HGB Ep. 631 - University of South Carolina

This Month in History - Doug Hegdahl blown overboard (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

In the month of April, on the 6th, in 1967, U.S. Navy petty officer second class, Doug Hegdahl became a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict. Hegdahl was aboard the USS Canberra in the Gulf of Tonkin when he was knocked overboard. He had been on the teakwood deck around 4:30 a.m. watching the 5-inch gun mount firing in the dark. Hegdahl's recounting of what caused him to fall overboard was unclear, but it is believed that it was due to a blast of gun fire. He was not missed until the ship's morning muster later that day. After several hours in the South China Sea, the Naval petty officer was picked up by North Vietnamese fishermen and subsequently turned over to the North Vietnamese Army. Doug Hegdahl was the youngest and lowest ranking POW of the Vietnam War. He was imprisoned for two years. Initially the Vietnamese interrogators thought that Hegdahl was a spy, but he was able to convince them of his low ranking status in the U.S. Navy and that he truly fell off his ship. The guards began calling him "The Incredibly Stupid One", however, Hegdahl was far from stupid. He determined that acting stupid was to his advantage and the young petty officer actually had an incredible memory. Hegdahl used his gift to memorize the names, capture dates and personal details about all the 256 men he was imprisoned with. He used the song, 'Old MacDonald Had a Farm' to help him memorize the soldier's information. The POWs had organized an unofficial chain of command amongst themselves in the prison. After two years, Hegdahl's superiors ordered him to accept an early release. Doug originally refused, not feeling right about leaving sooner than the other soldiers, but eventually agreed. The Vietnamese would regularly offer up POWs they wanted gone for propaganda purposes. After Hegdahl returned to the U.S. with two other POWs, he was debriefed and began listing the names of all the military men he had been imprisoned with. The information that Doug Hegdahl shared with the Nixon Administration was critical. It allowed the U.S. to put additional pressure on North Vietnam due the Geneva Convention's rules on the humane treatment of POWs. The information shared by the Navy petty officer second class, significantly improved the life of prisoners in POW camps. Doug Hegdahl may have been the lowest ranking POW to be captured during the Vietnamese War, but he is widely considered a hero of the major armed conflict.

University of South Carolina (Suggested by: Emily West) 

The University of South Carolina in Columbia is said to be the flagship university of the state. This is the home of the Gamecocks and was established over 200 years ago. What started as a small college has become a large university with over 35,000 students. The university features beautiful architecture and poignant sculptures. It also has several ghost stories. Join us for the history and hauntings of the University of South Carolina.

So, I know my first question is, what exactly is a gamecock and why did this university choose that as their mascot? They also have the school colors, garnet and black. Garnet is fairly unique we would think when it comes to colors. Not maroon or crimson, but garnet. First, a gamecock is a specially bred rooster, known for being very aggressive and strong. These are the birds used in cockfighting. If you have ever seen this kind of fight - you don't mess with a gamecock and frankly, I don't think you should mess with a rooster ever. They can be mean. Now, that's enough to make the gamecock a good mascot, but why did the university choose that? Apparently this goes back to the Revolutionary War. General Thomas Sumter, for who Fort Sumter was named, had a nickname and that was "The Fighting Gamecock." He was the last surviving general from the war as well. Since Fort Sumter is in South Carolina, it makes sense that the General would serve as inspiration for the school. But there is more to the story. Clemson is the chief rival to USC. Their mascot is the tiger. Back in 1902, the two schools' football teams were facing off against each other and Carolina was the underdog, They won an upset victory and some USC students made a picture that featured a gamecock crowing over a tiger that had been beaten. When the Clemson team saw this, they told the USC team that they better not carry it in the parade being held the following day. The USC student carried the picture and this set the stage for a violent confrontation. This was 1902, so this wasn't going to be fists. A couple hundred Clemson military cadets marched on the Carolina campus and they were swinging their swords around, calling for a fight. Forty Carolina students grabbed knives and pistols and hid behind a wall, preparing to confront the cadets. Thankfully, the police  and professors heard about this and rushed to the scene and they defused the situation. Everybody gathered round and they burned the picture together. All the students cheered, but the Tigers and Gamecocks wouldn't play a football game against each other for six years. The papers reported the Carolina students as being the Gamecocks and the mascot stuck. There is a tradition of burning paper tigers before every Carolina-Clemson football game now. No one knows where using garnet as a color came from, but it dates back to the 1890s. 

Back in 1801, the governor of South Carolina, John Drayton, wanted to bring harmony between the Lowcountry and the Upcountry of South Carolina. This division split the state into north and south. Charleston was the heart of Lowcountry and it was very powerful and very wealthy, trading heavily with England and the Caribbean. This was one of the most prosperous cities in America. Taxes were levied heavily on the town though and the first whispers of revolution would start here. 

The Upcountry wasn't affected much by England's taxes and had a more modest lifestyle and trade. These were farmers and traders of a lower class and this caused clashes with the richer Lowcountry. The Lowcountry were Patriots, while the Upcountry were Loyalists. There was actually armed conflict between the two sides before the Revolutionary War. William Drayton had been a prominent Lowcountry leader and he went to broker peace with the Upcountry. Initial attempts failed, but when the Cherokee Nation started to form an alliance with the Lowcountry, Upcountry leaders realized they would be in a big pickle. So they brokered a peace agreement until the war started. This rivalry still had a hold in 1801. So, Governor John Drayton - who was the son of Willaim Drayton - went to the South Carolina General Assembly and asked them to found South Carolina College. They agreed and passed an act to do so on December 19, 1801. There were initially nine students enrolled in a traditional classical curriculum when it opened its doors in 1805. The first president was the Baptist minister and theologian Reverend Jonathan Maxcy. The early plan was to build eleven buildings to form the campus. The first building served multiple purposes as an administrative office, academic building, residence hall, and chapel and still stands today. It is known as Rutledge College today. The President's House was the next to be built and was finished in 1807. The building that eventually will be DeSaussure (De sah soor) College was next and then the other eight buildings came over the next couple of decades. This grouping of buildings ended up forming a U-shape and this earned it the nickname "The Horseshoe." This has remained the central part of the university. 

These early years had the student body forming two literary societies: the Clariosophic Society and the Euphradian Society. These societies prepared students for leadership with a focus on oratory excellence. From the 1970s to 2013, the Clariosophic Society was shut down, but in 2013, it was re-activated. The Euphradian Society shut down multiple times through the years and would restart with the most recent being in 2010. The college was the leading institution of the South.

But being that this college was in the south, there is a history involving slavery and discrimination and and civil rights. The early buildings were made from slaved-made brick and slaves did the construction work. Maintenance and cleaning was also performed by enslaved people. The college supported secession and the Confederate side of the Civil War. Most male students volunteered, but there was also a system of conscription. The college ended up allowing students under the age of 18 to enroll, so that there were students for professors to teach. When the war was over and reconstruction was under way, The University Act of 1869 was passed to fund and reorganize the university with an amendment added by black representative W. J. Whipper, that would prevent racial discrimination at the university. Two black trustees, Benjamin A. Boseman and Francis Lewis Cardozo, were also added to the governing board. Most enslaved people needed remedial educations to prepare for college, so a normal school was added to campus to prepare them and the college also abolished tuition and other fees. On October 7, 1873, Henry E. Hayne, the Secretary of State of South Carolina, became the first black student when he registered at the medical college at USC for the fall session. This made the national papers and some white students left the school in protest. Because of this, within two years, most of the students were black. There are many monuments around the school inspired by these efforts. The most recent was unveiled in 2024 and features a 12-foot bronze monument with three of the first black students aftyer the campus had been closed off to blacks again: Robert Anderson, Henrie Monteith Treadwell and James Solomon Jr. Treadwell was just 16 years old when she filed the lawsuit that led to USC’s integration in 1963 and she became the first post-Reconstruction black graduate and first black female graduate in 1965. This monument stands near McKissick Museum on the historic Horseshoe. 

At the top of the Horseshoe is a Slavery Historical Marker. It recognizes the work of slaves in building the campus and shares that enslaved people lived in outbuildings, one of which still stands behind what is now the President's House. The Kitchen House and Slave Quarters Marker is near the President's House and identifies the last remaining kitchen and slave quarters on campus. There is  statue of Richard T. Greener who was the first African American professor at the University of South Carolina and he served during the Reconstruction Era.

Things changed in 1877 when the South Carolina legislature became all-white again and they closed the university and reopened it three years later as a white only agricultural college. The university's first black professor, had to leave. And this was just white men. Women weren't allowed at the university until 1893, but even then, they weren't allowed to live on campus. Mattie Jean Adams became the first female graduate in 1898. In 1924, women could finally live in dormitories on the campus and a quarter of the campus was female. In the spring of 1924, Irene Dillard Elliott became the first dean of women at USC. The Horseshoe was registered as a National Historic Landmark and the 11 original buildings there have survived fires, an earthquake and the Civil War. 

The university has grown extensively from its origins, not only adding thousands of students, but the property has added the student union, 24 residence halls, several academic buildings, the Longstreet Theatre, the Koger Center for the Arts, the Carolina Coliseum, the Colonial Life Arena, Carolina Stadium, the Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center, the Greek Village, the Green Quad, the Honors Residence Hall, the Public Health Research Center, the Graduate Columbia hotel, School of Law building and the Darla Moore School of Business. 

