PART 1: THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON
The Nightmare Room

The wind coming off the Long Beach harbor wasn’t cold, but it felt cold. It felt like the kind of chill that doesn’t care what the thermostat says—a damp, heavy sensation that settles into your marrow and refuses to leave.

I stood in the parking lot, the asphalt radiating the last heat of the California afternoon, staring up at the black and red hull of the beast. The Queen Mary. To most people, she was a tourist attraction, a floating hotel, a relic of a bygone era of transatlantic luxury. To me, she was a cage. A massive, steel cage floating in dark water, waiting for the one prisoner who thought he had escaped.

“This is a nightmare room,” I muttered, my voice barely audible over the distant sound of highway traffic and seagulls.

Beside me, Shane Madej slammed the trunk of our rental car, the sound echoing like a gunshot. He hoisted his bag over his shoulder, looking like he was about to check into a Motel 6 for a weekend of cable TV and pool time. He adjusted his sunglasses, looking up at the ship with an expression that was bordering on admiration.

“This is where we’re sleeping tonight,” Shane announced, a grin spreading across his face that I found personally offensive given the circumstances. “This week on BuzzFeed Unsolved, we explore one of the most haunted places in the world as part of our ongoing investigation to answer the question: are ghosts real?”.

I sighed, the air hissing out of my lungs. “Right now, we are sitting in the Queen Salon of undoubtedly the creepiest boat in the world,” I said into the camera lens, rehearsing the opening lines in my head before we even boarded.

Shane scoffed, kicking a pebble toward the water. “Bit rude to call it the creepiest boat in the world, isn’t it?”.

“It’s… I mean, that’s not an unfair statement, would you say?” I argued, gesturing vaguely at the looming smokestacks. “Look at it. It looks like it eats people.”.

“Right. It’s a marvel,” Shane countered, shaking his head at my lack of appreciation for engineering. “It’s a marvel of human ingenuity, Ryan. It’s a boat. It floats. It’s big.”.

“Allow me to introduce you to the Queen Mary,” I continued, ignoring his optimism. “Apparently, this boat is two times the size of the Titanic. Two times.”.

“Titanic’s tiny,” Shane deadpanned.

“That’s not true,” I snapped.

“It’s true,” he insisted. “Compared to this? A dinghy.”.

I rubbed my temples. This was going to be a long trip. “All you need to know is I was here about ten years ago,” I said, looking back up at the portholes that seemed to stare down at us like hundreds of dead eyes. “And I said I’d never come back.”.

“And uh… well, here I am,” I finished, the resignation heavy in my voice.

Shane clapped a hand on my shoulder, hard enough to make me jump. “You’re not a man of your word, Bergara,” he teased. “But hey, look at the bright side.”

“There is no bright side.”

“You know, I will say this is a beautiful sunset, though,” Shane said, pointing toward the horizon where the sky was bleeding into a bruise-colored purple and orange.

I looked at the sun dipping below the waterline. It didn’t look beautiful to me. It looked like a closing door. “If there’s one thing I could take solace in today,” I admitted, squinting against the dying light, “it’s that nice sunset.”.

“Enjoy it, Ryan,” Shane said ominously, his voice dropping an octave. “It’s the last one you’re ever going to see.”.

I whipped my head around to look at him, but he was already walking toward the gangplank, whistling a tune that sounded disturbingly cheerful.

“Well, I’m back,” I whispered to myself. “That is… that is that.”.

The Grey Ghost

Walking onto the deck felt like stepping into a different frequency. The air was stiller here. The sounds of Long Beach—the cars, the tourists, the life—seemed to mute the moment we crossed the threshold. The smell of old wood, brass polish, and something distinctively marine filled my nose.

“Do you feel like it remembers you?” Shane asked as we navigated the promenade deck. He wasn’t even looking at me; he was admiring the Art Deco light fixtures.

“I certainly hope not,” I said, my stomach twisting. “After what I did last time I was here.”.

Shane stopped and turned, his eyebrows raised. “What did you do? You’ll find out?”.

“You mean that you think there’s something about Mary that…” he trailed off, making a vague mystical gesture with his hands.

“Indeed,” I cut him off. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. She might be a little bit enchanted.”.

“Enchanted,” Shane repeated, testing the word like it was a piece of bad fruit. “Like a Disney princess.”

“No, not like a princess. Like a curse.” I looked down the long, empty stretch of the deck. The wood planks were pristine, varnished to a shine that reflected the overhead lights. It was too perfect. “You know, when things are so pristine and beautiful like this, but vacant… there is something very unsettling to it.”.

Shane looked around, genuinely confused. “I don’t know what it is. What do you find unsettling about this?”.

“Lots of things,” I said. “The silence. The fact that thousands of people walked here and now they’re gone. The history.”.

“That being said,” I switched into my narrator mode, needing the comfort of facts to ground me, “let’s get into the history of this boat.”.

We found a quiet spot near the railing. I cleared my throat, trying to summon the authority of a historian rather than a terrified ex-tourist.

“Named after Britain’s actual Queen Mary, the Queen Mary was completed in the 1930s and embarked on its inaugural voyage on May 27th, 1936, from Southampton, England,” I recited. I could almost see the black-and-white newsreels in my head—the streamers, the cheering crowds, the champagne bottles smashing against the hull.

“The boat served as the new benchmark for luxury,” I continued, pacing slightly. “Containing two cocktail bars, two swimming pools, five dining areas and lounges, a grand ballroom, and much more.”.

“Two cocktail bars,” Shane mused. “Now we’re talking. Are they still open? That’s the investigation I want to lead.”

“Focus, Shane. However,” I emphasized the word, “all that luxury would soon go to waste during World War II when the ship was repurposed as a transportation vessel for troops and prisoners of war and was appropriately painted gray.”.

Shane looked at the red funnel above us. “Gray? Drap. Very military.”

“In fact,” I said, “the ship was so much faster than enemy U-boats that it earned the nickname the ‘Grey Ghost’.”.

“Did they paint it gray specifically for the war?” Shane asked.

“Yes, camouflage. Camouflage against the grey ocean and the grey sky.”

“You don’t think the ‘Grey Ghost’ is a pretty cool nickname?” Shane asked, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

I paused. “It is a pretty badass name,” I admitted..

“Right? Imagine being the captain,” Shane said, puffed his chest out, adopting a gruff, old-timey accent. “Captain of the Grey Ghost. Tell that story in a bar. ‘Oh, my ship? Well, she’s called the Grey Ghost.’”.

I laughed, a short, nervous sound. “The ship was estimated to have carried over 800,000 servicemen throughout the war,” I added, sobering up. “That’s a lot of souls, Shane. A lot of energy packed into tin cans, crossing dangerous waters.”.

“In 1947, the ship returned to the Queen Mary status,” I wrapped up the timeline. “And in 1965, it was sold to the city of Long Beach in California, where it is now docked permanently.”.

“So, it’s a retiree,” Shane noted. “It’s just living out its golden years in the sun.”

“It’s a tomb that happens to sell tickets,” I corrected him. “Now that we’ve established the boat’s history, let’s take a second to revisit my own personal history with this ship.”.

