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Share Your Paranormal Experiences On Board The Yorktown

patriotspoint May 08, 2012

Have you had any paranormal encounters aboard the USS YORKTOWN? Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum invites you to share your experiences! Please send any information – and photos, if available – to Ashley Smith, Patriots Point Public Information Officer. We will be compiling this data and sharing it with the public at a later date.

On Wednesday, May 2, the SyFy Channel’s “Ghost Hunters” team dedicated an hour-long episode to investigating whether the spirits of past heroes are still on duty aboard the USS YORKTOWN. The crew from TAPS [The Atlantic Paranormal Society], including Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, spent several nights aboard the USS YORKTOWN. During this time, the ship was closed to the public – there were no overnight campers or hosted events, only Patriots Point security was allowed on the property, and all power to the ship was completely shut off.

TAPS Founder, Jason Hawes, said, “Not only did we catch some of the most compelling evidence I believe we have ever caught and the most intense experiences all team members have encountered in a long time, but it is also known as a hotspot for the very things we seek, “the paranormal.”

Read more about their visit to the USS YORKTOWN.

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11 thoughts on “Share Your Paranormal Experiences On Board The Yorktown

  1. Kevin Murphy says:

    Back in November of 2011 of Veterans Day and the rest of the weekend, i went on board the ship with my boy scout troop, i am in Troop 712 of Palm Beach Gardens Florida. On a saturday night, around 8:00 to 10:00 P.M., I was searching around the ship seeing if maybe their was spirits on board because i figured their possibly was. I started asking questions, i started at some points hearing things, but wasn’t sure if i was imagining it. Then i started seeing shadows at the corner of my eyes. A friend from another troop starts seeing things like shadows that i hadn’t seen. I also started getting cold chills at some points, i tried to debunk it but couldn’t find any air vents, and it was only in one spot, then it would disappear. Sense boy scouts doesn’t allow electronics, i couldn’t record anything. At the point i did this, i didn’t know for sure it was haunted until Ghost Hunters Investigated there, and i just found this website through google. I did at some points here voices, but they were very faint, i checked around near bye but couldn’t find anyone. I have to say one thing, it was creepy but it was interesting to expeirence that kind of pranormal activities. I would love to go back their one day and do more reearch, but next time with electronics to record audio and video, and take some pictures.

    1. patriotspoint says:

      Hi Kevin,

      Thanks for sharing your experience! In the months ahead, we will be offering paranormal tours on board the Yorktown. We hope you will be able to visit us again and take part in one of these tours!

      1. Joey says:

        This is not paranormal.

  2. Sandra Long says:

    I am sorry but I plan my vacation around the 4th of
    July each year. I meet my family here so we can watch the most fantastic fireworks ever. I seriously cry each year as I remember my Uncle Bob’s ship that went down during WWll.
    I did not have that moment with him this year because we could not see the fireworks. Many elderly and children that sat for hours in the hot sun
    just to get a good seat only saw trees.

  3. Josh Hancox says:

    I have stayed there multiple times as a boy scout.

    A lot of times we would play capture the flag like games in the place while staying the night.

    All I know is I never felt alone in the engine room deep in the ship. At the time I probably did not understand the relelvance of what had happened in the ship, but I do remember that room was very solemn and eerie.

    I have not been back since I was a kid, but we are planning on coming over on our vacation to let our boys see the big ship.

  4. Heather Casto says:

    We went through the Ghost tour September 23, 2012 and it was really awesome, one of the best we have been on for ghost tours, down in the museum, my husband and I one minute was looking at some frames on the wall, and then for a split second just black covered them, we hadn’t moved, no lights changed or anything like that but then we could see the frames again, The tour guide said someone on another tour said they seem the same thing in the same corner. My daughter in one area started feeling really dizzy and got really scared and kinda backed into people wanting to leave, and in another area, where the scouts sleep, she kept feeling someone touching her hair and neck, and she kept swishing her hair to stop the feeling. Once the ghost meter went off around the electrical area but another time it went off real quick and stayed high in the yellow, in a couple of areas, The guide at one point tapped on a door and a few of us heard a tap from down another hall that was completely dark and no one was down there. My daughter at no time turned on her recorder on her phone but there is a one second recording of strange laughter and then in the background someone saying 2 words. Would recommend this tour to friends. Maybe it was just our minds playing tricks on us but maybe not.

