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The Terminal Spirits
Three stories from an airport with more departures than scheduled.
Memphis International Airport (MEM)
Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Location: 9 miles southeast of downtown Memphis
Airport code: MEM
Website: flymemphis.com
Overview: Memphis International Airport is actually a tale of two airports. By day, it’s a former major hub for Northwest and Delta Airlines. But at night, when FedEx’s gigantic cargo sorting operation comes to life, the airport fills with planes.
A little history: The airport opened in 1929 and rose to prominence as a passenger hub during the 1980s.
After the merger between Northwest and Delta Airlines, Delta eliminated Memphis as a passenger hub in 2013. Today, FedEx, which established its presence in Memphis in 1973, remains the airport’s defining presence.
In recent years, the passenger terminal has undergone substantial renovation. Concourses A and C were closed in 2022, and all flights now operate through a modernized Concourse B.
Please note: recent federal aviation security mandates have resulted in temporary restrictions on access to several maintenance areas. Airport operations has stated that passenger operations should not be affected.
Eating and drinking: Travelers will find a selection of restaurants, bars, and quick-service outlets, including Memphis’s celebrated Blues Room. Friendly bartenders make it a popular place to spend time before a flight.
Connections: Despite its international designation, Memphis primarily serves domestic destinations. Travelers bound for overseas destinations will generally need to connect through a larger airport, such as Miami.
Verdict: An unusually easy airport to get to (although a little bit tougher to leave), with a long tradition, renovated terminal, and relatively modest passenger crowds. Memphis lacks the international connections and extensive amenities of larger airports, but its peculiar combination of sleepy passenger concourses and immense, round-the-clock cargo operations gives it a character all its own.
The Door to Maintenance Corridor 73B
Clyde Owens had worked at the Memphis International Airport since 1972 and had never once opened the door to Maintenance Corridor 73B. Then new regulations came from Washington: every welded, sealed, and bolted door was to be opened, inspected, and catalogued.
It took four hours with an angle grinder. Clyde cut through every weld, bolt, latch, and rod, and one by one, the bolt heads dropped to the concrete.
The corridor opened onto a warehouse.
The ceilings were 40 feet high, taller than the terminal itself. Clyde knew every square inch of the airport, from the tower to the basement. Nothing of this size could possibly fit within the airport. The room reverberated with the sound of his footsteps.
And it was filled with luggage.
Tens of thousands of suitcases, duffles, trunks, and valises, stacked in neat rows ten feet high and ten feet deep. Clyde looked around for a forklift, or even a ladder. But there was nothing but luggage.
The oldest bags were piled in the corner. Clyde turned over a tag:
December 17, 1929.
Another:
October 1, 1934.
Down one aisle, he read the tags in order.
July 14, 1975
July 15, 1975
July 16, 1975
In the next:
June 5, 1944
June 6, 1944
June 7, 1944
Clyde walked up and down the rows for an hour. He never found the same date twice. He never found one date missing.
Clyde looked back at the door, and at the bolt heads scattered on the concrete. He searched the walls for another door, or a window, or a vent. There was no other way in.
In the far corner, a conveyor belt Clyde hadn’t noticed before suddenly shuddered to life. He knew every belt in the airport, end to end. None of them came down here.
The belt ran empty for minutes. Then, a small blue-green suitcase came tumbling down the chute.
Clyde checked the tag. It was dated today.
The belt stopped. On the wall above it, there was an old split-flap board, the kind that used to spell out departures and arrivals.
Its letters began to flip.
Behind him, the door slammed. Something heavy clicked into place.
Clyde ran to it. There was no handle. He dug his fingernails into the seam.
The door didn’t move.
He had ground off every bolt and latch himself.
Behind him, the board clattered to a stop.
WELCOME, CARETAKER
Seat 23A
Tabitha Williams had lost her phone and was stuck with a paper boarding pass, like it was 1997.
She had seat 23A, a window on the red-eye from Memphis to Miami. She’d come straight from signing a merger. Her husband and kids were already at the resort in Coral Gables, waiting for a long-overdue beach vacation.
Without her phone, she had no music, no meditation app, and worse, no pictures of her family. She wished she still kept photos in her wallet.
She was starting to relax when she heard a commotion up front. The doors had already closed. Somebody had gotten on anyway.
