorry, bros! I must keep moving on!
I head back to Korinthia, stopping to defeat a huntress camp and to see what quests I have in the queue already, I find one about helping a captain on a beach, so I head off in that direction. Along the way I learn that Alexios thinks carrying boats over land is a dumb idea. Clearly he and Fitzcarraldo have wildly different opinions on this.  I arrive at the handsome pirate’s shore. Let’s see what he has going on.
Hello, Captain!
Here’s the story… Soldiers have been taking out pirates. Obviously, I am on the side of the pirates in thi situation somehow. Cool. Well, anyway, this dude’s brother went out to take on the military and didn’t come back. I choose the cagey option when I reveal I know he got eaten by sharks. I don’t tell him that I visited his bro’s grave. (This is one of the graves I went to when that lady asked me her obtuse riddle last time.) This guy’s new plan is to build an unsinkable ship that surely the army won’t be able to defeat and thus his village will be saved.
Is his villiage the boat? Like—I’m pretty sure if the military wanted to exact revenge or something, they could just burn the village to the ground? But I probably shouldn’t give them any ideas. I’m here to gather supplies though! I have to collect only Olive wood, which I already have because I walk or swim everywhere and pick up everything along the way. (Sorry, Phobos! I love you, good horse-o, but I always forget you exist!)
Next I have to go get a protective eye from a shipwreck—If the eye is protective, then how come it’s in a shipwreck? Oh, well. Who am I to question lucky charms. Off we swim!
Okay, the eye was on pirate guy’s old ship. He’s sad about how the pirate ways led to such death, and Alexios advises him that maybe he could use Titanic II for other things besides piracy. He agrees and pays me the last of the pirate treasure for good measure. Alright!
Titanic II
Now, I learn that this dude was part of that old lady’s riddle quest. Why do these quest lines keep making me think I’m finished when I’m not? I supposed I’ll return to her and help the guy who’s brother got eaten by a lion? Let’s find out! Who is this woman??? IS she a goddess? She’s sending me to a volcano island now, and is curious to know about what my gathering wood and advising the dude to quit piracy says about my character. I mean, I’ll do it, because she’s behaving suspiciously witch/godlike. I mean, the prince got turned into a beast because he didn’t help the old lady in disguise, right? Volcano island it is!
But first, I have to retrieve a key from a graveyard hermit, because this quest has something to do with this lady’s locked vault. I return to the graveyard to meet the hermit, and he is also a weird duck. A weird duck who doesn’t have the key. He left it on a guarded island somewhere. Gee, thanks. I guess it’s time for a swim. Or not. It’s far enough away that I have to find a dock and call Barny. 
As it turns out, this thing is guarded by lions. Is this the test? and not volcano island? Well, it is a location that requires me to kill the alpha lion so— I shoot them all accidentally with knockout arrows because I forgot I used up all the pointy ones. As it turns out, taming the alpha animal will also clear the location, so now I have a lion friend for as long as it takes me to get back to my boat I guess. 
Lion friend tearin’ up the town
OMG. He came with me! Lol, I return to the old lady and lion friend materializes out of nowhere. Surprise, lady! I brought one with me! He’s off to go fight the guards that were chasing me, so I’m afraid he wont be long for this world after all. Alas.
I return the key and learn that I am going to Haephestus’s foundry to find a helmet and not a volcano…thought I guess it could also be a volcano. I am ready as I’ll ever be, lady! Let’s do it! 
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Update: The guard’s did not kill Lion!
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myhauntedsalem · 5 years
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The Titanic and the Paranormal
There are many supposedly haunted places in this world, and most of us may think that these spectral forces gravitate towards dilapidated old houses or scary forests in the middle of nowhere. We have this image of what haunted should be, and most often it all comes down to a place or thing with a tragic history and death orbiting it, through whatever means producing these alleged haunted phenomena. The seas also have plenty of this, and there is perhaps no greater tragedy on the ocean than the deadly sinking of the now infamous Titanic. Here thousands of people died a horrible death, and it should go without saying that this doomed vessel has generated its fair share of strange phenomena over the decades.
When the RMS Titanic set out on its maiden voyage it was considered to be a grand wonder of engineering and the pinnacle of passenger liners, unparalleled in opulent luxury and comfort for its time. A British ship operated by White Star Lines and designed by the architect Thomas Andrews, the RMS Titanic was the largest ship on the seas at the time, just about the largest ship ever, and had the most cutting edge technology and facilities ever seen on a passenger liner. The colossal ship was fitted with all manner of bells and whistles, including fancy radio transmitter equipment, and it was actually one of the fist ships ever to start using the new SOS distress signal, which would replace the signal CQD (come quick, danger). The imposing ship featured revolutionary safety features for its time, including an ingenious system of interlocking compartments and remotely operated watertight doors, among others, and when it inexorably set out from Southampton to New York City on its very first voyage the Titanic was widely touted as being wholly unstoppable and “unsinkable.”
When this behemoth of a ship departed on April 10, 1912, under the command of a Captain Edward Smith, it was to much joyous fanfare and publicity. The Titanic departed with over 2,200 passengers, many of them some of the wealthiest people in the world, and others were emigrants from all over Europe eager to go off to start a new life in the faraway, promised land of the United States. It was a truly historic event, demanding attention, and at the time no one would have thought anything of the fact that despite its advanced safety features it was woefully short of lifeboats, with only enough to carry around 1,178 people under ideal conditions. After all, the lifeboats were just a formality, right? Surely nothing could ever sink the mighty Titanic. Or so they thought, and the rest is history.
