HGB Ep. 632 - Haunted Inveraray, Scotland

Moment in Oddity - The Dancing Plague of 1518

In July of 1518, there was a strange plague outbreak in Strasbourg, Holy Roman Empire, which is now modern day France. The plague has become historically known as the 'Dancing Plague' and although not the first of its kind, it has been the most thoroughly documented. This 'dancing plague' saw more than 400 people uncontrollably dancing for weeks, ultimately leading to deaths from exhaustion, heart attacks and stroke. The epicenter of the 1518 'dancing plague' was Frau Troffea in mid July of that year, who danced, twisted and shook in the streets for days on end. History has differing theories as to the cause of this dancing plague. One theory was that Saint Vitus, a Catholic saint cursed those who were sinners with a plague of uncontrollable dancing. This caused local leaders to organize pilgrimages to St. Vitus shrines. Another theory was ergot poisoning, which is caused by the ingestion of ergot fungi, a hallucinogenic mold found on damp rye. The medical doctors of the age believed that the dancers had 'overheated blood' which caused a misunderstanding by the city officials who hired musicians to play music, worsening the frenzy. But today's modern day theory, attributed to historian John Waller, is that the event was a case of mass psychogenic illness, also known as mass hysteria. The sufferers were driven by extreme psychological stress, famine and superstitious fears of the times. The victims of the dancing plague of 1518 did not exhibit dance moves of their current time, but danced with flailing limbs and scared expressions. Regardless of the cause, 400 people dancing themselves to death, certainly is odd.

Haunted Inveraray, (In vah rare ee) Scotland (Suggested by: James McKenna)

The town of Inveraray in Scotland holds one of the most famous castles in Scotland and a jail from the 1800s that was one of the most modern jails for its time, making this the perfect spot for those seeking history with haunts. Nearby Loch Fyne attracted a long history of clans and people with its rich fishing of herring and oysters and is the longest sea loch in the country. The waters also harbor dolphins, seals, otters and even basking sharks. Stories claim that a phantom galleon occasionally appears on the loch and it seems to signal death is coming. What are some other haunts around this village? Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of Inveraray, Scotland.  

Argyll is located in western Scotland and is a region of dramatic coastlines with a mountainous terrain. It is known as Earra-Ghàidheal (Err-uh-GAA-ul or EH-ruh-GHAAL) in Scottish Gaelic and means "coastland of the Gaels." This area is said to be the birthhplace of the Scottish nation, where Irish Gaels established the kingdom of Dál Riata (dahl REE-uh-tuh ) around 500 A.D. There were conflicts with Vikings and this became a stronghold of Clan Campbell, whose Dukes resided at Inveraray after it was established as the seat of the Campbells in the 15th century. The quaint town of Inveraray sits on Loch Fyne and has a main street full of shops and restaurants. For centuries, country people carried wool, cheese, feathers, eggs, broom, salmon, and skins to the market and the main industries were in fishing, hunting, agriculture, cattle and sheep rearing, curing of hides and iron working. A castle was built in the 1400s, but was later replaced with the current Gothic Revival castle that is absolutely stunning. The entire town was rebuilt in the mid-18th century as a planned Georgian town by the Duke of Argyll who hoped to make this a base for herring fishing. And it did become that for a little while, but when the herring were gone, the town turned to tourism. There are many wonderful sites to see here like the Inveraray Castle. 

Inveraray Castle 

The Inveraray Castle was preceded by another castle that eventually became uninhabitable. It was demolished in 1745 to make way for the castle that stands today. That first castle was built by Sir Colin Campbell in 1432 and became the main residence of the Earls of Argyll in 1457. 

The current castle was designed in the Gothic Revival style with the foundation stone being laid in 1746. The design was inspired by a sketch drawn by the architect of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard, Vanbrugh. Architects Roger Morris and William Adam came up with the final design said to be architecturally before its time because it mixed modern, baroque, Palladian and Gothic-style. The construction took 43 years to complete. The castle was only two floors at first, but a third floor was added after a major fire in 1877. At this time, the conical roofs were also added to the four corner towers. The interior rooms were neoclassical and the castle was heated by open fires. The basement had the Old Kitchen, which was last used by Duchess Louise in the 1950s. There were seven fireplaces that featured different cooking methods like two ovens for baking, two stewing stoves, a boiling stove, a hot plate and a roasting fire that had a spit. copper utensils were used for cooking. Today, there is now a tearoom serving light lunches and teas and the castle's gift shop in the basement. 

