Spooky moment Titanic car display at 'haunted' museum inexplicably fills with water
Staff can't explain why a flood started under the car, in a building that hasn't flooded in decades.
Footage courtesy of Volo Museum
THIS is the bone-chilling moment that the Titanic exhibition at a haunted museum starts to inexplicably fill up with water.
Staff at the Volo Museum in the US state of Illinois were spooked to find the exhibit flooded when they reopened after a night of bad weather.
Director Brian Grams said: “I thought ‘Oh s***!' It was storming out and I figured there had to have been some damage to the building to allow so much water in.
“But there was no explanation for the water – the building is on high ground, there was no flooding on the outside, and no wet ceiling tiles or drywall.
“Nor was there any evidence as to where water, especially in that volume, would have come in – it's a concrete floor.”
The centrepiece of the exhibition is a 1912 Renault Type CB coupé de ville, one of only two ever made – with the other one famously lost aboard the Titanic.
So staff were creeped out when CCTV revealed that the water seemed to have come from the car.
In the footage, the dark shadow of the water can be seen emerging from beneath the Renault and covering the floor of the exhibition.
Mr Grams said: “There is no reason for the storm water to enter that building – it has not had any issues in 40 years, nor did it in the storm two days later.
“And the irony is that it happens just a year after becoming the Titanic building, and the flooding started at the Titanic car.
“Even after seeing the video footage to narrow down where the flooding started, there is nothing in the area that would have allowed water in.
“There’s been lots of comments on social media about the irony, and employees that witnessed it first hand were a bit creeped out.”
Brian said it wasn’t the first spooky happening at the motor museum.
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He said: “It's an old property with buildings dating back to 1848.
“For decades people have witnessed unexplainable occurrences that include apparitions, levitating objects, electronics turning on that were not plugged in, and just countless things.
“There is one main, common experience: people seeing what they describe as a young man in a trench coat, soldier's uniform, long coat, etc.
“We later discovered one of the founding members of the original farm fought and died in the Civil War and is buried in a cemetery across the street from the property.”
There have been other ironic incidents too.
The same building was once made to resemble an old fire station, housing old fire engines and equipment, but it burnt down and had to be rebuilt.
It then became a workshop for fixing autos – and one famous resident was the possessed car from the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Christine.
Mr Grams said: “I was working late, it was winter and it was dark, and I had to go through that building to get to my car to leave for the night.
“When I was walking directly in front of Christine, the horn just started blowing. It scared the crap out of me and I ran out of there.”
The cause of the flood remains a mystery.
The Renault aboard the Titanic belonged to William E. Carter, the scion of a wealthy coal and iron family, and was valued at $5,000 – an estimated $161,000 in today’s money.
When the ship struck the iceberg, Carter sent his wife, her maid, and their two children to safety on a lifeboat.
He would eventually escape on the last lifeboat himself, along with J. Bruce Ismay, who sparked controversy when he became the highest-ranking White Star Line official to survive the disaster.
Carter’s car went down with the wreck, but a replica made a steamy cameo in the 1997 film, Titanic, where it was used for a sex scene.