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic was making its way through the Atlantic at high speed around 375 miles from the coast of Newfoundland in the early hours of morning when it struck an iceberg that promptly robbed the ship of its popular title of “unsinkable.” Many of the watertight compartments that had been hailed as groundbreaking technology immediately were smashed wide open, and the crippled giant began to sink at a steady rate. In the ensuing panic and chaos, the problem of the lifeboat shortage became painfully apparent, and many of these had the added problem that they were difficult and time consuming to launch. Indeed, many of the scant lifeboats went out into the frigid seas only partially loaded, leaving others to their impending doom. Eventually the gargantuan ship broke apart and plunged down below the waves with an estimated approximately 1,500 people still aboard.
When the another ship called the RMS Carpathia came to the ship’s aid, it was able to rescue around 700 of the survivors, with the rest disappearing down into a watery grave to rest at the bottom down in nearly 13,000 feet of water, where the ship remains to this day. Indeed, for decades the exact location of the wreck remained a mystery in and of itself, with it not being discovered until 1985. The sinking of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst, most tragic maritime disasters in history, and at the time it shocked the world. Since that fateful morning, the Titanic has gone on to become one of the most famous ships to ever ride the seas, and has been the subject of countless films, books, and documentaries. It is by far one of the most well-known wrecks in the world, and it is perhaps no surprise that it has drawn its fair share of tales of the paranormal as well.
Weirdness seems to have hovered around the vessel even before it was even launched. According to an April 12, 2012 Associated Press article, in 1898 the American author Morgan Robertson wrote a novella called Futility, which features in its first half a ship called the Titan, and which besides the similarity of the names of the vessels displays a wide variety of spooky, seemingly prophetic details and uncanny parallels between the fictional Titan and the real Titanic. For instance, both were nearly the same size and could go the same maximum speed of over 20 knots, and both of the ships were deemed unsinkable and were subsequently sunk by hitting icebergs, in mid-April no less. In addition, both lacked enough lifeboats to save all of the passengers, and even the novella’s opening sounds as if it could easily be talking about the Titanic, saying:
She was the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men. In her construction and maintenance were involved every science, profession, and trade known to civilization.
When Futility was first released, it was met with a resounding lack of interest, due to the fact that it is actually not seen as being very good, and Robertson was mostly considered a bit of a hack. The book itself mostly devolved into an improbable tale of survival for the alcoholic protagonist, with Titanic historian Paul Heyer saying of Robertson and his work, “He’s not exactly a great literary stylist. Moralistic tone, implausible situations, poor character development. The only saving grace of the novella is intriguing information about the ship and her fate.” Indeed, it was not until after the historic disaster that the book got any sort of fame or recognition at all. Considering all of these eerie details in a book written years before the real Titanic set sail, in the wake of the disaster it did not go unnoticed, and Robertson was widely hailed as having prophesied the sinking of the ship with some sort of precognitive abilities. This has been explained away by skeptics as being pure coincidence, as Robertson was an avid writer on ships and the sea and Heyer has said of this:
He was someone who wrote about maritime affairs. He was an experienced seaman, and he saw ships as getting very large and the possible danger that one of these behemoths would hit an iceberg.
Whether Robertson was really psychic or not is unknown, but what is known is that this is just the beginning of the weirdness surrounding the Titanic. Considering the sheer loss of life and the traumatic circumstances of the disaster, along with the fact that hundreds of these bodies were never recovered and remained lost at sea, it is perhaps no surprise at all that the very wreck of the Titanic is said to be haunted. There have been numerous reports of ships passing the area of the Titanic’s resting place off Newfoundland seeing glowing or flickering orbs of light both above the water and darting about beneath the waves. This phenomenon is reportedly often accompanied by inexplicable radio interference, and even submarines passing the area of the wreck have apparently had such interference, as well as phantom SOS signals that seem to come from nowhere.
One ship that was passing the site of the wreck even had a sighting of a ghostly apparition said to be a victim of the RMS Titanic. In 1977, the liner SS Winterhaven was passing through and on this evening Second Office Leonard Bishop was showing a passenger around the ship who seemed to be absolutely obsessed with every detail of the vessel. As the tour went on, Bishop noticed that besides this intense interest in his ship there was something off about the quiet, soft-spoken man he was guiding around, but he wasn’t sure what at the time. After the tour, he did not remember seeing the man again, but the strange aura of something not quite right made him memorable, and Bishop would not forget the mysterious stranger’s face. It would not be until years later when Bishop by chance saw a picture and claimed to know the man in it, much to the shock of the person who had showed it to him. It turned out that unbeknownst to Bishop the picture was of Captain Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, who would have been long dead during their tour.
The ghost of Titanic captain Edward Smith actually seems to get around, as he has been reportedly seen from time to time on other vessels passing the area of wreck as well, and he is even said to haunt his childhood home in Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, England. The previous house owners, Neil and Louise Bonner, rented the house out for over a decade, and they say that there had been numerous reports from tenants over the years of paranormal activity at the house. Banging, whispers, and other anomalous noises were common, as well as roving colds spots, inexplicable floods in the kitchen, and most shocking of all a full-bodied spectral apparition of Smith himself seen in the bedroom.