Another delay, Tabitha thought.
Up the aisle, a stylish woman in a cream-colored jacket and a hat was talking to a flight attendant.
“Take 14B for now,” the flight attendant said. “We’ll get you to your seat after takeoff.”
Tabitha looked away. She took red-eyes for the quiet.
At cruising altitude, Tabitha pressed the call button. She wanted a glass of Chardonnay.
The flight attendant arrived almost instantly. The woman in the cream jacket was right behind her.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the attendant said. “I think you may be in the wrong seat.”
“I don’t think so.” Tabitha held up her paper boarding pass. “23A. It says so right here.”
The flight attendant took it and studied it.
“Is this for Miami to San Juan, too?”
“No. I’m getting off in Miami.”
“And you’re sure this is your boarding pass?”
“Of course.” Tabitha craned her neck to check the number above her. “This is 23A, isn’t it?”
The attendant turned to the woman in the cream jacket. “Are you continuing on to San Juan, ma’am?”
The woman nodded.
“It looks like you’re both booked in the same seat. Please go back to 14B for now.”
A few minutes later, the attendant returned with the first officer.
“Jack, this passenger says she’s Tabitha Williams, in 23A.”
“What’s going on?” Tabitha asked.
“Ma’am, I’m First Officer Jack Roberts. May I see your ID?”
Tabitha handed it over. He studied it the way the attendant had studied her boarding pass.
“Please stay seated, ma’am.”
Tabitha was still waiting on her Chardonnay. Instead, the first officer came back with the woman in the cream jacket.
“You’re Tabitha Williams, in 23A.”
“Yes,” Tabitha said through her teeth.
“So is she.”
“That’s impossible. Either it’s a mistake or she’s a fraud.”
“American reservations confirmed both bookings.”
“My husband works for the airline. Call him. This is ridiculous.” Tabitha’s mind raced. “Our birthdays. Ask for her date of birth.”
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The woman in the cream jacket spoke for the first time.
“February 14, 1983.”
Valentine’s Day. Tabitha’s birthday.
“City of birth?” the first officer asked.
“San Antonio,” the woman said. Tabitha said it a half-second behind her.
“I don’t know if this is a prank or a con or something worse,” Tabitha shouted, “but this woman is not me!”
“Let me message Mike,” the woman said. “My husband. He’s at the resort with our kids, Lucy and Ethan.”
The woman held up her phone. On the lock screen, she sat on a beach beside a tall, handsome man. A little girl, her spitting image, sat at her side. A boy who looked just like his father was building a sandcastle.
Tabitha went numb. She knew that photo.
It was the photo on her screensaver at work. That was the beach in Coral Gables where Mike had proposed all those years before. Where they had taught Lucy to swim. Where Ethan had ridden his first jet ski.
It was the same photo. Except the woman sitting beside Mike wasn’t Tabitha.
Tabitha reached for her phone to prove the photo was a fake. Her hand closed in an empty pocket.
The flight attendant returned with a note from the captain. The first officer read it, then took out his phone.
“The airline reached your husband,” he told the woman. “He sent this.”
On the screen, the woman stood in a long white wedding gown, with Mike’s arms wrapped around her waist.
“He says he’s in San Juan with Lucy and Ethan. They’ll meet you at the resort when you land.”
He turned to Tabitha. “Ma’am, airport police will meet us at the gate in Miami. You won’t be able to leave the airport until this is sorted out.”
“Those are my kids!” Tabitha shouted. “That’s my husband!”
The flight attendant led her, sobbing, to 14B.
The woman in the cream jacket took her seat in 23A. The flight attendant brought her a glass of Chardonnay.
Back in the cockpit, the first officer keyed the radio.
“Atlanta Center, American Four-Eight-Two. We have a passenger situation. Request advice.”
The pause was longer than it should have been.
“American Four-Eight-Two, Atlanta Center. Say again call sign.”
“Atlanta Center, American Four-Eight-Two.”
Another pause.
“American Four-Eight-Two, be advised. We have an unidentified aircraft in your vicinity, also claiming to be American Four-Eight-Two. Stand by.”
Then he heard his own voice on the radio. Not from his mouth. From somewhere out in the dark.
“Atlanta Center, American Four-Eight-Two. First Officer Jack Roberts. Standing by.”
