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Mary King's Close & The Mystery of Pittsburgh's “Ghost Bomber”
23 Plays1 year ago
This week, it’s an underground haunted historical close and an underwater ghost plane!
First up, Felicia takes us on a tour of Mary King's Close - an area of ancient alleyways and abandoned houses under the Edinburgh City Chambers in the historic Old Town area of Edinburgh, Scotland. From plagues to poltergeists, naturally this area has had a reputation for dark misdoings and hauntings since the 17th century, as it soon became “shrouded in myths and urban legends; tales of hauntings and murders abounded.”
Next, Lauren goes fishing for clues in the Monongahela River with the Mystery of Pittsburgh’s “Ghost Bomber” of 1956. How does a 15-foot high B-25 bomber go missing in a 20-foot deep river never to be seen again? Well that’s the mystery! Was it carrying dangerous or mysterious cargo that the government wanted gone? A nuclear weapon?! A UFO from Area 51?! To this day, the Ghost Bomber remains one of aviation’s murkiest unsolved mysteries that’s just plane weird.
PS: If you have requests for future episodes or just want to hang out, follow us on Instagram @sinistersisterspodcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Sinister Sisters
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Felicia. I'm Lauren. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff.
Spooky School Days
00:00:20
Speaker
Lauren, do you want to know what's really spooky? Yes. The first Monday of a new school year. How terrifying. I can't believe we're recording, actually. I didn't really put that together. Yeah. Oh, it's fine. I mean, like the first, you know,
00:00:36
Speaker
When you're a theater teacher, the first couple weeks of school are what's known as ensemble building, which is a lot of theater games and stuff. So it's not so terrible. Like it's not, you know, it's not so crazy. But yeah, but I survived it. I lived.
Dallas Adventures
00:00:57
Speaker
I lived. Yeah, I'm honestly blissed out because it's our first like, I don't, I think it did hit 90 degrees.
00:01:06
Speaker
but it's still way under 100, which is beautiful here. Oh my God, Lauren, that just makes me sick. I know. I know. It's really horrible. I will say though, Willow and I went to the water park on Saturday for a few hours, and that still is my favorite part of Dallas, that we just went for a couple hours. We did the Lazy River, a couple slides, we came home. That's very nice. I love that.
00:01:33
Speaker
I know. I felt like I had like a very balanced weekend because I had like, I don't know, we like had family dinners for my birthday, which was really fun. But then we had like a friend skate party. That was very fun. So the pictures are fantastic.
00:01:49
Speaker
No, thank you. Yeah.
30th Birthday Celebrations
00:01:51
Speaker
Lauren just turned 30. Yes. Congratulations. Thank you. I feel like you celebrated very well. I'm so happy with all the things you've done. I'm just like, yes, you're doing it right. You're doing it upright. You know what I'm saying? I think I'm just celebrating every weekend, I guess, for the whole month, or as long as I can. I think, why not?
00:02:11
Speaker
Remember, I left the country. When you turn 30, you have to do something. You have to, you have to do something. You got engaged, right? Or was that not right after? No, actually, you're right. I did get engaged. Yeah, that's pretty huge. All the same thing. Yeah, we're all very busy here. Yeah, but I mean, big, a big ring, a big birthday trip. It was pretty good. Oh, yeah. And now we're both 30, which makes me feel better.
00:02:36
Speaker
Yes. And Felicia sent me the sweetest care package present birthday gift. It was amazing. Well, you sent me the sweetest care package birthday gifts when I turned 30. So if I had not sent you something, I think I would have had to fire myself from the podcast. And it was fun actually. I don't know if you had fun doing yours, but I like had fun doing it. It was so sweet. She did like a timeline of like our friendship sort of and it's in her sister's nest and it was beautiful.
00:03:06
Speaker
We've really done so much together.
Horror Theater Memories
00:03:09
Speaker
Those of you that only listen to the podcast and don't know us outside of this, we ran a theater company in New York doing horror theater for some years. We've worked on a lot of shows together in the theater world.
00:03:22
Speaker
Our friendship has spanned many years and also many forms of artistic collaboration. You should have seen us in our day. We were working really hard. We were. We were tired. We were not qualified for anything we were doing. No, we were killing it. I still think the bullshitting skills that we both learned during that time is still present today.