In addition to the hauntings of the wreck site and the home of the Titanic’s captain are the numerous hauntings that seem to revolve around artifacts and relics from the wreck, and museum collections with such items tend to be magnets for inexplicable ghostly activity. One of the more active of these is the “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition,” at The Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which houses a large array of over 300 items from the sunken ship and is ground zero for a whole plethora of unexplained phenomena. Visitors and staff alike supposedly frequently report strong feelings of being watched or followed, as well as disembodied voices or footsteps, or being poked, prodded, or pushed by unseen hands, in addition to sightings of shadowy apparitions lurking in the halls and corridors. The attraction’s artifact expert Joe Zimmer seems to be particularly tormented by these wayward spirits, claiming that he constantly experiences having his hair or clothes yanked on or his name whispered when no one is there, and he says he has even heard phantom music playing.
One of the more well-known of the apparitions of the Luxor exhibit is apparently the ghost of Frederick Fleet, who was the lookout on the RMS Titanic who had spotted the iceberg that sank the ship and had warned the crew. Although Fleet was one of the survivors of the tragedy, he would forever have feelings of guilt afterwards, and this plus the death of his wife in 1964 drove him to commit suicide by hanging himself at his home in England. Fleet’s spirit has been reported as haunting the Promenade Deck of the exhibition, although why this ghost should appear all the way over in Las Vegas remains unclear. There is also the apparition of a young woman in a black old-fashioned dress and with her hair in a bun who is regularly seen on the premises.
e strange incident with a ghost allegedly happened on the very opening day of the exhibition, when a photographer was getting ready for the event. He claims that as he was setting up he was surprised to see a woman in period clothes come walking down the grand staircase, which was odd because as far as he knew, no one else was supposed to be there and he had not seen anyone else arrive. Thinking that perhaps it was an extra dressed up in period clothing for the purpose of the grand opening he asked her if he could take her photo on the staircase, but she did not say a word, merely standing there in an apparent trance before vanishing into thin air.
Some of the strange incidents at the Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition have apparently been caught on film and audio as well. One example is a strange sequence of events concerning a photo of Bruce Ismay, who was the chairman and managing director of the White Star Line. One morning the staff opened the exhibition to find the photo inexplicably lying on the floor of the entryway and carefully propped against the wall, reportedly still pristine and undamaged. Baffled by how the photo could have possible gotten there during the night, surveillance footage was reviewed, which showed the photo appearing to shake on its own before being taken down and put against the wall as if by unseen hands. Paranormal investigators to the exhibit have captured orbs of light and shadowy images as well, and there have been several EVP recordings made of what appear to be the voices of Titanic victims.
Another collection of Titanic pieces that seems to be haunted is the Titanic Aquatic exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium, in the United States, which also has intense paranormal activity similar to what has been experienced at the Luxor exhibit, including ghost sightings, strange noises, period music from nowhere, and phantom hands grabbing, nudging, or pulling clothes or hair. Spookiest of all is a creepy ghostly old lady who is said to dwell within a replica of one of the Titanic’s cabins in the exhibit, and is not shy about suddenly appearing to startle visitors before blinking away again. Paranormal investigator’s and the Syfy Channel’s Ghost Hunters have examined the exhibit and found definite signs of paranormal activity, as well as made recordings of EVP phenomena at the site. As to why these ghosts should latch onto these relics from the Titanic, Dianna Avena, founder of Georgia Paranormal, has said:
It just makes sense that, especially with the Titanic exhibit, there would be residual paranormal energy. When you have a strong emotional imprint, there could be some energy attached.
Perhaps the strangest tale of a haunting related to the Titanic has to do not with any artifact from the doomed ship, but rather a replica of it. Retired architectural draftsman Wyatt Jason Moore, from Portsmouth, Virginia, managed to painstakingly build a 200 lb. model of the RMS Titanic over the course of 9 years and an estimated 17,368 hours of work, which was an ambitious project he became obsessed with after watching the 1958 film A Night to Remember. He began studying numerous old photographs of the Titanic, incorporating every detail he could into his grand vision, and he found himself spending hours and hours a day toiling away on his creation.
The end result was a lifelike replica of the famous ship, accurate right down to each individual stairway and hall. When his masterpiece was finished he decided to take some photos of it and that was when strange things began to happen. As he took his photos, he could hear anomalous noises coming from the massive model sitting in his home, and later mysterious entities began to appear in his shots. He would say of one of the startling images he took:
I couldn’t make it out until I looked at it very carefully and I found it was a bald headed man with a handle bar mustache, and I said to myself, what’s he doing there?
In addition to this creepy ghostly man were a spectral man and woman looking out of another porthole just above the lifeboats. At around the same time as these events, Moore says that doors around the house began to mysteriously slam shut or open even when no one else was there, but he says he is not scared of the entities, he just thinks they are lost souls, saying “Maybe it was someone that was aboard the Titanic that found a new home for himself.” Skeptics have been quick to point out that the photos are nothing more than a reflection and trick of light, but Moore insists that the portholes on his model don’t feature glass. Moore has tried to sell the haunted Titanic model on Craigslist, but found no takers, perhaps because of the exorbitant $263,000 asking price, but he hopes that a museum will take it at some point. They might as well, because it seems any museum with genuine paraphernalia from the actual Titanic is haunted anyway.
