👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº9478
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USS Yorktown (CV-10)
USS Yorktown (CV-10) is a location reputed to be haunted in South Carolina, US. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.
Where is USS Yorktown (CV-10)?
- Location
- South Carolina, US
- Type
- Ship
- Coordinates
- 32.791, -79.909
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is USS Yorktown (CV-10) said to be haunted?
Laid down at Newport News on 1 December 1941 as Bon Homme Richard, this Essex-class carrier was renamed Yorktown on 26 September 1942, three months after the carrier of that name sank at Midway. Eleanor Roosevelt launched her on 21 January 1943 and she was commissioned on 15 April 1943 under Captain Joseph J. "Jocko" Clark. She earned eleven battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation in the Pacific, five more off Vietnam, and in December 1968 picked up Apollo 8 and the first three people to orbit the Moon. Navy cameramen filmed aboard her for The Fighting Lady, which won the 1944 documentary Oscar without ever naming the ship on screen; the nickname stuck. The Navy's official history records five men killed and twenty-six wounded by a single bomb hit off Kyushu on 18 March 1945. Moored at Patriots Point since 1975, she is a memorial, a National Historic Landmark and the venue for a commercial after-hours ghost tour — which is, honestly, the best-documented source of her haunted reputation.
What is the history of USS Yorktown (CV-10)?
She was not born a Yorktown. When the keel went down at the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company on 1 December 1941 — six days before Pearl Harbor — the hull was to be named Bon Homme Richard. The name lasted nine months. The third Yorktown, CV-5, was crippled at Midway and, at 0701 on 7 June 1942, turned over on her port side and sank in three thousand fathoms of Pacific water with her battle flags flying. On 26 September 1942 the Navy moved her name to the unfinished hull at Newport News.
Eleanor Roosevelt sponsored the launch on 21 January 1943. The ship was commissioned on 15 April 1943 at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia, with Captain Joseph J. "Jocko" Clark in command — roughly sixteen and a half months from keel to commissioning, a building time Patriots Point still describes as a record. Her designed complement was 3,448 officers and men, most of them very young.
Her war started on 31 August 1943, about 128 miles off Marcus Island, and did not really stop for two years: the Gilberts in November 1943, Kwajalein and Maloelap in January 1944, the Truk raids of February, the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June, Leyte, Lingayen, and in January 1945 a sweep through the South China Sea that took her aircraft over Saigon, Formosa, Canton and Hong Kong. On 7 April 1945 her Air Group 9 aviators claimed torpedo hits on the battleship Yamato before she exploded and sank.
The Navy's official history records one hit on the ship herself. On the morning of 18 March 1945, off Kyushu, three "Judy" dive bombers attacked; two were shot down, and the third placed its bomb on the signal bridge. It passed through the first deck and exploded near the hull, punching two large holes in her side. Five men were killed and twenty-six wounded. Yorktown remained fully operational and her gunners brought the attacker down. Those five deaths are the only crew fatalities the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships attaches to a date; the aviators and aircrew she lost over two years of strikes are not counted there at all.
While she fought, she was also being filmed. Navy cameramen working under Commander Edward J. Steichen shot 16 mm colour footage aboard her; Louis de Rochemont turned it into a 61-minute Technicolor feature, distributed by 20th Century-Fox and narrated by Lieutenant Robert Taylor, USNR. For wartime security the ship was never named on screen: the trade press reviewer described "a flat-top identified simply as The Fighting Lady". It premiered at the Victoria Theater in New York on 17 January 1945 and, on the night of 15 March 1945, won the Academy Award for documentary feature production. The nickname stuck to the ship and it has never come off.
Peace nearly ended her. She was placed out of commission on 9 January 1947 and lay in the Bremerton reserve fleet for almost five years, until reactivation work began in 1952; she returned to full commission on 20 February 1953, received an angled flight deck in 1955 and was reclassified as an antisubmarine carrier, CVS-10, on 1 September 1957. She was off Vietnam repeatedly — a fact the ship's popular reputation tends to forget. She earned five battle stars there, on top of the eleven battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation of the Second World War, and in 1966 and 1968 flew antisubmarine and search-and-rescue cover for the strike carriers on Yankee Station. In late 1968 she served as a set for the film Tora! Tora! Tora!, and in December of that year, operating out of Pearl Harbor, she was the recovery ship for Apollo 8.
