Welcome first time visitors and followers! I’m Nicholas McGirr, Author of the Afterlife and you’ve landed on another blog post of haunted stuff. This blog (and podcast) is intended to entertain you with my research on haunted locations for inspiring my fiction works. I hope you enjoy another adventure with me! Read on for this week’s post on Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
Memorial Day Weekend
Visiting Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant, SC with my daughter on Memorial Day weekend turned into not just a history lesson for her, but also a haunting search for both of us.
Patriot’s Point is the home of the USS Laffey Destroyer, the USS Clamagore Submarine and the “Fighting Lady” herself, the USS Yorktown Aircraft Carrier. We thought Memorial Day weekend would be a perfect time for some exploration on all three vessels.
Spirit Box App, “Ghost Detector”
With this tour, we continued to use the “Ghost Detector” app since we knew that the weekend would pack in tourists. The “Ghost Detector” app, if you haven’t been following this blog, gives off white noise for spirit activity to communicate with the living. It records each word or phrase that comes through and allows me time to research it later without having to know all the history on front side of the investigation.
Please note that the app “Ghost Detector” is intended more for party games and hoaxes. However, the app does give off white noise which, in my earlier tours of alleged haunted locations, I was able to find the historical relations to many words and/or phrases provided by the app.
Previous Tours
Our tour was not guided, and we were able to freely roam all three vessels at our leisure. Some day in the future, I will take a ghost tour with Bruce Orr, author of “Ghosts in the USS Yorktown”. Like most tours, I do the heavy research after the tour is complete. Along with my research for the USS Yorktown, I read Orr’s book and it’s not one to overlook.
The team of TAPS, the host of the TV Series, Ghost Hunters, also did an investigation on the USS Yorktown. TAPS was able to find an apparition as well as a shadow figure in their investigation. None of the activity they encountered was found to be harmful. In fact, most of the TAPS team experience was based on footsteps pacing on overhead catwalks. At one point in the show, part of the team set up a shadow box light, which makes an alarm sound when a beam of light is broken. Although they did not have evidence on camera, the light box did make the alarm sound once the team left the area. It can be heard in the background.
Our Tour
As for our tour and investigation, we did not encounter any eerie feelings, see shadowy figures out of the corner of our eyesight, or feel any cold spots. In fact, like the TAPS team, we used an EMF detector (electromagnetic field) to no avail.
In truth, the Ghost Detector spirit box app seemed random as well. The words and phrases we received had no relevance in my research. The app did capture quite a few names with the closest relation of “Pierce” on the app, we found the dog tags of “Jesse James Pearson”.
With all the words/phrases grouped together, I was able to point out that a small group of words made sense and we’ve never seen them come through before. Those words/phrases were:
- Preacher
- Pray
- Preacher (again)
- Holy
- God
- Pray (again)
Keep in mind, that there were two phones running the Ghost Detector app. The above list is a conglomeration from all words/phrases taken from both devices.
It makes complete sense that the men who worked these vessels were no doubt men of faith and the list above came through the app on both devices.
Granted, this was the only bit of evidence I could find with the hauntings of the USS Yorktown, a very well-known haunt in the Charleston, SC area. I may one day do a full investigation of the ship and stay overnight.
If in the future, I decide to stay overnight on the USS Yorktown, I will report any findings of footsteps, apparitions and other supernatural activity. I will not provoke and try to duplicate any prior investigation. Experiences should be just that, an experience.
For now, I’m convinced that the haunting claims on the ship are indeed true and in the words of Mac Burdette, the director of Patriots Point: “They’re our guys!”
While exploring all the aircraft on the ship, I happened to notice a sign pointing off to an island in the distance:
I’m taking this as a “sign” of a future tour/investigation!
Not all hauntings have to be demonic or dark in nature. The claims on the USS Yorktown have been of fully uniformed men working the ship as if nothing’s changed for them. These are men who died for our freedoms, fought for the life we have today. We might be related to them and we may never have met them or known them personally, but they’re our guys. No one to fear.
More than just a Blog
This is episode 10 of the Stories in the Cemetery podcast.
E49: 2023 Prediction Reveal – Stories in the Cemetery
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Let’s Go Ghost Hunting
Works mentioned in this post for reference:
Ghost Hunters, SE 8 EP 10. (2012, May 2). Haunted by Heroes.
Orr, B. (2012 ). Ghosts of the USS Yorktown: The Phantoms of Patriots Point. Charleston: Haunted America.
