Haunted Ships of California: The Ghosts of the Star of India and USS Hornet
There is something about an old ship that already feels a little haunted, even before anyone starts talking about ghosts. Maybe it’s because so much life happens within such a confined space. For months or even years at a time, people worked, ate, slept, celebrated, argued, got sick, and sometimes died within the same walls. Add dangerous working conditions, violent storms, wartime service, accidents, and more than a century of history, and it’s easy to understand why old ships have collected so many ghost stories.
On this episode of You Two Scare Me, we headed to California for two ships with very different histories and surprisingly active paranormal reputations: the Star of India in San Diego and the USS Hornet in Alameda. One carried cargo and emigrants around the world during the age of sail, while the other carried fighter planes into battle and later helped bring the Apollo 11 astronauts home from the moon. Both are museums today, and according to visitors, crew members, museum employees, and paranormal investigators, neither one is completely quiet after the tourists leave.
The Star of India
Docked today at the Maritime Museum of San Diego, the Star of India began her life very far from California. The iron-hulled sailing ship was built in Ramsey on the Isle of Man in 1863 and was originally named the Euterpe, after the Greek muse of poetry and music. She was intended to carry cargo between England and India, but her first voyages were rough enough to make you wonder whether the ship had some bad luck attached to it from the beginning.
On her first voyage in 1864, the Euterpe collided with a Spanish brig off the coast of Wales and had to return to port for repairs. Things got even worse when members of the crew refused to continue the voyage, resulting in seventeen sailors going to prison for mutiny. The following year, the ship was caught in a tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal. The storm was so severe that the crew had to cut away the masts to keep the vessel from going down. Somehow, the Euterpe survived and made it back to port, but Captain William John Story died shortly afterward and was buried at sea.
Despite those disastrous early voyages, the ship continued sailing and eventually began carrying emigrants to New Zealand on journeys that could take between 100 and 143 days. She spent twenty-five years doing this before being sold again, and in 1906 she was renamed the Star of India. By the 1920s, steamships had made sailing vessels like her increasingly obsolete, and she was eventually laid up in California. The Zoological Society of San Diego purchased the ship in 1926 with plans to make her part of a museum and aquarium, but the Great Depression put those plans on hold. Restoration finally began in 1956, and twenty years later, the Star of India sailed once again in San Diego Bay.
Today, she remains docked at the Maritime Museum of San Diego, but the stories of strange activity aboard the ship go back much further than her days as a museum.
The Boy Who Fell From the Rigging
One of the Star of India’s best-known ghost stories involves a 15-year-old boy named John Campbell. According to the captain’s log, Campbell was a stowaway aboard the ship in 1884 and began working as part of the crew after he was discovered. On June 29, he climbed high into the rigging and slipped more than eighty feet above the deck. He managed to grab onto a single rope, but when a wave caused the ship to lurch, he lost his grip and fell more than 100 feet to the deck below. Campbell survived the initial fall but remained in a coma for three days before dying.
Stories about his presence reportedly began while the ship was still sailing. Passengers and crew members claimed they could sense him aboard the vessel, and similar experiences have continued into the present day. Visitors near the mast where Campbell fell have described sudden chills, cold spots, a feeling of overwhelming sadness, and even the sensation of a cold hand touching them. His death happened more than 140 years ago, but if the stories are true, something connected to the young stowaway may still linger aboard the ship.
Something in the Chain Locker
Campbell isn’t the only sailor whose death has become connected to the Star of India’s paranormal reputation. In 1909, the body of a Chinese sailor was discovered inside the ship’s chain locker. Exactly what happened to him remains uncertain. Some versions of the story suggest he became caught in the chain, while others claim he may have been killed and his body hidden there. Whatever happened, the sailor was eventually buried at sea.
Visitors near the chain locker have since reported dramatic cold spots, even on warm days. Others have described feeling a cold hand settle onto their shoulder or a gentle tap on the arm while standing near the area. Some people interpret those experiences as the sailor trying to warn visitors to step away from the place where he died, which somehow makes the story a little sadder and a little creepier at the same time.
The First Mate’s Cabin
Another disturbing story dates back to the ship’s days as the Euterpe. During a voyage between England and New Zealand, an Army captain named McBarnett reportedly became severely depressed and attempted to take his own life aboard the ship. He initially survived and was treated by the ship’s surgeon before being placed in the first mate’s cabin under observation. According to the story, he later reopened his wounds and died. There is some debate over whether every detail of the story belongs to McBarnett or whether accounts of two separate deaths have become combined over the years, but the first mate’s cabin has nevertheless developed a particularly unsettling reputation.