She was decommissioned at Philadelphia on 27 June 1970, struck from the Navy list on 1 June 1973, and towed from Bayonne, New Jersey, to Charleston in June 1975. She was dedicated as a memorial on 13 October 1975, the two-hundredth anniversary of the United States Navy.
Timeline: the documented record of USS Yorktown (CV-10)
- 1 December 1941 The keel is laid at the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company in Virginia. The hull is assigned the name Bon Homme Richard.
- 7 June 1942 The third Yorktown, CV-5, crippled at Midway, turns over on her port side at 0701 and sinks in three thousand fathoms with her battle flags flying.
- 26 September 1942 The unfinished Bon Homme Richard is renamed Yorktown, inheriting the name of the carrier lost at Midway three months earlier.
- 21 January 1943 The ship is launched at Newport News, sponsored by Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt.
- 15 April 1943 Yorktown is commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, with Captain Joseph J. “Jocko” Clark in command.
- 31 August 1943 First combat: operating some 128 miles from Marcus Island, she launches fighter and bomber strikes against the Japanese garrison there.
- 17 January 1945 The Fighting Lady, shot aboard her by Navy cameramen under Commander Edward J. Steichen, has its world premiere at the Victoria Theater in New York. The film never names the ship; the trade press describes “a flat-top identified simply as The Fighting Lady”.
- 15 March 1945 The Fighting Lady wins the Academy Award for documentary feature production. The Film Daily prints the winners the next morning: “Feature picture: ‘Fighting Lady.’ (20th-Fox and U. S. Navy).”
- 18 March 1945 Off Kyushu, a Japanese dive bomber plants a bomb on the signal bridge. It passes through the first deck and explodes near the hull, opening two large holes in her side. Five men are killed and twenty-six wounded; the ship stays fully operational.
- 27 December 1968 Apollo 8 splashes down at 10:51 a.m. EST about 5,100 yards from Yorktown, 147 hours after launch and precisely on time. Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders, the first humans to orbit the Moon, are aboard the carrier at 12:20 p.m.
- 27 June 1970 Yorktown is decommissioned at Philadelphia after twenty-seven years of service, eleven battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation in the Pacific war and five more battle stars off Vietnam.
- 13 October 1975 Towed from Bayonne, New Jersey, to Charleston that June, the ship is formally dedicated as a memorial on the two-hundredth anniversary of the United States Navy.
- 10 November 1982 USS Yorktown (CV-10) enters the National Register of Historic Places, flagged as a National Historic Landmark (reference 82001519). The nomination argues that no Second World War Essex-class carrier has survived unmodernised, and that her hull, machinery and hundreds of compartments remain intact from the war.
Is there a rational explanation for USS Yorktown (CV-10)?
The strongest evidence about the Yorktown's ghosts is that the ship sells them.
Patriots Point's own website lists Ghost Tours among its attractions and describes "the well-documented stories of strange, startling sights and sounds", promising after-hours entry to areas normally closed. The tour is operated under exclusive access by Bulldog Tours of Charleston, which invites visitors aboard "to hear the stories of the American heroes who lived, died, and are still rumored to be here today" — ninety minutes, evenings, currently from $39 for adults and $29 for children. That is the best available source for the legend and, at the same time, the most obvious reason to be careful with it: the museum is the interested party.
Nothing else stands up. No named first-hand witness — no volunteer, no crew member, no employee — could be traced in any accessible published source; the accounts that circulate online are anonymous and unattributed. The museum's own page invites visitors to see "why there's a Syfy Channel's 'Ghost Hunters' all about the USS Yorktown"; in the 281-episode listing of that series, warship investigations are well represented (USS North Carolina in 2005, USS Lexington in 2007, USS Hornet in 2008, the Battleship New Jersey in 2022) and the Yorktown does not appear once.