The main floor's entrance is fairly modest, but does contain a 1600 German decorated strong box commonly known as an 'Armada Chest' that holds cannon balls recovered from Tobermory Bay on the Isle of Mull. 

The entrance hall leads to the French-influenced Tapestry Drawing Room that still contains original Beauvais tapestries. The room also has painted shutters by Girard and he also painted the ceiling, which was designed by Robert Adam. A painting of Lady Charlotte Campbell, daughter of the 5th Duke, by John Hoppner hangs on the wall and there are a pair of confidantes with matching armchairs and a circular giltwood palm tree table with a specimen marble top inlaid with the 7th Duke of Argyll's coat of arms. There is also the Armoury Hall that has a high ceiling - said to be the highest ceiling in Scotland - and this room holds a large collection of weapons that include 1,300 pikes, Brown Bess muskets, Lochaber axes, Broadswords and other weapons. Pikes are those very long, two-handed thrusting spears. A highlight of the collection is the dirk and sporran belonging to Rob Roy MacGregor. The upper parts of this room contain the Campbell family c rest and the various cadet branches of the Campbells. The Saloon has a collection of portraits and furniture. The State Dining Room is extravagantly decorated and features a 1784 painting by two French artists, Girard and Guinand. We aren't art experts, but we've heard that the quality of this painting is unparalleled in Britain for that time. The dining chairs were specifically commissioned by the 5th Duke from France and feature coverings of tapestries dating to the 1780s. The dining table is from 1800 and was made by Gillow of Lancaster. There is a Waterord chandelier, which is part of a trio and it is the largest. The other two are in the Tapestry Drawing Room. 

The China Turret is entered through a secret set of doors concealed with tapestry panels integrated into the design of the drawing room. Its ceiling is made of papier-mâché and was designed by Robert Mylne in 1773. This was originally a library, but today has a collection of Oriental and European porcelain, including Japanese Imari-ware (known for its vibrant designs of cobalt blue, red and gold) of the early 18th century. 

The Saloon was a room for music and billiards, so there is a grand piano in the corner. But not just any piano. This one was where the songwriters Lerner and Loewe composed some of the songs for their musical My Fair Lady when they stayed at the castle. The North West Hall has a collection of clothing from the Campbells including Coronation robes and the present Duke's uniform of the Royal Company of Archers. A more recent addition is the stunning cream gown designed by Bruce Oldfield and worn by the current Duchess at her wedding to the 13th Duke in June 2002. The next level has the Victorian Room that is aptly named because there is a Maplewood writing desk in here that was given to Princess Louise by her mother, Queen Victoria, as a wedding gift in 1871. There is also a piece of art that the Princess created from porcelain that is of her mother, Queen Victoria, at her spinning wheel. There are also two intriguing pieces of furniture converted from an old coach presented by the Duke of Sutherland to the 8th Duke of Argyll. The MacArthur Room features the state bed of the MacArthurs of Loch Awe. This is a four poster bed with elaborate carvings and is very old and was moved here from the original castle. Remember this bed, it will come up again. The Picture Turret has a bunch of photographs with one featuring HMS Argyll, named for the county. Three Royal Navy ships have had the name, the first dating back to 1715, which was a 50 gun fourth rate frigate. The second was a Devonshire Class armoured cruiser from 1904 and the third is a 1991 high-tech duke class frigate. 

The Gallery has a bunch of portraits. One of which is of Lt. Col Duncan Campbell of Lochnell who raised the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders Regiment of Foot. This was painted by Sir Henry Raeburn. Queen Victoria made her first visit to Inveraray Castle in 1847, but obviously came several times to see her daughter. A visit in 1875 lasted for a week.

