Note: I wasn't sure where to put this. Ghost stories seemed too frivolous for "World Events", and yet "Gossip" doesn't seem right either. If the powers that be know of a better slot for this, please feel free to move it. I felt the subject of ghosts would interest a segment of the DA membership which is why I decided to submit it as news.

Ghosts Haunting Flight 93 Crash Site?

Grown men who work as security officers and are known to be tough guys started seeing ghosts at the crash site of United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania soon after the plane crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. Hired to guard the site 24/7, security officers with R.A.C., a rent-a-cop outfit, reported that strange things started happening on this sacred plot of ground they were charged with protecting. There were heroes aboard Flight 93--ordinary people turned heroes who wrestled with the hijackers and took the plane down in an empty field in Pennsylvania rather than its intended target in Washington, D.C., now thought to be the U.S. Capitol. The 44 people on board perished as the plane plowed into the ground forming a mammoth crater and a huge fireball.


The site is protected by a gate, which is about a mile from the crash location. In addition, there is a house trailer that was supplied by the FBI and state police that is located right next to the crash site. A few months after the crash, guard Robert Wagstaff told EarthFiles reporter Linda Moulton Howe about the ghosts.


Ghost Story No. 1: The Game of Cards
One night after they had searched the area thoroughly and found nothing out of order, Wagstaff and his partner decided to pass the time playing cards in the trailer. Someone knocked on the door. They opened it--and no one was there. So they went outside the trailer to do another search. They found no one and assumed it was the wind that made the knocking sound. "So, we go back into the trailer and we got our coffee and we went to sit back down to play some cards," he told EarthFiles. "We didn't have any chairs set up yet. Well, when we went to sit back down, one of the chairs was already set up and we didn't set it up. I don't know where the chair came from. I don't know who put it there." Wagstaff and his partner looked at each other and shrugged. He said they tried to ignore it. They started playing cards. And then they heard muffled voices outside the trailer. "It sounded like a group of people. It sounded like more than one. They all sounded like they was outside on the back half of the trailer. So we hurried out and ran outside, and we looked and there was no footprints in the snow," he said. Wagstaff has a theory about this: He thinks the hero spirits were herding the terrorist spirits into the trailer using it as a prison, and the heroes are still being heroes--protecting the guards from the terrorist spirits.


Ghost Story No. 2: "So, now what?"
The trailer spooked him so much, that Wagstaff guarded the site from the main gate while sitting in his car. He was there one night at about 3 a.m. He had been alternately working a crossword puzzle and staring at the gate, when he laid his head back to rest for a minute. Then he heard a male voice distinctly say: "So, now what?" No one was there. "It sounded just like somebody was in my car, like somebody was in the passenger seat and I was in the driver's seat. That's how clear it was, but there was nobody there!" he told EarthFiles.


Ghost Story No. 3: Who's Sitting On the Car?
Another night he was at the main gate sitting in his car--a 1987 Cougar--with the engine running. It had just stopped raining. All of a sudden, it felt as if someone jumped up to sit on the trunk of the car. No one was in sight. He got out to look. No one was there. No tracks or footprints were in the mud. No scuffs were on the car, marring the dirt and rainwater. Nothing. But while Wagstaff was staring at the trunk of his car, the rear end of the Cougar jumped back up. "Like whatever was on it came off," he said.

Ghost Story No. 4: The Woman With the Light Brown Hair
Wagstaff says he saw a ghost near the main gate, which is about a mile from the crash site. "I seen this woman as clear as day," Wagstaff told EarthFiles. He said she was walking toward the main gate from the crash site at about 4 a.m. one night. There was a full moon and a lot of light. She was wearing a blue baseball jersey and blue jeans. She had light brown hair and wore glasses. She didn't have a coat. She vanished into thin air when Wagstaff approached. He said, "She totally disappeared. She didn't like fade out or nothing. It was almost as if I blinked, and she wasn't there no more." But he saw her again--in photographs of the Flight 93 passengers.