MIST: Over the years, there have been a number of aircraft-related tragedies over the Grand Canyon.  Enough that large swaths of the canyon are considered no-fly zones. As you stand at the edge of the canyon and gaze across its seemingly endless breadth, the reasons behind these restrictions become obvious.  The immensity of the canyon itself has an appreciable effect on the local weather conditions. Winds are funneled through the troughs and chimneys of the canyon, creating strong gusts that can wreck havoc with aircraft.  Add in the constantly changing visibility, due to cloud cover, the interplay of sunshine and shadow, and the ragged outline of the canyon itself, and you can see why even sightseeing helicopter tours can be nerve-racking endeavors.  

But on June 30, 1956, weather and visual conditions over the canyon played only partial roles in what became the worst aircraft disaster of its time.  On that date, two commercial passenger airlines collided in mid-air and sent one-hundred and twenty-eight souls to their fiery deaths in the east end of the canyon.  I won’t go over every single circumstance leading up to the collision as this is documented, sometimes in excruciating detail, on other websites.  But some explanation of the events before the collision are necessary in order to understand what happened after the tragedy... including the alleged paranormal activity.

The two flights – TWA Flight 2 and United Air Flight 718 – departed Los Angeles International Airport just three minutes apart.  Their flight paths would run roughly parallel to each other as they proceeded to Chicago and Kansas City respectively.  Near the east end of the Grand Canyon, as the planes were entering the airspace over the Painted Desert, their paths would overlap with fatal results.  The Painted Desert was an important line of position for pilots in an era before extensive radar tracking, when large areas of American airspace were labeled “uncontrolled.”  In these areas outside of major metropolitan hubs, air traffic controllers relied on variable altitude assignments and a “seen-and-be-seen” rule to prevent mid-air debacles.  Put simply, pilots had the major responsibility for their aircraft in these areas with little technological help.

As unlikely as it seems for two aircraft to collide in such an immense area, circumstances seemed to conspire against TWA 2 and UA 718.  The planes were traveling at night and the weather over northern Arizona was extremely poor.  Probably in an attempt to avoid the area thunderstorms, TWA 2 requested changing its altitude from 19,000 to 21,000 feet.  There seems to have been some debate between the TWA, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City air traffic controllers about what the pilot actually wanted and if it would interfere with the flight path of UA 718.  In the end, TWA 2 was given permission to proceed, was told about the proximity of UA 718, and was assumed to be flying under the “seen-and-be-seen” rules.  

It still seems unclear as to why the two aircraft did not see each other.  Was it the darkness?  The weather? Pilot error? Or just tragic bad luck?  Regardless, at 10:31 p.m., the Salt Lake City air traffic controllers received a brief but ominous transmission from UA 718.  The pilot said simply: “Salt Lake, United 718... ah... we’re going in.”

United 718, which was behind TWA 2 but moving faster, had somehow hit its wing against the other’s aircraft’s tail.  The props from United 718 sliced through TWA 2’s fuselage, severing the tail section and sending the craft into a four-mile nose-dived into Temple Butte.  United 718, which was not as badly damaged, still could not maintain altitude and it smashed into the side of Chuar Butte some ten miles to the northeast.  By 11:51 p.m., the air traffic controllers who had been assisting the flights knew something had gone seriously wrong and issued a missing aircraft alert.  

The location of the wrecks, especially that of United 718, made investigating the accident particularly challenging.  Most of the wreckage of United 718, including the scattered body parts from its fifty-eight passengers and crew, were strewn some 4000 feet above the canyon floor. Large pieces of the aircraft had fallen into a chimney, a narrow cleft in the rockface, where even the most intrepid mountain-climber would have great difficulty reaching them.  Tremendous efforts were made, however, to recover as much evidence and human remains as possible.  Members of the Swiss Air Rescue Patrol were even dispatched to Arizona to assist, having had more experience in mountainous terrain than local authorities.  But even the weather conditions in the canyon seemed to conspire with the geography to make the recovery process next to impossible, as a contemporary newspaper article described:

“The first five bodies brought out were enclosed in plastic bags placed aboard the helicopter making the initial lift of victims. The whirling-bladed aircraft courted disaster as it bucked powerful winds in the canyon to bring the bodies out. The twisted and burned remains were taken by ambulance to a temporary morgue set up at the National Guard Armory in Flagstaff, Ariz., 80 miles from the canyon. Only the bodies from the TWA plane were removed because it was more accessible than the wreckage of the UAL aircraft... [Nevada State Journal, July 3, 1956]

In the end, however, the best recovery teams could do was pick up the strewn fragments of now anonymous bodies and bury them together in mass graves.  Sixty-seven victims were buried together at the Citizen’s Cemetery in Flagstaff. Twenty-nine more victims were collectively interred at the Grand Canyon Cemetery on the south rim of the park.  A handful were returned to their families and still others were never identified or recovered at all. 

