The Queen Mary, Long Beach: Door 13, Stateroom B340 and the Pool

The ship's history is thoroughly documented, and it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Some ghost stories rest on real deaths: the ship's archives record that 18-year-old John Pedder was crushed by watertight door No. 13 in July 1966, and a steward's report describes the 1949 death of Senior Second Officer W. E. Stark.

The sightings themselves are thinner. The earliest press account we found, in the Los Angeles Times in 1988, comes from the ship's own archivist and a ghost-tour leader, with no named guest. A 2022 Skeptical Inquirer investigation found no deaths recorded in either swimming pool, and showed that cabin numbers were changed when the ship became a hotel, undermining stories tied to rooms like B340 and B474.

Door 13

Watertight door No. 13, deep in the engine room, is the center of the Queen Mary's best-known story. The ship's records show that John Pedder, an 18-year-old crewman, was crushed by it on July 10, 1966. In 1988 the ship's archivist, Bill Winberg, told the Los Angeles Times that guests asked about a man in white coveralls seen tinkering in the engine area. No guest was named. He also said Pedder died during an emergency drill, but a 2022 review of the records found the circumstances unknown.

The officer who drank acid

Senior Second Officer W. E. Stark died in 1949 after drinking cleaning acid kept in a gin bottle; the captain's steward wrote a report of it. Ship officials say he still makes his rounds of the officers' quarters, but no witness is named.

The First Class pool

The same 1988 article tells of a tour guide who saw a woman in a 1960s outfit vanish behind a pillar at the First Class pool. The guide wasn't named and wouldn't talk to outsiders. The ship now promotes "Jackie", a giggling child said to haunt the pool, but no deaths are recorded in either of its pools.

Stateroom B340

B340 is billed as the ship's most haunted room, with reports of lights and taps turning on, covers pulled off the bed and a dark figure by the bed. It wasn't rented out from the 1980s until 2018. Author Nicole Strickland has written that Disney-era staff made up the legend to explain why an unfinished room couldn't be booked, and no death in B340 appears in the ship's records.

Stories that don't hold up

The tale of two sisters murdered by their father in cabin B474 comes from the psychic Peter James. The crime it echoes happened in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1964, and there was no B474 while the ship sailed. The often-quoted figure of "at least 49 deaths" aboard has no source we could find.

Building the ship

The Queen Mary was laid down at John Brown & Co. in Clydebank, Scotland, in December 1930 as hull number 534. Work stopped during the Depression and restarted in 1934; she was launched that September and sailed on her maiden voyage from Southampton on May 27, 1936.

The Grey Ghost

In March 1940 she was requisitioned as a troopship and painted gray, earning the nickname "the Grey Ghost." In July 1943 she carried 16,683 people on one crossing, a record. On October 2, 1942, she struck and sank the cruiser HMS Curacoa off Ireland, and 338 of the cruiser's crew died.

Long Beach

Cunard retired her in 1967, and she arrived in Long Beach that December. She opened to visitors in 1971 and as a hotel in 1972, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. The City of Long Beach owns her. After closing in 2020 and a bankruptcy of the leaseholder, the city took back control in 2021 and reopened her in stages from December 2022.