00:03:50
Speaker
Oh, I use them constantly. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's how I get through my day to day. But yeah, I have in terms of recommendations to move to that land. I haven't really watched anything spooky, though. I know there's some stuff coming out in theaters. I know the non-sequel just came out that I'm going to go see. But what I have watched is the entirety of the Sex and the City catalog, which includes the original series.
00:04:18
Speaker
the two movies and the two seasons of, and just like that. I watched all of it over the last like, I don't know, month? Not even. Honestly, it's been like three weeks. And I loved it. I loved every second of it. Even the new stuff. I don't care. I loved it. I don't care. I don't care what you think. I loved it. I don't care. I like Charlotte's story.
00:04:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah. How could I could not handle the Cynthia Nixon? What's her character? Miranda. Oh, yeah. Miranda sex scenes. I like I know she needed the hot tub one is so intense. I've never seen a sexy that was like that. I don't know. Just like in your face.
00:05:03
Speaker
Like, I don't know. I was like, dang. It was crazy. But I do appreciate like this is going to sound weird, maybe, but I appreciate the continuation of the nudity of the women because it's sort of this thing of like, oh, OK, like women's bodies in their 50s, like still freaking hot and killing it and still sexual beings. Totally. Being like, oh, well, they're, you know.
00:05:27
Speaker
They're not in their thirties anymore, so we can't show their boobs. Yes. I don't know. There's something about that that I did appreciate.
00:05:36
Speaker
I totally agree. And just like, I kind of thought too, like, I don't know that I've seen like, you know, queer sex scenes as like graphically as like straight sex scenes. And I was like, they do do that. That's a great point. Yeah, they do. And yeah, it's all fabulous. I, I do like a lot of the new characters as well. You know, it kills me not having Samantha, but except for that one, like two second thing.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, what? Yeah, I know. Everyone says she got like thousands and thousands of dollars. I don't know what the number was. Just in a car. I was like, where does she even film that? Like by her house? Like, I don't know. It was such a weird thing. But I don't know. Samantha has this favorite character, of course. And so it's like, wait, Samantha's not in this one. I was like, I know. She just has the best one liners. Oh, yeah. She's
00:06:23
Speaker
As they say, she is fabulous, like truly. She's like a New York fabulous woman. But yeah, have you seen anything or no?
Spooky Reviews: 'The Nun 2'
00:06:31
Speaker
It's okay if not. I actually, I saw The Nun 2 last night. Oh, how was it? I'm very up to date. You know I was like mixed feelings on The Nun, so I'm like mixed feelings on The Nun 2 as well.
00:06:46
Speaker
I do think there are some really cool parts. I think the nun is obviously a very cool new icon.
00:06:54
Speaker
She's scary. She's scary. And it was like, I do think like Catholicism in general can be so scary that like a lot of that stuff really works for me. Like this is a slight spoiler, but they have like a ghost, a ghost kid with the incense, you know, that thing. And he kills somebody with like the incense thing. Yeah. And there's a couple other like things like that, that I think are really, yeah, just well done and like,
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah, scary scenes, but not like epic life-changing horror movie, but it's solid. That's good. All right, cool. And then I also just saw, you know what's funny is the way I saw this one is I was driving home and I saw a freaking billboard for The Haunting in Venice. Do you know anything about that movie? Is that supposed to be good or not? I haven't heard anything about it. I think so. It's one of those Agatha Christie
00:07:50
Speaker
What are those called? Murder on the Orient Express and those? Yeah, I got you now. Okay. But I'm excited about it. It's like seances, Tina Fey, Spooky. Yeah, that should be fun. Okay. I think it should definitely be fun.
00:08:07
Speaker
That's good. That's good. Okay, so this week, I am talking about something that I actually went to see in person.
Edinburgh Ghost Tour
00:08:18
Speaker
So a couple of weeks ago, I was in Edinburgh, Scotland. And while I was there, I was like, okay, obviously I have to do like
00:08:28
Speaker
a ghost tour of some sort while I'm here because it's a very haunted city. Scotland is very haunted. You've talked about like the Scottish witch trials. Like maybe we've covered other Scottish things. I don't even know. But I wanted to do something and I found a tour for Mary King's Close, which is sort of this like abandoned subterranean city underneath Edinburgh.
00:08:56
Speaker
And of course, it's extremely haunted. So I'm going to talk you through basically what this is. And then one of the ghost stories that's associated with it. I love that.