There are several spirits haunting the castle. The bed in the MacArthur Room has a young ghost attached to it. There was a civil war in Scotland in 1644. Archibald Campbell was the 1st Marquess (Mar kwiss) of Argyll when the 1st Marquess of Montrose marched in with his regiment. The Marquess of Argyll didn't remove his castle staff with him though and left behind was a young harpist whom the family thought very highly of. When the enemy troops arrived, they stormed the castle and found the harpist and brutally killed the boy, dismembering him and leaving the parts on the Marquess' bed. That bed eventually made its way into the new castle and it was after that that the Campbell family claimed to hear the faint sound of harp music. This mainly came from the MacArthur Room, but the ghost seems to be able to move. Family members spoke of a sudden stillness in multiple rooms and then the faint sound of harp music echoing along the corridors. Tradition holds that the soft strains of harp music drifting through the halls are a sign, a solemn reminder of loyalty, history, and the deep ties that bind Inveraray to its past. But another legend claims that the music is heard when a member of the family is about to die.

Lynelle Hayes claimed on Facebook that she toured the castle in 2017 and that her tour guide Kenny told her, "The daughter of the Duke's line will hear the harp." She also said, "I more than heard the harp. I saw the Irish lass playing, along with the horrific murder of the young boy. I also saw another lady in a long white nightgown walking carrying a candle in a holder. She was watching over the young boy." Now our understanding is that the harpist was the young boy, so we're not sure what she saw her. Kelly Nicholls wrote on Facebook, "I saw a face in that bedroom's mirror. Took a picture of it. I was the only person in the room at the time."

A strange story told about the castle is dated to 1758. On July 10, 1758, a physician named William Hart was walking along the castle grounds with two other men. The trio all witnessed what they described as "a battle taking place in the sky, between Highland soldiers and French soldiers." They saw the Highlanders retreating, leaving behind many of their dead soldiers. Two women later came forward claiming to have witnessed the same ethereal conflict. Weeks passed and chilling news reached the castle that a Highland regiment from a British Force had indeed suffered heavy casualties during an ill-fated attempt to capture the French held fort in Canada. Could this have been a vision of a battle taking place thousands of miles away? The castle has two libraries, one decorated in green and the other in brown. The Green Library has a strange story to go with it. Several times, people have heard inexplicable loud bangs echoing from the library's walls. These sounds are so forceful that they shake the very foundations of the room. A former owner said that one evening, a tremendous commotion shattered the peace and that it sounded like dozens of books being thrown to the floor inside the locked library. When the owner went to investigate, the library was completely put together with all the books sitting neatly on the shelves. The mystery sounds persisted. Every time, the room was empty and securely locked. And strangely, it seems that only members of the Campbell Clan hear the noises. If there are non family members around, they don't hear the noises when a Campbell claims to hear them.

Inveraray Jail

The Inveraray Gaol and Courthouse Act of 1814, commissioned the building of a replacement for the old town house that would not only have a new courthouse, but also three jails: one for males, one for females and one for debtors. The courthouse was designed by James Gillespie Graham in the neoclassical style and was constructed from ashlar stone. Building was completed in 1820. The courthouse had three bays facing Church Square and relatively plain windows. There really is nothing fancy about this building. However, the main courtroom that was at the rear of the building offered great views of Loch Fyne. 

The prison block was two storeys and built from coursed rubble and didn't have a separation of prisoners because funds didn't meet the lofty plans. This eventually was known as the Old Prison Block.  In 1845, a three storey prison block was added and became the New Prison Block. On arrival in Inveraray Jail, all prisoners went through a process of having their weight and height recorded by the Prison Surgeon and they were tested as to their proficiency in reading and writing. They were given a bath and issued with a set of prison clothing, although in the very beginning, prisoners wore their own clothing. There was only one prisoner to a cell. Everything happened in a prisoner's cell. They slept, ate and worked there and were kept from any interaction with each other. Prisoners could leave their cells to go to the bathroom and to exercise once a day. Cells contained a hammock, mattress, blankets, sheets, a pillow, towel, comb, spoon and salt cup, a stool, box and chamber pot with lid. On the wall hung a copy of the prison rules. Religon was encouraged, so Protestant prisoners were given a Bible, Prayer Book and Hymn Book, while Catholic Prisoners were given the Douai (doo ay) Bible, Garden of the Soul and Crown Hymn Book.

After some time, guards noticed that prisoners seemed to have it pretty good, so they decided to make it tougher by requiring new inmates to sleep on less comfortable, wooden "guard beds" with wooden pillows for the first thirty days of their sentence. Inveraray Jail had four of these beds. The prison was run by the governor, the matron - who was the governor's wife - and one warder, who was often a retired soldier or policeman with a pension. The warder slept there seven nights a week. This wasn't a well paying job. In 1874, Archibald Turner, who was the Warder at the time, made 15 shillings a week, while a man who cut wood or made fencing was paid 20 to 25 shillings a week. 

