MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Ghosts of Flight 401

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

My wife is a total skeptic. She does not believe in the paranormal whatsoever, and never has. But when I told her just a portion of today’s story, specifically the part about the passenger in first class – you’ll know when you get to that scene – she told me she was so intrigued by it. And I think the reason for that is: in this story, as you’ll see, there were so many witnesses. Hundreds of witnesses. And so how could they all be making this up?The audio from this story has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called “MrBallen,” and has been remastered for today’s podcast.Story name, preview & link to original YouTube video:#1 -- "Flight 401" -- A disaster over the Everglades has a spooky history (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIoyIYgghcI)For 100s more stories like this one, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. My wife is a total skeptic. She does not believe in the paranormal whatsoever and never has. But when I told her just a portion of today's story, specifically the part about the passenger in first class, you'll know when you get to that scene she told me she was so intrigued by it and I think the reason for that is in this story as you'll see there were so many witnesses hundreds of witnesses

and so how could they all be making this up? But before we get into today's story if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Delivered in Story format then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So, if that's of interest to you, please invite the Amazon Music Follow button to a Ouija board session, and once everyone's fingers are on the pointer, ask if anyone likes the Amazon Music Follow button, and then subtly move the pointer over no.

Okay, let's get into today's story. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round the world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before oh and his boat wasn't seaworthy oh and also tiny little detail almost didn't mention it he bet his family home on making it to the finish line what ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history to find out the full story follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.

I'm Peter Frank-O'Pern. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time, somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that

has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. Around 8.30 p.m. on December 29th, 1972, passengers inside of JFK International Airport in Queens, New York, heard over the intercom that Eastern Airlines Flight 401 to Miami was now boarding. About 30 minutes later, all 176 passengers, which included the 13 crew members, had made it on board, and then at that point,

the 13 crew members began making their final preparations for takeoff. Flight 401 was a very expensive and recently introduced model of plane by Eastern Airlines called the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, and it was both unbelievably technologically advanced and unbelievably enormous. sat up to 400 passengers which meant instead of having four seats to a row like you would expect inside of a passenger jet the l-1011s had eight seats per row and they had two levels there was the main level which was the main cabin where all the passengers were and then there was a second level, a lower level, that was only accessible via two small elevators that could barely fit one person inside of them in the back of the aircraft.

And down on this lower level was a full-size kitchen which had ovens and refrigerators. And also at the back of this lower level was a lounge area for flight staff. The pilot that night was Bob Loft, who was a strikingly handsome 55-year-old man with over 30,000 hours of flying experience, which for reference is a ton of flying experience. Captain Bob was known as a perfectionist who exuded confidence and who was cool under pressure. After Bob had boarded the aircraft, he had made his way right into the cockpit, which is the very front of the plane where the pilots fly the plane, and he had sat down in the customary captain's seat, which was the front left seat. And then after he had sat down, his 10 years younger

first officer or co-pilot, a man named Burt Stockstill, had joined him in the cockpit and sat down in the customary co-pilot seat which was directly to the right of Captain Bob. And so after the pilot and co-pilot were both seated, the remaining two members of that night's cockpit crew came into the cockpit. Now normally in most passenger jets there were only two seats in the cockpit, but because L-1011 planes were so massive, there were four seats in the cockpit. And so one of the last two men who joined the cockpit was 51-year-old Don Repo, who was the flight's engineer. And despite him being this big, strong ox of a man, he was actually known as being fairly soft-spoken and very approachable.

And so Don came into the cockpit, he said hello, and then he sat down in the seat right behind the co-pilot Bert, and then a few seconds after dawn, the last man came into the cockpit. It was 47-year-old Angelo Donadeo. Angelo was not actually part of that night's flight crew. However, he was an employee of Eastern Airlines, and that night he needed to get to Miami, and so the company had put him on flight 401 and sat him in the fourth and final seat in the cockpit right behind Captain Bob. Around 9.10 p.m., all pre-flight checks had been completed, all passengers were seated, as was the crew, and so Captain Bob began taxiing over to the runway. Ten minutes later, at 9.20 p.m., Captain Bob pushed the throttles forward and the plane began to take off. A few minutes later and flight 401 was airborne up in the night sky over New York headed south

towards Miami. For the next two hours, this flight was completely normal. In fact, it was so normal that one of the passengers named Jerry Escow actually wrote a letter while he was on the plane telling Eastern Airlines how great their airline was and how smooth this flight was. His plan was, once they landed, to mail this letter to Eastern Airlines. But at 11.32 p.m., so two hours and 12 minutes after takeoff, this flight would go from being very routine and normal to being anything but. would go from being very routine and normal to being anything but. At 11.32pm, Captain Bob began his approach to Miami International Airport, but when he lowered the plane's landing gear, his co-pilot Bert noticed they had a problem. L-1011 jets like 401 have three pieces of landing gear.

