Every Ship is Haunted

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As a Marine who has only spent a few weeks at a time temporarily living on and off various ships, I can certainly understand why sailors in the Navy, those who are permanently assigned to their ships for as long as three years, might feel like they are living on a floating prison.

You can see them skulking through the narrow passageways, their pale faces often wearing a grim expression.

Possibly from the lack of sunlight or the ship's constant maintenance issues with infrequent blackouts and loss of power which includes the air conditioning or the need to conserve water and take short and often cold showers.

Maybe it's the quality of the food or otherwise it's the inconvenience of suddenly having a bunch of rowdy marines being crammed onto their formerly quiet and once peaceful ship with them.

But jokes aside While I have never experienced anything so out of the ordinary on ship myself, what might cause a cold sensation to run down my spine is to find myself living on a ship and then finding out that the ship

is haunted.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

The following account was emailed to me by a sailor named Eric, who, at the time this story takes place, around 2011 to 2012, he was stationed on the USS Winston Churchill, an Arlay Burr-class destroyer, out of Norfolk, Virginia.

With the ship's guided missile destroyer class designation being DDG-81, he and his shipmates affectionately refer to their ship as Cellblock 81.

The following is his story.

It happened while we were in port.

We had a shipwide blackout.

As a damage control petty officer, it was my job to perform maintenance on the ship, so my chief told me he wanted me to walk around the ship and test some of the emergency lighting while the power was out.

It was simple enough.

I would get to explore some new parts of the ship in the dark, and all I had to do was push a button and see if the lights turned on.

But this was the first time I would be going down to

auxiliary room 2.

Now, at the time this story takes place, I was fairly new to the ship, and I had started hearing some stories about a room on the ship, an engineering space, called Auxiliary Room 2.

And when I first heard the stories, I honestly didn't believe it too much, but different people had claimed to have strange experiences in and around that area.

And to add to the weirdness, to me the experiences seemed to be gender-specific.

For instance, several of my female colleagues said they couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching them,

while my male colleagues said it felt like someone was about to attack them.

Now, I enjoy being creeped out as much as anyone else, but

I figured those kinds of stories could just be explained by people wanting to believe there was something strange going on, right?

And then psyching themselves out.

After my chief told me what to do i informed some of the ship's engineering personnel that i was heading down to that part of the ship to work they then gave me these wide-eyed expressions and firmly told me that i shouldn't go down there by myself and i wasn't sure if they were being serious but i told them i didn't really have a choice i sincerely doubted my chief would let me out of performing my duties because of a ghost

But then some of the newer engineers said they wanted to come with me, just to see if the odd stories true.

I have to admit, I was happy to have them come along, as I certainly wouldn't mind the company, and the stories were now making me feel a little bit on edge.

So we headed down into the belly of the ship and over to Auxiliary Room 2.

What the hell?

When I entered the room, as soon as my foot touched the deck,

it was like I could feel the air change.

You know, and goosebumps broke out all over my body.

My stomach just felt like it was sinking.

And I was filled with this

inexplicable feeling of dread.

Did you guys feel that?

And I look over my shoulder to see that the two engineers had ended up staying up in the ladder well

and they were clearly refusing to go any further.

And I wasn't sure if this was all just happening in my head,

but I just didn't feel right being in that room.

And to make things worse, it was completely dark in the compartment because the power was cut off from the main breaker on the ship.

So now I am navigating through this area with just a flashlight.

What was that?

I don't know.

I thought the power was off.

Maybe we should just go.

I'm almost done.

Oh!

When I was about halfway done with my walkthrough,

I heard the machinery make a cranking noise,

but I knew that should have been impossible because the power was off.

And when I paused to try and figure out why I was hearing something,

suddenly there was a loud banging sound from somewhere deeper in this pitch-black compartment, and some of the emergency lights started to flicker on and off.

And not a second later,

I heard a loud voice screaming, get out,

get out, get out, get out,

over

and over again.