The Boy Who Mocked Ghosts

We moved inside. The corridors of the Queen Mary are a labyrinth. The ceilings are low, the wood paneling is dark, and the smell of old carpet is overwhelming. It feels like walking through the stomach of a very old, very elegant beast.

“Oh god,” I groaned, the memories flooding back as we passed a familiar stairwell. “I’ve told Shane this story before, but about ten years ago when I was…” I paused, doing the math. “Was it ten years ago?”.

“This is riveting,” Shane deadpanned, checking his watch. “Please, take your time with the timeline.”.

“When I was 17 years old,” I said firmly, ignoring him. “I visited the ship with a couple of friends. I was really interested in the paranormal, but I didn’t believe it was a real thing.”.

“Ah,” Shane nodded. “Young, skeptical Ryan. A man I would have liked.”

“I was arrogant,” I corrected him. “I walked around this place like I owned it. Mocking it. Calling out into the empty rooms. I thought it was all a joke. A tourist trap.”

I stopped in front of a door. It looked like every other door on the B-deck, but to me, it looked like a mouth.

“Never thought I’d be back in this room,” I whispered, touching the brass handle. “This was the… this was my ghost father.”.

“Your ghost father?” Shane raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like a weird convoluted family drama.”

“This is where it happened, Shane. After taunting the ghosts to show themselves all night and coming up empty again, I returned disappointed to my hotel room on the boat.”.

I pushed the door open. Cabin B484.

The room hadn’t aged a day. The same twin beds with the dated floral bedspreads. The same beige walls. The same heavy curtains. It was like stepping into a time capsule of my own trauma.

“Cabin B484,” I announced. “Oh boy. Oh boy, boy, boy.”.

Shane pushed past me, walking into the center of the room. He spun around, arms wide. “This hasn’t changed one bit,” he observed. “That’s exactly the same.”.

“Which bed were you on?” he asked, kicking the mattress of the bed on the right..

I pointed to the bed on the left, the one pushed up against the wall. “I was sleeping right here on this one,” I said, my voice tight. “I was sleeping on the left side towards the wall.”.

“You were hanging out,” Shane said, sitting on the bed and bouncing slightly. “This looks like a Best Western. It’s not exactly the Ritz.”.

“It wasn’t about the thread count, Shane,” I snapped. “That night… that night when I slept, I was repeatedly poked in the face.”.

Shane stopped bouncing. He looked at me with that pitying look he reserves for toddlers and conspiracy theorists. “Poked? Like a Facebook nudge?”

“No! Like a finger. A physical finger jabbing me in the cheek. Repeatedly.” I demonstrated, poking my own face. “But I was too scared to open my eyes. I was seventeen, I was terrified. I just lay there, frozen.”.

“And when I finally did open my eyes to confront the person I was sleeping next to—my friend Elvin—I discovered to my horror that he was actually fast asleep and snoring.”.

“Maybe he’s a sleep-poker,” Shane suggested. “Some people sleepwalk. Elvin sleep-pokes.”

“I thought maybe… ain’t that like Elvin,” I said, recalling my desperate attempt to rationalize it at the time. “Yeah, maybe nothing. Maybe it was nothing. So I tried to push through it. I eventually did fall asleep.”.

I walked over to the bathroom door. This was it. The epicenter. The holy of holies of my fear.

“The next morning,” I said, standing in the doorway, staring at the white porcelain sink. “I went into the bathroom. My friend Casey saw the sink turn on.”.

“By itself?” Shane asked, leaning against the doorframe.

“By itself. Full blast. So, naturally, we did what any teenagers would do. We set up a camera to try and catch that.”.

I pulled out my phone. I had the footage saved. I always kept it saved. Evidence.

“So, when we sat with the camera, we actually caught something,” I said, holding the screen up for the current camera crew to see. “If you look in the footage at the left corner, there’s a bag with toothpaste on top of it.”.

On the screen, grainy and pixelated from ten-year-old technology, was the bathroom counter. A ziplock bag sat there.

“You’ll never forget that plastic ziplock bag,” Shane said sarcastically..

“Thank you,” I said, ignoring the tone. “I’m getting chills seeing the actual toothbrush that has been… Okay. See, look at it. You can see it.”.

I played the video. On the tiny screen, the bag twitched. Then it slid. Then it fell.

“It already happened,” I said, pointing frantically. “Yeah, it already happened. Not boding well considering I didn’t even catch it.”.

Shane squinted at the screen. “You were focusing on the wrong side of the screen,” he critiqued..

“There’s definitely a force at play there, though,” I insisted..

Shane sighed, looking at me with profound disappointment. “And what is that?”.

“A ghost! A spirit!”

“Gravity,” Shane stated flatly..

“Play that again,” he commanded. “See it again.”.

I rewound the video. The bag slid. The bag fell.

“Okay, you got to admit that looks weird,” I pleaded..

“No,” Shane said. “All right. Well, it really doesn’t. Let’s rewind it again.”.

He leaned in closer, analyzing the footage like it was the Zapruder film. “It happens at the exact same time that you throw your shit on the counter,” he pointed out. “There’s always something.”.

“Look at the bag,” I argued, desperate for him to see what I saw. “How it moves. It’s like… someone pulled it.”.

“Yeah, ’cause there’s toothpaste on it,” Shane countered. “It’s top-heavy.”.

“There’s like a jitter. Watch,” I pressed. “Bags are stiff. That’s a pretty firm movement.”.

“It almost looks like someone’s puppeteering it with a string,” Shane mocked, making a marionette motion with his hands. “Right. It’s a haunted bag.”.

“You can’t see that it flung it a little bit?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch. “This toothpaste falls straight down. It was up and down.”.

“Straight down,” Shane repeated..

“Up and down!”

“Straight down. No, up and down,” he mocked my intonation..

I lowered the phone, feeling the weight of the memory. He didn’t understand. He wasn’t there. He didn’t feel the electricity in the air that morning.

“Before that toothpaste hit the floor, I didn’t believe in ghosts,” I said quietly. “I thought this was all BS.”.

I looked into the mirror of the bathroom. I saw myself, older now, bags under my eyes, but the fear was the same.

“But what I saw in that bathroom changed me into the man that you see today,” I declared. “A firm believer in ghosts and the paranormal.”.

“I’ve never doubted it again,” I said. “And I swore I would never return to this ship.”.

“And yet,” Shane said, gesturing to the cramped bathroom, “here I sit like a freaking idiot.”.

“So, I’ve told you numerous times that I would love to see something like that,” Shane said, his demeanor shifting slightly. He wasn’t scared, but he was curious. He wanted the proof I had found. “If… if I just get one experience like that with definitive proof… maybe tonight’s the night. I’m feeling lucky.”.

I looked at him. “You don’t want to see what I saw, Shane. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The world gets bigger and darker.”

“I’ll take my chances with the toothpaste poltergeist,” he laughed.

“That being said,” I said, stepping out of the bathroom and back into the oppressive atmosphere of the cabin, “let’s explore some of the paranormally active areas of the ship in my return to the Queen Mary.”.

The Descent

Leaving the cabin felt like leaving a sanctuary, even though the sanctuary itself was haunted. The hallway outside seemed to stretch on forever, the carpet pattern repeating in a way that made you feel like you were walking in place.

