Erebus Crash Blamed For Antarctica 'ghosts'
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Erebus Crash Blamed For Antarctica 'ghosts'


NEW ZEALAND (AP) - American Allie Barden was sent to work in a stores
building at McMurdo Station, the United States base near New Zealand's
Scott Base, and knew it was empty because it was padlocked from outside
when she arrived.
"As soon as I entered, something was weird," she said.

"I took a couple of steps in (and) the hair on the top of my head stood
on end â€" footsteps upstairs; undeniably footsteps. A slow cadence
of footsteps.
"I froze. It went from the back of the building to the front."
Ross Island is rife with ghostly sightings, often attributed to the 257
victims of the Air New Zealand plane crash on Mount Erebus in 1979,
whose bodies were stored at McMurdo before being returned to New
Zealand.

Sir Edmund Hillary claimed to have been greeted by Sir Ernest
Shackleton's ghost when he visited the polar explorer's hut nearby a few
years ago.
Scott Base winter manager Glenn Powell said there had been no spectral
sightings at the New Zealand base, but Barden, who writes a blog under
the name Sandwichgirl, said there were frequent reports of ghosts 3km
away at McMurdo Station.

"Ghosts haunt McMurdo. I've been hearing about it for ages," Barden
said. "Ghosts from the Erebus plane crash haunt the big gym."
Barden worked in Building 174, where toxic and flammable goods are
stored and which she considered to be "a boring place to haunt", but she
said others claimed to have felt similar spectral visits.
"It's always when we're alone and you can't turn to another person and
say, 'Did you hear that?' Myself and my two co-workers have probably
experienced the same thing, hearing footsteps walking around upstairs,"
she said.

"They don't last very long. The first time I went in there ... I tooled
around, marked some things that needed to go elsewhere, and looked at
things I wanted to open. Then I got a call on the radio to do a quick
thing at another place.
"I went, did that, and came back to 174. The door had been padlocked, so
I knew no-one was inside. As soon as I went inside I knew something was
different, but I wasn't thinking `ghost´ until I heard the footsteps."

When she heard the footsteps, she called a co-worker, who claimed to
have had a similar encounter in the storehouse a few weeks before.

Barden said she remained in the storeroom for 10 to 15 minutes until
called away to another job. When she returned, the ghostly presence was
gone.