The New Prison was an upgrade from older prisons, which were dark and dank. New regulations required that cells had to be kept warm and well ventilated. The jail here was heated by a coal fired system with pipes passing through all the cells to carry the heat. Hygiene at the jail included a bath every two weeks. The Prison Rules laid out the guidelines for feeding prisoners and a staple of the diet was porridge. A female prisoner considered unfit to work got 1.5 pints of soup and 6 oz of bread, while a male prisoner who could work got 2 pints of soup and 12 oz. of bread. Prisoners who weighed more than 12 stones also got and extra ounce of cheese and 4 oz. of bread daily. Milk for the prison was bought from a passing milk cart, but eventually there were also milking cows on premises. Breakfast was served at 7:30am. A prisoner would receive 5 ounces of oatmeal made into porridge with 3/4 pint of milk. Dinner was served at 1pm and this was just soup and bread. Soup was made from marrow bones or ox head, barley, green peas, leeks, carrots, turnips, onion and other similar vegetables. Supper was served at 6pm and was usually 5 ounces of oatmeal made into porridge and 1/2 pint of milk. Food was prepared in the kitchen, which was located on the ground floor. Prisoners ate in their cells.

The type of work that prisoners did in their cells included manufacturing herring nets for the local industry, sewing prison clothing and doing something called picking Oakum. What is that you ask? This sounds like great fun. Prisoners would pick apart and shred old, tarred ropes into fiber.

As we have found through our years of featuring haunted prisons, they all seem to have their own flair for punishment. These might be techniques or devices. Inveraray Jail had a Whipping Table where the prisoner was laid across it with his arms through these holes. The body was strapped down across the small of the back and a strap across each leg. They were then given striped, not to exceed 12 for each boy under 14-years-old and not exceeding 36 for those over 14-years-old. There was also the Crank Machine, which was a form of useless labor, that wasn't as hard as breaking rocks or moving rocks. The rocks thing was probably more interesting though. The machine was just this big crank on a metal drum in the wall that was attached to a mechanism with a bunch of cups on it that would turn the cups through sand when the crank was turned. The sand gave resistance and this could be adjusted by the Warder by using a screw. Prisoners called Warders a "screw" for this reason. Just a little prison slang there for you. The prisoners had to turn the crank between 6,000 and 14,400 times a day. And there was also the Treadwheel. This was an elongated wheel of a paddle steamer that had 24 steps instead of paddles. Prisoners would hang onto a bar or strap in a compartment above the treadwheel and the wheel would turn under their weight. Prisoners had to keep climbing or they would fall off. This could get very exhausting. Another form of hard labor was called Shot Drill. This entailed stooping down without bending the knees and picking up a heavy cannon-ball, bringing it up slowly until it was on a level with the chest, taking three steps to the right, replacing it on the ground and then stepping back three paces to start the procedure all over again. Warders shouted orders while prisoners, sweating profusely, moved cannon-balls with precision from one pile to another.  

There were some escapes from the jail. Twelve people managed to make a break for it. Most weren't gone for long because villagers were vigilant and the terrain was tough. One of the most impressive escapes involved John Campbell, William Dickson and John Duncan on August 12, 1874. 

These three men made a makeshift crucible from a tin cup that they could melt pieces of lead scrap inside. Over three months, they secretly gathered lead scraps. They then used a gas light to melt the medal and they molded replica keys for their cells. And it worked! They managed to get a hold of their civilian clothing and used a rope to climb down the outside of the jail after exiting through a skylight. Duncan and Dickson were captured a few days later, but Campbell evaded capture and his ultimate fate remains unknown. The prison closed in 1889, but the courthouse remained open for several decades after that. Over 4,000 prisoners had passed through the doors of the jail from 1820 to 1890. Meetings of the Argyll Commissioners of Supply, which was the main administrative body for the county, would meet in the courthouse. The County Council occasionally had meetings here starting in 1890. By the mid-20th century, the courthouse had become dilapidated and it shut down in 1962. The Argyll County Council sold the courthouse and converted into a museum that opened in May of 1989. The museum focuses on recreating 19th-century prison life and also has an escape room. This is now one of Scotland's premier tourist destinations. It also happens to be haunted.  