A little lesser known fact about the university is that it has tunnels underneath it. These were steam tunnels that gave power to the university with steam pipes running through them and other utilities. There were rumors that they connected to the tunnels in the underground of downtown Columbia, but this isn't true. The rumor we are most interested in is that these tunnels are the lair of Mr. Third Eye. He has that nickname because he apparently has three eyes. And that's better than his other nickname, which is The Sewer Man. The first story of seeing the Third Eye Man dates back to November 12, 1949. Two students, one of whom was named Christopher Nichols, were walking past the Long Street Theater around 10:30 at night and they saw this man who appeared to be wearing silver clothing and he went down under a manhole cover. Then, about six months later, a police officer was on campus investigating a report of mutilated chickens near the Long Street Theater. He saw those and then he also saw a strange man with silver skin. This man turned and looked at the officer and the officer saw that he had an oddly colored face and he also had three eyes. A third encounter happened later when a group of students claimed to see this thing in the underground utility tunnels. The final story I saw had Mr. Third Eye charging students with a lead pipe in the 1970s. The police searched the tunnels, but they couldn't find him and from that point on, the tunnels have been off limits to students. There are those who claim that sightings continued into the 80s and 90s, but when we went to find these supposed newspaper articles about any of these sightings, we could find none. So this just may be a very elaborate bit of folklore for the campus. 

So let's get into some more realistic hauntings. Lonely_Set1376 wrote on Reddit, "I worked in McMaster College in the darkroom when I was at USC, and it seemed haunted. Several times a young woman would be working alone in the darkroom and come out freaking out claiming someone was in there with them, like that they saw out of the corner of their eye. Different women, who didn't know each other. I never saw anything but the building was really creepy at night when no one was there."

The South Caroliniana Library was constructed in 1840 and it is the oldest freestanding college library in the entire country. It is located on the historic Horseshoe at the intersections of Sumter and College Streets and holds one of the largest Southern manuscript collections in the nation. The American history collection here is also very important. The library was designed by Robert Mills in the Greek Revival architecture and features four Doric columns on the exterior. The interior has a second-floor reading room designed after the 1808 Congressional library that housed Thomas Jefferson's personal library in the second Library of Congress. Two wings were added to the structure in 1927. When the Civil War raged, much of the campus was damaged by occupation by both forces, but the library remained relatively unscathed. A great black leader in America, Richard Greener, served as a steward who protected the library after the war. The building served as the state house for a while after the war because the real state house had been burned down. Being this old and this important, it is not surprising that people claim that it is haunted. J. Rion McKissick was one of the most beloved presidents of USC and he died in office in 1944. He actually had been a student at the school during the infamous 1902 conflict that led to the first "tiger burn." McKissick would ride his bicycle across campus and guided the university during the World War II years. His ghost is said to haunt the library and the area around it. This could be because his grave is to the left of the front doors of the library.

A Confederate nurse is seen haunting the Horseshoe area that had served as a giant hospital during the war. People have taken to calling her Ms. Black. The legend behind her claims that she wasn't helping everyone. In fact, she was poisoning Union wounded. She eventually poisoned herself. She used wine to carry the poison and her ghost is said to wander the Horseshoe, carrying wine and offering it to people. 

The McKissick Museum was originally a library when it was built in 1940. It was built in the same spot that the first President's House was located. The library became the museum in 1984 and specializes in Southern folk art. The Visitor Center offers student-led walking tours, called University Ambassadors. President McKissick's body lay in repose here after his death. The museum was named for him and is also said to be haunted by him. Michaela Reilly, a class of 2021 University Ambassador, said, "My favorite ghost story is the story of James McKissick haunting the McKissick Museum at night. His grave is fairly close to the building. There are rumors that you can hear footsteps at night when no one else is around and that you’ll hear objects moving and feel cool breezes. It’s a lively building during the day, but when all the lights are off at night, it does look pretty spooky.” There are those that think this building is haunted by a former custodian instead. 

DeSaussure (De sah soor) College is the second oldest building on campus and was named for Henry William DeSaussure, who served in the Revolutionary War and later as a politician in both chambers of the South Carolina legislature. He was a part of the assembly that established the college and he was one of the first trustees of the college. The building mirrors Rutledge College in style. It served as a hospital during the Civil War, and was the site of the first medical school at Carolina from 1866-1873. During World War I, one wing served as the first women’s dormitory. Today, it is an upperclassmen dormitory. The University's website reports, "One wing was also used during the Reconstruction Era as a federal military prison. Several of our students are believed to have heard the footsteps and voices of the Civil War soldiers that haunt the building." 

The Spigner House is located at 915 Gregg Street and was recently renovated and is used by the campus as an events and conference center. There are beautiful expansive grounds and an uncovered limestone, brick and tiled terrace that spans the width of the front and wraps onto both side of the exterior with a conference room, two drawing rooms and a central foyer. The house was built in 1915 by J. Carroll Johnson in the Italian Renaissance Revival style for Thomas and Isabel Boyne. The land had been deeded to Isabel by her father. In 1937, the director of the Palmetto National Bank, G. Trezevant Pressley and his wife, Annie, bought the house. Henrietta Bailey was their niece and like a daughter to them and she lived with them during the Depression. When Annie died in 1959, she bequeathed the home to Henrietta. Henrietta gave the home to the University of South Carolina in 1963. Shadow figures have been seen in the house and people claim to get eerie feelings.

The Taylor House is located at 1525 Senate St. and was built for Thomas Taylor, Jr. in 1908 in the Neoclassical style. It was restored in 2024 to serve as the School of Law’s admissions office and event space. The house served as the Columbia Museum of Art from 1950 to 1998. The haunting here includes employees hearing noises upstairs and in the attic. There is never anybody in those locations when checked. The light in the attic has been reported to turn on and off in the middle of the night. Shadow figures have also been seen.  

The Longstreet Theatre is just down the road from the Horseshoe. The theater started off as College Hall when it was built in 1855. The plan had been to have this serve not only as a hall, but as an auditorium and chapel. The exterior is amazing, resembling a Greek temple with large Doric columns in front and a Neoclassical design. It wasn't easy to get built as 400,000 bricks designated for the building were lost when the Congaree River flooded, The contractor also had trouble getting glass for the windows. Then the original contractors went bankrupt and another company had to be brought in to finish the construction. Shortly after opening, in April of 1855, The college's president, James Thornwell, delivered a speech inside the building. That's when it was discovered that the acoustics sucked. The sound was like an echo chamber and most people couldn't understand what was being said. So the college knew that they couldn't use this building for its original intent. It also couldn't be used for academic purposes because it hadn't been built to have a bunch of classrooms.  So it just kinda sat there until the Civil War and then it was used as a military hospital. From 1870 to 1887, it was used as an arsenal and armory by the US Army. In 1888, it was renamed Science Hall and laboratories were set up. The basement was transformed into a gymnasium. An indoor swimming pool was added in 1939 and the name went back to College Hall. An engineering miracle in the 1970s transformed the building into a premier stage for live theater and it took its current name from school president Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. A remodel turned this into a theater in the round and it opened in 1977. 

People claimed that the building was cursed because of all the building issues. A storm even blew the roof off early on. And this is a theater, so it isn't surprising people say it is haunted. Add onto that that this was a hospital and part of it was used as a morgue and you have all the ingredients for ghosts. 

Jim Hunter is the head of the Department of Theatre and Dance, which now occupies the building and he said, "Down underneath the front steps...there are these brick catacombs down there. Those were the morgues because it was cold down there. And of course, there's all the ghost stories that you get from that. We've actually had the Ghost Hunters TV show here shooting overnight. This was quite a few many years ago. And of course, you know, they heard things." Visitors have claimed to hear odd noises and doors slamming and they have seen shadow figures. Disembodied footsteps cause the floors to creak. There are stories of the elevator doors opening on their own and of apparitions being seen in the late-night hours. Students will see someone standing in the dressing room and they'll look away and when they look back, the person is gone. The sounds of moaning and groaning are heard as well.

The campus does host ghost tours every spooky season and the university paper isn't shy about sharing ghost stories, so they clearly feel there are some unexplained things going on here. Is the University of South Carolina haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 630 - Haunted Air Force Bases

Moment in Oddity - The Secret Subway (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

Alfred Ely Beach was an American inventor, publisher and patent lawyer, who spent most of his adult life in New York City. He is most well known for developing the Beach Pneumatic Transit Tunnel, the first experimental subway line in the United States. It began as a secret. Due to political opposition from Tammany Hall, Beach secured a permit for building postal tubes. However, he instead used his patented hydraulic tunneling shield to build a passenger tunnel under Broadway in New York, from Warren Street to Murray Street. The construction was completed in 58 days and was a single-car line that used air pressure to move passengers between the two destinations. His goal was to alleviate traffic congestion in the city. The tunnel greeted passengers with a luxurious station with a grand piano, chandeliers and a goldfish pond. Beach's creation was largely a demonstration project to prove the practicality of underground transport in the city. His invention used clean air power vs the noisy elevated trains of the time. In its first year, the Beach Pneumatic Transit tunnel attracted 400,000 visitors, who paid 25 cents to ride the 300 foot long experimental subway. The line closed in 1873 due to lack of funding and political roadblocks. The tunnel was demolished in 1912, but the story is a legendary piece of NYC engineering history. The fact that Alfred Ely Beach was able to secure permits to build postal tubes, but instead, was secretly able to build the first subway in the United States, certainly is odd.