Having just completed our two-week exodus to the bottom of the canyon in pursuit of Jeremy Riposte, no one on the team was interested in going back down to visit the crash sites.  All of us, however, wished we had known about them prior to our hike.  We would have probably chosen to go there over chasing Jeremy back and forth across the Colorado.  As stated above, only the TWA 2 site is accessible. The National Park Service contracted with a private firm in the 1970s to remove most of the debris, but you can still find grim reminders of the fifty-three year old disaster hidden among the rocks and scrub at the base of Temple Butte.  Federal law prohibits any of the wreckage from being removed, and it would seem that park visitors have been dutiful about seeing, photographing and leaving any remaining relics alone. The wreckage of UA 718 is still in place in the nooks and crannies of Chuar Butte, well out of reach of anyone but maybe the canyon’s birdlife.  Apparently you can see much of it as you drift by on rafts on the Colorado River.

The remains we were most intrigued by, however, were not the physical kind but of a more psychic nature.  I was particularly fascinated by the accounts written in Haunted Hikes: Spine-Tingling Tales and Trails from North America’s National Parks by Andrea Lankford, a book I’ve kept close at hand throughout our exploration of the Grand Canyon.  I can only speculate as when the passengers and crew on the two airliners actually died.  Did they know what was happening to them?  Robert Shirley, the captain of UA 718 certainly did, as it was he who uttered that terrible last message of “we’re going in...”  Did the people onboard TWA 2 survive their plummet to earth only to die in the impact?  I don’t ask these questions to be ghoulish... only to set circumstances for the alleged hauntings that are reported in Lankford’s book.  

The most intriguing is an account of a female ranger named K.J. Glover who was awoken in the middle of the night by voices as she camped between Temple and Chaur Buttes. Today, this area is called “Crash Canyon” by the local rangers. Lankford wrote:

The voices woke her up. Through the mesh of her tent, she saw 12 to 15 men and women walking up the trail toward her. Feeling vulnerable, the ranger put one hand on her fleece jacket and the other on her pistol. The men and women walking past her tent wore city clothes: the men in button-up shirts; the women in skirts down to the knee. These people in the city clothes were having mundane conversations as they hiked up the path toward the [TWA crash] debris...

Ranger Glover is not the only one to experience eerie visions while camping under the shadows of Temple and Chuar Buttes. Another ranger was camping on a beach across the river from Crash Canyon when he was awakened by the sounds of what he thought were voices crying for help... Across the water from where he was camped, he saw several moving lights, as if a large group of hikers with flashlights was walking along the edge of the river. the ranger found this odd, since he knew there were no trails across the river from him, and the only way to reach that area was by boat. He yelled across the cold water, but got no response... The next morning, the ranger asked all the river rafters boating by him if any of them had been hiking their clients across the river the night before. None of them had. [page 87-88]

From the point of view of the parapsychologist, the TWA crash site would probably make a likely location for a haunting. I should think that this would have been even more likely prior to 1975, when the area was still heavily strewn with debris and the personal affects from the deceased passengers and crew. We know, from both scientific studies and our own experience, that unexpected and traumatic death does tend to increase the odds of a haunting. If even some of the TWA passengers survived the fall to earth in their aircraft, then it would have been on the craggy slope of Temple Butte where they died, approximately the same place that the rangers saw the unidentified wandering people. After fifty-plus years, maybe some of their souls are still wandering the wilderness around the Colorado River, confused and lost in time and space.

Since the team didn’t have the opportunity to hike to Crash Canyon, we did the next best thing and visited the mass grave and memorial for the victims at the local cemetery. The marker for the crash is almost immediately inside the massive stone and timber entrance, just a little to the left. It is a simple grey granite plinth which reads “In memory of these persons who lost their lives in the aircraft accident at Grand Canyon, Arizona, June 30, 1956.” There are thirty-one names carved into the stone. The marker seems almost insufficient when you consider how many lives were lost and the impact this crash had on American commercial aviation in general. I hope the victims have found peace.

If you want to learn more about the Grand Canyon crash, there is a remarkable website dedicated to it at www.lostflights.org. The site does a particularly meticulous job of not only describing the crash, but the recovery efforts and the status of the wreckage sites over the last fifty years. There are also an amazing array of historical and contemporary photos about the flights, the victims and the aftermath.