“There are quite a few documented deaths that occurred on the Queen Mary and numerous more reported ones,” I explained as we walked. My voice echoed slightly off the metal bulkheads. “So, let’s revisit a couple.”.

I consulted my notes, though I knew the stories by heart. They were the bedtime stories of my nightmares.

“In 1936, Sir Edgar Britain, the first captain of the Queen Mary, died of a stroke in his cabin,” I began..

“Stroke,” Shane noted. “Natural causes. Sad, but not spooky.”

“Wait for it. In 1949, Senior Second Officer William Stark accidentally drank laundry detergent stored in a gin bottle, thereby poisoning himself to death.”.

Shane stopped walking. He stared at me, blinking. “Who’s storing that in a gin bottle, though?”.

“Apparently,” I elaborated, “the captain at the time had a gin bottle in his room, and he said, ‘You know, you’ve been doing a good job today. Go to my room, pour yourself a drink.’”.

“He failed to mention there was acid—or I’ve also heard it was detergent—inside,” I added..

“Imagine that,” Shane grimaced. “He takes a swig. ‘Hmm, this doesn’t taste like gin… this is burning my tongue… I better swallow it.’”.

“You imagine him just a minute after the guy left the room,” Shane continued, acting out the scene, “being like, ‘Oh shit! I hope he didn’t drink the other bottle!’”.

“The one with the X’s on it!” I joined in, laughing despite the grim subject matter. “Oh, darn it. By the way, Shane, I have a bottle of whiskey in the room for you if you want to go take a sip of it.”.

“Go, go, go,” Shane waved me off. “I’m sticking to sealed containers only on this trip.”.

We descended deeper into the ship. The air got thicker. Warmer. We were heading toward the boiler rooms, the guts of the vessel.

“However,” I said, my tone darkening, “the most unfortunate deaths all occurred at one time.”.

“As I had mentioned before, the Queen Mary served as a transportation vessel during World War II,” I reminded the audience..

We reached a steel door that led to the lower decks. It was heavy, requiring both of us to heave it open. The sound of metal grinding on metal screamed through the quiet.

“On October 2nd, 1942, the Queen Mary was being escorted from New York to Glasgow by another much smaller vessel called the HMS Curacao,” I narrated..

“The Curacao was zigzagging in front of the Queen Mary to confuse potential U-boats and German bombers,” I explained, using my hands to demonstrate the movement..

“However, the Queen Mary, traveling at 28.5 knots, unexpectedly caught up to the Curacao and consequently collided with the ship, splitting the HMS Curacao in half.”.

Shane’s eyes widened slightly. “Boy, how much bigger was it?”.

“20 times bigger,” I said. “20 times bigger.”.

“That just shit-cut through that thing like a hot butter patty,” Shane marveled, though his metaphor was falling apart..

“Butter… butter patty?” I questioned..

“Yeah, like a hot butter patty,” he doubled down..

“That’s not what it’s called,” I whispered, shaking my head. “Knife through butter. But sure. A patty.”.

“Some members of the Curacao were killed instantly on impact,” I continued, bringing the gravity back to the conversation. “While others were thrown into the freezing water, watching as the men who remained on board sank, trapped within the remains of the vessel.”.

The image was horrific. The dark, freezing Atlantic. The massive grey hull of the Queen Mary towering over you like a skyscraper, churning the water.

“And for those left in the water that didn’t die from hypothermia,” I said, my voice dropping to a hush, “it is said that the current of the Queen Mary carried them in, chopping them up in the propeller.”.

There was silence for a moment. Even Shane looked solemn.

“That’s all you got to say about that?” I asked him, surprised by his lack of a quip..

“Boats are tough,” Shane shrugged, recovering his stoicism. “You know, boats are tough. It’s not an easy life, boat life.”.

“Due to war protocol,” I explained, “the captain of the Queen Mary, Cyril Illingworth, was not able to stop to rescue the passengers, and they pushed forward, reporting the incident to nearby British destroyers.”.

“Cold,” Shane muttered. “Logical, but cold.”

“But by the time the British arrived about two hours later, it was too late,” I said. “Many had already died from hypothermia. And of the 430 crew members on board the HMS Curacao, only 99 survived.”.

We were standing now in the bow of the ship. The deepest part. The walls were raw steel here, painted a sickly green. This wasn’t the luxury liner anymore. This was the warship.

“It is said that you can hear the screams of the Curacao passengers in the boiler room of the Queen Mary,” I told him. “And some claim that the bow of the ship is a hot spot due to the fact that it’s where the Queen Mary made contact with the Curacao.”.

I looked around the cargo hold. It was vast, shadowy, and echoed with every breath we took.

“Are you scared right now?” Shane asked, noticing my shallow breathing..

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“You’re not fucking scared right now?” I shot back. “Are you just afraid of anything that’s old?”.

“Dude, do you have any idea where we are right now?” I demanded..

“It’s a boat,” he said simply..

“Right now. We’re in the bow of the ship,” I emphasized. “Yeah. This is where the ship struck the Curacao. We’re in her belly. That’s the cargo hold. They used to keep POWs down there.”.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a device that looked like a bulky smartphone.

“I got a new toy,” I announced, trying to regain some control over the situation. “This is a FLUR thermal camera.”.

“So, if there’s any ghosts here, we may be able to pick up their heat signature,” I explained, pointing it at Shane..

On the screen, Shane appeared as a glowing orange and yellow blob.

“Look at you,” I laughed nervously. “Look at your little stupid face.”.

Shane made a face at the camera. “I look radiant.”

“Normally, I’m against asking or communicating with ghosts,” I said, turning the camera toward the dark expanse of the cargo hold. “But if I’m truly going to be actually an investigator in this, I have to, right?”.

“Yeah. Do it,” Shane encouraged..

“Go on, Ryan. You go on. Talk.”

“Do you know my history with this boat?” I asked the darkness..

Shane leaned in. “Um, be direct.”.

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up,” I hissed at him. “First off, sorry for what I said last time.”.

“What did you call it?” Shane asked loudly.

“I called it a fucking… I called it a coward,” I whispered, terrified the ship was listening..

“Ryan!” Shane scolded mockingly.

“And I said, uh, this whole ship is bullshit,” I admitted. “We’re not here to hurt you.”.

“Oh god,” Shane groaned. “And I think you’re not here to hurt me.”.

“Though Ryan is very angry about that toothpaste incident,” Shane shouted into the void..

“Shut up, Shane!” I panicked. “He told me before we got here.”

“Shut your stupid mouth,” I snapped. “Um, spirits. Spirit, show yourself.”.

“No, don’t,” Shane interrupted.

“What are you doing? You said to be direct!”.

“Yeah, but don’t be Bruce Willis from Die Hard,” Shane laughed..

“Spirit,” I tried again, softer this time. “We had a scavenger hunt one day for some youngsters…”.

I started recounting a story I had heard from a guide. “Well, no one ever found their way down there that day, so I was there by myself. And I’m sitting there tapping on the woodwork next to the porthole and I thought, well, wouldn’t it be weird if somebody responded?”.

“And lo and behold, just on the other side of the wall, I heard somebody go tap tap.”.