The fate of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst seagoing tragedies of all time, and it seems somewhat fitting that it too should have its own odd tales of ghosts and hauntings. It is an aspect of the tragedy that does not get much coverage but is nevertheless still out there, lurking in the shadows. Does the fateful sinking of this once glorious vessel and its rusted, decomposed remains infused with the paranormal just as any old haunted house would be? What is going on with these rumors and scary stories? These are perhaps mysteries that we will never really understand, confined to the dark just as the hulk of the Titanic lies sitting down in the murk beyond the light of day.
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myhauntedsalem · 6 years
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The Titanic and the Paranormal
There are many supposedly haunted places in this world, and most of us may think that these spectral forces gravitate towards dilapidated old houses or scary forests in the middle of nowhere. We have this image of what haunted should be, and most often it all comes down to a place or thing with a tragic history and death orbiting it, through whatever means producing these alleged haunted phenomena. The seas also have plenty of this, and there is perhaps no greater tragedy on the ocean than the deadly sinking of the now infamous Titanic. Here thousands of people died a horrible death, and it should go without saying that this doomed vessel has generated its fair share of strange phenomena over the decades.
When the RMS Titanic set out on its maiden voyage it was considered to be a grand wonder of engineering and the pinnacle of passenger liners, unparalleled in opulent luxury and comfort for its time. A British ship operated by White Star Lines and designed by the architect Thomas Andrews, the RMS Titanic was the largest ship on the seas at the time, just about the largest ship ever, and had the most cutting edge technology and facilities ever seen on a passenger liner. The colossal ship was fitted with all manner of bells and whistles, including fancy radio transmitter equipment, and it was actually one of the fist ships ever to start using the new SOS distress signal, which would replace the signal CQD (come quick, danger). The imposing ship featured revolutionary safety features for its time, including an ingenious system of interlocking compartments and remotely operated watertight doors, among others, and when it inexorably set out from Southampton to New York City on its very first voyage the Titanic was widely touted as being wholly unstoppable and “unsinkable.”
When this behemoth of a ship departed on April 10, 1912, under the command of a Captain Edward Smith, it was to much joyous fanfare and publicity. The Titanic departed with over 2,200 passengers, many of them some of the wealthiest people in the world, and others were emigrants from all over Europe eager to go off to start a new life in the faraway, promised land of the United States. It was a truly historic event, demanding attention, and at the time no one would have thought anything of the fact that despite its advanced safety features it was woefully short of lifeboats, with only enough to carry around 1,178 people under ideal conditions. After all, the lifeboats were just a formality, right? Surely nothing could ever sink the mighty Titanic. Or so they thought, and the rest is history.
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic was making its way through the Atlantic at high speed around 375 miles from the coast of Newfoundland in the early hours of morning when it struck an iceberg that promptly robbed the ship of its popular title of “unsinkable.” Many of the watertight compartments that had been hailed as groundbreaking technology immediately were smashed wide open, and the crippled giant began to sink at a steady rate. In the ensuing panic and chaos, the problem of the lifeboat shortage became painfully apparent, and many of these had the added problem that they were difficult and time consuming to launch. Indeed, many of the scant lifeboats went out into the frigid seas only partially loaded, leaving others to their impending doom. Eventually the gargantuan ship broke apart and plunged down below the waves with an estimated approximately 1,500 people still aboard.
When the another ship called the RMS Carpathia came to the ship’s aid, it was able to rescue around 700 of the survivors, with the rest disappearing down into a watery grave to rest at the bottom down in nearly 13,000 feet of water, where the ship remains to this day. Indeed, for decades the exact location of the wreck remained a mystery in and of itself, with it not being discovered until 1985. The sinking of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst, most tragic maritime disasters in history, and at the time it shocked the world. Since that fateful morning, the Titanic has gone on to become one of the most famous ships to ever ride the seas, and has been the subject of countless films, books, and documentaries. It is by far one of the most well-known wrecks in the world, and it is perhaps no surprise that it has drawn its fair share of tales of the paranormal as well.
Weirdness seems to have hovered around the vessel even before it was even launched. According to an April 12, 2012 Associated Press article, in 1898 the American author Morgan Robertson wrote a novella called Futility, which features in its first half a ship called the Titan, and which besides the similarity of the names of the vessels displays a wide variety of spooky, seemingly prophetic details and uncanny parallels between the fictional Titan and the real Titanic. For instance, both were nearly the same size and could go the same maximum speed of over 20 knots, and both of the ships were deemed unsinkable and were subsequently sunk by hitting icebergs, in mid-April no less. In addition, both lacked enough lifeboats to save all of the passengers, and even the novella’s opening sounds as if it could easily be talking about the Titanic, saying:
She was the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men. In her construction and maintenance were involved every science, profession, and trade known to civilization.
When Futility was first released, it was met with a resounding lack of interest, due to the fact that it is actually not seen as being very good, and Robertson was mostly considered a bit of a hack. The book itself mostly devolved into an improbable tale of survival for the alcoholic protagonist, with Titanic historian Paul Heyer saying of Robertson and his work, “He’s not exactly a great literary stylist. Moralistic tone, implausible situations, poor character development. The only saving grace of the novella is intriguing information about the ship and her fate.” Indeed, it was not until after the historic disaster that the book got any sort of fame or recognition at all. Considering all of these eerie details in a book written years before the real Titanic set sail, in the wake of the disaster it did not go unnoticed, and Robertson was widely hailed as having prophesied the sinking of the ship with some sort of precognitive abilities. This has been explained away by skeptics as being pure coincidence, as Robertson was an avid writer on ships and the sea and Heyer has said of this:
He was someone who wrote about maritime affairs. He was an experienced seaman, and he saw ships as getting very large and the possible danger that one of these behemoths would hit an iceberg.