Haunted Air Force Bases

World War I would birth the beginnings of the Air Service branch of the Army, which would eventually become the Air Force. This branch of the military is almost 80 years old, making it the youngest branch of the military until the Space Force was established in 2019. There are currently over 50 active-duty air force bases around the world. They serve a variety of purposes from combat operations to support training to logistics to command. Several of these bases have ghost stories connected to them. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of these various American Air Force bases!

The official motto of the USAF is "Aim High...Fly-Fight-Win." The beginnings of the air service started on August 1, 1907, when the US Army Signal Corps established a small Aeronautical Division. This division took care of balloons and dirigibles. The Signal Corp would have their first airplane by August 1908, but they would lose it when it crashed the following month with Orville Wright and Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge on board. Selfridge was killed. An improved Wright Flyer would replace it and become the Army's "Airplane No. 1," on August 2, 1909. When World War I started, the 1st Aero Squadron was established and it had 12 officers, 54 enlisted men, and six aircraft. It would double and triple in size over the next few months, but never reached the level of the air forces of the European powers. In August 1916, Congress appropriated $13,281,666 for military aeronautics and another $600,000 for the purchase of land for airfields. Next, Congress passed the National Defense Act and this really bolstered the Aviation section of the Army. During World War II, the German Luftwaffe proved just how important airpower had become when it came to war and international relations. President Franklin D. Roosevelt acknowledged this growing importance of airpower before America joined the fight and he told his advisors that "airpower would win it." Through that belief, the War Department got started building new bases and focusing on air power with lots of flight training in 1939. The National Security Act of 1947 became law on July 26, 1947 and this created the Department of the Air Force and established the United States Air Force.

Unidentified AFB 

creepyafthrowaway 12 wrote on Reddit about an unidentified air force base overseas, "So I work nights in an older base overseas. I work in a very very old building. Not sure the exact date it was built but I've been told it's pre WWII maybe WWI. Usually there's a few of us who in our office at nights but due to COVID and some other issues with personnel I've been by myself at nights in this building. The building is mostly abandoned and besides a few offices it's mainly full of old shit and a lot of things from the 70s/80s. I've found some strange items in there to include old uniforms, journals from the 60s and some very old computers, Tandy 1000s and some other ones from that era. Since I work nights I'll sometimes explore the building. I've restored one of the Tandys and will play old games on it that I ordered on eBay but that gets old. Two nights ago I had zero work and was sick of playing games so I started to explore. There's a boiler room I've never been into before because it was locked but a couple weeks ago some CE guys were doing maintenance in there and they forgot to lock it so I just went in there to scope it out. It's a fairly normal boiler room with not much in there except the "boiler?" and an old beat up work bench. I looked underneath the workbench and saw there was a piece of ply wood leaning against the wall. I moved the plywood and saw that it had been blocking a fairly large vent, or tunnel, there was no cover on it so I'm not sure what it was. It also wasn't a typical vent, more of a tunnel if that makes sense. I peered in there to check it out but it was pretty dark so I went back to my office and got a flashlight and then used that and was able to see there was another room and the tunnel was maybe 10 feet long or so. I climbed through and found myself in another room with a MASSIVE steel door. Kind of like a vault in a bank. The lights in the room weren't working but I was able to look around using the flashlight. The "vault" door was somewhat open and I was able to squeeze through it and found a staircase leading down. I'm pretty inquisitive by nature so I went down the stairs and found a HUGE room that went on for what seemed like forever. Probably the size of the building and maybe even longer in other parts. I just had a creepy as fuck feeling being down there. Like I was being watched so I turned to go back up the staircase and that's when I heard a deep voice from somewhere in the dark scream "GET OUT!" I took off back up the stairs as fast as I could and I swear I heard footsteps running behind me. I crawled back through the vault door and shuffled through the tunnel and as I was in the tunnel I heard the vault door slam shut. This door was huge and made of metal and old as hell. I'm an average build but when I tried to get it to move earlier it wouldn't budge so whatever was down there was able to close it with ease. I crawled back through the tunnel and into the boiler room and slammed the door behind me and ran out to my car scared shitless and just drove the fuck home. It was probably around 1 am or so when all this happened and I was definitely only down there for like less than 2 minutes but both my phone and my car clock said it was 4 am. So SOMEHOW I'd "lost" 3 hours when I went down there. I really was freaking out and I'm a pretty rational guy but I've read stories on reddit before about people seeing ghosts and sometimes it can just be hallucinations from carbon monoxide or something so I thought maybe it was something like that. I have a friend who works in Bio-Environmental Engineering and I know they have equipment that can check for this kind of shit. I didn't want to tell any of my coworkers because I don't want them thinking I was insane so I texted him and asked him if he'd be willing to use one of his meters to check it for me. He met me at the building the next night with his gas meter and another meter. All the levels were normal around the office. When I took him to the boiler room the levels were normal there as well. But when I showed him where the tunnel was supposed to be under the bench there was NO tunnel. It was just a normal wall. I don't take meds, have no history of mental health issues, and I hadn't been drinking. I was fairly awake when all this happened and nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Should I call the chaplains office to have them come "bless" the building or should I just assume this was all some sort of temporary psychosis and move along or maybe talk to my doctor or something? Luckily one of my coworkers is starting nights with me now as well but I don't know what to do." 

Spook 50 - The Haunted KC-135

The KC-135 has a unique feature that goes back to its use during the Cold War and that is two APUs, rather than just one. These refuelers had a supporting role for Strategic Air Command nuclear bombers and needed to be able to rapidly launch. The Spook 50 was built in 1958 and was capable of flying a 24 hour alert cycle. To this day, the KC-135 is the main source of getting gas to US and Allied forces across the world. Spook 50 made a name for itself due to a tragic death as well as years of high strangeness via accounts from generations of Airmen who've both worked and operated on it. The most infamous story would be from the 80's. This is a quote from a Canadian Armed Forces Publication:

"November 22, 1988

MARCH AIR FORCE BASE, CALIF. BIZARRE ACCIDENT. An Air Force reservist died after a window burst on a KC-135 tanker aircraft flying over the Atlantic Ocean and the cockpit depressurized. Master Sgt. James L. Borland, 47, of Moreno Valley, was killed in the accident as the plane was en route from England, said Capt. Richard Williamson, a spokesman for the air wing. The precise cause of death was not immediately determined. He died when a 10-inch-by-8-inch sextant sighting window in the cockpit broke. None of the 17 others on board was injured. The accident, four to five hours into the flight from Lakenheath, England, was ''one of those bizarre things. The odds are one in 2 billion,'' said Lt. Col. Duncan Bridewell. Col. Tom Frank, the aircraft's commander, said he heard a sharp bang as the plane flew at 35,000 feet above the ocean and miles from land."