The physical explanations are unusually good here, because the object is unusually large. This is 270 metres of welded steel, afloat and moored in a tidal estuary. A hull that size expands and contracts measurably as the Carolina sun heats one side of it and the harbour cools the other, and steel under changing stress makes noise. The ship rides on mooring lines, fenders and tide; she is ventilated by forced-draught trunking that runs the length of the hull and carries sound between compartments that are nowhere near each other. Watertight doors and hatches are heavy steel slabs on hinges, some of them under spring tension, hung in frames that move. Passageways are narrow, low and hard-surfaced, which is exactly the environment in which a footstep three compartments away arrives with no visible source.
And there is the sheer weight of what visitors already know when they step aboard: a memorial to men who were killed in the ship, entered at night, in the dark, after paying for a ghost tour. Expectation does a great deal of work in a place like that.
Can you visit USS Yorktown (CV-10)?
The Yorktown is the centrepiece of the Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum, at 40 Patriots Point Road, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina 29464, across the harbour from downtown Charleston. It is open every day from 10:00 to 17:00; the ticket window closes at 16:00. The museum is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and closes early on 4 July and New Year's Eve. 2026 is its fiftieth anniversary season.
General admission covers the Yorktown, the destroyer USS Laffey, the aircraft collection, the three-acre Vietnam Experience and the Medal of Honor Museum. Bought online it is $28 for adults (13-61), $23 for children 6-12, $25 for seniors (62+) and $22 with a military ID; at the ticket window each of those rises by $2. Children under 6 are free, and military personnel in uniform are admitted free. Admission does not include parking: the lot is run separately at $5.50 an hour with a $25 daily maximum. The new entrance is reached via Patriots Point Road, past the old entrance and through the roundabout, then right onto Club House Road. The Charleston Water Taxi runs seasonally.
Accessibility deserves a straight answer, because this is a warship. Much of the Yorktown cannot be reached without climbing steep ladders, and the museum says so plainly. One elevator serves three levels — the hangar bay, the flight deck and the quarters — and those three do include the Medal of Honor Museum and more than half of the aircraft, so a visitor who cannot use ladders still sees a great deal. Wheelchairs are lent free of charge, and a golf cart will carry visitors from the ticketing area down to the ship and back. The Vietnam Experience, which is on land, is wheelchair accessible. The USS Laffey is not. Service animals are welcome but may be restricted in some spaces because of the ladders and confined compartments; other pets are not allowed. Wear closed shoes, expect narrow passageways and high door coamings, and note that most of the ship is not air-conditioned.
The after-hours Ghost Tour is not run by the museum but by Bulldog Tours, which has exclusive night access: about ninety minutes, evening departures, maximum twenty people, from $39 for adults and $29 for children aged 4 to 12, meeting at Patriots Point. It is explicitly not wheelchair accessible. Patriots Point also runs Operation Overnight, in which groups sleep in the original berthing compartments — the closest thing to living aboard that a civilian can now book.
Sources consulted
- Naval History and Heritage Command, «Yorktown IV (CV-10)» — Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS), 2018 archive
- Ralph Wilk, «1944 Academy Awards (list of winners)» — The Film Daily, vol. 87, New York, 16 March 1945, 1945 newspaper archive
- The Film Daily, «Review of “The Fighting Lady” and premiere announcement» — The Film Daily, vol. 86, New York, December 1944, 1944 newspaper archive
- United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, «USS Yorktown (CV-10) — National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form (War in the Pacific Ship Study), ref. 82001519» — National Register of Historic Places, 1982 report
- NASA, «Apollo 8 Mission Details» — NASA History, 2019 report
- Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum, «Plan My Visit, Hours of Operation, Directions & Parking, Accessibility, Ghost Tours, Operation Overnight and USS Yorktown (CV-10)» — patriotspoint.org, 2026 web
- Bulldog Tours, «USS Yorktown Ghost Tour» — bulldogtours.com, 2024 web
- Naval History and Heritage Command, «Yorktown III (CV-5)» — Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS), 2015 archive
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-11 · How we verify our content
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