Читать книгу Ghosthunting Florida - Dave Lapham - Страница 16

Everglades National Park is a vast, million-and-a-half acre wilderness, which covers most of south Florida. It’s ironic that the state’s most populated area lies just to the east of its most isolated.

On the evening of December 29, 1972, Eastern Flight 401, a Lockheed L1011 Tri-Star, was flying into Miami International Airport. Captain Robert Loft and Second Officer Don Repo began their approach and were lowering the landing gear when the captain noticed that the nose gear light and some of the other landing gear lights were not illuminated. That indicated that the nose and other landing gear were not down and locked in position. Captain Loft so informed the control tower, which directed him to circle the airport at an altitude of two thousand feet.

Although the altimeter and auto-pilot indicators were both lit, the crew realized too late that the plane was rapidly descending. The last, chilling words from the flight recorder were the captain’s: “What? We’re at two thousand feet, right … Hey, what’s happening here? Tower … Impact!” Then Flight 401 disappeared. The plane had crashed into Shark River Slough in the Everglades. Ninety-eight of the 163 people aboard, including the entire crew, perished.

Shortly after the accident, an Eastern Airline executive was flying to Miami on another Tri-Star similar to the Flight 401 plane. He sat in first class next to an Eastern Airline pilot in uniform, and assumed the man was headed home. Not unusual. But the pilot sat staring out the window, even when the executive tried to converse with him. Finally, the pilot turned to face him, and, aghast, the executive recognized the face of Captain Robert Loft. Instantly, the ghost evaporated.

Immediately after the crash, cleanup crews went into the Everglades to search for human remains and remove wreckage. The crews worked late into the night under the strong glare of large search lights, and would often hear screams, moans, and whimpering coming from the slough. Very unnerving.

One evening, a crew member in a johnboat heard moans coming from an area thick with saw grass. He guided his boat to the spot where he thought the sounds were coming from. As he plowed into the grass, he was horrified to see in the dark, tannin-stained waters the eyeless, bleached-white face of a man, his mouth open as if screaming. The crewman quickly poled his boat back out of the grass and screamed to his companions, “I found a body! I found a body!” When the others rushed to his aid, they saw nothing. There was no body.

Over the years since the crash, many have seen both Captain Loft and Second Officer Don Repo on flights to south Florida. And even to this day, airboat captains who run tours to the site hear moans and see ghastly faces in the dark waters of these haunted swamps in the Everglades.