I looked at Shane. “I mean, could it have been my imagination? Of course.”.

“Could it have been a spirit?” I asked dramatically. “Well, maybe.”.

“No,” Shane said immediately..

“No,” I agreed, deflating.

Suddenly, a rhythmic banging echoed through the hull. Bum bum bum bum bum.

“Oh, no,” I froze..

“I mean, you could try that,” Shane pointed to a pipe. “Oh, man.”.

“Wait,” I strained my ears. “It’s just creaking. That’s fine.”.

“Why did they do it right then?” I asked, looking around wildly. “Do it again.”.

We waited. Silence. Just the hum of the ship.

“Okay, we’re good,” I exhaled. “Nothing happened. No, we’re good. We’re good again. Yeah, we’re good. It’s all good.”.

“It’s all good,” I repeated, more for myself than anyone else. “It’s all good.”.

But as we packed up the thermal camera and headed back toward the stairs, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t alone in the cargo hold. The air felt heavy, charged with the static of 800,000 souls and one very angry ship that remembered exactly who I was. And we hadn’t even reached the pool yet.

PART 2: THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
The Kitchen Ghost

We moved away from the bow, leaving the echoing darkness of the collision site behind, but the heaviness in the air traveled with us. It clung to my jacket like the smell of stale cigarettes. We were heading deeper into the ship’s operational centers, the places where the crew lived, worked, and—in some horrific cases—died.

The corridors of the Queen Mary are deceptive. In the first-class areas, they are wide and polished, smelling of varnish and money. But down here, near the galley and the engine rooms, the hallways narrow. The ceilings drop. The pipes run exposed along the walls like arteries, painted in thick, industrial layers of cream and green. It feels less like a hotel and more like a submarine.

“According to the ship’s current captain,” I said, my voice bouncing off the linoleum floors as we approached the old kitchen area, “during World War II, a cook died in a horrific fashion.”

Shane was walking slightly behind me, his hands in his pockets, looking at the ceiling tiles with mild interest. “Horrific fashion? That’s a strong opener. Did he slip on a banana peel? A rogue ladle incident?”

“No, Shane. It wasn’t a cartoon death,” I said, stopping in front of a heavy steel door that led into the galley. “Apparently, he was shoved into an oven by Australian soldiers and consequently burned to death.”

Shane stopped mid-stride. The amusement vanished from his face for a split second, replaced by a grimace. “Wait, wait. I wait. What happened?”

“You heard me,” I said, leaning against the wall, feeling the cold steel seep through my shirt. “Australian soldiers they had picked up who did not like the food took this chef and, uh, instead of giving him one star on Yelp, shoved him into an oven.”

Shane let out a low whistle, shaking his head. “That is… that is an extreme reaction to a bad meal. I mean, I’ve had some tough steaks in my life, Ryan, but I’ve never thought, ‘You know what the solution is here? Homicide via appliance.’”

“It was war,” I reasoned, though the logic felt flimsy even to me. “Tensions were high. Maybe they were starving. Maybe they snapped. But can you imagine the terror? Being forced into that small, dark, hot space?”

“Maybe that’s why they created Yelp,” Shane mused, trying to deflect the horror with humor. “Yeah. Were tired of being murdered.”

“Exactly,” I said. “It was a preventative measure for the culinary industry.”

We pushed into the galley. The space was vast, filled with stainless steel counters that gleamed dully in the low light. It was silent. Not the peaceful silence of a library, but the holding-its-breath silence of a crime scene. I could almost smell the phantom scents of roasting meat and burning fabric.

“Many say his screams can still be heard,” I whispered, shining my flashlight across the empty food prep stations.

CLANK.

The sound was sharp, distinct, and shattered the silence like a hammer hitting glass. It came from the far end of the kitchen, near the ovens.

I jumped, my heart hammering against my ribs. “Whoa. Did you hear that?”

Shane looked around, his brow furrowed. “Yeah. Yeah, we heard a glass break a couple of seconds ago, too.”

“We are right next to… I mean, down the hall is the galley where the kitchen was,” I stammered, pointing frantically into the dark. “I’m a little unnerved that the… the clanking did come from the kitchen. That doesn’t sit super well.”

Shane walked forward, his skepticism momentarily challenged. He peered into the shadows. “It sounded like metal on tile. Or glass. Could be a pipe expanding? Or a rat?”

“A rat?” I scoffed, keeping close to him. “That was loud, Shane. That was a heavy object. That wasn’t a rat unless the rat is lifting weights.”

“Oh, wow,” Shane said, turning to look at me with a smirk returning to his face. “You’re actually admitting to something for once.”

“I’m admitting that I heard a noise!” I defended myself. “I’m not saying it’s the ghost of the cook making a souffle. I’m saying it’s weird.”

“It is weird,” Shane conceded. “But let’s not jump to ‘haunted oven’ just yet.”

We stood there for another minute, letting the silence settle back over the room. I waited for a scream, a moan, the smell of smoke. Nothing. Just the oppressive weight of the ship pressing down on us.

Door Number 13

We left the kitchen, the mystery of the clanking noise unresolved, and headed deeper into the ship’s infrastructure. We were entering “Shaft Alley,” a long, narrow tunnel that housed the propeller shafts. The air here was oily and thick. This was the working heart of the ship, dangerous even without the paranormal element.

“In 1966,” I began the next story, raising my voice to carry over the hum of the ventilation, “an 18-year-old crewman was crushed by door number 13, an automatically closing door during a watertight drill.”

Shane looked at the heavy watertight doors we were passing. They were massive slabs of iron, designed to seal off sections of the ship in case of a breach. They looked like guillotines turned sideways.

“His ghost is sometimes seen wearing white coveralls,” I added, checking my notes. “Looks very confusing.”

“Confusing?” Shane asked. “Why is he confusing?”

“I don’t know, maybe because he’s a ghost in a boiler suit? It’s not exactly a sheet with eyeholes.”

Shane stopped to examine the mechanism of one of the doors. “It looks like it’d be pretty easy to get crushed to death here,” he observed, running a hand along the heavy frame. “I mean, this is just in itself, even if this is not spiritually active… I mean, look at this place.”

He gestured to the endless pipes and valves surrounding us. “It’s a marvel. It’s just massive. They’re just numbers. How could anyone possibly know what the hell is going on down here?”

“It’s a labyrinth,” I agreed. “And imagine the alarms going off. The lights flashing. The panic of a drill. You’re eighteen years old, you’re running, you think you can beat the door…”

“And then crunch,” Shane finished the thought. “Grim.”

We arrived at a specific junction. The number ’13’ was stenciled on the bulkhead in chipped black paint.

“Number 13,” Shane read. “Is this where it happened?”

I looked at the diagram I had brought with me. “No, this is not where lubrication happened,” I muttered, reading the technical label on a nearby pipe without thinking.

Shane froze. A slow, mischievous grin spread across his face. “Huh?”

I realized what I had said. “Lubrication oil pump controllers to be exact,” I corrected quickly, trying to sound professional. “Little seaman lubrication.”

Shane burst out laughing. “Jesus Christ. Huh? No. That’s funny.”

“It’s a technical term!” I insisted, feeling my face heat up. “Stop it. This is a tragedy.”