The Darris wrote on Reddit, "When I was a Boom Operator in the USAF from 2008-2012, I was introduced to the legendary haunted KC-135, "Spook 50." The "50" comes from it's tail number, 58-0050. This is the one plane that seasoned crew members would jokingly try to avoid flying because of it's ominous past. My number was called to fly on it during the summer of 2009 when I was deployed in Kyrgyzstan. This was my first operational deployment as a fully qualified Boom Operator. In the summer of 2009, I was sent on my first deployment. The base I went to had KC-135's that were assigned to Fairchild AFB, in Spokane Washington. I was stationed at McConnell AFB in Wichita, KS so I was not familiar with any of the jets here. Yes, all of the KC-135's required the same checklist and operational procedures but just like any type of machinery, they all had their quirks and differences that you got to know over the days as "Line Boom." I was fortunate enough to be crewed with an Aircraft Commander (AC) that had just transferred from Fairchild to my unit so he was really familiar with these jets. Because I was a young boom operator, seasoned veterans would usually haze you in different ways. My AC loved to joke about how scary Spook 50 was for Boom Operators and for a couple of weeks of that first deployment, he'd share story after to story about how boom operators would see shadowy figures, have lights go out on them at the worst moment, circuit breakers would randomly pop during flight, etc. It was all mostly to freak me out. Well, after about two weeks into that deployment, I finally got to fly on this infamous haunted jet. Over the course of my 3 month deployment, I flew on Spook 50 a dozen times, if not more. I became very familiar with her quirks but there was always something strange that would happen that I never experienced on any other KC-135 the rest of my career, ever. On my first flight on Spook 50, I was a little nervous during the pre-flight portion of my checklist. I'd heard all the stories but still wanted to make sure I followed everything to a tee, especially concerning the circuit breaker panel. One of my job duties in flight was to back up the pilots and monitor the circuit breaker panels. So, one of the first steps when doing my pre-flight was to check the panel for any popped breakers and reset them (there was an exception for a few that were dangerous to reset). So, during my check, there were no circuit breakers to reset but right before I moved onto the next step about 10 different breakers all popped at once. This was not something that ever happened on this jet. And I mean, ever. So, that was freaky. All of them were simple enough to reset. I moved on. Nothing happened again until it was time for us to take off. The air base we flew out of was notoriously bad for how fucking bumpy the airstrip was. It would shake the hell out of you. Because of this, loose equipment tend to fall. One of those things was the Compass placard holder that sat just below the "whiskey compass" in the middle of the upper control panel between the pilots. It was a little door that you could pop open that was supposed to have a card in it showing a list of inspection dates for the analogue compass. Well, someone thought it would be funny to write is sharpie the words, "You are going to die" inside this holder so when the door would flap down, the entire crew would see it front and center while you're cruising down the runway. When this happened to us, my AC didn't miss a beat and said, "Roger Crew, we're going to die, continuing." Once we were established in our refueling track over Afghanistan, it was time to sit and wait for someone that needed gas during their mission. I'd find myself sometimes waiting 5-6 hours before someone called up needing the gas, in other cases we'd hang out for entire night and nobody would need us. On this day, some A-10's called us up. So, I got my gear and headed towards the back to get the boom down and get my night vision to adjust. This is when some strangeness started to occur. I wasn't thinking anything of it because once a receiver calls up for gas, I get into the zone. This job is dangerous so we are trained to be prepared for all sorts of things. That is, pretty much anything except for ghosts. I got to the back the aircraft and lowered the boom. I was pretty much ready to go. I was in radio contact with the A-10 pilots so the show was about to be handed off to me once I got visual contact with them. Up until I made physical contact with the aircraft, meaning the boom was connected in flight and we were passing fuel, everything was smooth and chill. As soon as I got the nozzle into the A-10's receptacle, I felt the feeling of someone else's hand grab my right wrist which was controlling the boom. My instinct was to disconnect from the A-10 and return them back to a safe distance while I figured out what was going on. I immediately look over to my right once the aircraft was cleared as I still felt the hand holding my wrist but I saw nothing. The feeling immediate went away. I tried looking to see if I could see someone getting out of the boom pop or hiding back there but given the tight space and lack of lighting, I couldn't see anyone. So, I called up to my pilots over our internal comms and said, "hey, who the fuck was back here with me!" I was pissed. I thought one of my pilots came back to fuck with me and given the critical phase of flight we were in, I was going to go off on them. Both pilots were on their regular comms and in their respective crew positions in the cockpit. Again, they are both required to be in those seats during all critical phases of flight. They were good pilots too so I believe they would never do such a thing but again, you never know. Especially after they were hazing me pretty much for the entire deployment. So, I took a beat to relax and regained my composure and told the A-10 to come back in for some gas. We got them finished up with no other issues. After that incident, I didn't experience anything else that was crazy for that flight. All the things I experienced for the rest of the deployment:-The feeling of someone standing very close to me, even in the daylight, lights turning on and off randomly without anyone touching the switch, voices when not in flight. If I was ever doing pre-flight or post-flight checklists and had my headset off, I frequently heard the sound of a soft voice towards the rear of the aircraft. I played around with our cargo compartment speakers to test whether or not I was hearing a faint sound of my pilot's running through their checklist over the radios but I'm 99% sure this was not the case. Basically, it the voice sounded as if it was someone sitting in the boom pod in the back the aircraft just having a conversation with themselves. Also, the feeling of something physically touching me, usually like a hand grabbing my arm or leg. I formed a fear of taking naps on that plane because whenever I did, would usually get woken up by the feeling of someone grabbing my shoulders and shaking me awake. I never experienced this on any other jet or sleeping anywhere else as far as I can remember. This was something I heard from a couple other boom operators when I asked them if they experienced anything on Spook 50. Thumps in the floor of the cargo compartment. The KC-135 is known to have very specific physical characteristics that you can feel through the floor of the airplane. Whether it be from the landing gear extending and retracting to fuel pumps through the lower body turning on or off. However, those were usually audible and you felt a vibration through the floor. On Spook 50, I experienced what felt like somebody underneath the floor knocking on it below my feet. This could just be how these physical characteristics were experienced on this jet because like I said before, all of the KC-135's I flew on had their quirks. This one was just a little more accentuated." 

Little Rock Air Force Base

Little Rock Air Force Base opened in 1955 on property that covered 6,100 acres. There was limited air traffic for two years until all the runways were completed. Things started tragically with the first base commander, Colonel Joseph A. Thomas dying in a crash of the base's only aircraft at the time, a C-45. 

In 1960, the base started housing Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and one of these would be involved in something called the Damascus Incident in 1980. An airman was doing some maintenance on a Titan II missile when he dropped a socket that fell and hit the rocket's first stage fuel tank. A leak started and the area had to be evacuated. The following day, the fuel exploded and the nuclear warhead was hurled 100 feet from the launch complex's entry gate, destroying the launch complex and killing an airman, but no radioactive material escaped. On April 25, 2011, an EF-2 tornado came through the base housing area and across the flightline, damaging more than 120 homes, five C-130s and 50 other base facilities. Thankfully, no one was killed. Today, the base is the world's largest C-130 training base today with a focus on tactical airlift, combat training and humanitarian relief. 

People claim there are Civil War ghosts here and that strange voices are heard. Shadow figures have been witnessed. Strategic Air Command shared this on Facebook about something that happened during the clean-up after the Damascus Incident:

"The story goes that there was a security post on the silo while the cleanup operation was underway. Usually a new Airman was posted on the site, especially at night when nobody was out there. One night, the control center conducted radio security checks and the Airman didn’t respond. Figuring either he was asleep or his radio was dead, a security team was sent out to find out. The team got there and the Airman was gone. Not only was he gone but his radio and M 16 laid on the ground and there were spent brass all over the place. A Search was started to find the missing Airman. They found him a couple of miles down the road, still running towards Little Rock. They picked him up and took him back to base. He was then questioned by OSI and he told the following. He was looking around the site and looked down at the burnt out missile silo. Then he saw the missile sitting there and the maintenance workers performing maintenance on the missile. He saw the Airman dropping the wrench, puncturing the fuel tanks. The explosion happened and the flames burned the flesh from bones. Then the flames died out. The blackened skeletons started to climb up the sides of the silo. The Airman retreated from the silo but the skeletons got to the top. There they advanced towards the Airman. He then took aim and fired all of his rounds. He then dropped everything and ran. They took him to the mental health center for treatment. OSI then looked over the missile site. They found the bullet strikes on the rubble. The strikes were perfect, the Airman was aiming at something. That just leaves one question. Was the original teller probably full of crap or did the Airman actually see something?" 

Sassy Owl on Reddit, "I was stationed on Little Rock in the mid 90s. Our primary mission was C130 Training support. I was a flight line guy and often required to climb into the C130s when no one else was on the plane. Not a big deal. After a yr on stationed I got moved to overnight shift (2230-0630). Now my primary job was to go to all the air frames scheduled to fly that day and upload water and such for the crew and conduct other small tasks on the plane. Any given night I would visit 25-30 individual planes. LRAFB is not the busiest airfield nor did it receive regular military arrivals so the place is dead after 1700, leaving only cops, maintainers and ATOC moving around for the most part. My job required all aircraft to be serviced prior to 0630 so you're out there in the dark driving plane to plane looking for tail numbers. So I was on the flight line knocking out my list and drove up to the next plane like any other. I parked in front of the plane and just felt creeped out. The planes, nearly 100, were parked in a grid pattern and some could be really far from the active area of the flight line. This particular plane was a couple hundred yards from the road so once you turned the truck off, it's dark and silent and you're surrounded by these giant black forms looming all around you. I sat in the truck for a few moments and looked around from the seat before I came to my senses and realized I was just in my own head. I got out and opened the tailgate and felt this horrible chill and the breeze picked up. It was fall, but I was COLD and that creeped out feeling returned. I finally went up the stairs entering this unpowered plane with just my little MAG light to see. So I am counting the tie down on the plane near the middle of the cargo area and I hear the distinct sound of someone stepping on the stairs on the aircraft to enter. This sound is two parts- the sound of the boot stepping down on the stairs and then the sound of stairs touching down on the concrete. I spun around and dropped my light and tried to get quiet. The next two footsteps that would carry the visitor into the plane never came, and I stood frozen for a few moments before laughing it off. I grabbed my light and turned back to the tie down. Just as I resumed I clearly heard a male voice directly behind me ask 'Got a pen?' I spun around again, I am pretty sure I screamed, it scared the shit out of me. The sound of the voice sounded like someone would be standing directly behind me, but no one was there when I turned around. I was frozen for a moment then I bolted off the plane and tore off the flight line. It was about a mile drive back to my shop and my heart was still pounding when I got back to the yard. That was the only weird thing that happened at LRAFB." 

Offutt Air Force Base

Offutt Air Force Base is located just outside of Omaha, Nebraska and began as Fort Crook in 1890. This was named for a veteran of the Civil War, Major General George Crook. The fort was used for Indian conflicts and sent troops to the Spanish-American War in Cuba. They suffered heavy casualties with only 165 troops surviving out of a regiment that numbered 513. Many died due to tropical diseases. The parade grounds and a few brick buildings have survived to the present day. 

The 61st Balloon Company would be stationed at Offutt in 1918. The air base takes its name from First Lieutenant Jarvis Jenness Offutt who was the first native of Omaha to become a casualty in World War I. Offutt Field was designated in May of 1924. The first airfield was grass. The Post Office also used the field for refueling and was mostly used for training purposes before World War II. When the war started, a new bomber plant was built at the base. The B-29 Superfortress were crafted here and these included the Enola Gay and Bockscar, which were the heavy bombers that dropped the atomic weapons in Japan. The newly established USAF took over the base in September of 1947 and would rename it Offutt Air Force Base in January 1948. This then became the headquarters of Strategic Air Command. The base grew quickly during the Cold War and eventually became U.S. Strategic Command when that war ended. It was from a bunker on this base that President George W. Bush conducted the first strategy session as to how America would respond to September 11th. When the Space Shuttles were in use, they would be shuttled through Offutt. 

Building 41 is home to the 55th Communications Group, but when it was built in the early 1900s, it was a post hospital when this was still Fort Crook. This hospital had both a morgue and a crematorium. RIP Paranormal Ventures investigated in 2019. One investigator was overcome with sorrow in the morgue, which she described feeling like a mother's sorrow. They had a trigger box, which was like a motion detector that had a ballerina that would spin on top of it. An investigator named Jason was going to remove the ballerina from the box and he felt something push his hand away from doing that.

