00:00.00
kinkella
Hello and welcome back to episode 139 of the pseudo archeology podcast and this is our last segment to talk about the uss hornet now in terms of the hauntings. There have been some specific. Vaguely specific. Don't you like? don't you love that sentence vaguely specific ah in in terms of when I looked into this a little bit I'm like are there specific ghosts or goblins or apparitions that are seen. And there's one that they talk about once or twice called the dress white ghost and that would be a sailor in their dress whites right? that they're their dress up right? that you know the sailor has died that there's never a specific person though. At least that I had found like this specific guy and of course. With these various ghosts. It's always dead sailors right? and and why is that because well this this ah Aircraft Carrier has been in several wars right? and you know people die from time to time now there was I think much more death on the original hornet. Right? The one that that finally sank but even so over time people would die on the hornet like they would die on any ship like this like being just being on an aircraft carrier is intrinsically dangerous, right? Think about how many things that can just straight up kill you on there if you don't do everything right.

01:30.82
kinkella
You can be swept off the ship itself and just swept out to see my my uncle. My uncle Dave was on actually on an aircraft carrier in the sixty s he was on the hancock and he said 1 of his friends was swept off and never found again, right? Swept off and drowned died you know and um, you can have accidents with the. Aircraft on there, you're you're having this heavy machinery and just heavy equipment multiton stuff rolling around quickly. You know you do 1 thing wrong and you just get smashed. You know killed so you have um, the ah the systems that that launch the airplanes that have these. Big heavy cables that whip you know back and forth really fast. You get hit by one of those and you can just get cut in half dead right? So of course there's been plenty of of sad and unfortunate. You know sailors who've who've died over the years on the hornet again just like on any other ship. Um. You also do have suicide you know from from time to time and I had heard that so somewhere they said oh the um hornets had more suicide than average or something like this and like really is that yeah, you're going to sell that one hey our suicide rates are the best in the nation. You know I don't know feels a little ah and I just I don't know feels a little dirty man. Um, and I think it's kind of extra dirty because I've been holding out on you. My friends? Um I got 1 more story.

03:08.50
kinkella
In terms of of that in terms of you know if you want to sell the hornet as being haunted um talking about suicide. There is an article in the um East Bay Times which is. The barrier paper right? from the from the early two thousand s and if you look up the April Sixth Two thousand and seven edition of the East Bay Times there is a story there where the headline says man found dead aboard uss hornet and. Um, I'm going to read the first first sentence or 2 it says quote a volunteer at the uss hornet museum committed suicide aboard the aircraft carrier this week leaving both colleagues and loved ones badly shaken. Ah, fellow volunteer found the body and then it goes on and on and on like who this person was and this kind of stuff. Um I know this story really well because the volunteer who found the body was my father. My dad found this guy hanging. You know, um, below decks so he was he was there. You know early? Um, and again aircraft carriers like this are huge and he was walking through he I think he was going sort of going through.

04:37.58
kinkella
Where they would usually take people right? They kind of do a um quick walk around in the morning to make sure everything's cool to make sure the correct things are roped off where they need to be roped off etc right? and he came across this right and he had to like you know alert everyone and and deal and. You know he said it was you know he said it was a pretty macabre pretty awful you know and my dad like again stoic as Hail. Um, but I could tell he was like a little shaken up by it. Not too bad again. My dad did rock a gibraltar stoic but but he was like who. You know, um, pretty heavy day. So You know when when when people talk about oh the horn is haunted I'm like yeah kind of her I always thought.

05:34.79
kinkella
Speaking of my dad and again you know my dad my dad did did this job for quite a quite a few years but he got he had um alzheimer's you know he ultimately passed away from alzheimer's like a decade ago and um he was he was able to give tours you know, even when he started to get it got more difficult for him to kind of talk and everything he he still did him for a while and then there was a time when he finally it was finally just too difficult for him or you know and those is a sad sad thing. But um. And we also had my dad's memorial service at the hornet. So again in all this you know I really thank the um his fellow dosence at the hornet you know because they were really cool, really understanding about this kind of stuff and you know my mom and my brother and I were able to have this. Nice you know, um, service for him there and I think he would really appreciate it and it just it just fit because again my dad um he was not this like rah rah soldier guy not at all, you know, but he he just appreciated I think the navy for. Kind of what it is and the kind of camaraderie with it and um, what he learned and and the experiences he had traveling throughout the pacific um, and the learning experience. He always liked ah the schools that it had you know when he learned sort of the radio man stuff and and after that.

07:05.90
kinkella
So um, ah again I just I appreciate what the what the hornet community did for him in his in his later life. But you know he he did say 1 thing about the ghosts that I thought was like really cool. He's like. He's like yeah the hornet's full of ghosts. We're the ghosts and he's totally right? You know and what that means is my father is sort of taking people on these tours as an apparition of the past. You know he's talking about what it was like in 1965 you know he's he's one of the only people on earth I'm sure at that point who knew how to operate this antiquated. You know, radial equipment from 1965? Um, and so. He was the ghost and he would talk about how he haunted the hornet you know and him and his fellow docents. They're the ghosts who haunt the hornet.