Whether Robertson was really psychic or not is unknown, but what is known is that this is just the beginning of the weirdness surrounding the Titanic. Considering the sheer loss of life and the traumatic circumstances of the disaster, along with the fact that hundreds of these bodies were never recovered and remained lost at sea, it is perhaps no surprise at all that the very wreck of the Titanic is said to be haunted. There have been numerous reports of ships passing the area of the Titanic’s resting place off Newfoundland seeing glowing or flickering orbs of light both above the water and darting about beneath the waves. This phenomenon is reportedly often accompanied by inexplicable radio interference, and even submarines passing the area of the wreck have apparently had such interference, as well as phantom SOS signals that seem to come from nowhere.
One ship that was passing the site of the wreck even had a sighting of a ghostly apparition said to be a victim of the RMS Titanic. In 1977, the liner SS Winterhaven was passing through and on this evening Second Office Leonard Bishop was showing a passenger around the ship who seemed to be absolutely obsessed with every detail of the vessel. As the tour went on, Bishop noticed that besides this intense interest in his ship there was something off about the quiet, soft-spoken man he was guiding around, but he wasn’t sure what at the time. After the tour, he did not remember seeing the man again, but the strange aura of something not quite right made him memorable, and Bishop would not forget the mysterious stranger’s face. It would not be until years later when Bishop by chance saw a picture and claimed to know the man in it, much to the shock of the person who had showed it to him. It turned out that unbeknownst to Bishop the picture was of Captain Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, who would have been long dead during their tour.
The ghost of Titanic captain Edward Smith actually seems to get around, as he has been reportedly seen from time to time on other vessels passing the area of wreck as well, and he is even said to haunt his childhood home in Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, England. The previous house owners, Neil and Louise Bonner, rented the house out for over a decade, and they say that there had been numerous reports from tenants over the years of paranormal activity at the house. Banging, whispers, and other anomalous noises were common, as well as roving colds spots, inexplicable floods in the kitchen, and most shocking of all a full-bodied spectral apparition of Smith himself seen in the bedroom.
In addition to the hauntings of the wreck site and the home of the Titanic’s captain are the numerous hauntings that seem to revolve around artifacts and relics from the wreck, and museum collections with such items tend to be magnets for inexplicable ghostly activity. One of the more active of these is the “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition,” at The Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which houses a large array of over 300 items from the sunken ship and is ground zero for a whole plethora of unexplained phenomena. Visitors and staff alike supposedly frequently report strong feelings of being watched or followed, as well as disembodied voices or footsteps, or being poked, prodded, or pushed by unseen hands, in addition to sightings of shadowy apparitions lurking in the halls and corridors. The attraction’s artifact expert Joe Zimmer seems to be particularly tormented by these wayward spirits, claiming that he constantly experiences having his hair or clothes yanked on or his name whispered when no one is there, and he says he has even heard phantom music playing.
One of the more well-known of the apparitions of the Luxor exhibit is apparently the ghost of Frederick Fleet, who was the lookout on the RMS Titanic who had spotted the iceberg that sank the ship and had warned the crew. Although Fleet was one of the survivors of the tragedy, he would forever have feelings of guilt afterwards, and this plus the death of his wife in 1964 drove him to commit suicide by hanging himself at his home in England. Fleet’s spirit has been reported as haunting the Promenade Deck of the exhibition, although why this ghost should appear all the way over in Las Vegas remains unclear. There is also the apparition of a young woman in a black old-fashioned dress and with her hair in a bun who is regularly seen on the premises.
e strange incident with a ghost allegedly happened on the very opening day of the exhibition, when a photographer was getting ready for the event. He claims that as he was setting up he was surprised to see a woman in period clothes come walking down the grand staircase, which was odd because as far as he knew, no one else was supposed to be there and he had not seen anyone else arrive. Thinking that perhaps it was an extra dressed up in period clothing for the purpose of the grand opening he asked her if he could take her photo on the staircase, but she did not say a word, merely standing there in an apparent trance before vanishing into thin air.
Some of the strange incidents at the Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition have apparently been caught on film and audio as well. One example is a strange sequence of events concerning a photo of Bruce Ismay, who was the chairman and managing director of the White Star Line. One morning the staff opened the exhibition to find the photo inexplicably lying on the floor of the entryway and carefully propped against the wall, reportedly still pristine and undamaged. Baffled by how the photo could have possible gotten there during the night, surveillance footage was reviewed, which showed the photo appearing to shake on its own before being taken down and put against the wall as if by unseen hands. Paranormal investigators to the exhibit have captured orbs of light and shadowy images as well, and there have been several EVP recordings made of what appear to be the voices of Titanic victims.
