3 Very Disturbing TRUE Airplane Horror Stories

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:09]It was December 24th around 900 p.m. and I was on a 19-seater turborop heading into Stevenville, Newfoundland. A beach 1900D, the kind with the low ceiling where you sort of duckwalk to your seat. I had been working a contract job out on the west coast of the island and just wanted to get home to my brother's place for Christmas morning.

[00:00:32]There were maybe 12 of us on the plane that night, including the two pilots and no flight attendant. The weather had been bad all day, like real bad. The forecast called for a weather bomb hitting the Atlantic provinces, and by the time we boarded in Halifax, the wind was already screaming sideways across the apron. The gate agent told us they were trying to decide if we should even leave. We sat there for 40 minutes before the captain came out himself and said we were going. He said we had the fuel to try Stevenville and if it didn't work, we'd divert to Deer Lake. That was the plan anyway. Halfway through the flight, the captain came back on the speaker and said, "Deer Lake was now closed."

[00:01:14]>> Gander, too. He said it really calmly like he was telling us about the in-flight snack, but the math was easy enough. We were going to Stevenville and we were not going anywhere else.

[00:01:25]I had flown into Stevenville a bunch of times for work. Old World War II airfield, huge long runway because the Americans used it as a refueling stop years ago. Plenty of room to land.

[00:01:37]Normally, I would not have been worried.

[00:01:41]The thing about a small plane like this is there's no door to the cockpit. There was an opening with a curtain that nobody bothered to close. From row three where I was, I could see straight down the aisle and out the windscreen between the two pilots's heads. On a normal flight, that's kind of cool. You watch the runway come up to meet you. On this flight, it was not cool. About 15 minutes out, the plane started moving in ways planes are not supposed to move. It wasn't turbulence. Something was shoving the tail around. I gripped the armrest with my right hand and the seat in front of me with my left and just held on. The lady across the aisle, an older lady maybe in her 60s, she pulled out a rosary and started doing it under her breath. She wasn't looking at me. I could hear her anyway, the beads clicking. The windows on the side were either white or black. I couldn't tell.

[00:02:35]There was no light, no horizon, just snow blowing past the glass so fast it looked solid. The only reference I had was the front windshield where both pilots hunched forward, almost touching the glass. We descended for what felt like way too long. I kept waiting for the wheels to touch and they didn't. I checked my watch twice because I was sure we should already be on the ground.

[00:02:59]My hands were soaked and I wiped them on my jeans and they got wet again right away. Then the runway lights came through. A few blurs of white yellow showed up in the snow and then disappeared. The plane was rocking side to side so much that I could see the lights out of the left window, then a second later out of the right window.

[00:03:18]Back and forth. The pilots were both working the yolks, fighting it. The first officer was talking, but I couldn't hear what he was saying over the engines. I am not a religious person. I have not been in a church since my grandmother passed in 2009. But I said, "Please, please," in my head over and over. The plane kept swaying.

[00:03:40]We were maybe 200 ft off the deck, lined up with the center line, more or less, and a figure stepped out into the lights on the runway.

[00:03:49]It was a person or something shaped like a person, all black, like wearing a black hoodie with the hood up. It was standing there in the middle of the runway facing us. I sat up straight. I remember saying out loud kind of there's someone on the but I did not finish it because at that exact second the plane slammed down hard. My head hit the seat in front of me. The overhead bin popped open and somebody's bag fell out into the aisle. The props reversed and we were breaking hard, fishtailing a little on the snow and I felt the right gear lift up off the ground and come back down. We stopped about 3/4 down the runway. The engine stayed running for a minute. Nobody said anything. The old lady across from me was still doing her rosary, but her voice was shaking now.

[00:04:37]The captain came on the speaker. He sounded out of breath. He said, "Welcome to Stevenville. Sorry about the landing."

[00:04:45]A couple of people laughed, but I was looking at the back of the first officer's head. He was talking on the radio fast. Then he turned and said something to the captain, and the captain looked at him for a long second.

[00:04:58]Then the captain unbuckled and walked back into the cabin. He had his coat on already. He went to the door, opened it, and the wind nearly took it out of his hand. I leaned forward and asked the older lady if she saw it, too. The figure, she just looked at me and said she had her eyes closed the whole time.