00:09:10
Speaker
Mm hmm. Okay, so basically a close, if you don't know that word, it just it's like an alleyway. So Mary King's Close is an alleyway named after Mary King. So let's just start just to get the Mary King's not gonna be a lot of this story. So I'm just gonna knock it out of the way.
00:09:33
Speaker
Alright, so Mary King was actually kind of badass for her time. She was born in 1590, died in 1644. And she was a member of a prominent family and ran like a sub sort of fabric business. So she was like, like a legit like business woman. Her husband was on a council
00:09:59
Speaker
in the city, and when he died, he left his seat to her. And so she was actually a woman sitting on a council, running her own business and helping make decisions for the city when she was born in 1590.
00:10:17
Speaker
So, pretty badass. Most of the closes are named after just various important business people, royal people, et cetera, et cetera, throughout the city. So, this is the one that was named after her. And it's one of the few surviving historic closes of its kind. So... That's cool.
00:10:41
Speaker
Yeah, so let me talk you through how I walked into it and then I'll explain how it got like that. So the tour, you basically, you go through this door and you go down this staircase and where you are is you're actually underneath the Royal Exchange Building. And when you walk down, you see rooms and passageways
00:11:04
Speaker
of what basically looks like with my first connection or my yeah, my first connection I made when I was looking at it is it sort of looks like the streets in the Aladdin cartoon where there's like, you know, multiple stories of windows where people could like hang out and there's like they have like clothes lines hanging across them or whatever. And these were basically early apartment buildings.
00:11:32
Speaker
So rooms were stacked on top of rooms and you got into them by basically like climbing a ladder up the wall of the building to get into your little cubby. And this is basically where was where people at the lower classes, like the lowest class of people lived. So in these little rooms,
00:11:59
Speaker
There were multiple families living there, very cramped, very unsanitary. And I'll get to the unsanitary stuff in a minute. But so basically, eventually, the Mary Kings close was shut down and then the royal exchange was built on top of it. So it basically served as a foundation for what became the new part of the city on top of it.
00:12:28
Speaker
So the city is like sitting on top of the old city in this way that is very weird and very crazy. Yeah. The alleyway itself or the close itself is like very skinny and tons of people lived here. And like when I was standing in there, like I was claustrophobic with a group of like 10 people. And this was like a bustling
00:12:56
Speaker
This is a bustling area at the time. So I can't imagine how crowded, how filthy. Something fun for you to talk about the sanitary conditions of the time. So a specific time of day. So they didn't have toilets. This is the time before toilets. And I feel like we talked about this or maybe not we, but in a history class, if you've ever taken any kind of European history class,
00:13:25
Speaker
You've heard about the time before toilets, where- Not a good time. It's not a good time. It's not a good time. Where you and everyone you live with, which might be multiple families in one room, had one fabulous chamber pot or bucket that everybody used. And then you would, at a certain time of day, take the chamber bucket and look out the window.
00:13:52
Speaker
Because remember, these are like apartments stacked on each other. Yell, Gardeeloo. That was the cry. Gardeeloo. And then dump your poo poo out onto the street. I know it. It's just horrible in every possible way.
00:14:10
Speaker
And yeah, and so they basically were living in filth and the smell, oh my gosh, they talked about on the tour, I forgot about this till just now, but he had mentioned that there was like a joke back in his time where people said you could smell Edinburgh before you actually could see it on the horizon.
00:14:31
Speaker
Oh, my God. Because of this. Yeah. Go, Rose. And just diseases and disgusting and all. So much diseases. So much diseases. OK, so now I'm going to take us into a lot of the a lot of people died in the Mary King's close and all the closest due to something that happened in the mid-1600s.
00:14:59
Speaker
that we've talked about before and I'm sure we'll talk about again, which is the plague that swept through Europe and killed all kinds of people. So there was two plagues that hit Edinburgh at the same time. The mnemonic plague, which is basically like a really terrible version of pneumonia that you basically cough so much you have internal bleeding.
00:15:27
Speaker
It blackens your extremities like your fingers and your toes. Very, very bad. And then somehow even worse, the one that we hear about more often, the bubonic plague. So that's the real nasty one where you basically get like what's the word of disease on you? Boils? No. Boils. No, that's right. That sounds that sounds better to me.
00:15:54
Speaker
that would get horribly infected and kill you. And it was very bad. So just like in our pandemic, when it started, nobody knew how it was spread. Nobody knew how to treat it. And it was just killing everybody. So
00:16:15
Speaker
They started to, they did have a couple of doctors, known as play doctors, and these play doctors are the scary costume that we have seen over the years in pictures of a giant, of a guy totally head to toe in leather with a crow beak over his nose that's like comically large.
