RMS Queen Mary

In 1942, the Queen Mary rammed and sank her own escort ship HMS Curacoa, killing 337 British sailors, and kept sailing because wartime rules forbade stopping. Now a hotel in Long Beach with an estimated 150 ghosts, she's home to Stateroom B340, which was sealed for 30 years after guests kept fleeing in the night.

On October 2, 1942, the RMS Queen Mary rammed her own escort ship and kept going. HMS Curacoa had been zigzagging alongside the troop-packed ocean liner in the North Atlantic when the two vessels miscalculated each other's turns. The Queen Mary, doing 28.5 knots and carrying over 10,000 American soldiers, sliced the light cruiser in half. Crewman Ernest Watson shouted "She's going to ram us!" in the seconds before impact. Wartime protocol forbade stopping for any reason, so she sailed on while the men in the water waited. Of the Curacoa's 430 crew, 337 drowned. Rescue didn't arrive for two hours.

The disaster was classified until after the war, and most people still don't know the Queen Mary, now a floating hotel in Long Beach, killed more British sailors than any German U-boat ever managed. At least 49 deaths have been recorded on board, and paranormal investigators estimate 150 spirits linger in her steel. If you believe that kind of math, this is the most haunted hotel in California.

The worst room is Stateroom B340. It was sealed for 30 years after guests kept fleeing in the middle of the night. Ship logs from 1967 onward record the same complaints over and over: bedsheets yanked off, bathroom faucets turning on by themselves, aggressive knocking inside the walls, a dark figure standing at the foot of the bed. Passenger Walter J. Adamson died in the room under murky circumstances in 1948, and the staff has always suspected he's still in there. The hotel reopened B340 on Friday, April 13, 2018, because of course they did. It comes with a Ouija board and an EMF detector now, marketed as "California's most haunted hotel room."

Down in the bowels of the ship, Door 13 in Shaft Alley is where eighteen-year-old John Pedder got crushed. He was tending the bilge pump during a routine safety drill on July 10, 1966, around 3:55 a.m. The massive watertight door closed on him. He died almost instantly, but the crew started calling him "Half Hatch Harry" because only part of his body made it through. Visitors to Shaft Alley describe a bearded man in a white boiler suit who whistles behind them and asks if they've seen his wrench before disappearing when they turn. A night watchman's German Shepherd once refused to walk past Door 13 and cowered seconds before metallic clanging echoed down the corridor.

The first-class swimming pool, drained and closed for decades, might be the weirdest space on the ship. Wet footprints show up on the dry tile leading from the empty basin to the changing rooms. Women in 1930s-style bathing suits have been seen wandering near the deck. There's a little girl named Jackie who giggles, splashes in the empty pool, and calls for her mother, except paranormal researcher Cher Garman looked into it and couldn't find any record of a child by that name drowning there. Psychics call the changing-room hallway "the center of spiritual energy on the ship."

Senior Second Officer William Eric Stark haunts the main deck near the Captain's cabin. On September 18, 1949, while docked in Southampton, Stark grabbed what he thought was a gin bottle and took two sips of carbon tetrachloride cleaning solvent. He refused the ship surgeon's offer to pump his stomach. "I did not think anything of it," he told his wife. He died five days later, two days before his 31st birthday. Visitors report choking sounds on the deck and a figure in a Cunard officer's uniform still making his rounds.

Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters, and Most Haunted have all filmed aboard. EVPs captured include "What anger" and, more memorably, "Oh, I f***in hate them." Time magazine named the ship one of the "Top 10 Haunted Places on Earth" in 2008. If you want to sleep on her, they'll happily sell you a room. If you want to go looking, they'll sell you a paranormal tour too. Nothing about the Queen Mary is subtle anymore, and maybe that's the point. A ship that rammed its own escort and then won the war probably deserves to be loud in retirement.