They have wheels that come down under the left wing, they have wheels that come down under the right wing, and they have wheels that pop out of the nose of the plane. And each of these pieces of landing gear has a corresponding little light bulb, a green light bulb, inside the cockpit that once that piece of landing gear comes down and locks in place and is ready to be landed on, its green light will go on inside of the cockpit. But when Captain Bob lowered their landing gear, his co-pilot Bert noticed only two of the lights came on. The one that did not light up was the nose landing gear. Now, Captain Bob and the other men in the cockpit, when they saw this issue, they immediately assumed it had to be the light bulb itself

that was faulty, not the actual nose landing gear, because this plane was brand new, it had been checked before they left, so the likelihood of the nose landing gear being faulty was incredibly slim. And so Captain Bob, while maintaining his approach towards Miami International, he retracted the landing gear, and then once it had come back into the plane, he just lowered it again, thinking this time all three lights would come on. But once again, once the landing gear was deployed the second time,

still the nose landing gear light did not come on. And so frustrated, Captain Bob hopped on the radio and contacted Miami Air Traffic Control and told them that he could not confirm his landing gear was actually safe to land on, and so they would have to circle around for a bit in the sky and get it figured out. And so Miami Air Traffic Control acknowledged what Captain Bob said and then directed Captain Bob to fly out over the nearby Everglades, which is a massive wetlands area in Florida, and to stay out over the Everglades away from other traffic until they fixed the problem. And so once flight 401 was out over the Everglades flying in a circular pattern, Captain Bob and his co-pilot set the plane to autopilot

so that it would maintain a constant altitude of 2,000 feet and a constant speed of 200 miles per hour. And so once the plane was all set, Captain Bob and his co-pilot Bert began fiddling with this front nose gear indicator light bulb, which they were convinced was faulty. And so they started by pressing on the light, and when that didn't work, they began twisting it. And when that didn't work, they actually pulled the light bulb off the panel and kind of blew the dirt and grime off of it. And then they jammed it back into the panel. But as soon as they did, not only did it not go back on, but they realized they had put it in sideways. And so they couldn't actually get it out again. And so now

they're thinking this light's not going to go on at all. We need to find another way to make sure the nose landing gear has come down. And so Captain Bob at this point is totally frustrated and so he turns around and he looks at Don Repo, the flight engineer who's sitting right behind the co-pilot, and he tells Don to go down into the hellhole and directly inspect the front landing gear himself. So the hellhole is a space right below the cockpit and the way you get to it is through a trap door in the floor in the center of the cockpit. And then once down in the hellhole, there is this window that looks straight towards the front of the aircraft, where you could look out and actually see the front landing gear,

and you could make sure it was down or not. And so Don Repo, he gets out of his seat, and he opens up the hellhole trap door, and he makes his way down below. Meanwhile, 2,000 feet below Flight 401, a 43-year-old man named Robert Marquis, along with a friend of his, were looking for frogs in the Everglades riding around on Robert's airboat. An airboat is a flat-bottom boat with this huge fan on the back of it that propels it forward. It's popular in the Everglades because the water depth is so shallow. At points in the Everglades, the water's only a couple of inches deep. And so all around these two guys, it is totally pitch black out. There are no buildings or people for miles and miles and miles. Their only light source is Robert's headlamp. And so at some point, Robert turns off the airboat and he and his friend are just standing in the middle of it, kind of scanning around on either side. And all around them, they can hear the sound of

alligators growling and snakes and frogs moving about the tall grass. And as they're just kind of silently looking around them, out of the corner of Robert's eye, he sees something. And so he looks up right as he sees this huge orange and yellow flash that kind of came out of the ground roughly five miles away from where they were. And basically as soon as Robert saw it, this flash dissipated and it was just totally gone. And so he turned to his friend who had not seen this flash and Robert said, hey, let's go investigate. Let's see what that was. And so Robert fired up his boat again and he began flying across the Everglades straight in the direction of where he saw this flash. And after 15 minutes of cruising at 40 miles per hour across this dark expanse, they reached the area where this flash had been.