00:16:42
Speaker
the two eye holes, the little hat thing. Just an icon. Very spooky looking. Just an icon. I mean, it's like one of the best designs I feel. It's such a good look. It's such a good look. And so there was only like two plague doctors that were working during the plague. One of them died from the plague. So that was not great.
00:17:06
Speaker
But the main one that people talk about is George Ray. And they thought that this mask, so basically in the giant beak, they would put strong smelling herbs and flowers because they thought that if they couldn't breathe in the plague, so they kind of thought it was airborne, if they couldn't breathe it in,
00:17:29
Speaker
then they wouldn't catch it. And so, and you may or may not know this, but the plague was actually spread by disease ridden fleas that were on the rats and I forgot about. Yes, it's not good. As you can imagine, with people throwing poop at their windows, there was a lot of rats.
00:17:48
Speaker
It was nasty, and those rats had a lot of fleas, and that's how it spread. But the leather that they recovered in, even though the breathing thing wasn't actually helping them, the leather they recovered with actually did help them keep the fleas off of them and kept them from getting sick.
00:18:10
Speaker
So it actually the plague doctor costume did work. It just didn't work for the reasons they thought it worked, if that makes sense. Yeah, that does make sense. Yeah. So George Ray, he developed a way for stopping for not curing necessarily, but for some it cured the bubonic plague. So he would. This is kind of graphic. If you don't like graphic stuff, maybe skip ahead.
00:18:37
Speaker
So he would slice open the boil that had formed on the person. Then he would drain all of the pus that was there. And then he would take a red hot poker and cauterize the wound itself.
Plague Doctors' Techniques
00:18:54
Speaker
And even though this was a horrific and probably excruciatingly painful way,
00:19:05
Speaker
it actually did help save a lot of people's lives. So we have to remember that there was no, you know, numbing, what am I saying, anesthetic? No, anesthesia. Yeah. Anesthesia. Yeah. There was nothing to help with the pain. So they just had to have this. Yeah. There was nothing going. It was just like, all right, slice you open. OK, here's a red hot poker. And that's what they had to do. So it was very, very bad.
00:19:34
Speaker
Cool. All right, so then the 18th century rolls around. So yeah, but basically, yeah, lots of people died in the plague. That's a lot of the reason why people think this area is haunted because so many people died in the close itself. Oh, also the closest were apparently kind of a hotbed for murder as well because
00:19:55
Speaker
The people there were of such a low class that it became like a stalking ground for predators because just as in our current day times, horrible people look for people that they think won't be missed. And so there was a lot of death in that way as well, and nobody really helping these people.
00:20:19
Speaker
bad. There was a rumor that seems to be untrue, but I'll just say it because it's it's written down on a lot of websites. But most people say they don't think it's actually true. And that is that Mary King's close and other closes were actually basically walled up brick by brick and locked all the people that were dying at the plague inside.
00:20:47
Speaker
so that they couldn't spread it to all of the wealthier people in Edinburgh and that they were all left there to die. I don't think that actually happens, but it's possible that that is a rumor that went around at the time to tell to let people know that they were like the government was trying to stop the spread. So horrifying, evil, hopefully didn't happen, but possibly did.
00:21:17
Speaker
But maybe did. Oh, maybe did. Who knows? Cool. So anyways, back to 18th century. They yeah, they closed off most of the clothes. Most of it was demolished and just completely buried underground. And they actually I wish I could remember this because now I'm just remembering a fact that I heard on my tour. And that is that they thought that nothing of it was left, but
00:21:43
Speaker
They were digging at some point, I can't remember when, and they found some preserved parts of the clothes that they then turned into these tours that you could go on. But that wasn't the original intention. The original intention was just to use it as a foundation, completely demolish and bury it, build on top of it. And the reason there was a tourist attraction there is basically by accident.
00:22:08
Speaker
that some of it survived. Oh, oh, it was during World War II. Yeah. So they were trying to dig to make bomb shelters and they found parts of the clothes that were like basically completely intact. That's what it was.
Ghost Story of Annie
00:22:24
Speaker
So now I'm going to take you through the main ghost story. There's a few ghost stories, but the one that I heard about on my tour, and the one that has the biggest visual impact is the story of Annie's doll.