[00:05:17]I undid my belt and went up to the cockpit doorway. The first officer was still in his seat looking at the instruments. I asked him, "Did you see somebody on the runway?" He looked at me and didn't say anything for like 4 seconds.

[00:05:32]Then he said, "We're checking on it."

[00:05:34]The captain came back about 10 minutes later. He stomped the snow off his boots in the doorway. His face was red from the wind. He said, "There's nothing out there. The ground crew drove the length of the runway in the truck and there was no damage to the plane and no marks in the snow." I said, "But I saw him." I described the hoodie, the way he was standing there. The captain nodded like he believed me, but also as if he was very tired. He replied, "Sometimes in heavy snow, your brain makes shapes." He said he saw something, too. And then we hit, and he was sure we hit it, but there was only snow. We taxied to the apron really slowly. I kept looking out the window, and the snow was still coming down sideways, but I could see the terminal lights now. They were fuzzy and yellow. When we got off the plane, I was the second last one. As I was walking down the air stairs, I looked back at the runway. I don't know why.

[00:06:29]And I saw way down at the far end where we had touched down a single light like a flashlight or a lantern. It was not moving. I stopped on the stairs and pointed at it. And the ramp guy behind me asked what. I said, "Look, look at that light down there." He looked and said, "There's nothing down there, buddy. That's the runway end identifier.

[00:06:51]But it wasn't. It was on the runway and it was moving. I went inside fast. In the terminal, there was hot chocolate and the lady from the airline gave us all little bags of chips because the restaurant was closed. My brother showed up to pick me up. I did not tell him about it that night. I told him a couple of weeks later and he said maybe it was a worker out there, but the airport people had already said nobody was on the runway.

[00:07:18]I don't remember exactly when I flew into Stevenville. Maybe four more times since then.

[00:07:29]My name doesn't matter for this. I was 26 years old in November 1971 and I was flying home for Thanksgiving. I had a job in Portland working at a bank and my parents lived in Seattle. The flight was only about 30 minutes. I had taken it so many times before. It was Wednesday, November 24, the day before Thanksgiving. It was Northwest Orient Flight 305. I bought my ticket at the counter for around $18 and got seat 15D.

[00:07:57]The plane was a Boeing 727, which I liked because it had stairs that came down from the back. When I got on, the flight was not full, maybe 35 or so people. I saw a man in a dark suit sit down a few rows behind me. He had on sunglasses, which was a little strange because it was afternoon and cloudy, but I didn't think much of it. People wear sunglasses indoors sometimes. He was holding a briefcase. He looked like a normal businessman. I had a paperback with me. I don't remember what book it was now, but it was some kind of novel.

[00:08:31]The plane took off on time around 2:50 in the afternoon. I looked out the window and watched the city get small. I was reading when one of the steartesses, Florence, I think her name was, walked fast up the aisle. Her face was serious.

[00:08:46]She went to the cockpit and didn't come out for a long time. I noticed it, but I kept reading because people go to the cockpit all the time. That's normal.

[00:08:55]Then the captain came over the speaker.

[00:08:58]He said we were going to be circling for a while because of the bad weather and that everyone should stay calm and stay in their seats.

[00:09:05]Some of the passengers started getting upset because of fear. Maybe they were on a plane for the first time. The plane started to bank. The stewardesses were acting strangely. They were walking up and down very slowly, looking at people but not really looking at them. One of them, a different one whose name was Tina, was carrying something. I saw later it was money, but I didn't know that then what was happening. I saw she was carrying a bag. Then we circled for almost 2 hours. The plane just kept going around in big slow circles. I asked the stewardess what was happening and she said the weather as you know. I knew that wasn't true because I could see out the window and the clouds were normal. But what was I going to do? So I sat down anyway. The businessman behind me, the one with the sunglasses, I could feel him back there. He had not moved and was very calm, not like everyone else. He was drinking something. The guy next to me named Bill or maybe Bob leaned over and said, "Something is wrong with this plane." I told him I thought so too. We didn't say anything else. I put my book down and I just kept my hands flat on my knees. My palms were getting wet because I was confused. You know, not knowing is the most difficult thing to handle. When we finally landed in Seattle, it was dark out. They had been circling that whole time. We didn't go to the regular gate. The plane stopped on a part of the runway with no buildings near it. A lot of lights came on outside. The captain came on again.

[00:10:40]He said very calmly that there was a situation on the plane.

[00:10:45]He said everyone needed to stay in their seats and follow instructions and that we would be okay.