The two guys with me who were still up in the ladder well, they apparently didn't hear the voice, but they did hear the loud banging, and as soon as they did, they started yelling and ran back up the ladder, and I just followed as quickly as I could.

Just, I mean, it was my immediate reaction was to get the hell out of there.

Needless to say, that was enough to convince me

something

was going on in there.

Possibly still is.

And the rest of the time I was on ship, I refused to go back.

I found out later, after returning from deployment, that the year before I was stationed there, the ship had attempted a rescue of some refugees after their boat capsized.

The rescue attempt went horribly, apparently.

The refugees were panicked, and there were eyewitness reports of men pushing women and children down into the water to save themselves.

And some of those people ended up drowning before they could make it on board.

And the crew was forced to store their bodies in the ship's freezer.

And you want to know the freaky part?

Where was the freezer located?

Right above auxiliary room

two.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

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Because he is still active in the military, Eric is understandably busy with his current duties, but he did offer to collect more stories from fellow sailors, if we would be interested to hear them.

As for his story, he made no mention of the details, but after a quick search, I did find the tragic incident he mentioned regarding the refugees.

It took place in September of 2010 in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Somalia.

In an attempt to cross over the Gulf into Yemen, a small skiff carrying 85 people, 75 Ethiopians, and 10 Somalis, had broken down in the water and was eventually spotted by a Korean merchant ship.

That ship radioed up a report, and after receiving this report from international authorities, the USS Winston Churchill moved to the location to offer humanitarian aid.

It is unknown how long the skiff had been stranded before being found.

The American ship immediately deployed a rigid-hull inflatable craft loaded with food and water, which was delivered to the overloaded skiff.

The sailors then attempted to help the Somalis repair their engine.

Unable to restart the engine, the U.S.

sailors then began towing the skiff back towards the Somalian coast with their rescue boat.

A second inflatable craft was deployed, also carrying a supply of additional food and water, but when they saw this second craft approaching with more food and water, the frantic refugees all began fighting to reach that side of the skiff, essentially trampling one another, with the skiff then capsizing because of the sudden shift in weight.

It quickly sank, stranding the refugees in the water, several of whom may have not been able to swim.

As Eric indicated, the American rescuers then helplessly watched as some of the men in the group panicked and inadvertently drowned the women and even children around them, trying to keep their own heads above the water.

Thirteen drowned bodies were recovered, while the American ship managed to rescue 64 survivors.

The other eight were presumed missing.

As if all of that wasn't bad enough, the Guardian article where this story was written goes on to say that the migration route across the Gulf of Aden is regarded as the most dangerous in the world.

Rough seas and the overloaded vessels mean capsizing incidents are common.

That and the Somali smugglers who pilot the boats have a reputation for brutality, frequently killing passengers or forcing them overboard into the shark-infested waters to reduce the load.

Considering the story of the USS Indianapolis, it goes without saying that those refugees suffered a terrifying experience.

and for 13 of them, it was the last thing they knew before they died.

I'm no expert on ghosts, if such a person even exists, but considering the ghostly voice Eric heard wasn't screaming in a foreign language when it shouted at him, perhaps there is more to this mystery than meets the eye.

But who aboard the Winston Churchill is willing to pay another visit to Auxiliary Room 2 to find out for us?

These next stories are taken from a book titled Tales from the Grid Square, Volume 1: Stories of Paranormal Military Experiences.

The author, Nick Orton, who is currently serving in the U.S.

Army, has spent a fair amount of time gathering these kinds of short and often spine-chilling stories from his fellow service members and veterans.

For me, there is just something unnerving about hearing the accounts of dozens and dozens of servicemen and women from around the world who have never met each other, and yet they all report having these eerily similar and yet highly bizarre experiences during their time in the military.

With that, here are a couple more creepy naval stories, or as Nick calls them, Tales from the Grid Square.

My friend and I, both flight deck night check, have experienced some creepy stuff during a three-month patrol we were on.