00:22:42
Speaker
So in 1992 a Japanese medium named Aiko Gibo came to visit the real Mary King's close like on a tour basically because she was making a film about haunted places in Britain and she stepped inside one of the rooms and she said she could
00:23:05
Speaker
feel a huge swell of pain and unhappiness somewhere in the room. She got to the doorway. She said, I cannot enter. It's too strong. There's a child here. And she said the child is tugging on her on my pant leg and she won't let go. She said, I can't go into that specific. I know.
00:23:28
Speaker
She then said that the child had been separated from her parents. She wants to go home and she seems very confused about why she's here. And she is confused about where her parents are. She doesn't know what's going on. And she said that
00:23:45
Speaker
this pain is like haunting that room very strongly. So eventually, Gibo goes fully inside the room. She starts communicating with the girl's spirits near the fireplace that's in there. And as she's talking to her, Annie says that she had lost her favorite doll and she's heartbroken about it. She's like, I've lost my family, but I've also lost my favorite doll.
00:24:10
Speaker
So Gibo left the close, went up into the streets, bought a doll like a like a Barbie doll and brought it down into the close again and gave it to her. And Gibo said that as soon as she did that, the child had an immense feeling of comfort and that as long as the doll remained there, the room wouldn't be disturbed by her spirit anymore because she could feel some comfort and some peace.
00:24:42
Speaker
So from that point, it became a tradition here. And of course, they told me not to take any pictures on this tour. Did you? I absolutely took a picture of this, so I will post it on Instagram. Are you going to get in trouble? Will you be tracked down? What are you going to do? What are you going to do to me?
00:25:00
Speaker
Delete that. Delete that. So people from all over the world now, because this story has become so renowned since the 90s, that people now leave toys and dolls for Annie in this room. So when you go in, and it's weird because like you kind of see it before you hear the story on the tour and you walk in and there's just
00:25:24
Speaker
this huge pile of toys. And some of them look extremely old and dirty. Some of them look newer. There's a SpongeBob or a frickin' Rastafarian banana. And then there's all these spooky looking porcelain dolls. It's all this stuff. And so people continue to leave stuff for her. Oh, also money. Sometimes people leave money for her.
00:25:48
Speaker
to the point that they actually like don't keep it all out there anymore. Like, I think they have like some storage because people just keep leaving stuff. And and yeah, and then but the one sad thing. So the original doll that Iko Gibo brought was stolen sometime during the pandemic when they started doing tours again, which is such a bummer.
00:26:14
Speaker
So somebody said the original doll. They did replace it like all these people online like kind of worked together to find this rep like another one of these dolls from the 90s. I'm obsessed. I know like I just love internet people and they got her another one but it just I'm like who would do that like come on people.
00:26:35
Speaker
Okay, and then there is like one more story that I don't know that well. But I'll just give you the gist. So, so after the plague, but before the building of the Royal Exchange, there was a couple if I knew their names, I would tell you but honestly, I don't remember. There was a couple that moved into the into Mary King's close.
00:26:59
Speaker
And at this point, it was already very known because of the plague that this place was very haunted. So the wife already wasn't thrilled about moving there, but the husband was like, this is the place we can afford. This is what I bought. Apparently, it was so haunted there that they had a living maid that had lived with them previously and the maid refused to move there and quit because she said it's too haunted there. I can't do it. So the first bit of time that they were there,
00:27:29
Speaker
Everything seemed fine. And then one night, the wife wakes up and she sees a gray, spooky, translucent figure standing in front of her with its arms stretched out towards her. Not good. I hate that. And then so she screams and immediately passes out
00:27:57
Speaker
which I think I would maybe do as well. Her husband finds her, wakes her up. It's like, what's going on? She tells him what she saw. And he's like, this was a bad dream. This didn't happen. Blah, blah, blah. Then she sees the figure again. He turns. He sees it.
00:28:17
Speaker
And this time, the gray figure has a child kind of birthing out of its head. So now there's multiple ghosts in one being with all of their arms stretched out towards them in pain and basically saying, help me, help me, help me. That's the vibe. I don't think they were speaking, but that was the vibe.
00:28:40
Speaker
And then one of the figure's hands reaches into the husband's chest and the wife is horrified, but she tries to help. She reaches and she grabs the ghost's hand. Out of the chest? And she rips it out of her husband's chest. The ghost disappears. She looks down into her hand because she feels something wet.
