Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
McClure, can you hear me? Yes, Captain. I can hear you. What do you- It's a sub, sir. No doubt about that. McClure, do you hear that? Yes, sir. I do. It sounds like hammering. It's coming from midship. I'm moving toward there now. McClure, when you get there, tap on the hull. See if you can get a response. Yes, sir.
In 1963, the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone aired an episode titled The Thirty Fathom Grave. In this fictional story, which is also set in the year 1963, a U.S. Navy destroyer is 100 miles off the coast of Guadalcanal when its sonar picks up an unusual sound coming from below their ship. The crew believes it sounds like something banging on metal.
After some investigation, they realize that there is a sunken submarine on the ocean floor, but there have been no recent sinkings in the area. In fact, after they send a diver down to investigate, they realize it's a World War II sub, number 714, an American ship that was sunk during the Battle of the Solomon Sea, almost 20 years earlier, and yet they are now hearing a knocking sound coming from the inside of the ship.
Stunned that someone could still be alive in there, the ship's captain asks Pacific Fleet Command for an emergency priority rescue operation. They send their diver back down to ascertain which part of the submarine the knocking sound is coming from. But when he starts knocking on the hull to verify that someone really is alive inside, the ship goes quiet. During his inspection, he does find a dog tag outside the ship belonging to one of the crew.
But quite bizarrely, he recognizes the name on the dog tag. It belongs to his shipmate, the destroyer's chief boatswain's mate, Chief Bell.
and looking aghast at the sight of the dog tag in conjunction with everything else that's going on, Chief Bell later confirms that it is in fact his. Evidently, Bell has spent the last 20 years living in extreme guilt because as that submarine's signalman during the battle, he had dropped a signal light while trying to change the infrared filter at night.
As a result, Japanese destroyers saw the light and then attacked the sub, sinking it and blowing Bell off the tower into the water where he was later rescued. As the only survivor feeling the overwhelming burden of responsibility for the deaths of all of his shipmates, hearing this knocking sound, he now believes his dead shipmates are demanding that he join them. The story ends with Bell jumping overboard, never to be seen again.
Quite a gripping story, written by Rod Serling himself and just one of many incredible episodes produced by the Twilight Zone. But that story is purely fictional, right? The ghosts of dead sailors remaining trapped inside their ships and spooking their fellow shipmates. How could Rod Serling ever dream up such a fantastic story? Well, he himself did serve in World War II, fighting in the Philippines. And perhaps, as these following stories would indicate...
He merely heard submariners telling stories about things they had actually encountered while working in those confined compartments of their ships, fathoms deep under the surface. This is the smoke pit, and these are true stories from submariners, stories about their submarines being haunted. The Man Wearing Utilities I'm Luke LaManna.
And this is Wartime Stories. This first story was submitted by Sailor with the user handle IceSir. He writes:
I was by myself in the engine room of a submarine on the mid-watch, just a newly reported sailor trying to find equipment so I could display knowledge to one of the watchstanders. There are a number of bays in engine room lower level, with narrow passages that pass through the center. I came down one of the ladders, and I swore I saw someone walk across the ship about 15 feet in front of me.
I could hear his footsteps as he walked around a corner and out of sight. Three problems. One, he was wearing utilities, an older light blue blouse and dark navy slacks, but nobody had utilities anymore. They had been phased out three years earlier. Two, there was only one other person awake in the engine room that late at night.
and he was standing at the top of the ladder behind me, waiting for me to come back up with an answer to his question. And three, this person wasn't actually there. I checked, and there was no one else in the compartment. I wrote it off as sleep deprivation, but I will admit, it shook me for a while. Fast forward to four months later, I had gone out to sea with another submarine of the same type.
While I was aboard, I met a sailor who had previously served on my ship. After a few weeks of standing watch with him, he ends up telling me a story of a sailor who had killed himself while on watch. Something that had happened when he served on my ship almost a decade earlier. And where did he do it? In engine room, lower level, while wearing his utilities.
I wish I could have gotten a picture of the look on my face when he told me that. The USS West Virginia. Hello? Hey, who was that? Anybody there? Squid, is that you? Okay. This following story was submitted to author R.S. Russo and shared in his book, Odd and Chilling Encounters, Part 2. The sailor in this case remained anonymous. He writes...
I'm in the Navy and I'm a Submariner aboard the USS West Virginia. I came back from my last deployment convinced that my boat is haunted. As a missile technician, I work on nukes and therefore have to provide security. We have a camp watch, a guy who looks at a panel and hangs around the missile compartment second level and who is my immediate supervisor. And then there's me as the roving patrol.