“It is, it is,” Shane said, wiping a tear from his eye. “But you walked right into that one, Bergara. ‘Little seaman lubrication.’ Good god.”

I shook my head, trying to regain the solemnity of the investigation. “And I think this is it right here,” I said, pointing to the threshold of Door 13. “This is door number 13. Do I feel strange right here? Yep. I don’t like it.”

I stepped into the doorway. It felt colder. Maybe it was a draft, or maybe it was the psychological weight of knowing a teenager died exactly where I was standing.

“I’m going to get out of that,” I said, stepping back quickly. “It is crazy that of all the numbers he could have gotten stuck in… 13. Okay, now I’m starting to get scared again.”

“It is a bit on the nose for a ghost story,” Shane admitted. “Door 13. If it was Door 12, nobody would care.”

“Hello there,” I called out, my voice wavering slightly. “Uh, if there’s anybody here, please show us a sign. Make a bang. Be nice.”

We waited. The ship groaned. A deep, metallic sound that vibrated through the floorboards.

“No,” I whispered. “No fucking way. No.”

“It’s clearly just some machine turning on,” Shane dismissed, though he was looking around with more intensity than before.

“Uh, if that… if uh…” I stammered.

“No, that’s got to be it. That’s an engine, right?” Shane asked. “Yeah, probably. Or a ghost.”

“Right now, I’m talking to the gentleman who got crushed in this door,” I said, addressing the empty air, ignoring Shane’s skepticism. “If you’re here still, please show yourself.”

I held up the audio recorder. “Did you like working here? Are you mad about the door? Do you have any opinion on the lubrication pumps?”

“Don’t ask him about the pumps, Ryan,” Shane warned. “Have some respect.”

The Face in the Engine Room

We moved further into the belly of the ship, entering the main Engine Room. This space was cathedral-like in its scale. Multi-story catwalks crisscrossed over massive turbines and engines that had once powered this city-at-sea across the Atlantic. It was a temple to the Industrial Age, silent and sleeping.

“Other hot spots on the ship include the engine room,” I narrated, looking down into the abyss of machinery below us.

It was dark down there. The kind of dark that eats flashlight beams. I scanned the area, my eyes darting from shadow to shadow, looking for the white coveralls, or a face, or anything that didn’t belong.

“Uh, I’m not seeing it,” I said, squinting. “Just… just light bulbs and shit. Not seeing anything. Not seeing anything. Scanning. Scanning.”

I moved the flashlight beam slowly across a row of dials and pipes. Then, I stopped.

“Did you see something?” Shane asked, noticing my sudden freeze.

“Look at this,” I whispered, pointing the beam at a cluster of machinery about twenty feet away. “It’s just a light… It’s just a light, but it looks like someone looking out. Does that not?”

“Where?” Shane asked, stepping closer to me.

“Right there. Between the two pipes. There’s a round bulb, but the shadow behind it… it looks like a face. A pale face staring right at us.”

Shane squinted. “Yeah, it does,” he said, surprisingly. “Holy shit, dude.”

My blood ran cold. Shane never agreed with me. If Shane saw it, it was real.

“That scared human being staring at the holy shit out of me,” I panicked, the grammar of my sentence collapsing under the weight of my fear. “It’s looking at us, Shane. It’s him. It’s the crushed guy.”

“Hold on,” Shane said, taking a step forward. “Let me get a better angle.”

He moved two feet to the left.

“Oh,” Shane said, his voice dropping back to its normal, disappointing tone. “Ryan. Come here.”

I didn’t want to move, but I shuffled over.

“Look now,” he pointed.

From the new angle, the “face” dissolved. It was just a smudge of grease on a white housing unit behind a light bulb. The illusion of eyes and a mouth vanished.

“It’s grease,” Shane said. “It’s a dirty machine.”

“It looked like a face,” I insisted, though the relief was washing over me. “From over there, it was a face.”

“Pareidolia, my friend,” Shane said, patting my back. “Your brain wants to see a face, so it builds a face out of grease and light bulbs. It’s a survival instinct. A stupid one, but a survival instinct.”

“I hate this room,” I muttered. “Let’s keep moving.”

The Isolation Ward

“Other hot spots include… the isolation ward,” I read from my list as we climbed a narrow metal staircase. “Where the sick and those diagnosed with a contagious disease were kept away from the other passengers.”

“And in some cases,” I added darkly, “the isolation ward served as a makeshift prison.”

The Isolation Ward was distinct from the rest of the ship. It felt sterile, removed. The paint was peeling in long, white strips like dead skin. It was a place where people came to be alone, and often, to die alone.

“Let’s do this,” Shane said, leading the way. “Pigeon looks scared, too.”

“Pigeon?” I asked.

Before I could process the word, a flurry of gray feathers exploded from the rafters above us. The sound of wings flapping in the confined space sounded like a helicopter taking off.

“Oh my god!” I screamed, ducking and covering my head. “I almost… My fucking heart almost exploded, dude!”

The pigeon, equally terrified, banked sharply and flew down the corridor, disappearing into the dark.

Shane was doubled over laughing. “Your heart on exploded? What?”

“Fuck! Fuck!” I yelled, pacing in a small circle to walk off the adrenaline. “What the fuck, dude? Check that out.”

“It was a bird, Ryan,” Shane wheezed. “It was a pigeon. The rat of the sky. It wasn’t a demon.”

“It came out of nowhere!” I defended myself. “I’m looking for ghosts, not ornithology! I’m tense!”

“I can tell,” Shane grinned. “You scream very high. It’s impressive. Like a tea kettle.”

“Let’s just… let’s just go,” I said, adjusting my jacket. “I’m done with the bird.”

The Walk to Destiny

We made our way back up to the promenade deck to regroup before the final—and most terrifying—leg of the journey. The sun had completely set now. The ocean was a black void surrounding the ship, invisible but audible as it lapped against the hull.

“We’ve done the boiler room,” I listed off on my fingers. “We’ve done the galley. We’ve done the watertight door. We’ve been assaulted by wildlife.”

“It was a pigeon,” Shane corrected. “Hardly an assault.”

“And now,” I said, ignoring him, “let’s move on to the final stage of the investigation.”

I looked at the camera, my face serious. This wasn’t a game anymore. We were about to do something that hadn’t been done in a quarter of a century.

“Spending the night on the ship,” I announced. “But not just anywhere. We’ve been given access to the most haunted cabin on the Queen Mary.”

Shane looked at me. “Which one? The one with the poking ghost?”

“No,” I shook my head. “Worse. Much worse.”

“Cabin B340,” I said, the name tasting like ash in my mouth. “You’re in for a real experience tonight in there. You’re really going to hate this.”

“Yeah, I imagine I’m going to hate this,” Shane agreed, though he didn’t know the half of it yet. “Okay. About to look at this for the first time.”

We walked down the long, carpeted B-Deck corridor. The lights flickered. I told myself it was faulty wiring, old electricity. But part of me knew better. The ship knew where we were going.

We stopped in front of a door that looked identical to all the others, except for the lack of a number plate. It had been removed.

“You’ve got to be fucking shitting me, dude,” Shane said, looking at the door. “Are you fucking kidding me? Oh, no. No, no, no.”