Another collection of Titanic pieces that seems to be haunted is the Titanic Aquatic exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium, in the United States, which also has intense paranormal activity similar to what has been experienced at the Luxor exhibit, including ghost sightings, strange noises, period music from nowhere, and phantom hands grabbing, nudging, or pulling clothes or hair. Spookiest of all is a creepy ghostly old lady who is said to dwell within a replica of one of the Titanic’s cabins in the exhibit, and is not shy about suddenly appearing to startle visitors before blinking away again. Paranormal investigator’s and the Syfy Channel’s Ghost Hunters have examined the exhibit and found definite signs of paranormal activity, as well as made recordings of EVP phenomena at the site. As to why these ghosts should latch onto these relics from the Titanic, Dianna Avena, founder of Georgia Paranormal, has said:
It just makes sense that, especially with the Titanic exhibit, there would be residual paranormal energy. When you have a strong emotional imprint, there could be some energy attached.
Perhaps the strangest tale of a haunting related to the Titanic has to do not with any artifact from the doomed ship, but rather a replica of it. Retired architectural draftsman Wyatt Jason Moore, from Portsmouth, Virginia, managed to painstakingly build a 200 lb. model of the RMS Titanic over the course of 9 years and an estimated 17,368 hours of work, which was an ambitious project he became obsessed with after watching the 1958 film A Night to Remember. He began studying numerous old photographs of the Titanic, incorporating every detail he could into his grand vision, and he found himself spending hours and hours a day toiling away on his creation.
The end result was a lifelike replica of the famous ship, accurate right down to each individual stairway and hall. When his masterpiece was finished he decided to take some photos of it and that was when strange things began to happen. As he took his photos, he could hear anomalous noises coming from the massive model sitting in his home, and later mysterious entities began to appear in his shots. He would say of one of the startling images he took:
I couldn’t make it out until I looked at it very carefully and I found it was a bald headed man with a handle bar mustache, and I said to myself, what’s he doing there?
In addition to this creepy ghostly man were a spectral man and woman looking out of another porthole just above the lifeboats. At around the same time as these events, Moore says that doors around the house began to mysteriously slam shut or open even when no one else was there, but he says he is not scared of the entities, he just thinks they are lost souls, saying “Maybe it was someone that was aboard the Titanic that found a new home for himself.” Skeptics have been quick to point out that the photos are nothing more than a reflection and trick of light, but Moore insists that the portholes on his model don’t feature glass. Moore has tried to sell the haunted Titanic model on Craigslist, but found no takers, perhaps because of the exorbitant $263,000 asking price, but he hopes that a museum will take it at some point. They might as well, because it seems any museum with genuine paraphernalia from the actual Titanic is haunted anyway.
The fate of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst seagoing tragedies of all time, and it seems somewhat fitting that it too should have its own odd tales of ghosts and hauntings. It is an aspect of the tragedy that does not get much coverage but is nevertheless still out there, lurking in the shadows. Does the fateful sinking of this once glorious vessel and its rusted, decomposed remains infused with the paranormal just as any old haunted house would be? What is going on with these rumors and scary stories? These are perhaps mysteries that we will never really understand, confined to the dark just as the hulk of the Titanic lies sitting down in the murk beyond the light of day.
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myhauntedsalem · 7 years
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The Titanic and the Paranormal
 There are many supposedly haunted places in this world, and most of us may think that these spectral forces gravitate towards dilapidated old houses or scary forests in the middle of nowhere. We have this image of what haunted should be, and most often it all comes down to a place or thing with a tragic history and death orbiting it, through whatever means producing these alleged haunted phenomena. The seas also have plenty of this, and there is perhaps no greater tragedy on the ocean than the deadly sinking of the now infamous Titanic. Here thousands of people died a horrible death, and it should go without saying that this doomed vessel has generated its fair share of strange phenomena over the decades.
 When the RMS Titanic set out on its maiden voyage it was considered to be a grand wonder of engineering and the pinnacle of passenger liners, unparalleled in opulent luxury and comfort for its time. A British ship operated by White Star Lines and designed by the architect Thomas Andrews, the RMS Titanic was the largest ship on the seas at the time, just about the largest ship ever, and had the most cutting edge technology and facilities ever seen on a passenger liner. The colossal ship was fitted with all manner of bells and whistles, including fancy radio transmitter equipment, and it was actually one of the fist ships ever to start using the new SOS distress signal, which would replace the signal CQD (come quick, danger). The imposing ship featured revolutionary safety features for its time, including an ingenious system of interlocking compartments and remotely operated watertight doors, among others, and when it inexorably set out from Southampton to New York City on its very first voyage the Titanic was widely touted as being wholly unstoppable and “unsinkable.”
 When this behemoth of a ship departed on April 10, 1912, under the command of a Captain Edward Smith, it was to much joyous fanfare and publicity. The Titanic departed with over 2,200 passengers, many of them some of the wealthiest people in the world, and others were emigrants from all over Europe eager to go off to start a new life in the faraway, promised land of the United States. It was a truly historic event, demanding attention, and at the time no one would have thought anything of the fact that despite its advanced safety features it was woefully short of lifeboats, with only enough to carry around 1,178 people under ideal conditions. After all, the lifeboats were just a formality, right? Surely nothing could ever sink the mighty Titanic. Or so they thought, and the rest is history.
