Society & Culture & Entertainment Other - Entertainment

Strange Tales 16: Which Story is False?

Play the game: Read the stories and decide which one is false


IT'S GAME TIME ONCE AGAIN! If you are a student of the paranormal, you know well that there are many events that take place around this world that defy rational explanation. That's why it's sometimes difficult to tell fact from fiction - hence, the idea behind this game.
Presented below and on the following three pages are four stories. Three of them have been documented by reputable authors as being true.

One of them, however, is completely made up by me. Your task is to read all four stories and then vote for the story you think is the one I invented. Good luck!
STORY #1: THE WRONGED PILOT'S GHOST

The year was 1913 and aviation was still new, but airplanes had come a long way since that first flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903. Yet many planes were experimental, and the men required to test them were made of the same brave "right stuff" that later defined the test pilots of the early space program. One such pilot was Lt. Desmond Arthur, who was assigned to Britain's Montrose Air Training Station.

When a newly designed plane arrived at Montrose, Arthur was eager to test it out, despite a mechanic's pessimism that the plane was constructed strongly enough. Without hesitation, however, Arthur climbed into the cockpit and headed down the runway for the plane's maiden flight. At about 4,000 feet, Arthur put the plane into a roll when disaster struck. One of the plane's wings came off and the ship went crashing to the ground, killing Arthur.

An investigation concluded that the accident was due to pilot error and not because of any defect in the plane. But Arthur - or rather, Arthur's ghost - was not going to let that decision stand.

Shortly after the report was published, Arthur's ghost appeared to a mechanic at Montrose while he was working on another plane. The ghost was silent, the mechanic told his superiors, but showed great anger in its face and gestures, as if he were shouting. The spirit also appeared to a Second Lieutenant, who saw the phantom dissolve into a wall, and days later to two senior officers who saw the Montrose ghost wearing pilot's gear angrily, if silently, shouting and gesticulating at them before disappearing.

Clearly, Lt. Arthur was not happy with the report that blamed him for the crash of the airplane, and his ghost became so well known that many called for a reinvestigation of the case.

Finally, in 1916 the editor of Britain's leading aviation magazine, Aeroplane, with the aid of another legendary pilot, Commander Perrin, convinced the Air Ministry to reopen the case. The new investigation concluded that the accident was not the result of pilot error, but rather faulty construction of the airplane, and those conclusions were officially entered into the Parliamentary record.

Two months later, in January 1917, the Montrose ghost materialized for the last time, appearing to three officers, all of whom testified that the spirit of Lt. Desmond Arthur was smiling broadly. He had been vindicated.

Next story:Swallowed by a Whale

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