[00:10:51]That's when people started to figure it out. A woman across the aisle started crying quietly. She just put her hand over her mouth. Her husband held her arm. A man came on the plane from the outside. He was carrying a bag in some kind of bundle. He gave it to the stewardist. Then the stewardist walked it back to the man with the sunglasses.

[00:11:10]Then they told us we could leave one row at a time out the front. I remember walking away from the cockpit as soon as I could. I just looked at the back of the head of the person in front of me and I walked. When my foot hit the stairs going down to the ground, I let out a big breath. There were a few agents of the FBI on the ground. Police cars were parked and also an ambulance even though nobody was hurt. They walked us into a building and started asking questions. That's when I learned the situation. The man behind me had handed Florence a note. He said he had something that could destroy the plane in seconds in the briefcase. He opened it just enough for her to see wires and what looked like red sticks. He told her to write down his demands. He told her that his demands were $200,000, four parachutes, and refueling. He said he would blow up the plane if they didn't do what he wanted. The whole time I was reading my book, he was sitting back there with his briefcase. I had to stay in Seattle for hours answering questions. They asked me what he looked like, what he sounded like, and if I saw his hands. I said, "Sorry, I didn't see.

[00:12:22]I was reading my book. They were nice about it." One of the agents got me a cup of coffee from a machine. It tasted bad, but I drank it. I called my mother from a pay phone at the airport. I told her I was alive and I would be home in a little while. She started to cry on the phone. I didn't cry back, so maybe she could handle herself.

[00:12:44]What happened after I left the plane is the scariest thing. Even though all of it was scary, the man in the dark suit kept the crew on the plane. They took off again. He made them fly toward Mexico, low and slow. Somewhere over Washington in the rain and the dark, he opened the back stairs of the 727. He had on a parachute and he strapped the money to himself and jumped out quickly.

[00:13:07]They never found him or his body. They found some of the money years later buried near a river. A boy found it while having a picnic, but they never found the man.

[00:13:18]I stopped taking flights to Seattle and started driving when I could. It took 6 hours, but I didn't care. I would rather drive.

[00:13:32]Not exactly an airplane story, but it happens in the orbit of one. The long-term lot at Kansas City International, where a guy who's been driving the same patrol ranger for 12 years tells you about a gray ram that sat in row H longer than it should have and what he chose not to see.

[00:13:48]So, here is the story. I worked the night shift at the outer lot at KCI.

[00:13:53]Have for about 12 years. It's not complicated. You drive a little ranger up and down the roads with a scanner that's supposed to ping every plate once a day. Half the time it doesn't, but that's a different story or it's the same story. That's what this is about.

[00:14:09]In 2017, I was 29 and I thought I was dialed in. I had my routines. I knew Eddie, the morning shuttle guy, brought a thermos of cocoa in January because his wife made him. I knew the back corner of Row M flooded if it rained more than half an inch.

[00:14:26]I knew when the heater in the Ranger was about to quit because it ticked three or four times before it died and you had to slap the dash. None of that matters except to say I thought I was good at the job. There was a gray ram in row H or silver. I called it gray for months because in the parking lot lights everything looks gray. I scanned it on January 17. I only remember the date because the cops asked me later and I had to pull my log. The scanner did that hourglass thing where it sits forever and you have to hit the side button to reset it. I wrote the plate on the clipboard and kept going, probably already late for my break. A week or so after that, I drove past the same spot.

[00:15:10]I don't remember what made me look.

[00:15:12]There had been snow 3 or 4 in, and the rest of the cars look like cupcakes.

[00:15:17]The Ram had dust on the windows, but not much snow on the hood, which I figured meant somebody had brushed it off. I touched it with my glove. Not warm, just I don't know. Not as cold as it should have been is what I told myself. Or maybe I told myself that later after and now I can't remember which order things actually happened in. That bothers me.

[00:15:40]Spring break got busy. I'm not going to pretend the truck was on my mind every day. It wasn't. The lot was full.

[00:15:47]Shuttles ran back to back. A kid got clipped by a Suburban in the crosswalk.