And Robert and his friend, they just could not believe what they were looking at. About 20 minutes earlier, back up inside of Flight 401, when Captain Bob turned around in his seat to tell the flight engineer, Don Repo, to go down into the hellhole, it's believed that Captain Bob nudged the steering wheel with his leg. And this little nudge was enough to disengage the plane's autopilot, which sent the plane into a gradual descent. But nobody noticed. Because, one, it was totally pitch black outside. The Everglades below them, there's no lights, there's nothing, and there was no moon that night. And so when they're looking out the window, there would have been no visual cues that they were going down, up, or anything. It just would have looked like a total void outside. And two, the descent they were now suddenly in was so gradual, it would not have felt like they were tumbling out of the sky. It would have felt like they were just cruising as expected.

And three, all of the men in the cockpit were completely fixated on this light bulb problem. In fact, they were so fixated that when an alarm went off inside of the cockpit telling them they had dipped below their intended altitude of 2,000 feet, they were now going down, nobody noticed. Although, to their credit, this alarm only sounded once and it wasn't that loud. And so not long after Don Repo had gone down into the hellhole, the plane crashed into the Everglades. No one on board flight 401, from the cockpit crew to the passengers to the other flight staff, had any idea they were in an emergency until they hit the ground. And when they hit the ground, the plane exploded. And that was what Robert Marquis saw when he looked up and saw that yellow

and orange flash. And so Robert and his friend, they speed over to the crash site. And when they get there, they are the first ones there. And even though they're looking out and they can hear the sound of all these people screaming and crying and moaning, they can't see anything because the fire from this huge explosion was already out because the swampy wetlands had pretty much immediately extinguished it. And even though the plane had crashed into the ground at over 200 miles per hour, it had not struck the ground at a very steep angle because basically the plane was in this gradual descent pattern and just kind of coasted until it hit the ground. And so that combined with the soft muddy ground of the Everglades meant that the impact of the plane hitting the ground

was not nearly as violent as other plane crashes were. And that ultimately saved lives. In fact, dozens of passengers survived the initial impact with the ground. But many of them were left with these horrible injuries, or they were trapped within the wreckage, or both. When Robert and his friend arrived at the edge of the crash scene, Robert lifted up his headlamp and began to scan, and he saw all these body parts sticking out of the ground, and then his light rested on the first survivor he saw and it was this man whose clothes had been completely burned

off from the explosion. All he had on was just a little bit of his socks on both ankles and this man was still strapped into the seat that he had been on on the plane and when the plane had broken up his seat had fallen forward into the mud pinning this man's upper body and most of his face under several inches of water. And so as Robert had scanned over with his light, his light had hit this man's face and he had looked up and pleaded with Robert and his friend to come get him before he drowned. And so Robert and his friend they jumped off their boat and ran over to this guy and pulled the chair up and out of the water, saving this guy's life. But as soon as he was up

and out of the water, Robert and his friend began hearing more calls from other people in the darkness screaming for help. Robert and his friend would do their absolute best to save as many people as they possibly could, but there was just too many people who needed saving and not enough time. About 30 minutes after Robert and his friend had arrived at the scene, the Coast Guard showed up in helicopters and they, along with Robert and his friend, would spend the entire night pulling as many people to safety as they possibly could. By the time the sun came up on the following day, there were no other survivors left to save. All told, 99 people perished and 77 survived.

Amongst the dead were Captain Bob Loft and his co-pilot Bert Stockstill and their flight engineer Don Repo, who had gone down into the hellhole. Amongst these survivors was Angelo Donadeo, the fourth man in the cockpit, as well as Jerry Escow, the man who ironically had written that letter to Eastern Airlines saying how wonderful that flight had been. A major investigation following the crash would confirm that the reason flight 401 went down was because of a number of factors, most notably human error. The investigation would also confirm that the nose landing gear was working perfectly fine. The light bulb not coming on was a result of the light bulb being burned out. Following the investigation, Eastern Airlines would make every effort to compensate both the survivors of the crash and also families of those who were killed in the crash.

