This is the first entry of my Encounter Countdown to Halloween. There are only 30 more days until All Hallows Eve!
TWA Flight 514 Crash Site Memorial
VA-601
Bluemont, Virginia
A Haunted Southern Book of Days–1 December
This article is a part of an occasional blog series highlighting Southern hauntings or high strangeness associated with specific days. For a complete listing, see “A Haunted Southern Book of Days.”
Early on a chilly morning in 2004, a long-haul trucker pulled into a closed gas station near the intersection of VA-7 and VA-601 to check his map. It was extremely dark in this rural, mountainous area, though close to the bustle of cities like Winchester, Leesburg, and suburban Washington, D.C.
He was startled by a knock on the door of his cab, turned on the interior light, and rolled down his window. Staring into the dark, chilly morning, he saw a man standing next to his truck oddly wearing an airline uniform.
The man climbed up onto the side of the truck and asked if the trucker could give him a lift. The trucker noticed the TWA insignia on the man’s cap and the four stripes of a captain on the shoulder of his short-sleeved shirt. The man also reeked of kerosene.
“I am with TWA. I have to get to Dulles Airport to work a flight. Please give me a ride. I’ll pay you.”
“Well, how about I give you a ride to the next open store where you can call a taxi?” the trucker responded.
“Okay, thank you.” the captain muttered awkwardly. “He said we could descend.”
The trucker invited him to get in and the captain jumped down off the side of the truck.
As he walked around the front, the captain suddenly vanished. Shaken, the trucker got out of his cab to investigate, even looking under the truck with a flashlight. The captain was nowhere to be seen.
Agitated, the trucker continued his lonely route home pondering his strange encounter, made especially strange when he realized that TWA had gone bankrupt just two years prior. A little research revealed that his experience had occurred a short distance from the crash site of TWA Flight 514 in 1974.
The trucker recounted his story on the Your Ghost Stories website where it was picked up by the late L.B. Taylor, Jr. and included in his 2010 Big Book of Virginia Ghost Stories.
The crash site today, along a wooded stretch of VA-601 on the flanks of Mount Weather, is marked by a small memorial stone set upon a rocky outcropping. It was at this site on the morning of December 1, 1974, the TWA Boeing 727 with 92 souls aboard slammed into this mountain on their descent into Dulles Airport. Miscommunication between the pilot and air traffic control led the plane to shear off the tops of trees before it disintegrated.
Ghost stories concerning the crash site have circulated for some time receiving attention from the nearby Queen City Cryptic Researchers who checked out the site in October of 2018. According to their case file, the group witnessed lights in the woods around the crash site as well as a hearing voices. They also noted feeling a powerful energy there.
Sources
- “Dead Pilot?” Your Ghost Stories. 5 May 2007.
- Rogers, Dawn. “Case File—TWA Flight 514 Crash Site.” Queen City Cryptic Researchers. 22 October 2018.
- Taylor, L.B. Jr. The Big Book of Virginia Ghost Stories. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2010.
- TWA Flight 514. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 1 October 2019.