♪ (eerie music) ♪
I'm Mark Adams and in 2014,
I was a member of the South Carolina ETV production
team who came here to Patriots Point Naval and
Maritime Museum to do a story about ghosts on the
USS Yorktown aircraft carrier. The story that
aired on Palmetto Scene was about the various ghost
stories people had experienced, and the ghost
tours Bruce Orr, author of several books about
hauntings in South Carolina, were giving to the public.
There was a lot of interesting things going
on on this ship. You get everything from whispers
to footsteps to door slamming, hatches slamming,
all the way up to full body apparitions.
People claim to see a lot of things going on on this ship.
A web extra time on the South Carolina ETV
website was about our team spending the night
on the Yorktown conducting our own ghost hunt
with Bruce Orr as our guide and some of the
results from that experience. There was some
evidence I recorded that I thought was significant
and now I want to go back and revisit that evidence.
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On October 6th, 2014, we set up the
equipment including unmanned cameras in three
different places on the ship for the overnight
ghost hunt. One of those areas was the lady's
birthing area near the front of the Yorktown,
an area not on any of the public tours. Bruce Orr
suggested this paranormal hot spot because of
previous experiences in one specific hallway.
The plan was this: I placed the camera here, that I
would leave running unmanned looking down this hallway
while we walked around the ship.
♪ (eerie music) ♪
The lights and power had been completely shut down on
the ship and Bruce Orr let us uses laser
pointer that can project a grid pattern on the
hallway to see if any movement would be caught
on tape. I took my still camera and braced it against
this metal box right above my video camera.
I knew it would be a timed exposure because of the
low light situation in the hallway. I wanted to
make sure it was as still as possible.
After I took the first photo
I decided to turn the camera and
take more of a vertical image. In order to see more of
the laser grid pattern on the floor. So, five seconds
later I turned the camera and took the second photo.
I then asked Bruce to walk all the way down and back
so I can have footage of a real person
walking in the hallway to compare with any footage
of a ghost I might have later. And, I am rolling
go ahead and come around the corner.
By the time you get there,
it's really working. It's really all over you.
All right good. All right now
Let's leave it rolling without us here.
Let's see what we get. Yep. We then left to begin our
investigation elsewhere on the ship.
After that day of filming and I was back at ETV
I started watching the video footage and was a
little disappointed that nothing unusual was seen.
But what did surprise me was the audio captured in
that hallway with the laser grid. Throughout the
night strange sounds were heard.
(clanging and banging)
At one point,
a startling sound was heard. A loud slap on the wall
very near the video cameras microphone.
(slap)
I started taking a close look at my photographs,
and noticed something strange in two of them.
They were the two photos I took of the empty
hallway with the laser grid right before we left
on our investigation around the ship. Something
caught my eye, discrepancies between the two.
As you can see in the first photo, the end of
the hallway is completely black, but in the second
photo taken five seconds later you can see the end
of the hallway. It's as if there's a big black mass
in the first photo that wasn't there in the
second photo. Then I noticed in the second
photo that this doorway on the side of the
hallway is blacked out, where can be seen in the
first photo. I then realized that in the black
mass of the first photo that these pinpoints of
light from the laser grid were not pinpoints at all.
They were streaks of light as if in motion.
Remember this was a timed exposure and all these
pinpoints of light from the laser grid are still
except for the ones in the black mass.
The next step was to take these photographs and increase
the brightness and decrease the contrast and
then it became clear what I'd captured in these images.
In the first photo, the black mass now
appears to be a figure with a head, torso and
two legs. The light streaks which indicate motion are
clearly on this figure. In the second photo
the figure is gone, but in that doorway the black
mass appears to be a leg and a foot stepping into
the room. So it appears that I took two photos of
someone walking down the hallway and stepping into
this side room. I know there was no one in the
hall as I was taking the photos.
Why was it important for you to use those two photos that I
took in your ghost tours of the USS Yorktown?
What I love the best about using what you guys did,
you guys came out here, you listened to our stories
you took the challenge. You said we'll let the
ship speak for itself, and it did. So, you guys come in.
ETV comes in. Now all of a sudden you guys capture
stuff you weren't expecting to capture.
To me, that's a lot more credible. The fact that you
guys came in here you were skeptical. You listened
to us. You took the challenge. You stayed on
the ship that night. And the ship did exactly what
we told you it would do. It proved itself to you.
As a bonus feature I turned on an EMF detector
electromagnetic field detectors. Now paranormal
investigators believe that when they come into
contact with spirit energy they can activate.
They turn themselves on their on and they light up.
So I sat that in the floor along the path down this
corridor with the ghost grid. You set up the cameras
and we actually secured it, locked in so nobody
would have access. So that was what made it so great,
for that catch. There's no one coming in
or out of this place. You had two pictures back to
back shows what it does traveling down the hallway.
It turns into a room. But in the
background the EMF detector is actually
activated so whatever this is has passed by and
activated that device. Me or are you walking down
this corridor is not going to set that off.
So whatever this is that passed over it did and
that was a great catch to a great added bonus to it.
We like to think here at Patriots Point that any
spirits here are friendly. You know we're Americans
they were here just to protect our country.
If their spirits are trapped here, maybe it's a good thing.
Maybe they continue to watch
over the ship and we have no reason to believe that
there's any ill will for any of our spirits that
are here and you know we share the ship with them.
♪ (eerie music) ♪