Roymetheus said on Reddit, "Offutt AFB, old Building 41. Used to be a hospital and the basement was a morgue with a crematorium in it. If you go there at night you can hear what sounds like a small kid laughing and running through the halls on the third floor. I can't remember off the top of my head but one of the floors was allegedly a psych ward and maybe had a section for kids? I made the mistake of being there with one other person late one night after closing down a lengthy exercise probably around 2am. I heard the voice and the running, immediately turned around to flip on the light switch and started hollering at the person I was there with the stop being an idiot. As I turned around, he was standing right behind me with a terrified look on his face. "Bro, you heard that too?" We immediately left and locked up behind us. No other cars in the lot. All the other doors were locked. Later learned the kid ghost had a name, Billy I think it was. I never went there by myself at night. Freaked me right the heck out haha."

Lynnie Elliott wrote on Facebook, "I worked on the third floor for many years. Yes the place is haunted. Not only will you hear knocks on closed doors but hard knocks. In addition, you will hear glass breaking and the toilets will flush. Many nights working late I would encounter those noises as well as feeling the spirits. They truly come out after dark but only when there are not many people in the building. Billy is true too. Story goes he was a child that died in the building when it was a hospital." 

Other haunted locations include Building D where B-29 manufacturing took place. Strange, loud noises are heard, disembodied voices are heard and lights turn on and off by themselves. The Old Strategic Air Command HQ is said to be haunted by the spirit of General Curtis LeMay  who liked to smoke cigars. When he is around, there is the scent of cigar smoke. 

Wendover Air Force Base

Wendover Air Force Base is no longer a military installation, but rather Wendover Airport today. But based on its history, we wanted to include it. Wendover Army Airfield was built in 1940 in Tooele County, Utah. This played a crucial role during World War II and was once one of the largest bombing ranges in the world. The unit that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan were trained here. 

Construction continued throughout the war with three runways and seven hangars. There were 18,000 military personnel on the base as well as 2,000 civilian employees. At its peak, the base had more than 668 buildings that included barracks, a gym, mess hall, Service Club and a 300-bed hospital. The base was placed here because it was remote and could be used secretly. That made life on the base hard with harsh weather conditions and training hours were long. The secret operations could cause psychological issues. One story from the base dates to July 25, 1944. Apparently, five armed prisoners escaped Wendover’s military guardhouse by taking a guard hostage and forcing him to drive them in a stolen garbage truck to Knolls. They let the guard go and stole another car, which they crashed and then tried fleeing on foot. They had only had around two hours of freedom through this escape before being captured. Military officials were never forthright about what really happened here. Of course, the most important secret plan developed here was the atomic bombing of Japan. Test drops were conducted here. After the war, Wendover played a key role in the postwar weapons development industry. The Air Force closed it in 1969 and Wendover City took it over in 1977. Tooele County assumed ownership and it opened as the airport in 1998. 

People have claimed to hear disembodied footsteps and voices. There are reports of full-bodied apparitions wearing World War II era uniforms being seen and blood-curdling screams. Strange music is sometimes heard and an unexplained light has been seen “landing” on the active runway. The Firehouse Building was used by the Civil Air Patrol and has a haunted reputation. People would stay overnight there sometimes and one time, a guest woke up and heard these quiet disembodied footsteps that seemed to be winding through the people all sleeping in the room. They then made out a shadowy figure and they assumed it was just somebody up and walking around, until it disappeared. The Enola Gay Hangar is haunted as well. People have heard the shuffling of papers and whispered voices in the former office of Colonel Paul Tibbets. When the office is checked to see if anyone is in there, it is always empty. 

Jennifer Jones of The Dead History wrote in 2018, "During a public ghost hunt, a group of us were cleaning up the Service Club at the end of the night, putting chairs and tables away. The second floor of the building held a few small rooms where historic items were stored, including an old radio that, when a button was pressed, played speeches by FDR. As I stood near the foot of the stairs, I suddenly heard a man’s voice. At first, I assumed guests from our event were still upstairs, so I went to check. But there was no one there. Yet, the radio had turned on by itself. Whether it was an electrical glitch or something unseen replaying history in its own way, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t alone." She also shared, "One night, a member of the Historic Wendover Airfield staff walked into the Service Club to check that everything was secure before locking up for the night. As he made his way through the auditorium section, he caught sight of something unusual—a man in uniform standing on the upper level, calmly tapping his fingers on the bannister, looking down at the floor below. When the figure on the upper level noticed that he was being watched he looked at the staff member and slowly faded away."

March Air Reserve Base

One of the oldest military airfields in America is located in Riverside, California and this is March Air Reserve Base, which was established in 1918 as Alessandro Flying Training Field. The owner of the Mission Inn in Riverside, Frank Miller, and several other local businessmen headed up the effort to build a new airfield with the blessing of the War Department. On March 20, 1918, Alessandro Flying Training Field became March Field, named in honor of 2nd Lt. Peyton C. March, Jr., who died in a flying accident. 

This airfield would train pilots for World War I and was a response to the plans of General George O. Squier, who was the Army's chief signal officer during World War I. His plan was to "put the Yankee punch into the war by building an army in the air." Training would continue here before and during World War II and it served as a major West Coast bombardment training center at that time. Many crews heading to the Pacific had their final training at March. Many buildings would be added at this time and most were built in the Spanish Mission architectural design. During the Cold War, March became a strategic base with tankers and bombers and got its first KC-135, "The Mission Bell," on October 4, 1963. In 1996, the Air Force base became March Air Reserve Base, so it was no longer for active duty. More than half of the acreage and buildings was declared surplus and sold off. The March Joint Powers commission has been tasked with redevelopment, but things haven't been going according to plan. There is lots of controversy and push back over various plans for the land and building of warehouses and such. Today, the base supports 452d Air Mobility Wing and hosts Air Mobility Command missions. There have been stories of ghosts here for decades. One of the main haunted areas is the Old Hospital/Dental Clinic, which is also known as The Rookery. This had started as a children's tuberculosis clinic and morgue, which is probably why the ghosts in this building all seem to belong to children. Staff claim to have seen ghostly children playing and they apparently like to hide things. 

There aren't just young children here though. A teenage girl has been seen many times walking around the hospital. She is a pretty horrifying figure though as her face in sliced open and she seems to be talking to herself about trying to find the person who has done this to her. There have also been reports of a "Lady in White" and a 19th-century officer named Major Edmund Ogden. 

There is a museum on the base, the March Field Air Museum. This building is haunted more than likely because of attachments to the objects inside, which include aircraft. Visitors and staff are positive that former pilots are hanging around their old air crafts. Visitors claim to hear disembodied voices and to hear noises and these have also been captured by paranormal investigators. Full-bodied apparitions of pilots have been seen. Ghost Adventures investigated the museum in 2018, during Season 17. They captured a voice that they interpreted as a child saying "It's Daddy's". Later, another voice reportedly said, "I'm the mother". They used a Polaroid camera and captured strange anomalies and then on video they captured a spiral light or ball of mist flying towards Aaron's face. The SLS camera also picked up a figure where this visual anomaly had been. Zak was told by employees that they sometimes feel like spirits are passing through them and they see artifacts moving on their own. Phil Navratil was investigating the museum with his son and his son's girlfriend, Freda. Phil said, "When we entered the room she was white as a ghost and her eyes were as big as saucers. We asked her what happened and she said, ‘There was a shadow figure standing right in front of me, blocking my way out.’ You could tell she wasn’t making stuff up. She was scared. She looked scared.” Phil also said that they captured an EVP. Freda had asked "where’s the light?" and a voice on the recording said, "It’s over here.”

F.E. Warren Air Force Base

Francis E. Warren Air Force Base is located in Cheyenne, Wyoming and is the oldest continuously active installation in the Air Force. The base got its start as a tiny Army outpost called Fort D.A. Russell that was established for workers building the Union Pacific Railroad in 1867. 

This was a tough place to be stationed on the plains with rough weather in the winter. Summer would bring skirmishes with Native Americans and eventually, troops from Fort Russell joined the fighting during the Great Sioux Indian Wars. This was the war that would bring the defeat of Colonel George Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The Army made things official for Fort Russell in 1884 and with this came money and expansion. Twenty-seven buildings were built to replace old wooden structures initially and this building would continue until 1930 with 220 total buildings added to the base. Many of these historic structures remain today. Soldiers from the base would participate in the Spanish-American War and every war thereafter. Troops from Fort Russell came back from the Philippines after putting down an insurrection with a seven-foot Queen Mary Tudor cannon forged in 1557 that is the only one of its kind and it is still at the base near the base flagpole. In 1930, the base was renamed Fort Francis E. Warren by proclamation of President Herbert Hoover. Francis Warren had received the Medal of Honor for heroism when he was 19 and serving during the Civil War. He later became Wyoming's first senator and served in that capacity for 37 years. Air Training Command took over jurisdiction of the base in June of 1947. A month later, the Army Air Force facilities around the country, including Fort Warren were all folded under the newly established United States Air Force. In 1949, the fort became Francis E. Warren AFB. 

This became Strategic Air Command from 1958 to 2005. The base is very important as it has nuclear weapons, making it a part of the triad of nuclear weapon systems we have that includes ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles), submarines and bombers. Today, it is home to the 90th Missile Wing and 20th Air Force and is undergoing modernization for the Sentinel system, aimed at maintaining strategic deterrence through 2075.