One time we were walking back from getting snacks from the vending machine, going back upstairs to the deck to watch some anime with a projector.

and we were walking in lit space, no red lights or anything.

Suddenly, the hatch in front of us that I'm about to grab just dogs open and swings open about five feet from us.

So we both step to the side to let another person through,

only to see that after a few seconds, no one was there.

I thought I was losing it, so I was like, bro, did I open that hatch?

And he responds, nah, there should be someone on the other side or something.

We both checked, but there was no one there.

It is 0200 hours down in the bottom of the ship, and this door flies right open in front of us.

I looked around to see if it was a draft of wind or something, which wouldn't explain how the door got unlatched, but nope, nothing.

It freaked us both the hell out, and our supervisor didn't believe anything we had to say and said we just made it up, trying to be funny or something.

But that's not everything.

So another night, when we were literally in the middle of the ocean, we had to darken the lights on the ship for some reason, so there was no lighting on the flight deck.

And every two hours we roved around the deck to see if anyone was up there at night when they shouldn't be.

Now we had all the weight stacked up forward, meaning all the aircraft on the ship were secured up at the front end.

And while up forward, you can hear the wind blowing against the aircraft, making these whirling sounds and whatnot.

And that itself is kind of creepy.

When you're in the middle of the ocean, it's pitch black, and all you have is a flashlight that you're walking around with.

So back aft was completely clear.

There were no aircraft sitting on the rear end of the deck.

And while walking around aft without a flashlight, it's like staring into a blank void with nothing there.

It is just pitch black.

But when we walked back aft, we both heard voices.

and something like a faint rotor sound.

So I immediately walked over to the railing and checked the external catwalk that ran along that side of the ship, and my buddy went and checked the other side.

Nothing on either side.

No idea where those voices could have been coming from.

So we got the hell out of there and went back inside right after that.

And here's the last one.

The P-way on the second deck, it runs throughout the ship and such.

It's a pretty long passageway and you can see a good distance down it.

I was walking through it at night.

The red lights are on, and I hear hatches opening and creaking.

But when I look through the porthole, the little window on the door that is a good distance away, it looks pitch black through it, which the lights are on, so that doesn't really make sense.

But when I got closer,

it straight up looked like someone was staring at me through this window.

And I just stopped dead in my tracks.

And I'm moving my head around to see if this person or whatever it is is going to move.

But it just stares motionless at me.

And after about 10 seconds of not seeing this thing move, I just turned around and ran right the hell back upstairs because I've seen enough on this ship.

I'm not dealing with this.

No thanks.

The following story is from a Canadian sailor.

I'm an air controller in the Canadian Navy, and when our aircraft are far away, we use HF, which is a long-range radio frequency band, to check in with them.

In the meantime, we have to sit there and just listen.

And when you're sitting there, you hear things that sound an awful lot like language.

But the cadence and rhythm of it doesn't really sound like any language you would expect to hear in Atlantic.

Sometimes you'll hear low, distorted voices that seem to be speaking random words without any correlation.

It could just be a long-range pickup from stations stations a long ways away,

but sometimes it just sounds otherworldly.

I have certainly heard some weird stuff, and the bizarre thing is that I've been told radio signals after they're transmitted, they can get stuck or they can bounce back from where I don't know,

but they can come back years later.

I've also got a ghost story from my time on ship.

It was a destroyer, the Athabascan.

On the Athabascan, before it got decommissioned, I was on duty one night, and I was the only one staying in my mess on ship that night.

About halfway through my off-watch, as I'm laying there on my cot, I heard footsteps walking around the mess and curtains opening.

I got up to have a look around.

It was still just me in the mess.

And the footsteps had stopped when I got out of my rack and then started again when I got back in.

That was creepy as hell.

I was a new sailor at the time, but I guess other guys have walked into the mess on duty and seen an old sailor smoking a pipe.

Apparently they try talking to him.

Hello?

And then he'd disappear.

The old ships are always creepier, it seems.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acascio, and Whitla Cascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden, artwork by Jessica Clogson Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at infowartimestories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.