00:29:09
Speaker
And she is holding her husband's heart. Nope. I don't think that one's true, but I heard it, so I thought I would tell you. That is a really fun one. That is intense. And also, can you imagine if you just had a heart in your hand? No, thank you.
00:29:33
Speaker
It feels like Game of Thrones, I guess. Isn't that where she eats the heart? Or Vampire Diaries. Did you ever watch Vampire Diaries? I never did. Ah, they do it on the show all the time. Like when a vampire is trying to kill somebody, they just like rip their heart out. They love to do it on Vampire Diaries. Which is easy. Just a little easy to grab it out.
00:29:52
Speaker
But yeah, so that's that's basically it. That's the real Mary Kings Close, an underground city with a ghost story where probably a lot of pain and suffering took place. And yeah, it was it was cool to see in person. Very interesting tour.
00:30:08
Speaker
And that's all I learned. I love it. I think that was so wild in so many ways, but I always love all the stuff around the plague. I just feel like it's like no time you have like real history and it's dark and it's crazy. People are wearing crow masks. Exactly. Exactly.
Pittsburgh Ghost Bomber Mystery
00:30:42
Speaker
Okay, so I'm doing a topic that was sent to me by my actually my great aunt, I think sent it over to me. All of my family I know all of my extended family like they all talk about the podcast. And it's so sweet. And so she sent over this story to me it is they're all from Pittsburgh.
00:31:02
Speaker
So it's the mystery of Pittsburgh's ghost bomber, and it is an unsolved mystery. I love it. So you're going to have a disappointing end. But anyway, on January 31st, 1956, Major William Dotson and five crew and passengers were flying over Pittsburgh on a routine on a routine training flight from the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
00:31:32
Speaker
to pick up a cargo of airplane parts at Olmsted Air Force Base in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Big cross-country trip. They were also going to deliver a couple of the passengers to an airport in Maryland, but the crew was mostly military people, so Dotson, Captain John Jameson. What a good name. Captain Steve Tabak.
00:31:54
Speaker
Staff Sergeant Walter Soucy, Airman Second Class Charles Smith, as well as passengers Captain J.P. Ingraham and Master Sergeant Alfred Altman. So during the cross-country flight, the plane had to refuel at an Air Force Bank base in Oklahoma.
00:32:12
Speaker
and then again at an Air Force Base in Michigan. And along the way, it didn't have any mechanical difficulties. In Michigan, they actually were told like it's going to be a little bit until we get more fuel here. So they decided to skip the weight.
00:32:28
Speaker
and take off because they only needed about half of the current fuel supply that they had left, so they felt super safe. They only needed 375 gallons to make it the next little bit that they had to go.
00:32:43
Speaker
But at around 4 p.m. on January 31st, the crew reported a loss of fuel and requested permission to land at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport. So then then they're like watching and the fuel is still not going to last. So they asked to land at the Allegheny County Airport.
00:33:03
Speaker
And then at 4.11 PM, both of his engines died, which feels very like from you to triangle to me. But anyway. Yeah, absolutely. Like something, they pass through something and it all shut down. Exactly. So the co-pilot, Captain Jameson, transmitted a Mayday and there were no airstrips nearby. So Dotson actually had to try and land.
00:33:27
Speaker
And they're gonna kill me because I don't know how to say this. Monongalia River? Monongalia River, I think is what it is.
00:33:35
Speaker
and they glided over a bridge. It's now the homestead Gray's Bridge, and they landed in the river in like a neighborhood of Pittsburgh. And so there were eyewitnesses that like saw the plane go down and very spooky. All six passengers initially survived the crash. Oh, yes. So great. Not what I expected. No. So they stayed afloat for 10 to 15 minutes.
00:34:05
Speaker
But as it began to sink, the crew members had to swim to floating logs and get whatever they could to try to stay afloat.
00:34:15
Speaker
But sadly, two men actually died in this, like waiting for someone to come save them. It was, you know, January, as I mentioned, the water was freezing. So there were actually like two different, I don't know, there were two different like things on websites that I saw, where one said that they died trying to like swim to shore, either like drowning or, you know, just like trying to
00:34:40
Speaker
get out of there. Then another website I saw said that they died of hypothermia in the cold water because obviously very cold. Is that a bad way to go? No. Hypothermia? I feel like I've heard that drowning isn't that bad, but I don't know. I don't know. I feel like I'd be so scared if I was drowning. I don't know. Maybe I'd be scared if I was freezing. I would definitely be scared if I was burning though. That would be the worst one for sure. I think burning would be so, so bad.
