Titanic Museum: Branson, MO

THIS BLOG POST IS IN REMEMBRANCE 
OF THE TITANIC: 4-14-1912

           It was February! Who wouldn’t want take a spontaneous trip to the Titanic Museum in Branson, MO! In my case I looked at my kids’ school calendar and saw that they had a four-day weekend. So I turned to my husband and said, “That’s it! We are out of here!” I packed our bags, booked a hotel with a small water park inside for the kids, and we were off!

I have always loved learning about the RMS Titanic! I confess, I probably saw the movie four times in the theater. After that, I turned into a Titanic Junkie!  

When I learned from the TV Show Ghost Adventures that there was a Titanic Museum in Branson I totally freaked out with excitement and knew I had to go! The kids getting off school for an oddly timed, four-day weekend was a pure sign!

Who knew I would end up interviewing Jamie Terrell, the chief of staff, dressed in a Titanic stewardess uniform in the museum’s gift shop. Jamie appeared on the episode of Ghost Adventures that prompted this mini-vacation and was interviewed by Zack Bagans, paranormal investigator and executive producer of the show.  She also took him around the museum and showed him all the haunted spots. I became a total groupie! I could not believe I got to interview her. I am so lucky. This experience was truly amazing and Jamie made my day … my year!

I asked Jamie about the most haunted spots in the museum. She said there are children’s hand prints found every morning and night on the Captains Bridge on the second floor. At first the cleaning crew noticed them and reported it because they didn’t want the staff to think ill of their cleaning job. After a while the staff took over cleaning the windows and soon experienced the same thing: young child hand prints toward the bottom of the glass on the bridge each morning and night. Soon after the staff would clean it, they would come back. The staff would see the prints again on the glass when walking through on their rounds. The staff is unsure of who is leaving the prints but Jamie says it could be a 6-year-old boy who didn’t die on the Titanic but soon afterward. The boy’s name was Robert Spedden. He did make it to a lifeboat and was rescued, but died later in a car accident. “It seemed like death followed him,” said Jamie. “He almost died before he got onto the Titanic from an illness, survived the ship’s sinking, but then died in a sudden car crash.”

          

           Another mysterious thing that people have experienced is the scent of cigar smoke, believed to be coming from the Captain of the Titanic. I noticed the aroma TWICE myself! The first time, I was on the second floor with my husband and children sitting in the replica of the Titanic’s lifeboat. My grandfather smoked pipes and cigars when I was a kid, so I know what a cigar smells like! I turned to my husband and said, “Am I crazy or do you smell cigar smoke?” He replied he did. We both thought it was strange because you can’t smoke in the museum.

          

          The second time, I was speaking to Jamie about this very thing and also was taking her picture for this blog in the gift shop when the scent came through the air again! We both stopped and looked at each other. “There it is again. Cigar smoke!” I exclaimed to her as we both smiled. Jamie let a little laugh saying, “Yep! That’s definitely the smell we always experience.” I considered it a compliment that the ghost must like me!

          Jamie also said she and the staff often hear their names being called while completing tasks when the museum is closed. Also, the bows the women have on their stewardess-costumes tie in the back, and they report feeling the strings of the bows being tugged. I asked her if she thought the ghost-children may be the ones who were responsible for this, but she simply said, “I’m not sure. No one knows!”

          

         

        The museum hosts many weddings on its incredible stairwell, which is a replica of the staircase on the ship. The original blueprints of the Titanic were used to rebuild the staircase inside the museum. Jamie said the staff has the same experiences before each wedding hosted by the museum. For example, when setting up for a wedding the staff gets out two three-tiered candleholders placing one on each side of the stairwell for the ceremony. They light all the candles and every time just before the ceremony, one candle mysteriously blows out. “It’s never during a wedding ceremony,” Jamie stated, “but always right before. The staff just lights the candle again and everything is fine. They don’t go out again after that. It’s always when they are first lit.”

            “Have you ever seen a spirit here in the museum before?” I asked Jamie. She said she had. “I believe it’s John Jacob Astor, age 47, who was the richest man aboard the Titanic. He died when the Titanic sank.” Jamie says she often sees him at the top of the stairs to the right on the famous stairwell inside the museum because his bedroom, also rebuilt from original blueprints, was right next to the stairwell. Jamie says she has often seen a shadow person figure of him as well.

Astor’s duplicate bedroom also holds a replica of a dress his wife designed showing patrons what style of dress was worn in 1912 by a First Class wealthy woman. His wife, in early pregnancy, escaped the ship in one of the lifeboats, but Astor was ordered to stay on the ship with other men.

 “It just goes to show how much money will not save you,” reported Jamie. “That is amazing,” I replied. “You would think that back then you could try to buy your way onto a lifeboat,” I replied. However, if John Astor tried, he simply found out, he couldn’t.

          Another spirit that often visits the museum is Wallace Hartley, age 33. Wallace was the lead violinist on the Titanic and became a nautical hero. As the ship was sinking, he led fellow band members in playing music to help calm passengers and crew as they loaded the lifeboats. Historians believe the band played “Nearer My God to Thee.” The men played until the very end. When the ship sank they were all on deck near the staircase. Some were dragged off the bow as others down holding the staircase railing. It was said that Hartley exclaimed as they went down, “Gentlemen, I bid you farewell.”  

None of the men survived and Wallace Hartley’s violin was found on his frozen body about two weeks later. He had a bag strapped to him with his precious violin inside. The violin is now considered a National Treasure. It flies first class with a personal handler to the museum when it is on temporary display on loan by a personal collector. In 2013 the violin sold at auction for about $1.5 million and became the highest price paid for an RMS Titanic Artifact. Now in 2020, it is worth 2 Million dollars.