The Captain
Raymond Mendoza tended bar at the Blues Room, in the Memphis airport. The hard part of the job was that nobody was ever a regular. Everyone was just passing through.
Except Captain Samuels.
Most pilots stayed out of bars, for obvious reasons. Greg Samuels wasn’t most pilots. Ray assumed he was based in Memphis, because he was in the Blues Room a few times a week.
Greg would always come into the Blues Room, set his hat down on the end of the bar, and take off his flight wings.
Ray didn’t remember the date Captain Samuels first came in, but he remembered the night. He kept the bar open ninety minutes past closing while Greg told stories about the Air Force, and flying mail planes the week before Christmas.
Greg had a story for everything. Refueling the Saudi royal family’s jet in midair. Flying a tour up to Nome, Alaska. Landing a pontoon plane to search for a shipwreck. Each one was too big to be true, with just enough detail that you believed him.
The whole bar loved him. Ray loved him most of all. Before Greg, Ray’s life had felt small. Greg brought a little adventure into it.
Once, Greg mentioned finding fossils in the Kuwaiti desert while he was stationed there. Ray said his daughter, Kate, was obsessed with fossils. She was saving up for a fossil-hunting trip to Utah.
The next week, Greg left a small bag of fossils on the bar, with a note:
For Kate. Happy hunting!
Then Greg stopped coming in. A few days. Then a week. After three weeks, Ray started to worry.
Ray asked around. None of his coworkers remembered serving him.
“Loud guy,” Ray told Annie, who worked the late shift. “Great stories. Always buying somebody a round.”
“Ray, we almost never get pilots in here.”
After six weeks, Ray went to his friend Vee in airport security.
“How would I track down a pilot who used to drink here?”
“Why? He skip out on a tab?”
“No. He’s a friend. He just stopped coming by.”
“If he’s a pilot, he’s in the access logs. Give me his name.”
A few days later, Vee stopped by the bar after her shift.
“Nobody by that name has flown in or out of here, Ray. Not in any records I can see.”
“I’ve seen his ID. It had the FAA logo on it.” Ray hesitated. “It was old, though.”
It took Ray three days to find the right number at the FAA, and two more for someone to call him back. They had no record of Greg Samuels.
By the three-month mark, Ray was ready to give up.
He took Vee out for pizza to thank her, and to ask one more favor.
“Can you check the security footage? I know which nights he came in.”
“Why does this guy matter so much to you?”
Ray didn’t have a good answer.
Two weeks later, Vee pulled him aside in the security line.
“I found him. I guess. Kind of.” She lowered her voice. “There’s a shoulder at the edge of a frame. Or the back of his head. Or a body behind a pillar. But never his face. Not once.”
She hesitated.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say he knew exactly where every camera was. Do you have any pictures of him?”
“No. We never took any.”
Then Ray remembered trivia night, months back. Greg hadn’t played, but had been there that night. And Rachel, the bar’s social media manager, posted a photo of the winning team on the bar’s social media.
Ray pulled out his phone, and scrolled back on the Blues Room’s Instagram page. There, in the photo of the winners, was Greg, small, blurry, and half-turned away.
“That’s him.”
“Send it to me.”
A week later, on a quiet Monday, FBI agents walked into the Blues Room. Vee was with them.
“Raymond Mendoza?”
“Yes.”
One of the agents held up a printout of the trivia-night photo. “You know this man?”
“Greg Samuels. He used to come in a few times a week.”
“What did he talk about?”
“His career flying, mostly. Why?”
“That’s not possible. This man is Christopher Yarborough. Air Force veteran, Alaska bush pilot. In 2003, he flew a tour up to Nome in a Cessna and put it into the side of a mountain. His body was identified by dental records.”
Ray thought about Greg’s story of the tour to Nome. Then he thought about the bag of fossils on Kate’s shelf.
“Why are you telling me this now? Why the FBI?”
“Your photo was too blurry to identify him. But we found someone matching his appearance on the crew-only cameras. One of them caught his face. We matched it to Yarborough an hour ago.”
He paused.
“Yarborough just boarded American 1143 to Seattle. Somebody updated the crew roster to list a Captain Greg Samuels as a last-minute replacement. The scheduled captain was called off his shift. Nobody knows who called him.
“As soon as the plane reached altitude, Yarborough turned it toward Nome.”