As the name says, I rove and walk for hours and take logs. My section was on watch from 23:30 to 07:30, so I did have sufficient sleep and rest that day before starting my shift. A new watch bill was promulgated that switched me from being in control as a sticks guy, a driver, down to the missile house so I could get some experience. He writes, "I was taking logs in the M-Kull, the missile compartment upper level.
As I passed the missile tubes, they have a diameter of approximately 7 feet 4 inches, I noticed in the corner of my eye that there was a shadow matching my speed and walking along with me on the port side. A cold chill went up my spine and I, for a brief moment, I just froze in place. I tried to rationalize what I'd just seen and my first thought was that someone was up there with me.
So I crossed between the tubes with my flashlight on. I looked both ways. I was completely alone. The lights down there are mounted above my head, so I debunked the only other possibility, which was that my own shadow had been projected across the other side. I freaked the hell out, and I immediately went down one level to see my camp watch and the weapons tech who were both chilling by tube 13.
I asked them if they'd ever seen any weird stuff while on watch, and they instantly answered me, "Yes." And it turned out that other guys had also seen and experienced strange things. Apparently, it had been a thing ever since a guy had shot himself on board the boat around 2011. During the next few days, I felt a little paranoid. I found myself constantly looking around, but I wasn't too shaken by that event.
I spoke with some more senior guys in my division and they told me stories of the Maryland. They said on that ship the nuclear weapons storage area signs posted between the tubes in EMCOL would move in unison while in port without any ship movement. My senior chief told me that back on the Rhode Island during the early 2000s he saw shadows in the EMCOL and lower level
as well as seeing visions of severed heads sitting on valves and horizontal surfaces. His worst experience was once again in Imkel when he saw a faceless apparition hanging between the tubes.
Three guys on that ship apparently tapped out and ended up being sent to mental institutions, while the rest of the missile division guys just sucked it up and lived with these hauntings. Another experience I had, I was located all the way forward in the compartment in the M-Kull on the center line of the ship, where I could look down all 24 tubes and see everything.
I'd been feeling cold chills down my spine and I felt as though I was being watched. I was determined to ignore the feelings and just keep doing my job. I then turn around and I see a shadow run behind a tube on the starboard side. I raced towards the location with my flashlight and ran the same drill as I did with my first experience. And again, no one was there. I never saw anything again, but I always got chills.
each time I was up there. So what's your favorite thing to do here on the island once you're off ship? Oh, you know something I really want to do? It's actually, it's illegal. There is, you heard of Stairway to Heaven? Is that a hiking trail? Yeah, so yeah. Well, no, it's a rickety ladder
Stairway that they built on the side of the mountain. Um... Okay. You have to go over to Kaneohe on the Marine Corps base side. Right. You can see the stairway off of the H3 if you're heading down. I mean, have you been to that side of the island? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, basically, you can climb up this rickety asslat. Hold on. Chief? Oh, shit. Chief, you okay? What? Chief, what's wrong? There's a fucking ghost.
"And Shaft Alley." "Fucking ghost." "And Shaft Alley." This final story was submitted by sailor with the user handle Driftwolf. He writes: "Submariner here. There are few things as unnerving as wandering about the engine room from 23:30 to 05:30 alone, on watch. When the boat is largely shut down in port, it becomes a very quiet place.
The roving watch usually makes it an hourly game to speed through their log rounds, especially in the lower levels. During one particular period that we were in port, the boat was moored in Pearl Harbor and a few people started complaining about having this really uneasy feeling. I was on the mid-watch as the SEO on evening shift and a senior chief came back to do his required 0300 tour
We saw him walk past, maneuvering on his way to shaft alley. This particular senior chief was the crusty old salt type and would usually spend a bit of time just sitting in the lower levels of the engine room and contemplating life, you know, alone down there. So we expected as much. What we didn't expect was to see him literally running into the maneuvering area a few minutes later.
The man was now pale-faced and breathing heavily. We sat up straight, our eyes as wide as his, thinking we were about to have to make an announcement and deal with some kind of ship casualty. He then slumps into the EDO chair. A few tense and silent moments go by. It were on pins and needles. He finally opens his mouth and tells us about the f***ing ghost in Shaft Alley. He explains what he saw.
swearing that a sailor passed by him as he was sitting on a trash can in Shaft Alley. His first response was to call out to the guy to see who it was, but then he realized this guy wasn't dressed right. He describes what this guy was wearing, and what he's describing clearly is not like our uniforms, but something more like the old World War II naval uniforms.