“You got to sleep in here,” I told him, handing him the key card. “No.”

“This is where we’re sleeping tonight,” I confirmed. “Yeah.”

Shane stared at the door. For the first time all night, he didn’t have a joke. The reputation of B340 preceded it.

“You’re going to lose your mind,” I warned him.

“Yeah, I’m going to lose my mind,” Shane replied softly. “Of course.”

“Workers that have worked on this ship for decades, some in some cases, they never go in there by themselves,” I told him, trying to convey the gravity of the situation. “And when I told them that we’re sleeping in there, they laughed and told me I was an idiot to my face.”

“Well, so that’s fun,” Shane deadpanned.

“The cabin has reports of voices, beds shaking, water running, and lights being turned on by itself,” I listed the phenomena.

“In fact,” I continued, “Cabin B340 has garnered so many reports of complaints of activity that it was actually shut down and ripped apart about 25 years ago.”

Shane looked at the door handle. “Ripped apart? Like an exorcism via renovation?”

“Since then, nobody’s been allowed to sleep inside until tonight,” I said. “Where we will attempt to sleep inside Cabin B340 for the first time in nearly 25 years.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever attempted something more idiotic than this,” I concluded. “Holy shit. Are you kidding me?”

I put the key in the lock. The light turned green.

“This is a nightmare room,” I whispered.

We pushed the door open. The air inside was stale, trapped for decades. The room was stripped bare compared to the others. No carpet. Just cold floor. Two simple beds. It looked like a cell.

“If there’s anybody in here that wants to talk to us,” I called out into the room, stepping over the threshold, “say something.”

“Um, if there’s… Please, God, no,” I muttered to myself.

“If there’s… if there is that…” I trailed off.

PFFT.

A sharp, distinct sound cut through the tension.

I whipped around to look at Shane.

“Did you just fart?” I asked, incredulous.

Shane looked guilty. “You piece of shit,” I groaned. “Shane… my fart is scary?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yelled, the tension breaking into absurdity. “It was an accident!” Shane pleaded, laughing.

“I didn’t do that on purpose,” he insisted. “I genuinely did not. It just slipped.”

“It just slipped right your butt cheeks,” I mocked him. “We are in the most haunted room in America, and you are defiling it with flatulence.”

“If I see anything at all tonight that awakes something in me, then I’ll join you in this weird little camp,” Shane promised, trying to compose himself.

“And you’ll be me. I’ll be you,” I said.

“Man, bed shaking in here. That’s gnarly,” Shane said, looking at the bolted-down bed frames. “Jokes on them. No bed to shake. Uh-huh. Gotcha, ghost.”

“It’s an empty room,” I observed, looking around the stark white walls. “It’s… It’s… What is the ghost even going to do in here?”

“I don’t know,” Shane shrugged. “Poke me in the face like it did when I was 17?”

“Oh crap. I’m already doing it,” I realized, feeling the panic rising again. “I’m starting to psych myself out again.”

“Just focus on how tired you are,” Shane advised, sitting down on the bare mattress.

I sat on the opposite bed. The lights hummed. The silence of the closed-off room pressed against my ears.

“Oh, what the fuck is that?” I jumped, hearing a screeching noise from outside.

“Those cats fighting, dude,” Shane said dismissively.

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked, looking at the porthole. “Is there animals fighting outside?”

“No, that doesn’t sound like animals,” I corrected myself. “It sounds like static.”

“No, those are outside,” Shane insisted. “Oh, it was? Yeah.”

“I mean, we tried to sleep at the Sally house and every time I fell asleep, you woke me up,” Shane reminded me.

“Yeah. Well, I can’t make any promises that you’re going to stay awake,” I told him honestly. “If I see a ghost, you are waking up.”

“I am going to go to sleep and if you try to wake me up, I’m just going to ignore you,” Shane threatened, laying back and crossing his arms like a vampire.

“I’m going to pour water on your face,” I countered. “You do whatever the hell you want. I’m not going to acknowledge you.”

“You know… what was that?” I asked, freezing again.

“I don’t know. Some shit,” Shane mumbled, eyes already closed.

“Did you hear it?” I pressed.

“No.”

“Sound like a voice,” I whispered. “A voice? Yeah.”

Shane cracked one eye open. “You’ve somehow tricked me into not being upset that you’re still talking, but I… I’m going to go to sleep.”

He rolled over.

“I’m going to try again,” he muttered. “I don’t know what you did. I’m… I’m angry again.”

I sat there in the dark, watching my friend sleep in the middle of a nightmare. The room felt electric. Every creak of the ship sounded like a footstep. Every shadow looked like a hand reaching out.

I kicked the leg of Shane’s bed.

“You… You just kicked me,” Shane groaned.

“Yeah, I did. Sorry,” I said, not sorry at all.

“What the fuck?” he sighed. “It’s Morty. We’re still here.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t stabbed to death with a butter knife,” he noted sarcastically. “The room is clear. The room is clear.”

“And now it’s just an empty bare room appropriate for a sitcom exit,” he said, sitting up and looking around.

“Oh, we’ve had some fun times in here,” he joked.

Morning broke slowly. The gray light of the harbor filtered through the porthole, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. We had survived.

“Farewell to the Queen Mary,” I said, packing my bag.

“She’s a be… You’re a be… You’re a beautiful lady,” Shane said to the room, awkwardly patting the wall. “I love your bones.”

We walked out onto the deck. The sun was rising, burning off the fog. The ship looked less like a monster and more like a tired old woman.

“The prodigal son returned today,” I said to the camera, standing by the railing. “And uh, didn’t come back with as much evidence as last time, but what a ship.”

“Still, oh, what a ship,” Shane agreed.

“And I’m still not prepared to say this place is not haunted, ’cause I very much believe it is,” I stated firmly. “So, it remains.”

“The Queen Mary is an 80-year-old ship with plenty of rich yet tragic history,” I concluded. “Are there actually ghosts that inhabit the halls and decks of this former warship, or is that merely part of the narrative?”

“After spending one nearly sleepless night in the ship, I can certainly attest to the fact that the Queen Mary may be haunted,” I said.

“But as always,” I looked at Shane, “the answer will remain unsolved.”

“See you later, kitchen ghost,” Shane waved at a ventilation shaft. “Okay, follow us. There’s going to be a party in our room later if you want to.”

“Uh… Nope. Nope. No. Stop it,” I panicked, pushing him toward the exit. “This is fucked up.”

“Meanwhile,” I pointed back at the ship as we walked away, “Shane’s over there taking a squat.”

As we drove away, I looked back one last time. The Grey Ghost sat motionless in the water, silent and secretive. I knew I would never go back. But I also knew that a part of me—the terrified 17-year-old boy—would always be trapping in that bathroom, watching a bag of toothpaste defy the laws of physics.

And somewhere deep in the hull, Door 13 was waiting for its next drill. PART 3: THE TRAGEDY OF THE WATERS AND THE LONG NIGHT
The Echo Chamber

Leaving the industrial grime of the engine room felt like escaping the belly of a mechanical beast, only to walk straight into its cold, dead heart. We ascended the metal staircases, our footsteps clanging against the grating, until the air shifted. The smell of oil and grease faded, replaced by something muskier—the scent of old dust and enclosed spaces that haven’t breathed in decades.