    1. patriotspoint says:

      Hello Heather,

      Sounds exciting! We’re glad you enjoyed your experience and hope you’ll come back for another tour in the future.

  5. Riley says:

    Yesterday I was at the USS Yorktown with my group and went down into the room with the glassed in ship movements. I looked in the small room next to it and thought someone was gonna try and scare me so I started staring and all of the sudden I saw the reflection of what looked like a marine in full khaki dress in the glass of the case. No one real was there so that freaked me out.
    (It was around 9:15)

  6. Carla Sanders says:

    in 2013 I spent the night on the USS Yorktown with my son Jevante’s cub scout troop. Troop 45 was from Catawba’s Height Baptist Church in Belmont, North Carolina. We really enjoyed the self-guided tour and exploring all of the history. Later that night sleeping quarters were separated by gender. I chose a top bunk and settled down to sleep. First …it was so incredibly cold in the room. Around 4:30 I was awakened to heavy footsteps going up and down the stairs right outside of the room we were in. At first I thought that since there was an event on the ship earlier that evening (similar to a prom) that the teenagers must be running back and forth up the stairs and on the deck. The stomping was so loud and hard it was vibrating the ceiling above my head. I lay there until close to 5:30 completely annoyed and at one point thought about going out of the door to see what all of the commotion was. I was surprised that no one else woke up. The next morning I asked the other mothers if they had heard all of the noise and no one had. It wasn’t until later that I was reminded after mentioning the event to some employees on the ship that the deck is closed down every night and no one could go up there. A few weeks later I told my manager about us staying on the ship and she said “That ship is haunted. Look it up. I am surprised that you didn’t know.” I am the person who is always researching stuff and this got right past me. Actually the whole time we were in Charleston I tried talking my sons (I have 3 and we all stayed) into going on a ghost tour with me. They abruptly declined. Little did I know that I would be spending the night on a haunted vessel.

  7. Amy Overbaugh says:

    My husband and I visited Charleston a few weeks ago around the 3rd week of September. We were touring the ship during the morning hours. We rented the $6 headphones that coincide with the areas of the ship (I highly recommend!) We were walking around the kitchen galley area listening to our rented headphones and looking at the kitchen scene where it shows lots of pancakes, bacon,, etc … I watched a man walk through the closed off kitchen display area pushing a cart. At first quick glance I thought he was part of the scene, then realized there are no moving parts to scenes on the ship especially real people. It seemed strange. I turned to my husband and said, “Did you see that guy?” And he said, “yeah the one pushing the cart.” I mentioned how I thought it was strange… no more than a few seconds go by and a group of 5 people walk through the doorway and I asked them if they saw a guy pushing a cart (he would have been walking toward them). When they replied no I walked passed them and looked in all directions for the guy with the cart. I couldn’t shake the thought of what we both had seen. Later that day we tried to analyze and rationalize who the guy could have been… a janitor? No one was “working” on the ship aside from the people on the main deck at the information desk and in the snack shack beside that, and if it was a janitor, where did he go? How did he manage to not be seen by the group he would have had to pass? The area was narrow. How did he even get a cart around in that area with the way the door jambs were raised and you had to step through some? I am absolutely convinced it was a ghost! Im so happy my husband also saw him so I didn’t feel like I imagined it! He looked completely real. He was a 20 year old looking small built guy, short hair, a tan fitted t shirt on (I don’t remember seeing his lower half as it was concealed by a window frame) and pushing what I would call a silver utility cart. He never looked over over at us, walked casually down the hallway from the right to the left as if he didn’t see us. Simply doing his job. It was bizarre!! I cannot stop thinking about how cool it was to see an actual apparition like that without It scaring the daylights out of me. I never felt “cold spots” on the ship (even when I walked down the corridor he had just walked down). Never felt spooked or creeped out. It was just an awesome experience but I don’t want to have another one! 🙂 That one was enough!

  8. Connor Cunningham says:

    I visited the ship in i believe summer of 2015, and it was just a normal tour not really expecting anything to happen. And nothing did happen, or so i thought. Down near the Marine barracks, there is a hallway with a marine dressed in a khaki uniform (not a real person) so i took a photo because i thought it looked creepy. Turns out something more creepy ended up in my photo, at the end of the hallway in the darkness you can see the outline of a figure with orbs around their face, i hadn’t noticed it until like a year after the fact and i still have it saved to this day, its honestly one of the creepiest things to ever happen to me.

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