Diksha Sundriyal
In Paramount+’s ‘Evil,’ a team of assessors is brought together to identify if a certain case has something to do with the paranormal. Kristen, Ben, and Father David are at the forefront of these assessments, and in the fourth season of the series, they come across a very peculiar case. The fifth episode is the case of a stewardess, Vicky Finch, who claims to have seen the ghost aboard her last flight. She starts to exhibit symptoms that lead her husband to believe she is possessed. As Kristen, David, and Ben take a flight to solve the case, they come across a very peculiar series of events. Interestingly, there have been stories about ghost captains showing up on flights and causing turbulence.
Captain Lemire’s Story is Inspired by a Real Urban Legend
In the show, Vicky’s colleagues reveal the story of Captain Lemire, who went down with the plane over the Atlantic, which killed everyone on board. Since then, several people have reported seeing the dead Captain on their flights. His appearance is accompanied by severe turbulence, leading people to think he is trying to crash the plane. This story is made up to serve the show’s plot, but like several other things on ‘Evil,’ the ghost story of Captain Lemire has similarities to a real-life legend.
Of all the stories about ghosts showing up on planes, the most well-known is that of Flight 401. It has been the subject of a documentary, a book, and a TV movie and has been referenced several times in TV shows and movies. The crash happened in December of 1972 when Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was on its way to Miami from New York and crashed into the Florida Everglades, leading to the death of the crew in the cockpit, along with 98 other casualties. An investigation revealed that the cause of the crash was pilot error. The crew had been handling a problem in the nose landing gear position when a different problem emerged, which they couldn’t pay attention to in time, and the flight crashed.
Later, parts of the plane were salvaged and used in other planes of the airlines, and this fed into the stories about the flight. Over the years, several people reported seeing the pilot and other dead crew members of Flight 401, and the reports always came from the flights of Eastern Air Lines. Some suspected that the ghosts only showed up in the planes that used the salvaged part of the crashed plane. The stories, however, could never be verified. The airlines did their best to shut down the rumors, and eventually, the number of sightings lowered and then stopped. Still, Flight 401 had entered pop culture, leading to more stories. Interestingly, pieces of the flight’s wreckages are reported to have been included in the museum of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Clearly, the writers of ‘Evil’ were inspired by the same stories to concoct their own.
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