For over 100 years, military personnel and civilians have reported strange phenomenon. They claim to see uniformed cavalry troops patrolling around the base. The current Security Forces Building was once the base hospital with a morgue in the basement. Base personnel have claimed over the years to see a female ghost walking around the corridors as if she is a nurse checking on patients. Some people think this is connected to a story that claims that an escaped mental patient went to the building where six nurses from the hospital lived and he killed all of them. This occurred in Bldg. 233, now home to the Wyoming Wing Civil Air Patrol . 

Quarters 80 is home to a ghost named Gus. There was a young married officer who was away a lot of the time on military maneuvers. One day he came home early and found his wife having sex with another soldier named Gus. Gus decided his best option was to jump out of the second story window and unfortunately, he ended up hanging himself on the clothes line. Gus moves objects around this house, including rearranging furniture, and he also likes open up the cabinet doors. 

The base shared the following story in an article published in 2007, "Loud, horrifying screams of a young woman bellowed throughout Warren's FamCamp. The shrieks and screams rang thick with desperation and despair. The noise awoke Airmen in the nearby dormitories who alerted Warren authorities. Under a canopy of stars, police began a four-hour search following the screams they could still hear. At the moment they neared the source of the screams, the noises would stop and start again, shifting to a different, farther location. The police never found the source of the screams. Later research discovered that in the 1920s, a young Indian woman was brutally raped and murdered by cavalry men at White Crow Creek, Warren's present day FamCamp." 

Hickam Air Force Base

Hickam Air Force Base in on the island of O'ahu in Hawai'i. It is today merged with Naval Station Pearl Harbor. Land was bought from several estates on the island to build a new air depot in 1934. The task of building a modern airdrome from sugar cane fields and tangled brush was difficult, but the new airfield was completed and dedicated in May of 1935. It was named in honor of Lt. Col. Horace Meek Hickam, an aviation pioneer who was killed in an aircraft accident in Galveston, Texas the month before the airfield opened. 

Throughout the rest of the 1930s and into early 1940, the base expanded with new buildings for barracks and other housing and the largest structure of any kind on an American base, the Hickam Hotel, which a consolidation of a mess hall, medical dispensary, post exchange, laundry and dayrooms. Hickam was part of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Its planes were bombed and the structures suffered extensive damage. The base had 189 people killed and 303 wounded. Casualties included nine Honolulu Fire Department firefighters who fought fires at Hickam during the attack. They all received purple hearts today, something only ever done at that time. The base continued to train pilots during the war and assembled aircraft. During the Cold War, Hickam served as the Military Air Transport Service and supported the Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s. The base also hosted Operation Homecoming, which was the return of POWs during the Vietnam War. The Space Shuttle flights would also use the base in the 1980s and 1990s. The base bears the scars of its past with bullet holes still marking many buildings and the tattered American flag that flew over the base the morning of the attack on Pearl Harbor is on display in the lobby of the Pacific Air Forces Headquarters building. This building has many bullet-scarred walls that have never been fixed to serve as a reminder to never again be caught unprepared. The worst air disaster in Hawai'i's history took place here as well. On March 22, 1955, a United States Navy Douglas R6D-1 Liftmaster was carrying 66 people through a bad rain storm and ended up veering off course and crashing into Pali Kea Peak killing everybody on board. 

This past seems to have left spirits. People claim to hear bombing noises and the sounds of dying soldiers. Full-bodied apparitions wearing World War II uniforms are seen. The most well known ghost is named Charley and he roams the hall and often switches the radio stations. He likes to throw things too.

throwawaytoreply1 wrote on Reddit, "When I was a kid I got salmonella and was hospitalized at Wilford Hall for about a week. When I got admitted I had a 111 temperature. They threw me in a bath tub of ice water clothes and everything. First day or two was not fun. But that's not why I'm writing this. One night I was feeling pretty good and couldn't sleep. The nurse said it was ok if I walked around the building as long as I didn't go into any rooms or the emergency room. So I set off to wander around. At one point I came up to this area that had 6 or 8 elevators. As I'm passing them I heard a ding and I look to see who's going to come out of the elevator. The sole elevator facing directly towards me opens up and there's a little girl about 6 or 7 standing in the elevator. I ask if she's lost and she doesn't say anything. Then the elevator doors close but I don't hear anything indicating to me that the car is going up or down. Concerned for her well being, I walk over to the elevator and hit the button. When the elevator doors opened up nobody was in the elevator. I noped it back to my room and never went exploring again." 

ipissrainbows wrote on Reddit, "I had to stay late in PACAF HQ once and it creeped me the fuck out. The motion detectors activated the lights in our office and I was the only one in the area. I was inside a cubicle writing something so I and pretty sure I didn't set them off.... then again, I had heard it was haunted so that didn't help. Someone else swore they heard people talking to each other while he was there late one night and he was alone. If you have a dog, try walking it past that field in front of the water tower. Some dogs (like mine) freak out and growl and bark at the field. I heard that's where they laid all the bodies after the attack and that's why some dogs hate it."  

Kristen wrote in 2005, "I hadn’t been stationed there for very long and I had just gotten out of basic and Tech school so I was still kind of learning the ropes. Well the Commander’s secretary had to leave for an appointment and asked me if I would sit outside the office and answer phones for her and take messages. Well of course I said "yes" so I sat down. It was so silent in the office it gave me the creeps just to sit there with no one around. Well I was sitting there patiently waiting for the Commander or the phones to ring when I started to hear someone pass back and forth from the Deputy Commander’s office, past my desk, and into the Commander’s office. At first I thought it was the people upstairs but then the weirdest thing was if you got up and started to walk across the room the footsteps would stop until you passed then started passing again once you passed a certain place in the office. So I knew it couldn't be upstairs, the timing was just to perfect every time. You could take a step and as soon as you did the "Pacer" would stop walking. My supervisor at the time and I went in one Saturday to work on some things and catch up on paperwork. On Saturdays there is no one in the building with the exception of Security Forces and some computer people that have to work then. This might not seem like much but I’m going to tell it anyway. Well we walked in, had our IDs checked, the usual stuff, and went to the second floor where our office is. I clearly remember leaving the door to the hallway wide open. After we had done all the things we needed to do we walked towards the door and it was shut. Now mind you no one else was on that floor. It was quiet and everything was still expected for the both of us. Anyway there’s a story behind all of this apparently a few years back some guy committed suicide because his wife had left him and he was broken hearted. He jumped off the top of the building I worked at one day, and I guess he’s still here wandering around. Like I said it wasn’t much but still odd just the same.

Amy wrote this in 2006, "My father was stationed at Hickam AFB in 1989. We took the house out on Apollo Avenue because it had air conditioning. Not long after living there, things began to happen. The front bedroom (at the end of the short hallway) was impossible to sleep in. It was my 8-month-old son's room, but he never slept in it. One night, my sister wanted to sleep in the room to see why he woke up screaming every time we put him in his crib fast asleep. That night, her blankets were pulled off and the room was extremely cold. She pulled them up, and they were pulled off again. That happened once more before she said she couldn't take it anymore and came back to the bedroom we shared (all three of us).
We always heard our names being called like someone was whispering in our ears. Mostly this happened as we were walking up and down the stairs. We saw a few ghosts during our stay there. I saw a woman in a black dress sitting in the upstairs bathroom at the end of the long hall. She looked sad and made eye contact with me as I reached the top of the stairs. My bedroom was right next to the bathroom; and not only did I have her staring at me, I had that uncomfortable feeling pouring out from the front bedroom. YIKES! My sister saw a woman in white, like a nursing type uniform, floating up the stairs. My mother had someone climb in bed with her. She thought it was my father coming to bed, but when she turned over to say goodnight, there was no one there. She saw an impression though where something was lying. My father saw a shadow figure in his bedroom doorway one night. He thought it was one of his daughters, so he asked if we needed something. The shadow didn't answer. That next morning, he asked us who came to his room and why we didn't answer him? We were astonished. No one had gone in his room. One night, my sister wanted to leave my parents a note to wake her up that morning but they were asleep already, so she wrote a quick message on a piece of paper that she slipped under the door into the hallway. Our parent's room was across the hall. Not long after she pushed it out, she heard a set of limping footsteps coming down the hallway. It stopped next to our door (as if it were reading the letter) and then limped back down the hallway towards the stairs. Another night, my sister and I were staying up late and decided to head to bed. We turned everything off and started up the stairs. When we reached the top, we heard voices, like a party, going on downstairs. My sister was curious. She snuck back down the stairs halfway and peeked around the wall quickly to see. The voices stopped immediately. She started back up the stairs again. When she reached the top, the voices started again. We RAN to our bedroom. My son was always playing with an unseen figure. Peek-a-boo over the back of the recliner one time when he was one-year-old. Then, when he was about 2-years-old, he started talking about a boy named Bobby. I made him his lunch one day and my son took it to the bottom of the stairs. He set his food down on the first step and called up the stairs "Bobby!" That was pretty creepy. Things always disappeared, our keys, the hammer which we finally found the day we were moving in an ice chest that had been stored in the back of the closet under the stairs most of the time that we lived there. Also, we all fought amongst one another daily during the 3 stay. I remember how much hate we all had towards one another, it hung in the air. Lots of many other things happened -things moving, clunking noises and footsteps, etc. When we moved, my mother made a point to tell the spirits that they couldn't go with us. They had to stay there. I wish I was older and knew how to help them find their way to the light. I hope they've reached it. I saw that there was another account of a house on this same street on your site and I'm curious to know if they lived in the same house as we did. I can't remember the numbers exactly but I'm sure I can find out. I do know that it was in the "D" townhouse but I can't remember whether it was 2625, but that seems right to me if I were to guess it. I also DO remember finding out that those houses were built on the old flight line during the Pearl Harbor attack. It had been set up as a temporary morgue during that period." 

