CASTLE - History’s hulking metal shells draw crowds of thousands each year at Castle Air Museum, triggering the imagination of visitors wondering whose faces once stared out from the cockpits of the old warbirds.

For most, their daydreams are nothing more than flights of fancy, no pun intended.

But a few believers in the paranormal think a face is still staring from the cockpit of a B-29 Superfortress called “Raz’n Hell,” an aircraft made up of parts of three B-29s gathered at the Naval Weapons Center in China Lake in 1980.

“I’d like to think of myself as an open-minded person and I know there are a lot of things we can’t explain,” said Tom Cavallero, former crew chief of the plane. “There are a lot of interesting planes here and this one has its celebrity in the fact that it’s haunted.”

Soon after “Raz’n Hell” was pieced together, workmen and museum officials began relating stories about spooky happenings in and around the old plane.

And whether or not you’re a believer, word about the plane has made it famous.

“People have actually stopped and asked if this is the haunted plane, so the story is out there,” Cavallero said.

Karen Machen, executive assistant at the museum, said a man working to restore the aircraft got a little spooked after asking his friend to hand him a wrench.

“He thought his partner handed him the wrench, but he was somewhere else, smoking a cigarette,” Machen said.

The man Machen thinks may have handed the wrench to the workman is “Arthur,” a ghost whose name was said to have been spelled out one night long ago during a session on a Ouija board.

Another story goes that passers-by who thought that the crew was trying to restore the plane’s electrical system drove by late at night and saw that all the lights were on, Machen said.

The next day, those passers-by congratulated the crew, only to be informed that the electrical system had not yet been restored.

Machen said she even captured a wavery image of Arthur while photographing the planes.

“I don’t think he’s causing any harm to anybody,” she said. “He’s just not at peace yet. He’s not ready to rest.”

Some other believers turned up for a ghost hunt at Castle earlier this month, when members of Ghost Trackers, an organization dedicated to “the research and investigation of ghostly activity,” and members of the Central California Paranormal Investigators joined forces.

And while the team walked Castle’s grounds beneath a full moon from about 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., the ghostliest hours were between 10 p.m. and the early morning hours.

“The theory is that the veil between the earth plain and the other world is thin during a full moon, and during those hours,” said Jackie Meador of CCPI.

Meador and her husband, Mark, used videotape in an attempt to catch footage of potential ghostly energy, while Gloria Young and Jim Carter of Ghost Trackers used a Geiger counter and an electromagnetic field detector to record any unseen traffic.

“We saw at least one entity that we believe might be something,” Mark Meador said. “We saw something unexplainable.”

That unexplainable something showed up on videotape that recorded and reportedly captured the images of a “sprit” that cannot be seen by the naked eye, Meador said.

“Basically, what we’re looking for is a manifestation of spirit energy,” Jackie Meador said.

That energy, she added, usually shows up in the form of orbs or lights.

And Meador believes that “Arthur” sticks around because he likes the digs.

“I think that’s where he’s comfortable,” she said. “It’s probably where he’s happiest.”

Meador said that the crew of Ghost Trackers picked up readings on their Geiger counter inside the cockpit of the plane, in which the other crew videotaped for hours.

“Raz’n Hell” was a bomber during World War II, when it carried 20,000 pounds of bombs into battle, Cavallero said.

“There’s no way we can know every battle these planes were in,” he said. “Not just this plane, but all the planes out here have stories both heroic and tragic.”

Article by: Merced Sun-Star

http://www.mercedsun-star.com/news/newsview.asp?c=80680

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