USS Arizona, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
More than 1,100 sailors perished aboard the USS Arizona during the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941.
The Arizona now rests in Pearl Harbor, with a floating memorial built over her allowing visitors to peer down into the deep blue sea at her outline. From personal experience, it is a very eerie feeling to see a once great ship, humbled at the bottom of the sea, forever frozen from one fateful day. Tiny drops of oil still bubble to the surface, and shimmer across the waves.
Stare at the waters long enough though, and you may even see an anguished face appear, as a tourist who visited the memorial captured on film.
Additionally, numerous military members assigned to the area have reported eerie noises and disembodied screams that still come from the harbor. See Most Haunted Bases in the Military
USS Lexington, Corpus Christi, Texas
Nicknamed the “Blue Ghost”, the USS Lexington was at first, seemingly unsinkable. During WWII, she was mistakenly reported as sunk four times by enemy forces, until she was finally hulled in the Battle of the Coral Sea, fighting alongside the USS Yorktown in May, 1942.
When word of the sinking reached Massachusetts’ Fore River Shipyard, and the nearly finished USS Cabot,the decision was made that the “Lady Lex” would sail again, in honor of the 216 crew members lost at sea. The Cabot was renamed, and the second carrier to be commissioned as the USS Lexington raced to join the fight in the Pacific.
The new USS Lexington went on to set more records than any other Essex-class carrier, spending 21 months in combat, her aviation crews destroying 372 enemy aircraft in the air, another 475 on the ground. During her five decades in service, the Lexington would earn 11 battle stars, along with the Presidential Citation for exceptional bravery.
That type of legacy does not go quietly into the night. Now a maritime museum in Corpus Christi, Texas, the Lexington reports hundreds of supernatural activities each year. Among the most famously reported, are sightings of sailors guiding lost guests back to the deck, and a sailor, mistaken as a museum docent, giving lectures of how the turbine engines work … before vanishing into thin air.
USS Yorktown, Charleston, South Carolina
The legacy of the USS Yorktown is as inspiring, as it is haunting.
Yorktown is a pivotal name in US history, never to be forgotten. The year was 1781 and the Revolutionary War had been raging for six years, when British General Cornwallis retreated to Yorktown, Virginia. He had hoped to be evacuated by the British navy, but the plan proved to be a trap, with Cornwallis met instead by the French navy at sea, and US forces surrounding the city. The victory at Yorktown effectively ended the war – and the name Yorktown has been inspiration for US naval warfare ever since. There have been five commissioned under the name, with the first dating back to 1840.
Known as the “Fighting Lady”, the third USS Yorktown was one of only eight active carriers left in the country after the WWII attack on Pearl Harbor. US signals intelligence had picked up plans of an enemy attack planned in the Coral Sea. The USS Yorktown joined the Lexington and both steamed to the South Pacific, and into what became the Battle of the Coral Sea.
It was a strategic, but tough victory for Allied forces. The Lexington was sunk; the Yorktown badly damaged. Further naval intelligence suggested a new attack was being planned against the Midway Atoll, which would tip the balance of power in the Pacific to whomever won.
It was estimated the USS Yorktown would take at least 90 days to repair, but commanding Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz knew there was no time. The Battle of Midway would need every ship that could be mustered – and the USS Yorktown was deployed back into battle…just three days later. With a hole in the flight deck, no radar, and leaking fuel across the sea – the brave sailors of the USS Yorktown steamed to Midway…knowing that they were likely trading their own lives for the naval battle of a lifetime.
They were right. The Yorktown was sunk, claiming 141 souls with it. Witnesses say that the great ship sank honorably, stern first – and with her battle flags flying until the end.
A fourth USS Yorktown was commissioned in 1953, as an ongoing legacy to the heroic sailors who had come before. And it is the fourth Yorktown, decommissioned in 1975 and now moored in Charleston as a museum – that is home to some truly otherworldly activity.
Although the wreckage and the entombed men of the third, WWII-era Yorktown still rest at the bottom of the Pacific (when the wreckage was discovered in 1998 – the ship’s anti-aircraft guns still pointed skyward), countless visitors have reported sailors still walk along the moored Yorktown in the Charleston Harbor.
From unexplainable apparitions and shadowy figures caught on film, to whispers, and slamming bulkhead doors – ghostly activity has been reported by law enforcement, museum employees, tourists, and even paranormal professional investigation teams.
One Yorktown museum employee shared his thoughts. “I think some of these men loved this old ship so much, they just want to come back and stay a while. And if there are ghosts – well, they’re our men. They’re the good guys.”