Eastern Airlines would also make major changes to their training for their pilots and co-pilots and anybody that was ever going to be in the cockpit to ensure this type of disaster never happened again. But this was not the end of the story for Flight 401. Much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers?

OK, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's stone-cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil.

George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge, and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. For For almost three years after the crash, hundreds of Eastern Airline employees began to experience a terrifying phenomenon. Now, at first, many of these employees were going to their superiors

and reporting what happened to them. But very early on, Eastern Airlines made it clear that they didn't want anybody to talk about this. Anytime an employee made one of these reports about this phenomenon, they were either sent to the psychiatrist or they were just fired. However, despite this intense pressure from Eastern Airlines to their employees to be quiet about what was going on inside of their ranks, there were still some very brave employees who had firsthand experience with this terrifying phenomenon

who still came forward and told their stories to the press and to journalists. They just did it anonymously. And so I'm going to tell you two of the most chilling accounts from those employees. Keep in mind, the names used in these stories have all been changed. In March of 1973, so three months after Flight 401 had crashed in the Everglades,

an Eastern Airlines flight attendant named Ginny was assigned to a flight from New York to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Working with her on this flight was her very close friend and fellow flight attendant, a woman named Denise. Neither of these two women were on flight 401 when it crashed. The plane these two women would be working on on their flight to Florida was called number 318 by Eastern Airlines, and it was an L-1011 just like Flight 401 had been. In fact, plane number 318 actually had some original parts from Flight 401 on it, because it would turn out after that huge investigation was done on the crash, the investigators discovered lots of parts from Flight 401 were still in pretty good shape. And so after rigorously testing them and ensuring

they did really work, those parts were actually installed on other L-1011 jets in the Eastern Airline fleet. Now, for the record, this was not considered an inappropriate thing to do. These parts were extremely expensive, and they worked perfectly fine, and they were not involved in causing Flight 401 to crash. And so no one batted an eye when Eastern Airlines put these parts on their other planes. So Ginny and Denise, along with several other Eastern Airlines flight attendants, board plane number 318. And after takeoff, the flight attendants began going through the very long and drawn out process of getting food and drink for the nearly 200 people on board the flight. And so the way the flight attendants

divvied up the work is they would have some of the attendants on the main level of the plane in the cabin taking orders from all the passengers. And then the other flight attendants would be down on the lower level, the second level of the plane where the kitchen was, preparing all the food and drinks. And so at some point during this process, Denise, who was up on the main level helping with taking orders, realized she didn't have anything to do. She had taken all the orders she could, and so she decided she would head down to the second level, to the kitchen, where her good friend Ginny was, to see if she could help her. But ironically, as Denise got in the elevator in the back of the plane and began heading down to the second level, Ginny, who was on the second level, discovered she did not have anything to do. She'd already prepped

her cart. And so she had gotten into the other elevator and began going up to the main level to see if Denise needed any help. And so the two women literally passed each other in their elevators but didn't see each other. And so once Ginny arrived at the main level, the cabin level, she got off the elevator and she walked down the aisle and she began asking around to the other attendants if they knew where Denise was. And they would tell her, oh, you know, she just left a minute ago to go down to see you. And so after a couple of minutes, Ginny would leave the main level and go back down the elevator to the lower level to find Denise. Now to understand what happens next, you need to have a basic understanding of the layout of the second level. So when you come down

on either of those two elevators, when the doors open, you'd be looking down a stretch of hallway, basically the length of the plane from the back towards the front and when you stepped off the elevator you'd be stepping into the middle of the kitchen now the kitchen was very very cramped and on the left side was a row of ovens that were all stacked up against each other and then on the other side on the right side was a row of cabinets and cupboards if you were to walk down the kitchen straight towards the front of the plane, you would eventually reach a wall that separated the kitchen to the lounge area, and there was a door slightly off to the right side on this wall that you could walk through to get into the lounge. So if you were standing in the kitchen and looking in the direction of

this door, you wouldn't really be able to see into the lounge area because again the door was kind of off to the side you would have to actually go over to the door and poke your head through to get a full unobstructed view of the lounge and all the lounge was was a couple of sofas and chairs kind of arranged in a circle so Ginny has gotten back in the elevator and she's made her way back downstairs to continue looking for Denise she gets down to the lower level the doors open up and she's made her way back downstairs to continue looking for Denise. She gets down to the lower level, the doors open up, and she looks out into the kitchen, and Denise is not there. In fact, the kitchen is totally empty. And the door leading into the lounge area is shut, so she can't even see in part of the way into the lounge to see if anybody is in there.