Visitors have described feeling an immediate sense of heaviness or uneasiness when entering the room, and some have reported seeing a dark shadow moving across the cabin. During a fourth-grade overnight stay aboard the ship, one teacher who was sleeping in the first mate’s cabin claimed that her blanket was suddenly pulled from her body in the middle of the night. She also said the room became extremely cold and that she could feel a strange presence nearby. This is, incidentally, a fairly convincing argument for ending fourth-grade field trips before bedtime.
Ghosts in the Galley
Not every strange experience aboard the Star of India is frightening. One of the more unusual recurring reports is the smell of freshly baked bread coming from the galley, even though the stoves haven’t been used for decades. Visitors have also heard what sounds like heavy cooking pots rattling around inside, leading some people to wonder whether a former ship’s cook is still going about his daily routine.
Other reported activity includes ropes apparently untying themselves without wind or anyone nearby, unexplained footsteps, disembodied voices, sudden temperature changes, and even full-bodied apparitions. Security guards and visitors have described seeing translucent sailors dressed in nineteenth-century clothing standing on the deck or walking across it before disappearing. Andi has actually visited the Star of India herself and didn’t experience anything she would call paranormal, but she remembers the ship having a heavy, dark, atmospheric feeling. Considering how many people lived and worked aboard her during more than a century of history, it isn’t hard to understand why the old ship might feel as though some of that history is still hanging around.
The USS Hornet
Several hundred miles north, another historic ship sits at Pier 3 in Alameda, directly across the bay from San Francisco. At 872 feet long, the USS Hornet is enormous, with a flight deck stretching roughly the length of three football fields. During the day, the ship operates as the USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum, where visitors can explore naval history, see retired aircraft, and learn about the remarkable career of one of America’s most famous aircraft carriers. After dark, however, the Hornet has a very different reputation.
The USS Hornet, CV-12, was an Essex-class aircraft carrier commissioned on November 29, 1943, during World War II. She served throughout the Pacific campaign and earned nine battle stars for her wartime service. Her air group was credited with destroying more than 1,400 Japanese aircraft, and ten of her pilots achieved “ace in a day” status, meaning they recorded five or more aerial victories in a single day. She participated in major campaigns including the Marianas and Palau Islands operations and the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
Life aboard an aircraft carrier was dangerous even when the enemy wasn’t firing at you. Sailors worked around aircraft, arresting cables under enormous tension, powerful propeller wash, heavy machinery, boilers, and steam lines capable of causing catastrophic injuries when something went wrong. Fatal accidents involving flight deck operations, machinery, falls, and steam leaks were an unfortunate reality of life aboard ships like the Hornet.
The Hornet continued serving after World War II, was modernized to accommodate jet aircraft, and was eventually converted into an anti-submarine warfare carrier. She even served off Vietnam before receiving an assignment that would make her part of another major chapter of American history. In 1969, the Hornet was selected as the primary recovery ship for Apollo 11. After Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins returned from the first lunar landing and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, they were brought aboard the Hornet and placed inside a quarantine trailer on the deck. The ship later recovered the Apollo 12 astronauts as well.
The Hornet was decommissioned in 1970, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991, and opened to the public as a museum in Alameda in 1998. During more than twenty-seven years of active service, more than 300 men reportedly died aboard the ship from combat, accidents, and other causes. There are also longstanding claims that the Hornet experienced an unusually high number of suicides, although the claim that it held an official record has never been confirmed.
The Faceless Sailors
Many accounts of the Hornet’s modern paranormal reputation begin during restoration work in the early to mid-1990s, before the ship officially opened as a museum. One frequently repeated story describes a painter working aboard the ship who suddenly felt as though he was being watched. When he turned around, he reportedly saw two men wearing Navy uniforms. The men appeared to have faces, but there were no visible facial features.
The exact origins of the story are difficult to verify, but versions of it have appeared for years in accounts of the Hornet’s hauntings. As restoration continued, workers and visitors began reporting their own strange experiences, and the number of stories associated with the ship grew. Many of those accounts have since been collected from former crew members, docents, volunteers, overnight youth groups, and ordinary museum visitors.
The Sailor in Dress Whites
One recurring apparition aboard the Hornet is commonly known as the Dress Whites ghost. In February 2009, a Coast Guardsman named Bob Ice was volunteering aboard the ship when he became lost in its passageways while searching for supplies. He saw someone he believed was a coworker step into a side passage about twenty-five feet ahead of him, but when Ice reached the passage, he discovered that it was blocked by a chain and the compartment beyond it was empty.
A few minutes later, he found the coworker he thought he had seen and learned that the man hadn’t left the room where he had been working. When Ice told a staff member what had happened, he was informed that he may have encountered the Dress Whites ghost, a recurring apparition described as a sailor wearing a white Navy dress uniform.