We were approaching the First Class Swimming Pool.

“If the engine room is the muscle of the ship,” I whispered to the camera, wiping sweat from my forehead, “this next location is its soul. And it is a tortured one.”

The doors to the pool area were heavy, but they swung open to reveal a space that was breathtakingly eerie. The pool itself was empty, a deep, tiled gash in the floor. The art deco pillars rose around us, shimmering in the low light of our LED panels. The ceiling was a mosaic of mirrored tiles that reflected our distorted figures back at us. It was beautiful, but it was the kind of beauty you see in a funeral parlor.

“Other alleged deaths include two women who drowned in the first class swimming pool,” I explained, my voice echoing unnaturally in the cavernous room. “One apparition appears in 1930s clothing and the other in 1960s.”

Shane walked to the edge of the empty pool, peering down into the abyss. The tiles were cracked and stained, a far cry from the luxury they once represented.

“There are also reports of a little boy who fell overboard near the pool who now haunts the passageway,” I continued, checking my notes to ensure I got the tragedies correct. “A little girl named Jackie also was reported to haunt the swimming pool areas.”

Shane turned to me, his face illuminated by the harsh beam of his flashlight. He didn’t look scared. He looked confused.

“I just think it’s embarrassing for them to drown in a pool on a boat,” he said, gesturing to the dry basin. “That’s true. Also, was there no lifeguard on duty?”

I stared at him, aghast. “Shane, people died here.”

“I know, but think about it, Ryan,” he pressed, walking along the edge like a tightrope walker. “You’re on a thing that has conquered buoyancy.”

“Conquered buoyancy?” I repeated.

“Yes! That’s the whole point of a boat!” Shane exclaimed, his voice booming off the tiles. “They drowned on top of the ocean… in the ocean.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, realizing I couldn’t argue with his twisted logic. “It is ironic. But tragedy doesn’t care about irony.”

We moved toward the changing rooms. This area is known as “The Vortex” by paranormal enthusiasts. It’s a narrow passageway of changing stalls, tiled in black and white. It feels like a funhouse maze designed by a madman.

“This is where people claim to see the wet footprints,” I told Shane. “Footprints that appear out of nowhere and lead into the pool.”

“Water evaporation, Ryan,” Shane dismissed immediately. “Or a leaky pipe. Or a janitor with a mop.”

“There are no pipes running through the floor here,” I argued. “And the janitors don’t come down here at night. They’re too scared.”

“I’d be scared too if I had to clean this tile,” Shane quipped. “The grout work is a nightmare.”

I decided to try an EVP session. The acoustics were perfect for it—too perfect. Every breath sounded like a hurricane.

“Jackie?” I called out softly. “Jackie, are you here? We brought… well, we didn’t bring toys, but we brought cameras. Do you want to play?”

Silence. Just the low hum of the ship’s ventilation, sounding like a distant choir.

“Sing a song, Jackie,” Shane commanded, his voice jarringly loud. “Sing us a little ditty.”

“Don’t command the ghost child,” I hissed. “She’s a spirit, not a jukebox.”

“If she wants attention, she should earn it,” Shane shrugged. “I’m just saying. Give us a show.”

We stood there for ten minutes. I felt cold spots. I felt the hair on my arms stand up. I felt watched. Shane felt bored.

“Nothing,” Shane announced, checking his watch. “The pool is closed, Ryan. Let’s move on.”

The Bird in the Cage

We left the pool and navigated toward the Isolation Ward. This was the area I was dreading the most, aside from the cabin. It was isolated for a reason.

“The isolation ward,” I narrated as we walked down a narrow, rusting corridor, “where the sick and those diagnosed with a contagious disease were kept away from the other passengers.”

“And in some cases,” I added, stepping over a pile of debris, “the isolation ward served as a makeshift prison.”

The atmosphere here was different. The pool was sad; the engine room was imposing. The Isolation Ward was angry. The walls were tight, pressing in on us. The paint was peeling in long, violent strips.

“Let’s do this,” Shane said, pushing open a creaky metal door. “Pigeon looks scared, too.”

I froze. “What?”

Before I could process his sentence, chaos erupted.

FLAP-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP.

A grey blur launched itself from the rafters directly at my face.

“Oh my god!” I screamed, dropping into a defensive crouch, my hands covering my head. “I almost… My [ __ ] heart almost exploded, dude!”

The creature banked left, its wings hitting the metal ductwork with a terrifying thwack, and disappeared into the shadows.

“Your heart on exploded? What?” Shane was laughing so hard he had to lean against the wall for support.

“[ __ ] [ __ ] What the [ __ ] dude?” I yelled, trying to locate the attacker. “Check that out.”

“It was a pigeon, Ryan,” Shane wheezed, wiping tears from his eyes. “It was a literal bird.”

“It sounded like a demon!” I defended myself, my heart rate monitor probably hitting triple digits. “It came right for my eyes! It knew! It was a sentry!”

“It was nesting,” Shane corrected. “We disturbed its nap. That’s not a ghost. That’s nature.”

“I hate nature,” I muttered, adjusting my jacket. “And I hate this hallway.”

We did a quick sweep of the ward. The old cots were rusted frames. The medical equipment was long gone, but the feeling of sickness remained.

“Imagine dying here,” I said quietly. “You’re on a luxury liner, crossing the Atlantic, maybe going to a new life in America. And you get sick. They throw you down here. You hear the parties upstairs, the music, the champagne popping. And you’re down here, coughing your lungs out, alone.”

Shane looked at the empty room. For a second, the jokes stopped.

“Yeah,” he said. “That sucks. That really sucks.”

But the moment passed. “But hey,” he added, “at least they didn’t have to pay for the drinks.”

The Prelude to Insanity

We headed back to the main deck to collect our sleeping bags. The sun was long gone. The ship was wrapped in a suffocating darkness, broken only by the orange glow of the harbor lights filtering through the portholes.

We met with our producer outside the door to our destination. He handed us the key card like he was handing us a loaded weapon.

“Let’s move on to the final stage of the investigation,” I said to the camera, my voice grave. “Spending the night on the ship. We’ve been given access to the most haunted cabin on the Queen Mary.”

“Cabin B340,” I announced.

Shane took the key card, flipping it over in his fingers. “You’re in for a real experience tonight in there,” I told him, trying to prepare him for the psychological warfare we were about to endure. “You’re really going to hate this.”

“Yeah, I imagine I’m going to hate this,” Shane replied. He looked at the door. “Okay. About to look at this for the first time.”

I took a deep breath. “You’ve got to be [ __ ] [ __ ] me, dude,” Shane said as I pushed the door open. “Are you [ __ ] kidding me? Oh, no. No, no, no.”

“You got to sleep in here,” I said, suppressing a nervous giggle. “No.”

“This is where we’re sleeping tonight,” I confirmed. “Yeah.”

The room was… stark. It had been stripped of the usual hotel comforts. No carpet, just cold linoleum. The furniture was bolted down. It looked less like a guest room and more like an asylum cell from the 1950s.

“You’re going to lose your mind,” I predicted.

