LONG BEACH - Peter James played with dead children.

When he was 8 years old, James said he encountered the ghosts of three young victims. They were from an apartment fire 35 years earlier in the building where he lived in Rochester, New York. They would be his playmates for three years.

"With childlike innocence, I soon learned to communicate with my new friends," James wrote in a biography.

Those three young friends, James explained, gave him the skills to link up to hundreds of other ghosts on what he called the "other side."

These were skills that would open up channels to scores of souls on the Queen Mary.

James joined his friends on July 31 after suffering a heart attack.

The psychic avoided disclosing his age, according to friends and family. His 52-year-old brother, Tommy Nast, would only say James was older. Nast is his only survivor.

"That was a question Peter never addressed," Nast said. "He was ageless."

James began researching the paranormal in the late 1970s or early 1980s, according to his brother. He married when he was young, but later divorced. He moved to Southern California and settled in West Hollywood.

James took a ghost tour aboard the Queen Mary, where said he encountered a ghost. He began conducting regular tours in 1991 and was featured on 44 episodes of Fox and the Sci-Fi Channel's "Sightings" series for eight seasons.

"The series has turned millions of skeptics into believers and introduced me to millions of fans worldwide," James wrote in his biography.

"There is something very powerful and compelling when a viewer can watch for themselves as I identify and communicate with an unseen entity," he wrote. "But hearing my information corroborated by independent researchers, after delving into archives that have been untouched for decades, that's verification."

Nast said his brother estimated there were about 600 ghosts aboard the Queen Mary, and said James had personal encounters with about 150 of the passengers.

Among James' encounters, according to Nast, were a ship captain and a 3-year-old girl named Jackie who had drowned. An audio tape of the girl was made, Nast said.

"You could hear her as plain as day," Nast said.

Nast recalled being with James on the ship, when they would hear doors opening and closing, but there were no doors or ship hatches nearby.

On occasion, James also said he encountered ghosts who bumped into him or slapped him aboard the Queen Mary, Nast said.

James' paranormal skills impressed the ship's brass and staff.

"Peter's investigative tours of the Queen Mary, as recently as a couple of months ago, were quite remarkable and very popular with our guests," said Howard Bell, the ship's president and CEO.

"His deep and sincere belief in his work and his well-reported conversations with the Queen Mary resident ghosts were enhanced by his dramatic appearance and warm, generous personality," Bell said.

Nast said James often surprised people with the details he disclosed about them.

"I can't remember how many times he had peoples' jaws drop," Nast said.

James also worked with law enforcement investigators on crimes, but never exploited the details of those probes to the media, Nast said.

"His credibility was extremely important to him," he said.

A private memorial aboard the Queen Mary is being planned, according to ship spokeswoman Lovetta Kramer.

"We plan to create a permanent memorial for him aboard the ship and hope that Peter's spirit won't stray too far from the Queen Mary, where he has many friends," Bell said.

Joe Segura can be reached at joe.segura@presstelegram.com or at (562) 499-1274.