Voices in an Empty Bathroom
One of the most interesting Hornet stories comes from a visitor named Katie, who toured the ship with her family and a group from her church. At the end of the tour, she and her mother stopped in the women’s restroom. While washing their hands, they could clearly hear two male voices talking nearby, with one of the voices sounding young enough that it may have belonged to a boy. The voices were loud enough that Katie and her mother had to speak over them, so they naturally assumed there was a men’s restroom on the other side of the wall.
When they walked outside, however, they discovered there wasn’t one. They eventually dismissed the experience, assuming the voices must have come from somewhere else nearby, until several months later when they happened to watch a paranormal television program about the USS Hornet. The program showed the same bathroom and discussed previous reports of male voices being heard near the sinks. What makes the story so interesting is that Katie and her mother didn’t arrive expecting that particular experience. They only learned afterward that other visitors had reported hearing the same thing.
Sailors Who Vanish
Full-bodied apparitions appear again and again in stories from the Hornet. A live-aboard employee named Ryan Garrett described seeing a sailor standing behind another crew member during an overnight program. Employees sometimes dressed in sailor uniforms specifically to scare the kids, so Garrett was accustomed to seeing people in historical clothing aboard the ship. This sailor, however, appeared for only a moment before vanishing. Later that same month, Garrett reported seeing what appeared to be the same man on a catwalk, only to watch him disappear again.
Another account comes from Chris Bartlett, who served as dock master during the mid-1990s. While looking at a mooring line that had been passed incorrectly, Bartlett reportedly muttered to himself that it wasn’t going to work. A voice behind him answered, “That isn’t right.” When he turned around, nobody was there. A short time later, he saw a sailor wearing dungarees near the capstan and assumed he had found the person who had spoken to him. Bartlett looked away briefly, and when he looked back, the sailor had disappeared. If the Hornet’s ghosts really are still hanging around the ship, apparently at least a few of them remain very concerned about proper ship operations.
Strange Lights, Footsteps, and Things That Move
The Hornet’s paranormal reports aren’t limited to apparitions. Former engineering crewman Dan Brisker, who served aboard the ship during the 1950s, described standing watch alone in a fire room when he heard what sounded like someone working inside a boiler firebox, a place no one could safely have occupied at the time. When he investigated, he found a paint scraper lying inside the firebox, but no person was there.
A docent named Joe Martinez described another unusual incident during a live-aboard ghost story session involving more than thirty visitors. According to Martinez, the group witnessed a blue light or haze moving across the overhead area of a compartment known as the Foxhole before it disappeared. Other visitors and overnight groups have reported storage lockers moving or opening on their own, unexplained footsteps, muffled conversations, sudden cold spots, strange figures appearing in photographs, and full-bodied apparitions of sailors.
The Hornet’s reputation has attracted paranormal television crews for decades. Programs including MTV’s Fear, Scariest Places on Earth, Ghost Adventures, My Ghost Story, and Ghost Hunters have all investigated the ship, with investigators reporting everything from disembodied voices and equipment malfunctions to unexplained thermal anomalies. The museum itself has embraced this part of the Hornet’s history and offers after-hours paranormal experiences that take guests into areas associated with reported activity.
Why Do Ships Seem to Collect Ghost Stories?
One thing we kept coming back to while talking about the Star of India and USS Hornet was just how completely a ship can become someone’s world. When sailors were at sea for months at a time, they weren’t simply showing up for work and heading home at the end of the day. They slept there, ate there, formed friendships there, argued there, and experienced some of the most frightening or important moments of their lives there. On ships with decades of service, all of those individual lives and experiences begin to pile on top of one another.
There is also an unavoidable amount of danger connected to maritime history. The Star of India survived storms, accidents, deaths, and voyages that lasted for months, while the Hornet carried thousands of sailors through war, dangerous flight operations, mechanical accidents, and years at sea. If places can somehow retain traces of the people and events that shaped them, ships like these would seem like pretty good candidates.
What makes the Hornet especially interesting is that some of its reported activity doesn’t sound entirely residual. Sailors seem to respond to people, appear to notice what is happening around them, and in at least one case apparently felt the need to point out that a mooring line had been handled incorrectly. Maybe those experiences are simply stories that have grown around a ship with an enormous history, or maybe some of the sailors who spent years of their lives aboard the Hornet are still keeping an eye on things.
We’re just hoping that if there is an afterlife, nobody expects us to keep working in it. We would both prefer to become relaxation ghosts, preferably somewhere with a beach, a nice hotel, and room service.
If you love haunted seafaring stories like these, check out our episode about the Key West Lighthouse!
Stay curious, and beware what lurks beyond the light.