00:35:08
Speaker
Anyway, sorry, guys. Yeah, I don't know. I thought I saw something about drowning and there's a blissful moment when you lose oxygen. I thought there was something about hypothermia where at a certain point you're not actually cold anymore. You don't even feel it anymore. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
00:35:28
Speaker
I'll go watch the thing. Go ahead. Yeah, truly. But the creepy thing about those two men is that their bodies weren't found until months later. So I don't know how far away they got or why their bodies were so far, but they did not find their bodies for a few months.
00:35:44
Speaker
But anyway, in the next few hours, there was a boat, basically a coast guard, a big boat that's called the Forsythia. It's called a coast guard cutter, which I had to look up because I was like, what's a cutter? It's just a big boat. So it snagged a wing of the submerged plane while it was dragging its anchor by, or I guess maybe dropping its anchor.
00:36:05
Speaker
But the line slipped and so the plane slid to the bottom of the river and was never seen again. So this is the mystery.
00:36:16
Speaker
So just to give you some stats. Yeah, so they continued looking. The US Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers continued for two weeks, but they never found the plane. And some things to know. The plane was 15 feet tall, and the river was only 20 feet deep. So how did it go missing? Where'd it go? It's like 20 feet is not that deep. It's like double a deep end. I feel like you'd be able to see it. Yes.
00:36:44
Speaker
It's very strange. And so there were, and there are a lot of conspiracy theories going around that, you know, like this was during the Cold War era. So like conspiracy theories were just rampant at that time. So something that the plane was carrying dangerous or mysterious cargo and that the US military like secretly went and recovered it so that nobody would find it and see what was aboard.
00:37:11
Speaker
Some think that the plane could have been carrying a nuclear weapon or even a UFO, because it was coming from Vegas, so they're saying from Area 51. Oh, interesting. Others say that the plane was carrying Soviet agents, or others said Las Vegas showgirls to entertain the senators in DC.
00:37:36
Speaker
So there's a lot of theories, but other than the US recovering it immediately and secretly, some also believe that the river was so polluted that it corroded the plane and that it just fell apart basically until it was just like engines and landing gear, the website is. That feels like that would take a while though, right? I would think. I don't think it would happen immediately. Yeah.
00:38:03
Speaker
Or some say that there was a gravel pit that it sunk into and now 40 years later, all this sediment has filled it and buried the plane. But I still don't think it really makes sense for why they couldn't find it in that first two weeks. And I am in the camp that maybe the government or the military just got it out and didn't tell anybody because that just feels too crazy.
00:38:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's I feel like what would be I mean, I also just started watching X-Files again. And so my brain is like, well, the government had to get it because they don't want you to know anything. I really think I just think I don't know. I'm like, why else? What else would have happened to it? I can't say sentences. What else have happened to? I was just there's a meme going around that was like, nothing is funnier than when your best friend mispronounces a word.
00:38:56
Speaker
This podcast is your best friend mispronouncing a word. Absolutely. I did it already on this episode today. It's amazing, all of it. A mystery. So a mystery. And I will say in more recent years, there have been teams of volunteers trying to find it. There's a group that's called the B25 Recovery Group, and they tried to find it.
00:39:21
Speaker
But they had extensive research, sonar scanners, remote controlled cameras, and no evidence of the plane. Wow. That's wild. It honestly is a crazy mystery. It's a crazy story. There's probably more conspiracy theories and things you can look into, but I thought it was interesting. I thought it was scary. It is. I haven't heard a good disappearing plane story in a while. Right. It's a good one.
00:39:48
Speaker
That's a scary thing that happens. Like how does something so big disappear? I don't know. And in such shallow water. In such shallow water. Remember the submarine? That was freaking crazy. I still, I mean. That was a cultural moment. It was a cultural moment. That we will never forget. I loved it. I mean, I didn't love it for them. That's really sad.
00:40:07
Speaker
No, I know. But it was just it was like it was what's the word addicting like you like you wanted to know about it. Like you couldn't help but follow it. Yes, it was it was just addicting. Yeah. Well, anyway, that's a very short and sweet today. No, I love it. I think we did great. Don't we always? Yeah, we just pat each other on the back. We don't even know. We just do great. But thank you all for listening. We hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares.
00:40:36
Speaker
Bye!