Charleston: USS Yorktown & USS Laffey

The place to post about unsolved world mysteries, and places that are haunted or have a history of strange events.
Post Reply
User avatar
Zonk01
Posts: 246
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2018 10:24 pm
Patron Deities: Leviathan
Your favourite Demon?: Lucifer, Leviathan, Agares
Number of Demon Familiars: 19
Location: USA
Has thanked: 38 times
Been thanked: 55 times

I have visited Charelston SC a few times, but when I go, I always visit the USS Yorktown. She was an aircraft carrier for the US Navy and served in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. I have visited a few times, we would always go when I was a kid, and sleep overnight on the ship. I always felt funny on the ship though, like something was out of place.

It is known that the ship is haunted, and they offer ghost tours, but most of the things they say on there are usually just to sell tickets. While most of the tour is hamed up, there were people who died on board during Japanese attacks. Pilots took off from the deck and never landed. Many of their spirits never left though. There are certain hot spots on the ship that have regular activity too. The most audible places are the elevator lift room, the engine room, and the pilot’s debriefing room.

The most friequent room of activity is the elevator lift room. All throughout the night, you can hear squeaking and banging on the walls of the room. The squeaking sounds like rubber boots on a wet floor. It usually goes that there are a number of squeaks, and then a few bangs on the metal in the room. I camped out for an hour outside of the room from 11 pm - 12 pm and about every 20 minutes it would happen. I inspected the room with a friend before and after every event, and found that there are no speakers, or any other means for this to happen. The ship is all steel, and occasionally you will hear pops from the steel expanding and contracting, but it never sounded anything like a banging noise, or squeaking. It was very cool! There definitely was a unique energy to the room too. It was like a presence was there, but it wasn’t malicious. The elevator lift room was colder than the rest of that area of the ship. Everywhere below the decks of the ship is hot, but that area wasn’t as hot. Outside of the elevator lift room was a hallway. This hallway is also a center for poltergeist activities. At the end of the hallway is a little space which was used as a break room, which was across from the ship’s sick bay. On my walk down the hall, I was poked in the back.

The second hot spot is the debriefing room. It’s set up like a lounge more or less, with tables and a board where they would log the missions they flew. This area had a somber energy. Pilots would return without their friends, and have to cope with it in this room. Chairs have moved in the room without human interaction, objects placed in the room get moved as well. A common theory is that some of the pilots that died on missions have returned to the debriefing room and never left. The majority of the crew that died on the carrier were pilots, or other crew members on planes. I stayed in the room from 1 am - 2 am and didn’t experience anything more than the energy of the room. The energy itself was overwhelming. It felt like I was at a funeral of a family member. The energy was probably the most intense of any of the rooms in the ship, though I didn’t observe any poltergeist activity.

The third hot spot is the engine room. At night, the sound of levers and knobs being turned can be heard. I only heard it once in my multiple over night trips there. It was a squeaking of a knob, and it was sudden and sharp. After that I haven’t heard anything since. It was so subtle, I didn’t even realize it happened until I thought about it. It would belong in the setting, like background noise, but yet I knew it wasn’t supposed to be there. To my knowledge, no one died in the room, but this carrier’s records are hard to obtain. There wasn’t really a stand out energy to the room.

Some of the hotspots I haven’t visited are the armory, and the officer’s bunks. The officer’s bunks are now a staff area, but staff have plenty of stories about things falling down, and doors closing. These doors don’t close on their own either. The doors are water tight, and weigh about 60-70 pounds if I had to spitball a guess. I have red a few stories about staff members leaving doors open in the area, only to be woken up by them slamming shut. If I could I would love to experience this, but I don’t think I’m able to.

The next are is the armory. I’m not camping this place out any time soon though. A marine killed himself in the armory after receiving a letter while on deployment. People who have camped it out there have heard banging on the walls, as well as, crying. I refuse to camp this area simply because of the energy. The last time I camped at the ship, I was about a year and a half into my practice, and even when I walked through that room the energy was too much. It felt like pure frantic distraught. The energy had more or less stayed in tact from the incident. Maybe one day I will try there, but for now, I just don’t feel comfortable with it.

These are just the parts of the ship I could access. I imagine there are other hot spots I can’t explore. But yeah that’s my experience with it. If you are in the area, it makes a good day trip to explore and see what life was like on it for the sailors.

They also have a destroyer, the USS Laffey at the same dock as the Yorktown. She was a destroyer that was most famous for surviving one of the most horific Kamakaze attacks of WW2. She was hit by six kamakaze pilots, and four bombs and survived though heavily wounded. They don’t allow over night sleeping on the ship, but I can only imagine what activity is on the ship. There is much detail on what horrific tragedy happened during the attack, including a plane ripping through and destroying the main gun on the back of the ship. The owners of the museum ship refuse to let any type of paranormal seekers to stay overnight on it, but maybe one day we can explore and see what sort of paranormal events happen on it.
“I summon the one with the horns and the fire
as I throw myself right into the dark. I open the doors to the other side,
where everything is so old
I'm leaving this world and I enter the void
where the shadows forever reign.”
- “Where the Shadows Forever Reign” by Dark Funeral
User avatar
Red6joker
Posts: 974
Joined: Mon May 08, 2017 8:30 am
Patron Deities: Lord Lucifer, Lady Scylla
Your favourite Demon?: Lord Lucifer, Lord Satan, all of my awesome companions
Number of Demon Familiars: 93
Location: Georgia
Has thanked: 52 times
Been thanked: 95 times

That's pretty cool, I missed my chance to visit when I was on the east coast.
Post Reply

Return to “Haunted Objects, Places, and Unsolved Mysteries”