Flight 610, June 1951, Ghosts Claim Sabotage

 

I am Capt. Appleby's daughter. In December, 2011, I received a stunning email from a stranger addressing the issue of  UAL 610 crash on Crystal Mountain, Colorado in June, 1951. 

To better understand this email, you could read the brief compilation of my research of the disaster, uploaded in 2005 at www.coloradowreckchasing.com. Click on Civilian flights, then Crystal Mountain, DC-6B, then look for “Capt. Appleby’s daughter…” 

The mystery still hanging over the crash is, was Flight 610 hijacked by an intruder into the cockpit and deliberately flown into Crystal Mountain in the Colorado Rockies? This question is close to my heart since my father was the captain of UAL 610, which killed all aboard, including two military couriers, both carrying important documents pertaining to the war and to atomic secret files. Several important documents (27 out of 40) disappeared from the crash site.

 

My late aunt and uncle, Mary and Hervey Froelich, told me in June, 1999 that W. A. Patterson, UAL president at the time of the crash, told my mother on the phone in 1951 that the crash of Flight 610 was not the fault of the crew, but he couldn't say more due to national security. The majority of the documents carried by the couriers disappeared from the crash site on a dark, foggy night before rescuers and investigators got to it. 

Although I have no proof of my suspicions, I've been writing a memoir about my own investigation of the crash.

Around Dec. 14, 2011, a stranger named Erika wrote me:

"Hi Janet, I know this may be a bit strange getting this crazy email from some random stranger. What I'm about to tell you might seem crazy too. Last night, I took a class in Fort Collins, Colorado for paranormal activity. I thought it would be fun entertainment but never expected to see and hear I did. We visited a garage in old town where apparently the remains of the aircraft were stored while the investigation was being done. This building is quite old and is only used for storage for the restaurant on which the property sits currently. From my understanding there had been two suicides in the building and one fatal police shooting among the remains from the airplane.

"Anyway, we used an EMF sensor that detects electrical transmissions in certain areas. You may be familiar with this already. This building is so old it really should be torn down but they have left it up due to the cost of demolition and have since turned off any power to it for safety reasons. As we were standing in the middle of the room the EMF meter started going off. Interesting but not conclusive, so we walked around with it and it would continue to go off in certain areas. Those areas were constantly moving. There were also warm spots in that area that you could feel. The temperature in the garage was 27 degrees last night and in those warm spots you could read 40 degree plus. You could feel a wind being pushed directly from the concrete straight upward where the meter was going off too. I know at this point it sounds hokey but it does get a little more interesting.

"There is a controversial application you can download on your iPhone called the iOvilus. The tour guide had been "playing" with this app recently but wasn't sure about its credibility. So as this EMF reader was going crazy, the iOvilus was starting to say words that pertained to the plane crash. Keep in mind there is no way to program this app to do anything, you download it and it just works. The words that were spoken were ‘plane,’ ‘casket,’ ‘ascending,’ one of the names of those who perished ‘Frank.’

Those words by themselves could be taken for anything, but the one that surprised me the most was ‘Crystal.’ I decided to come home and research about the crash and see if anything else was said on the device that struck me as odd. As I was reading your article I about fell out of my seat as one of the words that were said was ‘Hijack.’

"From my understanding the lady that used this app had also used it in many other places and she said there never seems to be anything of importance said unless she is in an area that is stated to have paranormal activity. You may or may not believe in this, however, it was quite real to me. We did take a digital recording of the whole event and if you are interested in it I could send it to you once I receive it. Please don’t think I’m nuts, but I did find it very interesting and thought I would share with you. Erika" She asked that I not use her full name.

A flurry of further correspondence produced this message from a woman who runs haunted tours of Fort Collins and who has also visited the garage. Lori Juszak wrote:

"I have to admit that the app on the iphone sounds like a really non-credible source. We’ve just had some really specific words come through along with random, nonsensical things as well. We had a young man on our tour a few months ago with the same app, and the words that came through in a row included ‘fly,’ ‘explode,’ ‘metal,’ ‘suppress,’ ‘hijack.’ Later that week I had mine on, and this was before I’d read your report, and words included ‘Korea’ and ‘atom’ popped up, which I thought were odd but at that point saw no relation to the garage. When I read your report I wished I had kept a log of other things it said.

"I am a bit of a skeptic myself about what is and isn't real in our search for contact with whomever may be ‘just out of reach’ as I call it, but I will keep you posted about anything new that we hear in that old garage. Lori Juszak, www.fortcollinstours.com."

In June of 2012, Ted and I arranged to meet with Lori Juszak in Fort Collins to talk about the experiences in the garage. We traveled and camped through several National Parks, including Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Arches, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Cedar Breaks National Monument. Our ultimate goal was Ft. Collins, Colorado. Lori led us into the Armadillo garage, where for a few years pieces of UAL Flight 610 were stored after the UAL 610 crash on Crystal Mountain, close to Rocky Mountain National Park. Lori tells me that it was an 81 year old man, a first responder at the crash site in ‘51, who attended a tour and provided that snippet of information.

Lori’s tours are first and foremost to preserve the rich history of Ft. Collins. It turned out in the course of events that several of the local stories she garnered from various sources were about haunted locations. The Armadillo garage was one of those locals. Besides the crash connection, there were three suicides and a murder associated with the property. 

On one of Lori’s tours, a teenage boy had an iOvilus application on his phone. The tour guides do not allow communication with the spirits that seem to inhabit certain spots, but if someone has an EVP recorder or iOvilus app, they don’t object if they use them. In fact, Lori now has one, mostly due to the interesting words that came through on that unique occasion.

After our tour of the garage, the three of us went to a coffee shop for a post mortem. I had Lori write down the words that came through the app on a scrap of paper (which I still have, although I can't find a copy of the original emails from Lori and Erika). She hastily scribbled, "12 yr old boys Iovilis app: fly, explode, highjack, suppress, metal. Lori downloaded app & got Korea atom. Later during investigation we got Crystal." 

At first, Lori just dismissed the whole thing because she had no idea what any of it meant and thought it was just random words. When the word "crystal" appeared, Erika began to research and found Ron Miller's wreckchasing.com website. Ron also lives in Fort Collins and has led tours to the crash site. 

During our visit, Lori showed me how the $2 app works. You turn it on and words begin to appear. I saw four appear while she stood and explained what it does. Sometimes a computer voice will pronounce a word or two. Lori told me that when they actually use EVP recorders, the spirits call the women ‘lizards,’ which it turns out is what uncouth men called women of ill repute in days gone by. There is one place that Lori won’t return to because the door keeps slamming in her face.

I am not going to buy this app. The reason is that any communication coming through it is most likely originating from a lost spirit of some sort. Lori told me that in the old jail morgue, there is supposed to be the spirit of a little boy. He has been there for decades or more. So, years after his alleged death, he is still a child and still trapped in a cluttered, dirty, dark cellar. Perhaps it’s not a child at all, but something pretending to be in order to garner attention and manipulate the living. Whatever the answer is, this is an entity that is not ‘in the light.’ These electronic devices are fascinating, but they may be ‘the devil’s sound system’ (words I woke up with one morning after we returned home).

Lori has written a little book called The Ghosts of Ft. Collins. Dad’s story made it into the book at the very last minute, so the story is missing a few facts. Other than that, it's an interesting book.