What Happened to the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach?
September 15, 2021
What is the Full Malignant(2021) Plot?
September 21, 2021Temporal Time Slip on the RMS Queen Mary
Listen to the podcast episode below or read on for the full Copper Shock Horror Episode!
The Intro Before The Story
Hello Constant listener. There are many affectionate terms for people who seem to have a little bit extra when it comes to the other side of the veil. They’re “sensitive”, “tuned”, they “Perceive.”
Spokane Washington has its own local history of dancing near that divide. A famous occurrence had been a tragedy at the Davenport Hotel in 1920. An out-of-town visitor walked onto the glass skylight and fell through the ceiling to her death in a rain of glass. She now roams its halls. She’s not alone in company either. To quote to Spokesman-Review Newspaper. “The Davenport has more spirits than a state liquor store.”
Moviesonmain.org is showing "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" in downtown Midland, Michigan as part of their outdoor film series. Viewers are invited to participate in a brand-new Jumanji experience at the event, which is sponsored by Ieuter Insurance Group. Four high school students find an ancient video game system and, after choosing an avatar, are thrust into the dangerous world of Jumanji. They have to face their anxieties and make their way through the dangerous forest in order to escape and return to reality. This action-packed movie, which stars Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, and Kevin Hart, guarantees exhilarating entertainment for everyone. Thus, gather your loved ones, pack blankets and seats, and get ready to enjoy the thrill of "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle."
But in another unusual case for Washington in 1982, a different local woman was profiled by that same newspaper. She had described conversations she’d had with a person belonging to the Sixth Realm. She conversed with a being named “Af”.
To quote Juddy Laddon the woman who experienced all these conversations: “It’s not actually a voice. What I hear is a stream of thoughts which are not my own. It’s real clear. It’s just as if it were spoken to me. I can feel expression, emphasis, exclamation. I can feel laughter. I can feel the good humor,”
The Spokesman Review also described when and where these conversations would occur. “Her sessions with Af would last as long as two hours and generate as many as 2,000 written words, with Laddon transcribing Af’s coherent and verbose descriptions. Af would visit Laddon anywhere – in her downtown office or at Riverfront Park. All she had to do was clear her mind.”
The conversations she wrote down are available in a book for purchase if you’re curious. It’s titled “Beyond the Veil” By Judy Laddon. It carries themes that there are a number of alternate universes to ours living parallel in tiered realms.
Interestingly enough, Judy isn’t the first person to present such “After Life Ideas” and comparing that to “alternate realms” or that death is another form of life in an “alternate reality”. There have been some critics that parallel her written work to that of a priest from the 1950’s. Titled “Life After Death in the Worlds Unseen” by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson. A priest who is remembered as writing fiction, however some wonder if his work held more grip on real stakes than realized.
“There is a surprising number of people who do not realize they have passed from the Earth in the death of the physical body. Resolutely they will not believe that they are what the Earth calls 'dead'. They are dimly aware that some sort of change has taken place,”
I'm Tasha Wheelhouse and this is Copper Shock.
I Experienced A Time Slip On the RMS Queen Mary
I’m a California native, who grew up with strawberry fields nearby my house in the 1960’s. My parents weren’t hippies. In fact, my father was what I would describe as a straight laced remnant of Victorian age upbringing. You see, he was 10 years old when the Titanic sank, he remembered hearing it on the radio and he once & told me about it.
I was the youngest of 8 children, and my parents were absolutely shocked when they discovered they were pregnant with me. He was 60 something, and mother was 50 something. I loved living in California at that early age. I remember hearing about when the Queen Mary was coming to dock at Long Beach, and my parents wanted to make a day trip with me a year after it arrived.
1968 was a good year. There are a lot of comforting things I still think about when I was a 10-year-old kid in SoCal. Bench seats rolled down windows with a crank, and listening to Love Is Blue coming through Mom and Dad’s radio.
I remember seeing The Queen Mary as we drove up to a nearby lot to park and walk over. She really was a behemoth of a thing. Basically, a skyscraper turned on it’s side. As we walked through the onboarding plank bolted to the dock I looked down the side of it as we walked on. This was something mind-bending to me at the time. To look down the side of the ship’s painted metal and see it stretch for a thousand feet. Later I’d learn that it was 4/5ths the height of the empire state building when stood up on end.
Hanna muses on the transient nature of weekends as they fly by on a Sunday night. It brought up memories of her prior employment prior to her promotion, since she had worked late on Saturday. She provides a quick update on her correspondence, noting that she has been getting letters from all over the world and that she has taken the time to reply to some of them. In the sweltering summer heat, Hanna makes a healthier veggie frittata and worries about how her eating patterns will hold up with her hectic work schedule. Thanks to accrued airmiles, exciting travel plans are in the works, including flights to Miami and San Antonio for a New Year's break. While understanding the need for a rest after the vacation, Hanna looks forward to the experiences that lie ahead.