While the Air Force bases are young in comparison to their other military branch counter parts, there has still been plenty of time and enough tragedy and death to lead to hauntings. Are the Air Force bases in America haunted? That is for you to decide! 

HGB Ep. 629 - The Life and Afterlife of Rudolph Valentino

This Month in History - Tiger King Launches

In the month of March, on the 20th in 2020, the show 'Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness' debuted on Netflix. Within a week of its release, the Netflix show went viral, motivating enormous social media engagement and becoming one of Netflix's highest rated shows at the time. The premise of the reality TV show centered around a feud between eccentric Oklahoma zoo owner Joe Exotic and animal activist Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue, culminating in a murder-for-hire plot. Viewer opinions were divided as to which of the two main characters were the antagonist and protagonist. The series was like the old adage, "Watching a train wreck". The 'documentary' show consists of two seasons which highlight accusations of animal abuse, cult-like behavior and exotic animal trafficking. The series also covered the conviction of Joe Exotic for a 2017 murder-for-hire plot against Carol Baskin along with multiple wildlife law violations. Joe Exotic, legal name Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage is currently serving 21 years in federal prison at the Federal Medical Center of Fort Worth, Texas. Carole Baskin is currently focused on big cat conservation and advocacy and still hosts her digital creation, 'The Cat Chat Show' online. 

The Life and Afterlife of Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino has been an enduring symbol of early Hollywood glamour. He immediately comes to mind when someone speaks of "Old Hollywood." Valentino was nicknamed "The Latin Lover" and women swooned in his shadow. He grew famous through silent films. Gossip columns talked about him being the sheik with a Ouija board and Valentino was indeed a serious Spiritualist. He bought a ring from a jeweler who warned him that it was cursed and some claim this is why he died young. Could this be why his spirit is still around. There are many places that claim to harbor his spirit. Join us for the life and afterlife of Rudolph Valentino. 

Rudolph Valentino was born as Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi (gool-yee-EL-mee) di Valentina d'Antonguella (d'An-ton-GWEL-lah) in Castellaneta (kah-stel-lah-NET-ah), Italy in 1895 to an Italian father and a French mother. His mother Marie was indulgent and she had added the di Valentina d'Antonguella (d'An-ton-GWEL-lah) to his official birth name, explaining to Rudolph that these additional names meant the following, "The di Valentina is a papal title, and the d'Antonguolla indicates an obscure right to certain royal property which is entirely forgotten now because one of your ancestors fought a duel." We love this, yeah we were really important and part of royalty, but yeah nobody remembers anything about that. Marie had apparently been a lady-in-waiting for a member of the Italian nobility at the time in Naples. Rudolph had three other siblings with his eldest sister dying in infancy before he was born. From a very early age, Rudolph displayed what was described as a dark gothic rebellious streak and he did poorly in school, having to repeat a grade. His restless energy got him the nickname "Mercury" from friends and family. Seems fitting as Mercury was the wing-footed Roman trickster god. 

Rudolph was living a very comfortable life when his father Giovanni died from malaria in 1906. This affected him greatly and his mother finally reached her wits end and decided that the best thing for him was military school, so she sent him north. That seemed to help and Rudolph decided that he would like to become a cavalry officer. He moved to Venice and for the first time, really applied himself to his studies. With that he passed the written test for the officer training, but he missed out on the physical part. His chest was an inch short of the requirement. 

Rudolph moved to Nervi, which was an old fishing village in Italy and attended Agricultural Institute of Saint Ilario of Liguria and graduated in 1912 when he was seventeen. But the heady stuff wasn't for him and now that he was an adult, he embraced his wanderlust and left for Paris and then moved on to Monte Carlo. Along the way, he learned to do the tango, which was a very controversial dance at the time and he worked hi way into fashionable circles. Within a year, he had burned through his savings. He needed a fresh start and his family encouraged him to emigrate to America. They bankrolled his trip and he arrived with $4,000 in his pocket. He spoke little English and was directed to an Italian boardinghouse where he rented a front-facing suite with its own bathroom. Rudolph blew through his money very quickly. It got so bad for him, that he found himself sleeping on park benches. Work in New York was hard to find and he didn't really want to work, but being broke he had no choice. He turned to his agriculture degree and in the spring of 1914, he found work as an apprentice landscape gardener at Oak Hill on Long Island, the Georgian Revival estate of Cornelius N. Bliss Jr. Rudolph didn't like getting his hands dirty and he neglected his duties, eventually losing his job. Bliss did provide Rudolph with a little money and recommended him to work at Central Park as a landscape gardener. The only issue was that the civil service test for the post was only open to American citizens.

New York City only provided menial work for Rudolph. The future great screen idol was left cleaning around fire hydrants. But then his luck changed. Maxim's Restaurant-Cabaret hired him. His job was working as a taxi dancer. For those who don't know, that was someone who was paid to dance with patrons and he was soon gliding debutantes and lonely society women across the dance floor for ten cents a dance. His good-looks and charm won him praise and he worked his way from a "lounge lizard" to an exhibition dancer. He gave private dance lessons as well, which entailed, shall we say, "other" services. 

Bonnie Glass was an exhibition ballroom dancer in need of a new partner and she hired Rudolph in 1914, paying him $50 a week. Glass opened her own venue in 1915 and the duo were incredibly popular. They traveled to various locations to perform as well. She married in 1916 and decided to retire and Rudolph found himself needing work again. He was matched with another partner through restaurateur Joe Pani and he toured performing the tango throughout the east. He was making $240 a week at this time. Blanca de Saulles was a Chilean heiress in an unhappy marriage to a wealthy businessman named Jack de Saulles when she met Rudolph in 1916. The two became fast friends and while some claimed they were romantically involved, neither claimed that to be true. Blanca was done with her husband's stepping out on her and she told Rudolph she was going to divorce her husband. He agreed to testify on her behalf during divorce proceedings and he embellished tales that he knew about an affair with a woman named Joan Sawyer. As if this wasn't scandalous enough, Rudolph was living in an apartment building owned by a madame. De Saulles knew this because the reason Rudolph knew information about his infidelity is because he had seen him at the apartment building. So de Saulles called in a tip and the madame, Georgia Thyme, and Rudolph were arrested for pimping. The evidence was thin and they were released. But that wasn't the end of the de Saulles saga for Rudolph. A year later, in August of 1917, Blanca shot and killed Jack de Saulles over a custody dispute involving their son and this put Rudolph in a spotlight he didn't want. He had to get out of New York and so he headed west, joining a traveling musical troupe. The group disbanded when they got to Utah and Rudolph thought about continuing to California to become a farmer. But a better opportunity presented itself. Al Jolson had a traveling production performing Robinson Crusoe, Jr. and when they came through Utah, Rudolph joined them and they moved on to San Francisco. While there, he met a movie actor who convinced him that he should try silent films and Rudolph joined him in traveling to Los Angeles and they roomed together at the Alexandria Hotel.

While he sought parts in film, Rudolph returned to teaching dance. He got bit parts in several movies, usually as a villain because he was darker complected. His first big acting part was in The Married Virgin and this is when he had to decide how he wanted to be billed. Guglielmi (gool-yee-EL-mee) was pretty tough for American audiences and he didn't want to be identified with the crime he had been arrested for in New York, so he went with Rodolfo di Valentina, which eventually morphed into Rudolph Valentino to make it easier. 

Screenwriter June Mathis saw him playing a bit part in the movie Eyes of Youth and she thought he would be perfect for her next movie based on the book "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. She cast him in the role of Julio Desnoyers. Before making the film, Valentino married actress Jean Acker in November 1919. This proved to be a bad move as the two eloped and later that evening when it was time to consummate the marriage, Acker locked him out of the room because she realized she had made a mistake. Valentino had begged her for two months to marry him as he had fallen in love with her at first sight. But Acker had agreed to the marriage to get her out of a weird predicament involving a love triangle with actresses Grace Darmond and Alla Nazimova. Yeah, you heard that right. Acker was a lesbian. Now Valentino spent much of his public life pushing back on rumors that he was gay. The truth seemed to be that Valentino was an Italian dandy and he threatened American male masculinity. He wore jewelry and perfume and was a graceful dancer, but he loved women and was very sad with his love life in which he claimed that the women he loved never loved him and the rest of the women didn't matter to him at all. Anyway, they wouldn't go to divorce court until 1921 and at that time, Valentino had become famous, while Acker was sick and in debt and so she claimed, "He deserted me. He was nothing when I married and when he arrived he lost interest in me." The judge found in favor of Valentino and granted him the divorce with no alimony needing to be paid, but he did give Acker some money for a while. Valentino called the marriage "a ridiculous tragedy."  

"The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse" opened in 1921 and was a critical success. It was the first film to make 1,000,000 at the box office and is the 6th best selling silent movie of all time. At this same time, Valentino was introduced to art director Natacha Rambova and she basically became his marketing agent. She took on responsibility for his fan mail and publicity photos. 