Visitors and staff feel as though they are being watched, they hear disembodied footsteps and voices and they see shadow figures. The giggling and whispering of children is heard because, yes, children were incarcerated here too. 

An employee named Sam Potts who plays a prisoner in the jail shared this experience on the jail's website, "I often sit in Cell 4 in the Old Prison. When I started working here I used to hear footsteps and see shadows passing the cell. At first I thought it was visitors and I’d call out ‘good afternoon’, but there was never anyone there. After a few months the activity stopped. Perhaps the spirits got used to me being there! Cell 2 in the Old Prison is interesting. A number of times I’ve seen young children crouching in the left-hand side of the cell chatting. When the parents ask who they’re talking to they say ‘the old lady’. I’ve never felt scared in the Old Prison though. It’s the New Prison that gives me the creeps. I was taking a guided tour there one day with a guy who turned out to be a psychic. He told me that there was a man following me who doesn’t like me. The psychic reckoned it was an angry Warder from the past who doesn’t like his routine being disrupted." 

A large man who is thought to be a violent ex-prison guard is regularly seen in the new prison. When he is there, the temperature drops and angry, heavy footsteps can be heard going up and down the corridors. Mournful cries are heard in Cell 1 sometimes apparitions are witnessed huddling in the corner of the room. 

And speaking of a warder, Rob Irons plays a Warder and he shared, "I’ve worked here for over 13 years and I’ve seen stuff that the would make your hair stand on end. I’ll often see someone crossing from the washroom to the dayroom in the Old Prison. It’s always from the corner of my eye. I used to check, but it’s happened so often now I don’t bother. Visitors see the same thing. One Sunday morning I stepped into Mad Archie’s cell. I was on my own in the jail but I heard someone call out ‘Rob’. It was so clear that I remember replying ‘I’ll be there in a minute’. I looked everywhere, but there wasn’t a soul in the building. We’ve held over 60 ghost hunting events here at the jail and they’ve all picked something up. One night I was locking up after an event at 4.30am. There was a light left on in the New Prison, but I couldn’t go through the door to turn it off. I froze at the entrance. I knew someone was waiting for me. I left the light on and hurried home." 

Paranormal investigator Mark Turner of Ghost Events shared what happened during one of the ghost hunts he hosted, "One evening we set up a motion sensor on the top floor. We watched it for about two hours but nothing was happening, so we all trooped downstairs for a cup of tea. Just as we got to the very bottom step, the motion sensor went off." 

Graeme (Gray um) Wilkins has done restoration and maintenance work on the jail and he shares, "To be honest I don’t really believe in ghosts, but I’ve had a few experiences here at Inveraray Jail that I can’t explain. I tend to be the first to arrive and the last to leave. One morning I arrived and I could hear voices. I looked everywhere but there was no-one around. On another morning I arrived and all the corridor gates and doors were shut; I’d left them all open the night before. When I work up in the loft at the top of the building, I always sense something strange. It’s such a spooky space. I was working there the other week and I felt someone standing right behind me. Perhaps it’s just the atmosphere in these old buildings that makes my imagination run wild – who knows! Why not come and visit us this Halloween weekend? Check out our gruesome Torture, Death and Damnation exhibition, where you can see a hangman’s noose, thumbscrews, branding irons and iron masks with tongue holders, supposedly for nagging wives. And if that hasn’t totally terrified you, take a walk through jail – you never know who you might meet!" 

Susan Simpson, SiMBA’s Highland Ambassador, was part of a ghostly lock-in to raise funds for SiMBA and she shared, "Our group was standing in the Courtroom and we heard a babble of voices at the door. We all heard it and thought it was the other group standing outside chatting. We even joked about how rude they were being! It wasn’t until later that we found out that it wasn’t them – they’d never been there. That was my first encounter with something I couldn’t explain...We were in the New Prison and we formed a human pendulum, which is when three people hold hands and the spirit communicates through the person in the middle. I really can’t make sense of what happened next, in fact I can’t quite believe that I’m saying this, but we made contact with a woman called Mary. She told us that she had fallen in love with a prison guard."

Inveraray is a beautiful patch of land and the history locked into this landscape is rich. Could this little Scotland village harbor two of Scotland's most haunted locations? Is Inveraray, Scotland haunted? That is for you to decide! 

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!