The day itself was fun. We got to roam about and take a look at the views of the ship. I remembered that day with my folks fondly. My father died before I could graduate high school, and my mother got very sick right after that. I worked a few full-time jobs to help with medical bills, and I had a long time to say goodbye to my mother. God Rest her. Perhaps I’ll tell you more stories about her in the future. She was a spitfire when she wanted to be, and I loved her for it.
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“Happy Honey?”
“Oh very, You know how much it makes me think of family when we come.”
My husband smiled and reached out to pat my arm lovingly as he also sat down his roller case.
“We better get going unless you want to miss all the good rides.” He smiled at me.
“I’ll beat you to it old man.” I grinned and did a little hop toward the door. I was feeling giddy and happy to be on vacation with my favorite person.
“I’m sure Knotts is big enough for the both of us.” He gestured for me to stand up and walk toward the room door connecting to the hall. I stood and began to exit. My husband gave a playful swat on my bum as I walked by. Didn’t matter if we were in our 50’s, I loved it when he’d tease and flirt with me all through our marriage. I turned around and gave him a kiss. He gave my hand three squeezes and we left the room. We could hear the ship's horns wailing on the decks above us.
“Oh! It must be 3 o’clock.” my husband Thomas smiled at the ceiling of the hall as we walked on.
We returned later that evening totally exhausted. The day was hot, and we were just happy to return to a small room with AC already blasting. I dressed down and so did he. We crawled into bed and did our normal routines before falling asleep. I sat up with a book in my hands just expecting him to fall asleep next to me as I read. But instead, he sat up next to me under the covers. He gently took my book from my hands.
“What page are you on?” He asked
“Chapter 13, right here.” I pointed to the paragraph I'd left off on.
He then took a deep breath and began to read out loud to me:
“‘Three,’ Douglas now said, half aloud. Three in the morning. In the meadow, the tents, the carnival waited. Waited for someone, anyone to wade along the grassy surf. The great tents filled like bellows. They softly issued forth exhalations of air that smelled like an ancient yellow beast.”
I listened intently to my husband's voice. I loved Ray Bradbury books, and often go back to revisit them over the years. After a few more pages, we eventually tucked ourselves to sleep for a rest.
(Giggles)
Both my husband and I woke abruptly.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered over.
“Yup. Happy ghost.”
I started to laugh and cuddled into him.
“That was loud enough it just woke me right up.” I said.
“Me too.” He wrapped a warm arm under my neck and pulled me close to him.
“I thought I heard it over there.”
I pointed across his body to the old intercom box sitting near the ceiling.
“Hmm Hmm. I wonder if the crew likes to pull small pranks.”
“It sounded like a woman.”
“We’ll have to ask about it on our Ghost tour of the ship tomorrow.” I yawned and tucked my arm under the blanket still holding on to him.
As I drifted off I remember passively thinking how odd it was that my laugh sounded similar to the one we heard.
We fell asleep again without incident and woke up the next morning. After finding some breakfast we went to go claim our tickets for the ship’s ghost tour. It was fascinating to have the guide show us not just spooky stuff on the ship but also that of historical significance. There was a hallway painted in beige and green that was still leftover from the World War II days when it was used as a medical ship, Then it was later a military transport of soldiers.
The tour guide pointed at an intercom box and was mentioning some facts about it (to tell you the truth I don’t remember the fact.) I was so distracted about the memory of the laugh coming back from the night before. I raised my hand.
“Excuse me. Where do those lead?”
The tour guide gave me a quizzical look. “How do you mean?”
“Uhm, The sound system. Is there a button you can press to make announcements in a control room or something?”
“Oh, sorry no. Those don’t go anywhere. They were all unhooked during the last renovation about ten years back. They don't work anymore, I'm sorry I won’t be able to demonstrate for you.”
Thomas and I gave each other an immediate and meaningful look.
We continued to follow the group from location to location, and arrived at the famed first class pool from the R deck. We looked over the tiled and empty pool as gell lights lit to show the space at a more ominous representation. After all this was the ghost tour.
“If you look down that way in the bottom right corner of the pool.” The guide gestured to the far side on the lower balcony at the head of the pool stairs. “You’ll see the entrance to the original Ladies Changing rooms. That’s where paranormal experts speculate where the vortex exists to allow ghosts to come through.” His voice echoed and bounced easily off of the entire hall made of stone and tile. Frankly between the spooky soundtrack blasting on stereos and the guide yelling I needed to cover my ears a bit.