But the second Ginny stepped off the elevator into the kitchen, she immediately had this powerful sense that Denise was definitely down there somewhere on the second level with her, probably in the lounge area that she couldn't see. And because Ginny felt so confident that Denise was down there, she actually didn't start by calling out for Denise or walking to the door, opening it up, and looking into the lounge to make sure Denise was there. Instead, Ginny just turned to the left and went to the ovens and began preparing food for the attendants upstairs. And as she's making these plates of food, Ginny would periodically look over at the closed door leading into the lounge, kind of expecting it to open up

at any point and see Denise walk out. But after a couple of minutes, no one had opened the door from the lounge, and Ginny was thinking to herself, you know, I'm making quite a bit of noise over here. If anybody was down here, wouldn't they come out of the lounge and just see who it was? And because Ginny again had this really intense feeling that she was not alone down there, she began to think, wait a minute, is Denise playing a practical joke on me? Is she hiding in the lounge or is she hiding in one of the cabinets on the right side here and she's going to jump out and grab me? And so the second Ginny began thinking about that, she became really paranoid. And so as she's making this food, she's pretty much constantly looking over at the

door or kind of scanning behind her, waiting for Denise to launch out and scare her. But again, after several more minutes, Jenny didn't see anybody come out of the lounge and none of the cabinet doors opened up. It was just her down there. However, the longer she stayed down there, the stronger that feeling got that someone was in the room with her. And so now she can't even make her food. She's completely turned around, just scanning all around the kitchen, really at this point hoping Denise jumps out to scare her. And when Denise didn't do that, Jenny just began walking over to the door that would lead into the lounge.

And so when she reached the door, her heart was racing like mad. She reached down to the handle, she turned it, she pushed it open, she poked her head in real quick, and there was no one in the lounge. But immediately, the second her head in real quick and there was no one in the lounge. But immediately, the second her head was in that room, that feeling that someone was down there with her spiked and she got chills all over her body. And she ran into the back of the lounge and looked behind all of the chairs and sofas, praying at this point that Denise was going to be down there. But after

looking all over the back of the lounge, there was no one there. And so finally, Ginny turns around and she's totally wracked with fear because now she's on the very far end of the lounge. There's no one in the lounge. She knows there's no one in the kitchen. And here she is still getting that sensation that she was not alone down there. But she has to go all the way back across the lounge through that door into the kitchen to get back to the elevator so she can escape. And so Ginny almost instinctively moved immediately to the left side of the lounge and put her back up against the wall to make sure no one could be behind her. And then she began slowly inching her way along the left wall towards

the door that was now open that would lead back into the kitchen and as she's slowly shimmying along her view of the kitchen is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and the whole time she's thinking I'm gonna see someone in the kitchen because this sensation that someone is down here with me is not going away but when she finally gets to the door and crosses into the kitchen there there's still no one there. And so she makes a run at that point to the elevator. She starts hitting the button. And as she's hitting the button, she's turning around and she has that awful feeling that someone's right behind her. And then finally the car comes down. She hops inside the elevator. She shuts the doors. She

hits the button and she begins going back up. When the elevator cart got back to the main level and the doors opened again, Ginny almost knocked over the flight attendant that was standing right outside of it, a woman named Mildred. And after Mildred and Ginny kind of regained their balance, they both looked at each other and Mildred could see very clearly that Ginny looked horrible. She was totally pale. She was sweating. And so Mildred said, Ginny, are you okay?