“Yeah, I’m going to lose my mind,” Shane agreed. “Of course.”

I walked into the center of the room, feeling the heavy stillness. “Workers that have worked on this ship for decades, some in some cases, they never go in there by themselves,” I told Shane. “And when I told them that we’re sleeping in there, they laughed and told me I was an idiot to my face.”

“Well, so that’s fun,” Shane said, dropping his bag on the bare mattress.

“The cabin has reports of voices, beds shaking, water running, and lights being turned on by itself,” I listed the menu of horrors. “In fact, cabin B340 has garnered so many reports of complaints of activity that it was actually shut down and ripped apart about 25 years ago.”

“Since then,” I continued, “nobody’s been allowed to sleep inside until tonight, where we will attempt to sleep inside cabin B340 for the first time in nearly 25 years.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever attempted something more idiotic than this,” I said, shaking my head. “Holy [ __ ] Are you kidding me?”

The Longest Night

We set up the static cameras in the corners of the room. The red recording lights blinked in the darkness like malicious eyes. We lay down on the twin beds, separated by a small nightstand that felt like a mile of empty space.

“This is a nightmare room,” I whispered, pulling my blanket up to my chin.

“If there’s anybody in here that wants to talk to us,” I called out, my voice trembling, “say something.”

The room was silent.

“Um, if there’s… Please, God, no,” I muttered. “If there’s if there is that…”

PFFFFFFT.

The sound ripped through the silence. It wasn’t a ghost. It was biological.

I sat up, staring at the dark lump that was Shane on the other bed. “Did you just fart?”

Shane giggled. “You piece of [ __ ],” I groaned. “Shane, my fart is scary. Are you [ __ ] kidding me?”

“It was an accident,” Shane pleaded, laughing into his pillow. “I didn’t do that on purpose. I genuinely did not. It just slipped.”

“It just slipped right your butt cheeks,” I scolded him. “This is serious, Shane! We are trying to commune with the dead, and you are… you are gassing them out!”

“If I see anything at all tonight that that awakes something in me, then I’ll join you in this weird little camp,” Shane said, trying to regain composure. “And you’ll be me. I’ll be you.”

“Man, bed shaking in here,” Shane said, grabbing the metal frame of his bed and shaking it violently. “That’s gnarly. Jokes on them. No bed to shake. Uh-huh. Gotcha. Ghost.”

“It’s an empty room,” I said, looking at the bare walls. “It’s It’s… What is the ghost even going to do in there?”

“I don’t know,” Shane mused. “Poke me in the face like it did when I was 17?”

“Oh crap,” I whispered. “I’m already doing it. I’m starting to psych myself out again.”

“Just focus on how tired you are,” Shane advised.

I tried to close my eyes. I tried to think about the sunset. I tried to think about anything other than the fact that we were in a room that had been sealed for a quarter of a century because it terrified grown men.

Then, a sound came from the porthole. A high-pitched, strangled screech.

“Oh, what the [ __ ] is that?” I sat bolt upright.

“Those cats fighting, dude,” Shane mumbled sleepily.

“What the [ __ ] is going on?” I asked, looking toward the window. “Is there animals fighting outside?”

“No, that doesn’t sound like animals,” I corrected myself, listening closer. “It sounds like static.”

“No, those are outside,” Shane insisted. “Oh, it was? Yeah.”

“I mean, we tried to sleep at the Sally house and every time I fell asleep, you woke me up,” Shane reminded me, turning over.

“Yeah. Well, I can’t make any promises that you’re going to stay awake,” I said.

“I am going to go to sleep and if you try to wake me up, I’m just going to ignore you,” Shane threatened.

“I’m going to pour water on your face,” I shot back. “You do whatever the hell you want. I’m not going to acknowledge you.”

Silence returned. Heavy. Thick. I stared at the ceiling. Was that a shadow moving in the corner? Was that a breath I heard?

“You know what was that?” I whispered.

Shane didn’t move.

“I don’t know. Some [ __ ],” Shane mumbled. “Did you hear it?”

“No.”

“Sound like a voice,” I insisted. “A voice? Yeah.”

Shane groaned. “You’ve somehow tricked me into not being upset that you’re still talking, but I… I’m going to go to sleep.”

“I’m going to try again,” he said, pulling the blanket over his head. “I don’t know what you did. I’m I’m angry again.”

I lay there for hours. Every creak of the ship’s settling metal sounded like footsteps. Tap. Tap. Tap. Like the scavenger hunt all those years ago. Was it the ship? Was it the ocean? Or was it the man who was crushed in Door 13, walking the halls, looking for a way in?

I reached out with my foot and kicked Shane’s mattress.

“You… You just kicked me,” Shane said, his voice flat.

“Yeah, I did. Sorry,” I lied.

“What the [ __ ]?” Shane sighed.

I checked the time. It was 3:00 AM. The witching hour. But nothing happened. The ghosts, it seemed, were camera shy. Or maybe they were just tired of us.

The Morning After

When the sun finally broke through the fog, painting the room in a dull, grey light, I felt a wave of relief so strong it almost knocked me over. We made it.

“It’s Morty,” Shane said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “We’re still here.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t stabbed to death with a butter knife,” he noted, checking his torso. “The room is clear. The room is clear.”

“And now it’s just an empty bare room appropriate for a sitcom exit,” he said, swinging his legs out of bed.

“Oh, we’ve had some fun times in here,” he joked, stretching.

We packed our gear in silence, the adrenaline of the night fading into exhaustion. We walked out onto the deck, the fresh sea air filling our lungs.

“Farewell to the Queen Mary,” I said, looking up at the towering smokestacks.

“She’s a be… You’re a be… You’re a beautiful lady,” Shane stammered at the ship. “I love your bones.”

“The prodigal son returned today,” I said to the camera, framing the final shot. “And uh didn’t come back with as much evidence as last time, but what a ship.”

“Still, oh, what a ship,” Shane agreed.

“And I’m still not prepared to say this place is not haunted, cuz I very much believe it is,” I declared. “So, it remains.”

I looked at the water, thinking about the Grey Ghost, the 800,000 soldiers, the cook in the oven, and the toothpaste tube.

“The Queen Mary is an 80-year-old ship with plenty of rich yet tragic history,” I summarized. “Are there actually ghosts that inhabit the halls and decks of this former warship, or is that merely part of the narrative?”

“After spending one nearly sleepless night in the ship, I can certainly attest to the fact that the Queen Mary may be haunted,” I said.

“But as always,” I concluded, looking at Shane, “the answer will remain unsolved.”

“See you later, kitchen ghost,” Shane called out as we walked down the gangplank. “Okay, follow us. There’s going to be a party in our room later if you want to.”

“Uh… Nope. Nope. No. Stop it,” I panicked, pushing him forward. “This is [ __ ] up.”

“Meanwhile, Shane’s over there taking a squat,” I narrated as he bent down to tie his shoe.

As we drove away, leaving the Grey Ghost behind in the Long Beach mist, I realized that while we hadn’t found definitive proof, we had found something else. We had survived the nightmare room. And for tonight, that was enough.

But I knew, as I watched the ship disappear in the rearview mirror, that I would never, ever go back.

Probably.