[00:15:51]And that ate up a whole week of paperwork. I'd stuck a ticket on the ram in February, the orange 30-day, and when I glanced over at it, the ticket was getting more and more weathered. But there are always cars like that. People go on cruises. People go to Europe for a month. The year before, I had a Camry sit in row C for 61 days because the owner was in Antarctica. I'm not kidding. She sent us a photo from the boat. I pulled my own scan records once, April, I want to say. The RAM had been scanned almost every day, and a lot of those scans had my badge on them. I knew I hadn't done them. I called dispatch and Marlene. I love Marlene. She's been there longer than the airport's been an airport, practically. Marlene told me the system cashes, which I knew was BS, or sort of knew, but I also didn't want to be the guy filing tickets on the company's own software, not after the layoffs. I let it go. May was when I smelled it first. 2 in the morning.

[00:16:50]Windows cracked cuz if I rolled them up, I'd fall asleep. Sweet smell. The bad kind. You know what I mean? I figured raccoon. We get raccoons. We had a possum once that crawled into the engine bay of a Mazda and the owner found him when she got back from Cabo. Anyway, I walked the row with my flashlight for 10 minutes, didn't find anything, and got back in the truck. I want to skip ahead because I don't want to do this beat by beat. By summer, the smell was bad enough that the shuttle guys made jokes about it on the radio. The ram had a stack of paper on the windshield like a bird's nest. One afternoon in July, I held the scanner to the plate and got nothing, but the screen said it had been logged the night before. Under my badge, I called Marlene again. Same answer. I asked her if I should write it up. She said, "Write what up?" I didn't have an answer. I hung up. September was the news story. Randy Potter, Lanexa, 53, missing since January. My wife was the one who caught it. She yelled from the kitchen for me to come listen. They read the plate on the radio and I knew before they got to the second letter. I sat down on the arm of the couch and she asked what was wrong and I just told her I had to call work. My supervisor then was a guy named Dale.

[00:18:10]Good guy. Dale met me at the row in the rain. He looked at the truck, then at me and didn't say anything for a long time, which isn't like him. He's a talker. He got on the radio finally and called airport PD and he had to say the row number twice cuz he got it wrong the first time. He said H and they heard 8.

[00:18:30]I'm not going to describe what was in the cab. The coroner said heart attack.

[00:18:33]Said it probably happened within a day of him parking, maybe before he even got out of the truck. The part I keep coming back to isn't the smell or the body or the news vans. It's the hood. I touched the hood in January and I made up a reason for why it felt the way it felt. And then for 8 months, every time something else didn't line up. I made up another reason. I don't think I'm a bad guy. I don't. But I learned something about how easy it is to look at a thing that's wrong and not see it because seeing it would have meant filling out the paperwork. His sister did a press thing at baggage claim. I went, stood at the back. She didn't mention the lot workers, and I was grateful for that, even though I probably deserved to be mentioned. My jacket was wet from walking over. I remember being annoyed about the jacket being wet, which is a stupid thing to remember from that day, but that's what I've got. They put in new scanners. We had a meeting. I signed a thing. The asphalt where the ram was is the same. They didn't even repaint the lines.

[00:19:44]Okay, so that brings our long night of travel to an end. We heard three very different stories today. First, a terrifying landing in a snowstorm where a passenger saw something impossible on the runway. Second, the famous mystery of a man who took control of a flight and jumped into the dark sky. And third, a heartbreaking story about an airport worker who ignored a truck in the parking lot for months. Even though these stories are so different, they all share one big secret about how the human brain works. There's psychological trick called normaly bias. What does that mean? It means that when something strange, scary, or dangerous happens, our brains simply do not want to believe it. Our minds want everything to stay normal and safe. To stop us from panicking, our brains make up easy excuses. It tells the passenger that the creepy figure on the runway is just the snow playing tricks on their eyes. It tells the people on the control plane that they are just circling in the sky because of bad weather and it tells the parking guard that a bad smell is just a wild animal so he doesn't have to worry or do extra paperwork. Our brains do this to protect us from feeling scared.

[00:21:14]But as we learned today, pretending everything is normal can actually be the most dangerous thing we can do.

[00:21:21]When we ignore our gut feelings, the nightmare can slip right past us. So, I have a question for you. Have you ever been in a situation where something felt wrong, but your brain tried to tell you everything was fine? Did you ignore a red flag only to find out later that you were in real danger? Mail me your stories to Mr. Nightcares [email protected].

[00:21:47]Until next time, remember to trust your gut, keep your eyes open, and safe travel out there. I'll be there with another episode. Until then, goodbye.