What's going on? And Ginny would just say, I don't know. I can't tell you what's going on. I don't know. But Mildred, instead of asking follow-up questions, just said, Ginny, you need to come with me. And so Ginny would follow Mildred, who led them back around behind the elevators to the space in the back of the plane, kind of out of view of the passengers. And there, Ginny would find Denise and Denise looked pale as a ghost she was sweating and looked totally shaken up it would turn out when Ginny left the lower level for the first time to come up to the main level to look for Denise and then

learned that Denise was not up there that Denise had actually gone down to look for Ginny in those few minutes that Ginny was up on the main level before she went back down again to continue looking for Denise, Denise was on the lower level. And Denise would say when she got off the elevator into the kitchen, there was no one down there, but immediately she believed Ginny had to be down there because of the strong sense that she was not alone down there. However, when she opened up the door to look into the lounge, she didn't see anyone and it totally spooked her. She shut the door, she ran back to the elevators, and she went back upstairs. And as she was going up in her elevator car, who once again passed her in the other elevator car,

Ginny. And so once again, the two women did not see each other. And so these two women, who had never experienced anything like this before in their lives, had nearly identical experiences, totally independent of each other, just a couple of minutes apart in the exact same space. It was just too many coincidences for them to totally write it off. And so that was a big reason why they felt like they had to come forward with their information. One month later, plane number 318, the same plane that Ginny and Denise had had their frightening experiences on, was at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, undergoing pre-flight checks from its crew before its flight to Miami that morning.

After most of the checks were done, the passengers were allowed to board the plane, and then after it seemed like most of the passengers had arrived and taken their seats, the senior flight attendant, whose name was Sis, began counting the people on board the plane to make sure they had everyone. And after counting up and down the rows, she realized their head count was off by one. They had one too many people. And so when Sis began recounting, she actually quickly identified the discrepancy. Sis was standing in first class in the aisle, and as she was counting down the left side of first class passengers, she noticed there was an Eastern Airlines captain seated in one of the seats. And so immediately,

Sis thought, oh, okay, I don't recognize this person, but since he's in uniform, he must be deadheading. Deadheading is a fairly common practice for airline employees, where if they need to be on a particular flight, but are not physically at the origin airport, they will just hop on another company flight that happens to be going to the airport they need to go to. And at least in the 1970s, it was not uncommon for employees not necessarily to tell the flight staff until they were literally on the plane, because these employees would just check the manifest, see if there were openings, and then climb on board. And so Sis assumed that was exactly what this man had done, and that was why he was

unaccounted for, and it was why they had this extra person. And so she just needed to get his name to account for him. And so Sis turned and took a couple of steps until she was right in front of this guy, who was still just seated looking straight ahead, and Sis introduced herself and asked him if he was deadheading. But the captain just continued to stare straight ahead and didn't even seem to register that Sis was talking to him, despite the fact that Sis was right on top of him and speaking very, very clearly and nobody else was talking. And so Sis, who was aware of the fact that this guy clearly should have heard her, just kind of waited for a second and then just asked again, you know, hey, what's your name? I need to make sure that you are in fact deadheading. But again, this captain just sat there without moving and didn't remotely react

to Sis. Now, by this point, another flight attendant named Diane had looked over and actually saw Sis having this strange interaction with this Eastern Airlines captain. And so Diane walked over and listened as Sis for a third time, tried to get this guy's attention, but he still did nothing. And so Diane and Sis, they start looking at each other like, what do we do about this? And at some point, Sis just says, okay, I'm going to go tell the captain, you know, he can deal with this. And so Diane stayed in the aisle next to this silent seated captain while Sis turned and walked towards the cockpit. And she told the captain, while Sis turned and walked towards the cockpit, and she told the captain, whose name was George. And so George, he leaves the cockpit with Sis by his side, and they start walking down the

aisle back towards where this guy was and where Diane was. And by the time they get there, six other passengers kind of in the general vicinity had noticed something strange was going on, and so they were all kind of turned around in their seats, looking at this captain who was sitting there and Diane and Sis and George kind of waiting to see what was going to happen. And so George and Sis, they walk right up alongside Diane and this seated silent captain. And George immediately crouched down to get a good look at this guy's face. Because again, this captain is just looking straight ahead with a hat on and so no one had really looked at him yet and so george kneels down and he sees this guy's face for the first time and he falls over and goes oh my god that's bob loft the same bob loft who had died on flight

401 the captain of flight 401 george had known bob really well and knew exactly what Bob looked like. But before Bob, sis, Diane, or the six other passengers that were all watching could do anything, the seated silent captain that looked exactly like Bob Loft vanished into thin air right in front of all of them. And immediately, the six passengers on board the flight that saw this happen became hysterical. They could not understand what they had just seen. People are screaming and crying. And George, Diane, and Sis, they were very shaken at what they saw, but they knew they

were in charge of this flight. And so they tried to calm down the passengers, but then very quickly, they organized a search of the plane because they're telling themselves, no one can just disappear into thin air. This guy has to be somewhere of the plane because they're telling themselves no one can just disappear into thin air this guy has to be somewhere on the plane and so for over an hour the passengers were told to stay in their seats and were told to stay calm while the flight crew searched every crevice every nook and cranny of this flight to see if they could find this guy, but they never did. And so after a very long delay, plane number 318, along with its very shaken up passengers and flight crew, eventually rumbled out onto the runway and took off.