 On April 14, 1912, the Titanic was making its way through the Atlantic at high speed around 375 miles from the coast of Newfoundland in the early hours of morning when it struck an iceberg that promptly robbed the ship of its popular title of “unsinkable.” Many of the watertight compartments that had been hailed as groundbreaking technology immediately were smashed wide open, and the crippled giant began to sink at a steady rate. In the ensuing panic and chaos, the problem of the lifeboat shortage became painfully apparent, and many of these had the added problem that they were difficult and time consuming to launch. Indeed, many of the scant lifeboats went out into the frigid seas only partially loaded, leaving others to their impending doom. Eventually the gargantuan ship broke apart and plunged down below the waves with an estimated approximately 1,500 people still aboard.
 When the another ship called the RMS Carpathia came to the ship’s aid, it was able to rescue around 700 of the survivors, with the rest disappearing down into a watery grave to rest at the bottom down in nearly 13,000 feet of water, where the ship remains to this day. Indeed, for decades the exact location of the wreck remained a mystery in and of itself, with it not being discovered until 1985. The sinking of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst, most tragic maritime disasters in history, and at the time it shocked the world. Since that fateful morning, the Titanic has gone on to become one of the most famous ships to ever ride the seas, and has been the subject of countless films, books, and documentaries. It is by far one of the most well-known wrecks in the world, and it is perhaps no surprise that it has drawn its fair share of tales of the paranormal as well.
 Weirdness seems to have hovered around the vessel even before it was even launched. According to an April 12, 2012 Associated Press article, in 1898 the American author Morgan Robertson wrote a novella called Futility, which features in its first half a ship called the Titan, and which besides the similarity of the names of the vessels displays a wide variety of spooky, seemingly prophetic details and uncanny parallels between the fictional Titan and the real Titanic. For instance, both were nearly the same size and could go the same maximum speed of over 20 knots, and both of the ships were deemed unsinkable and were subsequently sunk by hitting icebergs, in mid-April no less. In addition, both lacked enough lifeboats to save all of the passengers, and even the novella’s opening sounds as if it could easily be talking about the Titanic, saying:
 She was the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men. In her construction and maintenance were involved every science, profession, and trade known to civilization.
 When Futility was first released, it was met with a resounding lack of interest, due to the fact that it is actually not seen as being very good, and Robertson was mostly considered a bit of a hack. The book itself mostly devolved into an improbable tale of survival for the alcoholic protagonist, with Titanic historian Paul Heyer saying of Robertson and his work, “He’s not exactly a great literary stylist. Moralistic tone, implausible situations, poor character development. The only saving grace of the novella is intriguing information about the ship and her fate.” Indeed, it was not until after the historic disaster that the book got any sort of fame or recognition at all. Considering all of these eerie details in a book written years before the real Titanic set sail, in the wake of the disaster it did not go unnoticed, and Robertson was widely hailed as having prophesied the sinking of the ship with some sort of precognitive abilities. This has been explained away by skeptics as being pure coincidence, as Robertson was an avid writer on ships and the sea and Heyer has said of this:
 He was someone who wrote about maritime affairs. He was an experienced seaman, and he saw ships as getting very large and the possible danger that one of these behemoths would hit an iceberg.
 Whether Robertson was really psychic or not is unknown, but what is known is that this is just the beginning of the weirdness surrounding the Titanic. Considering the sheer loss of life and the traumatic circumstances of the disaster, along with the fact that hundreds of these bodies were never recovered and remained lost at sea, it is perhaps no surprise at all that the very wreck of the Titanic is said to be haunted. There have been numerous reports of ships passing the area of the Titanic’s resting place off Newfoundland seeing glowing or flickering orbs of light both above the water and darting about beneath the waves. This phenomenon is reportedly often accompanied by inexplicable radio interference, and even submarines passing the area of the wreck have apparently had such interference, as well as phantom SOS signals that seem to come from nowhere.
 One ship that was passing the site of the wreck even had a sighting of a ghostly apparition said to be a victim of the RMS Titanic. In 1977, the liner SS Winterhaven was passing through and on this evening Second Office Leonard Bishop was showing a passenger around the ship who seemed to be absolutely obsessed with every detail of the vessel. As the tour went on, Bishop noticed that besides this intense interest in his ship there was something off about the quiet, soft-spoken man he was guiding around, but he wasn’t sure what at the time. After the tour, he did not remember seeing the man again, but the strange aura of something not quite right made him memorable, and Bishop would not forget the mysterious stranger’s face. It would not be until years later when Bishop by chance saw a picture and claimed to know the man in it, much to the shock of the person who had showed it to him. It turned out that unbeknownst to Bishop the picture was of Captain Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, who would have been long dead during their tour.
 The ghost of Titanic captain Edward Smith actually seems to get around, as he has been reportedly seen from time to time on other vessels passing the area of wreck as well, and he is even said to haunt his childhood home in Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, England. The previous house owners, Neil and Louise Bonner, rented the house out for over a decade, and they say that there had been numerous reports from tenants over the years of paranormal activity at the house. Banging, whispers, and other anomalous noises were common, as well as roving colds spots, inexplicable floods in the kitchen, and most shocking of all a full-bodied spectral apparition of Smith himself seen in the bedroom.
 In addition to the hauntings of the wreck site and the home of the Titanic’s captain are the numerous hauntings that seem to revolve around artifacts and relics from the wreck, and museum collections with such items tend to be magnets for inexplicable ghostly activity. One of the more active of these is the “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition,” at The Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which houses a large array of over 300 items from the sunken ship and is ground zero for a whole plethora of unexplained phenomena. Visitors and staff alike supposedly frequently report strong feelings of being watched or followed, as well as disembodied voices or footsteps, or being poked, prodded, or pushed by unseen hands, in addition to sightings of shadowy apparitions lurking in the halls and corridors. The attraction’s artifact expert Joe Zimmer seems to be particularly tormented by these wayward spirits, claiming that he constantly experiences having his hair or clothes yanked on or his name whispered when no one is there, and he says he has even heard phantom music playing.
