There are spooky stories of mysterious happenings in aviation that are still lingering even though they are unproven. Some of them are circulated more widely as short documentary films and podcast on the internet.
Santiago Airlines Flight 513
On September 4, 1954, Santiago Airlines Flight 513 departed Aachen-Merzbrück Airport, West Germany, on an 18-hour flight to Porto Alegre, Brazil (some reports say Santiago, Chile).
The four-engine propeller, a Lockheed Constellation aircraft, had 88 passengers and four crew members.
However, a few hours into the flight, it lost communication with the control tower and also vanished from radar.
It was assumed to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Search efforts failed to find the aircraft nor any passengers dead or alive.
About 35 years after, on October 12, 1989, Santiago Flight 513 was spotted at the Porto Alegre airport, where it made a successful landing. It did not make any contact with air traffic controllers.
On opening the doors, the skeletons of 92 people were found fastened to their seats including that of Captain Miguel Victor Cury, in his pilot’s seat with hands on the controls. The engines of the aircraft were still running.
The story was first published by a tabloid, Weekly World News, in 1989.
In 1985, the tabloid published an article on Pan Am Flight 914, that reportedly had gone missing for 37 years before turning up again and landing without incident.
The story on Santiago Airlines is its second of such stories, and it got people speculating whether the aircraft went through time travel and came back.
This cannot be a true account for several reasons: The aircraft could not be accounted for today anywhere in Brazil: Is it in the museum or still at the airport? Where are the skeletons? No real pictures? Why was there no mention of the co-pilot: What is his name? Also, you cannot fly without air traffic controllers giving clearance and altitude and direction of flight.
Lockheed Constellation aircraft pictured in the report cannot fly the 10,000 kilometres (6,000 miles) journey with passengers between Germany and Brazil, and Santiago Airlines did not exist at that time.
Both Santiago Flight 513 and Pan Am flight 914 reports probably, copied “The Odyssey of Flight 33,” from a fictional American television programme called “The Twilight Zone.”
Pan Am flight 914
A Douglas DC-4 flight from New York to Miami, Florida, in 1955 disappeared, and suddenly, reappeared in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1985.
The aircraft landed safely, but the crew and passengers did not age after 35 years as if they had travelled through time. The story was first published by Weekly World News, a tabloid magazine, in 1985 and widely circulated on the Internet.
This tabloid is an entertainment publication. On January, 1985, it carried a story: “Diver Attacked by Mermaids,” and on 15 January, 1985, “Mom, 70, gives Birth to Twins.”
The haunted museum
There are stories about museum workers and visitors hearing strange voices and seeing spooky images in the National Museum in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in United States.
The US Air Force, owners of the museum, does not mind and in 2008 an episode of a ghost hunting show was recorded in the museum.
Are these real? Is the National Museum of the United States Air Force haunted? The Head of Information of the museum says, “No ‘ghostly’ sightings have been officially reported or documented.”
If for anything, the US Air Force and Wright-Patterson Air Base are gaining free publicity and attracting visitors and young recruits with the stories.