When they landed in Miami, the first thing George, Diane, and Sis all did is they went in and filed a report about what they had seen about this vanishing person but Eastern Airline didn't do anything about their reports in fact the logbook where these reports were kept was conspicuously missing a couple of weeks later when some other employees of the airline heard about this vanishing person and wanted to read the reports themselves and when these employees went to their superiors

and asked if they could get this logbook, the answer from the top was, George, Diane, and Sis never filed those reports. There was no vanishing person. This whole thing is a bunch of crap. But George, Diane, and Sis all said, we filed those reports. And apparently some other pilots within Eastern Airlines had actually

seen the reports before the logbook went missing, and they would tell other people that what they read was terrifying. Over the next two years, there would be an astounding number of other totally unexplainable events that took place on other planes within Eastern Airlines fleet. However, the strange events only occurred on L-1011 jets that had parts on them from the crashed flight 401. Some of these unexplained events included more sightings of the silent seated captain who looked just like Bob Loft. And in fact, one of those sightings was by an Eastern Airlines executive who after seeing this captain vanish into thin air right in front of him,

the executive freaked out and ran off the plane and demanded the plane be searched top to bottom. But like the last search, nothing was found. On another occasion, the catering company that loaded food directly into the second level of these L-1011s, basically right into the kitchen, one of their staff spotted a man wandering around the lower level that looked just like Don Repo, the flight engineer from the doomed Flight 401. And when this staff member spoke to this man who looked like Don Repo, Don Repo turned towards him and then vanished into thin air.

The catering company was so scared when this happened that they refused to go back into the plane and it caused a massive delay. On another flight, onboard plane number 318, the pilot and co-pilot began hearing banging coming from the hellhole. And when the pilot got up and opened up the hellhole and went down below and shined his light, he didn't see anything. But when he went to climb back up into the cockpit, he looked up and standing in the cockpit was once again Don Repo looking straight down at him, who then promptly vanished right in front of him. On another flight, a female passenger and coach, who had been quiet the entire flight, suddenly began screaming hysterically. And when they went up to her and asked her what

was wrong, she was pointing at the seat next to her and said a man had suddenly appeared right next to her. He did not walk in, he just appeared next to her. And then when she began screaming, he vanished right in front of her. This woman was so upset that when they landed finally in Phoenix, Arizona, she had to be restrained in a straitjacket when they pulled her off the plane. But as terrifying as all of these events were, there was at least one instance where these apparitions appeared to be helpful to the people on the plane. One captain said he walked into the cockpit,

and standing in there was flight engineer Don Repo and Don promptly told the captain about a specific malfunction in one of the engines before Don vanished in front of this captain. Now this captain was horrified at what he had just seen but he did actually go down and have that engine looked at, and sure enough, the malfunction that Don Repo said it had, it had. Then finally, in 1974, all of these strange events just came to an abrupt stop. Now, no one knows exactly why, but in 1974, Eastern Airlines, despite telling the world they didn't believe any of the reports of these strange happenings on their planes, despite that, that year, they went in to every single one of their L-1011 jets,

and they removed any parts that had been placed on them from the crashed Flight 401. Despite the fact, none of those parts were faulty. They were removing perfectly good parts, and they never gave a reason. And after they did that, all the sightings just stopped. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please invite the Amazon Music Follow button to a Ouija board session. And once everyone's fingers are on the pointer, ask if anyone likes the Amazon Music Follow button and then subtly move the pointer over no. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning. But in the meantime, you

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by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and he seemed really unwell. So she wound up taking him to the hospital right away so he could get treatment. While Dorothy's friend waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab a car to pick him up at the exit. But she would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and so many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case covering

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