The Fighting Lady at Patriots Point
40 Patriots Point Road, Mount Pleasant, SC 29464
Age
All Ages (some night programs age-restricted)
Cost
$$
Daytime general admission to Patriots Point covers the Yorktown and the surrounding museum complex; standalone ghost tours and overnight programs through the museum and partnering operators are priced separately.
Access
Limited Access
Carrier decks connected by steep ladders; hangar deck and parts of the flight deck partially accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1943 · National Historic Landmark · The Fighting Lady (1944 documentary) · Apollo 8 Recovery Vessel · Essex-Class Aircraft Carrier
USS Yorktown (CV-10) was the second American aircraft carrier to bear the name. The ship was originally laid down as USS Bonhomme Richard at Newport News Shipbuilding and was renamed Yorktown in September 1942 to honor the previous Yorktown (CV-5), sunk at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. The renamed Yorktown was commissioned on April 15, 1943.
During the Pacific campaign of World War II, Yorktown's air groups participated in nearly every major Pacific Fleet operation from the Marcus Island raid in August 1943 through the occupation of Japan in September 1945. The carrier earned eleven battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation. Yorktown crews and air groups gained the moniker the Fighting Lady, which became the title of a 1944 Twentieth Century Fox documentary directed by Edward Steichen and narrated by Robert Taylor.
Following World War II, Yorktown served in modernized angled-deck and steam-catapult configurations through the 1950s and 1960s. The carrier recovered the Apollo 8 crew in December 1968, the first manned mission to orbit the Moon. Yorktown served as an anti-submarine warfare carrier during the Vietnam War and earned five additional battle stars during that service.
The Navy decommissioned Yorktown on June 27, 1970 and placed her in reserve at the Bayonne naval shipyard. The U.S. Navy donated the carrier to the Patriots Point Development Authority in 1974, and Yorktown was towed to her current berth in Mount Pleasant. The Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum opened to the public in 1975.
USS Yorktown is designated a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The surrounding Patriots Point complex includes the Sumner-class destroyer USS Laffey, the Tang-class submarine USS Clamagore, and the Coast Guard cutter Ingham.
Sources
USS Yorktown's paranormal record includes some of the most-cited individual reports in the museum-ship community. Staff members and visitors have described full-body apparitions of young men in 1940s sailor uniforms, disembodied voices in the below-decks passageways, shadowy masses on the hangar deck, and recurring footsteps reported on the upper-deck staircases.
A frequently-cited single incident from 1987 involves a group of Boy Scouts holding a sleepover on the carrier. Multiple scouts reported seeing several apparitions distinctly dressed in sailor uniform during the night. The incident has been recounted in Bruce and Kayla Orr's book Ghosts of the USS Yorktown and in Patriots Point museum staff interviews.
Reports continue to surface during the museum's regular operations. The Patriots Point staff catalog includes accounts of disembodied footsteps echoing up a single staircase for nearly an hour, full-body apparitions observed by multiple witnesses simultaneously, and unexplained equipment failures in below-decks photography sessions. Photographs cited by South Carolina ETV in a 2017 feature show shapes interpreted as figures in period naval clothing.
The Patriots Point museum operates evening ghost tours through partnership with the Charleston Attraction Group. The Today Show and Family Circle magazine have described the program as among the must-do walking ghost tour experiences in the Charleston region. The carrier's combination of preserved combat-service spaces, the high documented casualty record across both World War II and Vietnam service, and the open access provided through structured tour programming gives the Yorktown an unusually accessible paranormal-investigation environment compared to most museum ships.
Media Appearances
Self-paced tour of the 1943 Essex-class aircraft carrier, with five tour routes covering the flight deck, hangar deck, foc'sle, bridge, and below-decks spaces. The Yorktown earned eleven battle stars during World War II and five additional battle stars during the Vietnam War. The Patriots Point complex also includes the destroyer USS Laffey, the submarine USS Clamagore, and Coast Guard cutter Ingham.
Evening guided ghost tours aboard the carrier hosted by the Patriots Point museum in partnership with the Charleston Attraction Group. The tour covers the most-reported below-decks spaces, the hangar deck, and the bridge, with paranormal-investigation context drawn from staff and visitor reports across decades of museum operation.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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