Jamie says each time the artifact is displayed at the museum, they seem to experience a bit of Wallace. For example, the day the artifact arrived before the museum opened, the staff held a prayer for the violin and afterward a man on staff said, “There’s going to be some ‘nay’ sayers,” and the lights suddenly went out in the whole museum. Jamie and the staff believed this to be Wallace defending this statement. Jamie says she called out to him, “It’s yours Wallace! We know it!” Then the lights came back on.

Another artifact that possibly brought another sprit to the museum was a set of wedding rings belonging to Carl and Selma Asplund. After their daughter died, the artifacts were found in an old shoe box. Jamie says, “the staff of the museum often conducts their own little ghost hunts when the museum is closed.” Jamie told me of a time when she and a friend were near the wedding rings asking questions. Her friend was holding an EMF reader while Jamie asked the spirit, “Are you looking for somebody?” The EMF reader lit up. Jamie took that as a ‘yes.’ She says she looked around the room and saw the Asplund wedding ring display. She knew Mr. Asplund, age 40, did not survive the Titanic’s sinking but his wife and two children did. Jamie knew the family had been split up last minute during the tragic event. She feels Mr. Asplund must be looking for the rest of his family to see if they survived. Jamie told him: “Mr. Asplund, you can stop looking for them because they made it off the Titanic.” She noticed the EMF reader never lit up again. Jamie took that as a sign the spirit of Mr. Asplund had moved on. She said, “The museum fell silent and peaceful after that moment.”

Jamie told me about a very interesting passenger who might be of interest to me due to my love of the history and paranormal hauntings. The passenger’s name was William Stead, age 62. He was reported to have been telling ghost stories while at dinner on the Titanic in the first-class dining room. Apparently, he had been telling other passengers about a mummy that was in cargo on the ship below and that this mummy had cursed the ship. Stead told his dining companions they would all parish at sea. Hmm…I thought, how fitting.

When I got home I looked up this information and found the story to be true! William Stead was an amazing man who was one of the world’s first paranormal investigators. He was a writer and journalist. Ironically, he had written an article called, How the Mail Steamer Went Down in the Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor. In the article, an unknown steamer collides with another ship and, due to a shortage of lifeboats, there is a large loss of life. Stead wrote, “This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of lifeboats.” He also wrote a novel very similar to the Titanic’s fate about a ship called the Majestic hitting an iceberg in the Mid-Atlantic titled, Old World to the New.

Stead was known as a Medium who held séances and did automatic writing using his Medium abilities. He often talked about being in contact with a female reporter, Julia Aims. William Stead was the last person she interviewed for an article before she died. After her death, he wrote several books, including : Real Ghost Stories (1891), A Collection of Psychic Experiences and Reports, Letters from Julia (1909), Borderland: A Casebook of True Supernatural Stories.

Shortly before Stead’s death he was reported to have communicated at some séances and was traveling to America to speak at Carnegie Hall in New York City to lecture on world peace.

During the Titanic’s sinking Stead was found in the first class dining area reading a book peacefully as the ship went down. After his death, he was seen and heard speaking to many loved ones and friends including his daughter. Stead was seen and heard so much that his friend in life, James Coates of Rothesay, another paranormal investigator, collected testimony from witnesses and wrote a book: Has W. T. Stead Returned.

So would I recommend visiting the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri? That would be BIG FAT YES! I sure do! I think this museum is something everyone should see and put on their bucket list! It was surely on mine!

As you walk through the museum you can’t help but be amazed at all the artifacts, the ship’s design and layout, and  how the First, Second, and (poor) Third-Class passengers lived and were treated, also the staff!  You see all the people’s awful fates and you feel a lot of emotions: mystery, fear, sadness, peace, and serenity.

It all makes one question one’s own fate and why things happen as they do. I am a person who believes that everything happens for a reason but walking through this tragedy you feel so much and wonder…why? Just why did this have to happen to these people? Why did the Titanic have to sink?

Yes, there is a lesson of speed and the rich wanting to be richer, but is that all? I don’t think so. After you read all these stories and experience the Captain’s Bridge, the cold water they have out for you to touch demonstrating how cold the water was the night of the sinking and just how slim was the chance of anyone’s survival, you know that everyone’s lives were affected! Therefore, there can’t just be ONE LESSON! There are so many! We may never know just how many.

Then there are those who LIVED! So many of the survivors’ stories were filled with so much irony! Even in the movie based on the Titanic they exhibited the irony of the survivors with Rose living, telling her whole story and then tossing the most important passion she had the whole time that everyone was looking for into the Mid-Atlantic waters right over the Titanic’s sunken grave!

Yet in real-life, most of the passengers’ who didn’t die on the Titanic that fateful night of April 14^th, 1912, died on the same date later in their lives or I found that their birthdays were the date of the sinking! How strange, how ironic or is it just FATE! We will never know.

This museum is as impressive on the outside as it is on the inside! The Titanic Museum should definitely go on your MUST SEE LIST while visiting Branson, MO. There is also a second location in Gatlinburg, TN, and both sites are haunted!

Jamie Terrell, the director of staff for both sites, says there is constant actively at both locations, however each building is one of a kind! They each have different artifacts and different ghosts! Go see for yourself. Look around. Maybe do your own investigations. See what you experience!

Stay tuned for my visit to the Titanic Museum in Gatlinburg, TN!

©Rosella C. Rowe

Visiting Information for the Titanic Museum:

titanicbranson.com

titanicpigeonforge.com

For Teachers and Homeschool Parents:

titanicbranson.com/education-guide