USS Battleship North Carolina

The September 15, 1942 torpedo strike is the anchor of the ship's haunting tradition. The five men who died in the forward compartments that day are the historical reference point for most of the reports that follow.

The tradition's principal witness is Danny Bradshaw, who took the job of night watchman in 1976 and spent more than two decades alone aboard after closing. In 2002 he self-published Ghosts on the Battleship North Carolina, a 73-page account of his experiences. Speaking to WRAL's Tar Heel Traveler in 2013, Bradshaw described a figure he walked toward one night whose head appeared to be lit with white flame, and said his flashlight beam passed through it. He also reported doors found unlocked after he had secured them and tapping from empty compartments. A colleague with thirty years aboard told the same program she had seen the figure. Independent visitors and investigators have described a young man with blond hair in a WWII-era uniform glimpsed in peripheral vision near the torpedo damage and the adjacent berthing spaces, gone when looked at directly. The rebuilt washroom near the blast site and the sick bay are the most frequently cited locations.

Television crews followed. The TAPS team filmed the ship for Ghost Hunters in a Season 2 episode aired August 17, 2005. In 2008 WECT reported a local group's review of audio a visitor recorded during a ghost tour, which the group attributed to the tour soundtrack rather than anything unexplained. The Ghost Guild has run paid public investigation nights aboard; a WRAL reporter who joined one in 2022 described sick bay bed springs banging with no one near them, a recurrence of an incident the group first logged in 2018.

Apart from any of this, nine decks of narrow steel passages and the smell of old metal make the ship an affecting place for anyone thinking about the men who served on her.