“You ok hon?” Thomas asked.
I nodded without saying a word. I was feeling a headache coming on. At last, after the guide had exhausted his whole spiel, he asked the group to exit the first class pool room for the next section of the tour. The lower decks of the ship. I honestly began to feel sick to my stomach, while my head pounded, I continued on to the boiler room. As we walked down I had a feeling the tour would be over soon.
The guide pointed up to a painted line on the side of the wall.
“You see that line?” He pointed up way high. The painted line was about 2 stories above our heads. That is about 20 feet below the surface of the ocean water.”
If felt my stomach twist a little bit when he said that. Give me ghosts, give me monsters, but don’t threaten me with an opportunity to drown below decks of thousands of pounds of water, and tonnes of metal. I felt my anxiety pick up even more as he was describing the maritime disaster involving the Queen Mary. She had split open her bow as she ran over another vessel killing everyone on the opposite ship and drowning more than a few men in the very room we stood in.
“Honey, you're not looking so good.” Thomas squeezed my hand.
“I think I've got a migraine.”
“I think we’re almost done.”
I nodded to him and held onto his hand tightly.
After the tour we heard the 3 o’Clock Ship horns.
“May we take a small nap?” I asked. He gave my hand three squeezes, and we walked back to the room. As we lay down I heard a sharp gasp of air near my ear.
“You ok?” I turned over and Thomas was sleeping heavily.
He didn’t appear to be awake at all, as I laid back down I wondered if he was the one to make that sound at all.
A few hours later we woke up together and got ready for the evening. We walked over to Sir Winstons. I was looking forward to our big anniversary dinner. As we walked up to the restaurant I could hear the restaurant pianist playing “As Time Goes By.”
“Reservation under Greene?” I said to the head waiter.
“Yes of course. This way please.”
As I walked behind the waiter I looked around me. The whole place was opulent and covered in deep warm wood colors. Shade covered lamps were placed periodically down the walls. We were seated at a small square table near the bar. We were handed our menu’s and asked if there were any drinks we’d like to have. Both of us asked for sparkling water with lime. He nodded and left us at our table.
“So? What looks good?” Thomas asked as he held up the menu. I scanned the menu and smiled as I looked at the description for Baked Stuffed Lobster.
“Oh! How about this?” I held over my menu to show Thomas.
Everything shifted.
As if I had succumbed to a vertigo-like state. I began to feel myself slide away from Thomas. Not physically exactly, my chair stayed in the exact same spot. My surroundings in the restaurant began to move and melt to my sight. I felt like I needed to blink a few times to help clear my vision. But as I did I started to see myself and feel where I was and panicked.
I was becoming an old woman. An old woman alone in a reality where Thomas was dead, and had been dead for many years during the “moment’ of time I experienced. God only knows how much I can express to you that all of it was as real as me sitting in this exact moment writing about it to you. I turned my head to where Thomas had been sitting an instant ago. He was so far away from me now, sliding farther and farther. I felt like I was looking down the wrong side of a telescope.
With a sharp gasp of air, I reached out to him and squeezed his hand hard pulling him back to me at the table, my other hand reached out toward his chest. As soon as I felt his shirt I grabbed it tightly. The second my fingers dug into the fabric and bunched into my fist, the whole restaurant returned to the flash of time we had both come from. Thomas gave me such a dazed look but also, he didn’t look surprised at me holding on to him. I eased the grip I had on his hand, and let go of his shirt. He gave three knowing squeezes and then kissed the top of my hand.
“Honey, the strangest thing just came over me.” I said.
“Me too actually.” I looked up at him.
“Tell me?” I asked.
He furrowed his brow. “You’re gonna think it's nuts.”
After what I’d just been through my mind was totally open.
“I was somewhere else…” he trailed off.
“I think I was too. That's why I grabbed you.”
He nodded and furrowed his brow as he crossed his arms. He then took a deep sigh and continued. “I don’t exactly know where I was. What I do know is I saw a lot of men around me in old looking uniforms. Brown hats, brown shirts, and pants. I think they were soldiers. I could feel the engine of the ship rumbling below me too. As you pulled me back here...” He was very specific when he said the word Here gesturing to the place where he was sitting. “I got the strangest inclination that none of them knew they were dead. I did, but they didn’t.”
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I’ve been away gathering more original stories to tell. And this week will hopefully prove to be unusual. Describing alternate existences is a hard sell. And yet there are countless books, songs, and entertainments describing alternate reality experiences. Find more information on coppershock.com.