 One of the more well-known of the apparitions of the Luxor exhibit is apparently the ghost of Frederick Fleet, who was the lookout on the RMS Titanic who had spotted the iceberg that sank the ship and had warned the crew. Although Fleet was one of the survivors of the tragedy, he would forever have feelings of guilt afterwards, and this plus the death of his wife in 1964 drove him to commit suicide by hanging himself at his home in England. Fleet’s spirit has been reported as haunting the Promenade Deck of the exhibition, although why this ghost should appear all the way over in Las Vegas remains unclear. There is also the apparition of a young woman in a black old-fashioned dress and with her hair in a bun who is regularly seen on the premises.
 He claims that as he was setting up he was surprised to see a woman in period clothes come walking down the grand staircase, which was odd because as far as he knew, no one else was supposed to be there and he had not seen anyone else arrive. Thinking that perhaps it was an extra dressed up in period clothing for the purpose of the grand opening he asked her if he could take her photo on the staircase, but she did not say a word, merely standing there in an apparent trance before vanishing into thin air.
 Some of the strange incidents at the Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition have apparently been caught on film and audio as well. One example is a strange sequence of events concerning a photo of Bruce Ismay, who was the chairman and managing director of the White Star Line. One morning the staff opened the exhibition to find the photo inexplicably lying on the floor of the entryway and carefully propped against the wall, reportedly still pristine and undamaged. Baffled by how the photo could have possible gotten there during the night, surveillance footage was reviewed, which showed the photo appearing to shake on its own before being taken down and put against the wall as if by unseen hands. Paranormal investigators to the exhibit have captured orbs of light and shadowy images as well, and there have been several EVP recordings made of what appear to be the voices of Titanic victims.
 Another collection of Titanic pieces that seems to be haunted is the Titanic Aquatic exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium, in the United States, which also has intense paranormal activity similar to what has been experienced at the Luxor exhibit, including ghost sightings, strange noises, period music from nowhere, and phantom hands grabbing, nudging, or pulling clothes or hair. Spookiest of all is a creepy ghostly old lady who is said to dwell within a replica of one of the Titanic’s cabins in the exhibit, and is not shy about suddenly appearing to startle visitors before blinking away again. Paranormal investigator’s and the Syfy Channel’s Ghost Hunters have examined the exhibit and found definite signs of paranormal activity, as well as made recordings of EVP phenomena at the site. As to why these ghosts should latch onto these relics from the Titanic, Dianna Avena, founder of Georgia Paranormal, has said:
 It just makes sense that, especially with the Titanic exhibit, there would be residual paranormal energy. When you have a strong emotional imprint, there could be some energy attached.
 Perhaps the strangest tale of a haunting related to the Titanic has to do not with any artifact from the doomed ship, but rather a replica of it. Retired architectural draftsman Wyatt Jason Moore, from Portsmouth, Virginia, managed to painstakingly build a 200 lb. model of the RMS Titanic over the course of 9 years and an estimated 17,368 hours of work, which was an ambitious project he became obsessed with after watching the 1958 film A Night to Remember. He began studying numerous old photographs of the Titanic, incorporating every detail he could into his grand vision, and he found himself spending hours and hours a day toiling away on his creation.
 The end result was a lifelike replica of the famous ship, accurate right down to each individual stairway and hall. When his masterpiece was finished he decided to take some photos of it and that was when strange things began to happen. As he took his photos, he could hear anomalous noises coming from the massive model sitting in his home, and later mysterious entities began to appear in his shots. He would say of one of the startling images he took:
 I couldn’t make it out until I looked at it very carefully and I found it was a bald headed man with a handle bar mustache, and I said to myself, what’s he doing there?
 In addition to this creepy ghostly man were a spectral man and woman looking out of another porthole just above the lifeboats. At around the same time as these events, Moore says that doors around the house began to mysteriously slam shut or open even when no one else was there, but he says he is not scared of the entities, he just thinks they are lost souls, saying “Maybe it was someone that was aboard the Titanic that found a new home for himself.” Skeptics have been quick to point out that the photos are nothing more than a reflection and trick of light, but Moore insists that the portholes on his model don’t feature glass. Moore has tried to sell the haunted Titanic model on Craigslist, but found no takers, perhaps because of the exorbitant $263,000 asking price, but he hopes that a museum will take it at some point. They might as well, because it seems any museum with genuine paraphernalia from the actual Titanic is haunted anyway.
 The fate of the RMS Titanic is one of the worst seagoing tragedies of all time, and it seems somewhat fitting that it too should have its own odd tales of ghosts and hauntings. It is an aspect of the tragedy that does not get much coverage but is nevertheless still out there, lurking in the shadows. Does the fateful sinking of this once glorious vessel and its rusted, decomposed remains infused with the paranormal just as any old haunted house would be? What is going on with these rumors and scary stories? These are perhaps mysteries that we will never really understand, confined to the dark just as the hulk of the Titanic lies sitting down in the murk beyond the light of day.
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