He had been under contract with Metro and after making three films with them, he moved over to Famous Players-Lasky that would eventually become Paramount Pictures. And this is when he starred in "The Sheik" that would bring him peak fame and success. After this role, he would be advertised as the "Latin Lover." More commercially successful films would follow. Valentino made several films with Famous Players, but he was getting increasingly unhappy with his roles. He didn't like changes in production and some of the directors he worked with. Through this, and before his first marriage was ended legally, Valentino took up with Rambova. So she was apparently helping him with more than just photos. He asked her to marry him and they married in May 1922. Now Valentino was divorced from Acker by this time, but California had a law that you couldn't marry for a year after a divorce was finalized and so he was arrested for bigamy and went to trial. This was a huge sensation and the couple had to annul their marriage, wait for the rest of the year to pass and then they remarried. Valentino would complete another very successful film that he considered one of his best films, "Blood and Sand" at this time. Rambova was deeply into mysticism and the occult and the couple hosted salons about spiritualism and attended seances together. She led Valentino into believing he had an Apache spirit guide named Black Feather that was always with him. Gossip columns called him the "Sheik with a Oujia board."

In September 1922, Valentino conducted a one-man strike against Famous Players-Lasky. The strike kept Valentino from working for any other studios and he fell deeply into debt and while the studio claimed he was a prima donna, Valentino was really just fighting for more diverse parts and more artistic freedom. The studio did allow him to do radio work. 

In March 1923, after Valentino and Natacha Rambova were legally married, they set off on an 88 city tour through Canada and America. they were sponsored by Mineralava Beauty Clay Company and the tour ended with a beauty contest in which Valentino presented the winner with the prize. Valentino later was able to get signed Ritz-Carlton Pictures as long as he agreed to fulfill his contract with Famous Players. United Artists was the next studio Valentino worked for and while his contract was lucrative with him being paid $10,000 a week for only three pictures a year, his wife Rambova was barred from any sets. Word had gotten around that she was poison on the set with her lavish design requests and other demands. It caused a rift in the marriage. The couple would eventually divorce in January 1926. The next major relationship that Valentino had would be his last and this was with Polish actress Pola Negri. Negri would claim they were engaged after Valentino died, but nobody believed that to be true as he had not told anyone that. Valentino's final film was "The Son of the Sheik," which opened on July 9, 1926. Valentino had been ill during the entire shoot and he had been having stomach or abdominal trouble for years. He was often in pain. While the publicity around the film was great, an article was published by an anonymous journalist decrying the feminization of men by Valentino and his screen image. The editorial asked rhetorically, "Why didn't someone quietly drown Rudolph Guglielmo, alias Valentino, years ago?" This pissed Valentino off and he was ready to prove his manhood through a boxing match. Valentino wrote, "This is not publicity. The man overstepped all bounds of decency and right thinking. I will go back to Chicago and give him what he deserves. Only one thing would prevent it-if he were feeble or old, or too young. If he is too old, he should have known better. If he is too young, I'll spank him. All journalists should be ashamed of him, whoever he is." The anonymous journalist never responded, but a match was set up with New York Evening Journal boxing writer Frank "Buck" O'Neil. Heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey trained Valentino and served as referee for the boxing match, which Valentino won. Dempsey said of Valentino, "He was the most virile and masculine of men. The women were like flies to a honeypot. He could never shake them off, anywhere he went. What a lovely, lucky guy." But his luck ran out. The following month, Valentino was hospitalized with excruciating pain. Doctors diagnosed him with ulcers and appendicitis. Emergency surgery was conducted to remove the appendix and suture a perforated ulcer. Valentino seemed to rally after the surgery, but soon infection set in through peritonitis. Doctors said if he improved through the next 48 hours, he would probably be okay. His health declined on August 21st as pleurisy set in his lungs and the doctors knew he would die, but they chose not to tell him. Fever wracked the actor for two days and he was in and out of consciousness. When he was conscious, he spoke of the future and claimed to feel fine. At 8am on August 22nd, he slipped into a coma and last rites were administered. he died at 12:10pm on August 22nd 1926 at the age of 31. 

Crowds outside the hospital grieved his death and women passed out. Tributes poured in from the film industry and 100,000 people lined the streets of Manhattan to pay their respects at his funeral. Pola Negri made a scene, collapsing over his coffin after placing an 11-foot-long bank of lilies that spelled out her name. His funeral was held at The Actor's Chapel in Manhattan and his remains were taken from New York to California and he is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in a crypt provided by June Mathis. She is buried next to him.

Falcon's Lair 

Falcon Lair was a symbol of Valentino's success. The mansion was located abobe Benedict Canyon In Los Angeles and featured a Spanish Revival style, expansive grounds and sumptuous interiors of ornate tile work and iron details. The architect was Wallace Neff. Valentino decorated it with memorabilia and items he had acquired from around the world like Renaissance art and decorative rugs. He gave the home its name in honor of "The Hooded Falcon," a film that he and his wife Natacha Rambova were producing that never got off the ground. There was a stable on the property where he kept his horses. The home was auctioned off after his death to pay debts and went through a series of owners until billionaire heiress Doris Duke bought it in 1953. She lived there until her death in 1993. New owners set about doing a major renovation in 2003, but this was halted before finished and in 2006, the mansion was demolished. Only the garage with an upper floor for servants quarters still stands. The stable was turned into a home, but that was eventually demolished too. This had been a sanctuary for Valentino, and that is perhaps why his spirit was said to still be in the house. We wonder if he still might wander the property, upset that his home is gone.  

A caretaker once ran down the canyon in the middle of the night yelling that he had seen Valentino. A stable worker quit his job there and didn't return to pick up his things after he saw the ghost of Valentino petting a horse. His ex-wife Rambova claimed to be in contact with him after his death and said he refused to leave his house because he didn't believe that he was dead. 

A woman who was friends with the caretaker had come to visit and stay over at the mansion shortly after Valentino's death. Her friends had taken Valentino's two Great Danes, Rudy and Brownie, outside to exercise and she was inside writing when she heard steps shuffling up the stairs and heard an inner door open. She figured her friends had returned and called out their names to which she got no answer. She then heard the door close and steps shuffle down the stairs and then the garage door closed. When her friends returned to the house several minutes later, she asked why they hadn't responded when she called out to them. One said, "Came up? Neither of us came up. You must have been dreaming." Then they all investigated to make sure no one else was in the house. As they opened the doors to Valentino's bedroom, the one caretaker pointed out some grass on the floor. She said, "But I swept this out yesterday and not a person has entered." In the end, they knew nobody could have come up to the house without passing the caretakers and the dogs and they would have been seen. 

Santa Maria Inn

We covered the Santa Maria Inn on Ep. 175. The hotel was opened on the Central Coast of California in 1917 by a man named Frank McCoy to be a luxurious spot to stay for the rich and famous. Back at that time, the hotel only had 24 rooms. Over the years, McCoy added more rooms. 

One of the stars who stayed here and visits it in the afterlife is Valentino. During his Hollywood career, he stayed at the Santa Maria Inn in Room 221. He has been seen lying on the bed in the room and his indentation on the top of the covers is clearly seen. His favorite tactic seems to be knocking on doors, particularly of Room 221. We read several accounts of people being awakened by knocking on the door, some of them as negative reviews about the hotel where people are completely unaware that they may have experienced something supernatural. A podcaster friend had joined us on the episode, Elliot, and he said he experienced this type of haunting during one of his stays. 

Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel

The Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel on Ivar Avenue is now the Hollywood Knickerbocker Apartments. This had been the hotel of the Stars in the 1940s. The hotel was designed by John M. Cooper in the Classical style and started as a luxury apartment house when it opened in 1925. It converted into a hotel in 1929 and had 500 rooms and 200 suites. Valentino was a frequent guest and is still spotted sometimes in the former lounge, The Lido Room, that is today a restaurant. He apparently loved to dance the tango there. 

Movie Studios  

There is the Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York, which had once been the Famous Players-Lasky studio. The commissary from the 1920s is now a restaurant called George’s, which is right next to the studio. Valentino filmed many of his movies here. The new studio films Sesame Street and was also the home of Orange Is The New Black and Nurse Jackie. People claim to have spied Valentino sitting at the bar at George's, sipping martinis. Paramount Studios is next to Hollywood Forever Cemetery and people claim that Valentino visits from there on occasion. He had filmed at the studio and the gates at the front were originally crafted to keep out his crowds, although the gates wouldn't be finished until after Valentino died. 

Hollywood Forever Grave 

Rudolph Valentino's grave is the site of an apparition of a woman in a black dress and many claim this woman is Ditra Flame. Ditra had been seriously ill in the hospital when she was a little girl. Valentino was freinds with her mother, so he showed up at the hospital bearing a single red rose. He whispered to her, “You’re not going to die at all. You’re going to outlive me by many years. But one thing for sure—if I die before you do, will you please come and stay by me because I don’t want to be alone either. You come and talk to me.” Valentino was right. Ditra got better and he died a few years later from complications from gastric ulcer surgery. As an adult, she brought red roses to his crypt every year on his death date. She died in 1984 and ever since then, people claim to see a ghost woman in black kneeling in front of Valentino’s tomb. Some visitors have seen a rose just appear in the vase on the wall. Disembodied footsteps have been heard and there is a feeling as though being watched by someone unseen. 

Valentino came from humble beginnings and worked his way to the upper echelons of Hollywood. He demanded to be respected and wanted to be allowed to be a real actor. And he was finally getting to that place when death came calling at far too young an age. Does Rudolph Valentino haunt these various locations? That is for you to decide!