So, he quickly gets up off the trash can to go catch up to this guy, and he does. He catches up to him all the way aft. This guy then turns towards the senior chief, looks right at him, then turns away and literally walks through the ass end of the boat, right through the bulkhead. It's now that the senior chief decides that it's time for him to leave Shaft Alley, and promptly does so.
He swears up and down that he knows what he saw and that he's not crazy. I sure as hell wasn't about to leave the maneuvering area that night to find out for myself.
The first story comes from Matthew Casey 5059, another Submariner. He writes: "I was stationed on the USS Florida and one night, on watch, I felt a presence and later come to find out there had been a crewman who had killed himself and his ghost ran around the ship.
I thought it was nonsense till I found in the torpedo room a small mural dedicated to him and asking around found out that others had been visited by him. He was an RM3 radio man. I don't remember his name but as far as I know the mural is still there in the room.
The kid who hung himself did so in machinery room one, and when I got visited by the radio man, I then started asking around, and a lot of people had encounters. Usually you can tell when people are messing with you, and every one of the guys I asked had serious looks on their faces, and described exactly the same encounter, or very similar. The ghost was never malicious, in fact it was quite benign, as far as these sorts of things go.
The next story was submitted with the handle "Sleep is overrated." They write:
This isn't really a military ghost story or anything, but just something kind of weird I experience at work every so often. I work at the USS Pomponito SS-383 submarine museum and memorial. For a bit of context, on her third war patrol in 1944, she and two other subs attacked a Japanese convoy
And one of the ships that was sunk, unfortunately, was one of the infamous Hell ships, cargo ships jam-packed full of POWs being shipped to Japan. No one knew at the time about her cargo, so the subs sailed off trying to catch more of the convoy.
Pomponito, after three days of searching, found nothing else to sink, so she went back to the original hunting grounds and found people in the water, British and Australian POW survivors. There's 35mm film footage of the rescue of 73 men here on YouTube.
During the trip back to Saipan to offload the barely alive survivors, one man unfortunately died and Subbs didn't have a dedicated doctor back then but only a pharmacist. The rest of the men lived through the remainder of the war and recovered, thankfully. As to where my experience with work comes in, it could just be my mind playing tricks on me, but sometimes I will see a shimmer out of the corner of my eye when I'm on the boat.
It happens when I'm making my rounds through the boat, when I'm climbing on the radar mast to raise colors. It'll always just be out of the corner of my eye, and it looks like heat waves coming off of a barbecue. Sometimes it'll be way down on the deck, or sometimes at eye level. It only happens when I'm on board for some reason, and it's very quick to disappear, very blink and you'll miss it basically.
"It never happens when I'm on the dock, in the office or the garage. Only when I'm on the Pomponito. I don't know if it's the ghost of the POW who died, or whatever amount of lead still on the boat getting into my system, but I've seen it all too consistently to write it off as just nothing." The next was submitted by Mark Meinzer, 8859. He writes:
We had the ghost of a dead shipyard worker from Newport News Naval Shipyard, where the submarine the USS John Marshall SSBN-611 was built during the early 60s. And not only one sailor saw the ghost either. I never saw the ghost. I was on that ship for two years as a quartermaster prior to getting orders to the east coast from Guam and Pearl Harbor, where both crews spent their semi-annual short duty periods.
I've heard that the USS Constellation or War of 1812 wooden sailing frigate in Baltimore is especially haunted. And this last story from another Submariner seems oddly familiar to one of the stories we covered in the episode. The handle "LlamaWalker744" writes:
I was stationed on board a submarine homeported out of Groton, Connecticut in the year 2000. There were stories of a ghost in Shaft Alley, an engine room lower level, called the Blue Streak. When the boat was underway, things weren't too bad. But in port and shut down, it was a different story.
The engine room was quiet, and when you were the roving watchstander, you felt that same feeling of dread when you climbed down the ladder to shaft alley, and then down again into the main seawater bay. I only ever saw it twice. The first time, it just looked like someone walking on the other side of the shaft. My second experience was more terrifying.
I looked up in the overhead and a dark humanoid thing scurried in between the condensers and disappeared. It reminded me of the xenomorph from the Alien movie. I ran the F out of there.
Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke LaManna. Executive produced by Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Written by Jake Howard and myself. Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Lacascio, and Wit Lacascio. Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham. Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain.
Production supervision by Jeremy Bone. Production coordination by Avery Siegel. Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden. Artwork by Jessica Clarkson-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picotta. If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com. Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.