These Mysterious Vehicles will give you the Creeps

Whether you believe it or not, stories of cursed, haunted or possessed vehicles are plenty. With Halloween around the corner, it's time to look at some of the most mysterious vehicles of land, air and sea. Writing this made our skin crawl...we hope it does the same to you *evil cackle*.

The Cursed Car

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the catalyst that, after mounting tension, caused World War 1 to erupt. He and his beloved wife were shot in a 1910 Graf & Stift Double Phaeton. It is said that the violence of the event and those that took place after were somehow imbued in the car, claiming 13 lives in the following 12 years.

The next owner of the Graf & Stift, an army captain, crashed into two peasants just nine days after he bought the car. The governor of Yugoslavia, during the time that he owned the cursed vehicle, got into four accidents, in one of which he lost an arm; his non-superstitious friend, a doctor, bought the car from him and six months later, was crushed under it when it overturned. A diamond dealer took ownership of it next...and committed suicide. Then, a Swiss racing driver crashed into a wall while driving the vehicle, got thrown out, and died immediately. A Serbian farmer, who couldn’t switch on the ignition, was towing it in a wagon when the car fell on him. The last owner was a garage owner who, while on the way to a wedding, spun out of control and crashed, killing him and four of his passengers.

The car is today in the War History Museum of Vienna…where no one dares to drive it again.

The Haunted Planes

Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed in December 1972 into a Florida swamp. 101 died, including pilot Bob Loft and flight engineer, Don Repo. It wasn’t the crash site that was haunted, though. Parts of the plane were salvaged and used to built other planes, where soon there were reports of strange sightings.

Apparently, Loft and Repo’s spirits would appear, in lifelike forms, in the passenger seats and sometimes even engage in conversation, and sometimes near the salvaged parts of the 401, before disappearing into thin air.

(L to R): Captain Robert Loft, pilot Albert Stockstill and flight engineer Donald Repo

The Train to Hell

An eight-car train was built in the sixties for the Stockholm Metro Network. While the other trains were painted green, this one was a test unit and never had its aluminium body painted, giving it the name Silverpilen (Silver Bullet).

Up until 1996, it was occasionally used as a back-up train during peak hours. According to passengers’ and subway workers’ accounts, the train has been sighted on unused lines, and any (living) person who stepped on board have claimed to arrive at their destination weeks or months later, if they are lucky enough to reemerge at all. Sometimes, she/he might even end up in Kymlinge, an abandoned subway station, which led to the local saying: “Bara de doda stiger av I Kymlinge” (only the dead gets off at Kymlinge).

The Phantom Bus

In 1934, a car on Cambridge Gardens swerved for no apparent reason, hit a wall and burst into flames, killing the motorist. After the accident, witnesses came forward to testify seeing a phantom bus in the vicinity of the crash. The phantom London bus was a double-decker, numbered seven, which would sometimes be seen barreling down the road, always around 1.15am, without a driver behind the wheel. The last reported sighting of the bus was in May 1990.

The Spooky Submarine

The UB-65 was constructed in 1916 by the Germans, but before completion, it was already plagued by freak accidents. A steel girder that was being hoisted by chains snapped and fell onto two workers: one died instantly while the other was caught under the massive weight, writhing in agony, only to die two hours later. No fault could be found with the chains and no cause as to why they snapped could be found. In a later incident, the engine room was suddenly, inexplicably filled with toxic fumes, killing three engineers who were doing routine checks. Several more unexplained incidents and deaths occurred during the testing stage—including one time when the UB-65 sank to the bottom of the sea with its crew in a panic, only to be able to surface 12 hours with depleted oxygen supply—until the submarine embarked on its maiden voyage in 1917.

Misfortune after misfortune continued to plague the sub. A torpedo exploded while being put in place, killing Second Officer, Lieutenant Richter, whose spirit were sighted by various crew members aboard the UB-65, including by the captain himself. Crew morale were so low and many wanted off the U-Boat that the German Imperial Navy actually ordered an exorcism to be performed on the vessel.

The strange incidents did not occur as often after a new no-nonsense captain took charge, but never completely ceased up until the submarine met its end. In July 2018, it was sighted by an American submarine, on the surface and appearing to be listing. As the Americans prepared to attack, to their surprise, the UB-65 exploded before it was even fired upon. The Americans attributed their good fortune to some malfunction aboard the German sub, but when the wreckage was finally found in 2004, there was no concrete evidence to pinpoint the cause of the mysterious explosion.

The Ship That Never Was

There are many reports of ghost ships, but this one is one of the most mysterious and closest to home. In June of 1947, ships along the Straits of Malacca received a mysterious Morse Code message from the Dutch freighter, Ourang Medan, which read: “All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead” followed by a second radio message “I die”.

The American merchant ship, Silver Star, arrived at the position of the Ourang Medan to attempt a rescue. Upon boarding the seemingly undamaged ship, the Silver Star rescue team did indeed find the crew and captain, and even the dog, dead; their bodies were frozen with arms outstretched, and the look of horror on their faces. The sender of the distress messages was found in the communications room, hand still on the Morse Code machine, eyes and mouth agape. There was no visible wound on any of the bodies. The Silver Star attempted to tow the Ourang Medan, but an explosion soon caused the stricken ship to sink to its watery grave.

Many regard this story as mere seafarers’ legend as no official registration of the Ourang Medan could be found. Some speculated that the Ourang Medan was carrying biological weapons which killed the crew, and therefore it was made as if to have ‘never existed’.

 image credits: The Telegraph; news.com.au; Wikipedia; Lady Vervaine; mysteriousuniverse.org; Beyond Science