We consider ourselves to be serious investigators and do our best to use both logic and what some philosophers like to term ‘controlled doubt’ when we are working. Although it is often difficult to apply hard, fast and consistent rules to allegedly supernatural phenomena, we have to recognise the fact that sights, sounds and impressions which are recorded without strict working practises will only ever be potentially interesting talking points or sources of curiosity - not steps which might lead to actual proof. Adherence to good working methods is just as important as taking care to show respect for historic places or artefacts and for other people’s feelings and property.

Sadly, many individuals with no connection or experience of legitimate paranormal investigations tend to file every variety of spook spotter in the same drawer...and that drawer is often labelled ‘Kook’ or ‘Nutcase’. Before any ghost-hunters start to splutter angrily about this kind of assault on our collective integrity, bear in mind that most folks have had no chance to see a real investigation; they’ve maybe seen ‘Scooby Doo’ and ‘Ghostbusters’ when they've been too lazy to change the channel and that about sums up their entire knowledge. If you want that to change, find time to explain and don’t assume that it isn’t necessary to start with the basics.

The Queen Mary attracts every variety of ghost-seeker - the keen amateur with a digital camera, the high-tech-equipped academic and the cynical dollar-chaser with a box of tricks and a vested interest in getting results, even if he has to produce them with trickery. The tour business operators on board the liner are invariably in the latter category. They have encouraged belief in invented hauntings and apparitions and they have also added special effects (unspecial effects would be a better description) which have been installed at the expense of original structural parts of the vessel.

They painted ‘wet look’ footprints around the empty First Class Pool (to suggest the recently-made tracks of a barefooted person), rigged up a false bow compartment which flooded - to recreate an incident during World War II when the giant ship collided with a British destroyer (hidden loudspeakers played the taped ‘screams’ of drowning German Prisoners Of War), carved holes in bulkheads to allow a projector to show a spooky image in a mirror inside a supposedly haunted cabin and also shut off large areas below decks to create space for a spooky maze.

The maze is particularly hated by ocean liner enthusiasts because the rubber cobweb-infested sideshow a) Cheapened the ship’s public image...b) denied access to places of genuine interest to those who wished to study the vessel - not just for a few days around Halloween, but for most of the time as the operators refused to take the maze down even when the holiday period was over....and c) encouraged managers who were already criminally slack about maintenance to allow further deterioration to set in - their reasoning being that nobody was going to get a good look at the damage in dark, ill-lit compartments. Rust, broken fittings and decay would, they apparently speculated, offer a ‘more haunted’ appearance.

Most of the Queen Mary ghost stories you can read online are complete fabrications. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they have been planted by the ship’s operators. Some of them are incredibly ill-researched - for example, we informed Wikipedia a while ago that a sad tale about scores of stowaways ‘hiding in the coal bunkers and burning to death every time the ship started her engines’ was laughably inaccurate. The Queen Mary had no coal bunkers; she was constructed as an oil-fired vessel and ran that way for all of her working career.

When time allows, we will explore all the famous ghost stories associated with the ship and give you a point-by-point analysis of their worth.