Charleston is a pretty active area as far as the paranormal experiences.
Charleston has been around since 1670 and it's had as ups and downs. It had a pretty
bloody history getting to the point where it's at so it does have a lot of
ghosts, it has a lot of locations that are haunted in Charleston. I spent quite a
long time here in Charleston being in law enforcement. I was a homicide
investigator for many years and after our retired always had an interest in
folklore and legends decided to start looking into ghost tales. Well I wrote a
lot of books throughout the States but after doing the ghosts of the USS
Yorktown that was two years ago and I haven't left this ship yet. It's pretty
active has a lot of interesting things going on on this ship. You get everything
from whispers to footsteps - door slamming, hatches slamming - all the way
up to full-body apparitions. People claim to see a lot of things going on on the
ship shadowy apparitions to full-body apparitions. I've worked here for about
17 years now started when I was 13 years old as the volunteer project to school
and then fell in love with the place and would work at age 14 just running papers
and now I'm currently exhibit technician doing audio visual interactive
entertaining stuff for the kids now. I've heard lots of shadowy figures. I've heard of
footsteps. I've heard of people talking. Me, personally, I've had tons on me and
I've had doors come open on me and other other noise related things. I haven't
seen much. One time saw shadow cut across a light but that was the most of what I
saw. It was back in my high school days when I would pretty much come out
here on Friday and leave on Sunday mornings and whole weekend working and
we had staterooms where we could stay and on this particular night I was
the only one down there. I was just sitting on the edge of the
bunk collecting my thoughts I guess and all
of a sudden the door slammed opened I expected it to be maybe some kids
wandering into where they shouldn't have been and I went out to investigate and at
either end of the pathway from where I was there were chains hanging and the
chains were perfectly still...nobody. It'd be hard for me to believe that somebody
was able to sit under the chain real quick and time took me to get up without
making the chain sway at all. Plus, on a steel ship you can hear footsteps from
pretty far away so for me to have not heard anybody running was a little
concerning for me but outside of that I don't know really what to make of it. I
had the door pinned shut so it it was it was it was definitely some force behind
it. About two years ago we had a couple visiting from Wisconsin and they they
took a picture of this helicopter and after looking at their digital camera
here onboard the ship they brought it to a crewmember of ours to take a look at
what they what was appeared to be a human form in the back of the helicopter
and it does appear to be a crew member which would been a flight engineer with
a helmet May West jacket uniform standing in the back of the helicopter,
which is we've tried to duplicate that shot many many times to no avail. So, it's
one of the more one of those unexplained stories of the USS Yorktown and its crew.
January 23rd of 2013 on this aircraft carrier we were hosting an investigation.
About 2:30 in the morning we get up onto the hangar deck. As we're walking through
the hangar deck two of the young ladies point in the residual lighting towards
the drink machines to a person's walking down there and they ask 'who is that?' I
said it's one of the security officers. The moms replies that it's neither of
the security officers I saw tonight and it definitely was neither are those two
security officers it was a young white male walking past the drink machines
wearing a black coat and had a black hat on. Well, I noticed something they don't
notice and what I notice is he does not have security and reflective letters on
the back of his jacket. He's not a security officer after 20 years of law
enforcement my brain automatically defaults to cop mode and I realized
we've got a trespasser on the ship. So, I begin again calling to him he does
not acknowledge. So, at this point I have a walkie-talkie I want to get to him
before he gets down below deck, contact security or law enforcement get him out
of here. So, I started running across the hangar deck towards the individual I get
to about 20 feet of him he turns left towards the stairwell and what I'm not
anticipating is the fact that the other part of my brain says look at the pretty
round buttons on that U.S. Navy Military pea coat...realize he's wearing a pea
coat. He has a hat on with some sort of riding across the crown of the hat I
started downshifting rather rapidly he makes a he stepped towards the stairs
and there is no longer anything there in front of me. 20 years of law enforcement
I've had a lot of things happen in that situation running up onto a suspect but
that's the first time in my whole 50 years of existence have ever had a
person vaporize. That was a new one on me. Took a little bit of getting used to
where we are currently is that we're at forward on the fourth deck near a
Marines landing force equipment room where I was up here and actually was
able to get to the center of this room and felt a tug on my radio. I had a boom
mic on my radio and actually felt it pull tight and that's nothing
out of the ordinary catches on things all the time I stopped to see what it
was hung on and by that time had already snapped on me and I was clearing
middle of the room and the cord on the mic didn't reach to anything I
was sitting here it was a couple of feet shy of anything that could have snagged
on. We had our current Chief of Police for the town of Mount Pleasant who was a
lieutenant at the time had a very interesting experience when he was
called on board because our security guards thought they had a prowler on the
ship. And he and a sergeant, at that time, saw a large black black mass that ran
from them at a very rapid rate faster than they said they could move it was
very large black mass and it happened in the same area where on the program ghost
hunters they picked up an image on a video a thermal camera video in the same
location. So, you know, that was pretty interesting compelling evidence. We've
had a lot of supports of seeing what what's called the Shadow Man so it kind
of fits with that as well. We've had certainly lots reports of noises but of
course this ship makes a lot of noise when it's a contracting and expanding
because of heat differentials but that sort of thing. We had report of a lady in
a birthing area where the campers stay that her towel rose to the ceiling or
the overhead of the the compartment and came back down and excited her a great
deal. But the main thing is if if they are if there are ghosts period and if
there are ghosts on this ship there are guys, you know. And it's again very
comforting, I think, to have them here. If there's such a thing as a ghost on this aircraft here
is a hero, a patriot, an American, who died for the freedoms of this
country died for all of our freedoms. So these are the good guys on here. There's
nothing on this ship is going to hurt you. They were our Greatest Generation. They
certainly did plenty for us back when the ship was operational in World War
Two and it is very important that we don't forget about where we came from
and part of doing that is preserving ships of this nature that
carried so many good Americans over to a fight and so many of them lost their lives
doing it and so it's just right we honor them this way