Some more thoughts on the Grey Ghost Paracon aboard the USS Hornet. This is the just the second time I’ve been to a “haunted” place since I’ve come out of the closet about the paranormal, both to myself and to world at large, and allowed myself to notice and feel whatever there was without discounting it. The evening “investigation” tours took all the attendees, in small groups, to many of the shipboard hot spots. My group was led by a woman who was an intuitive, and was a member of an investigation team that is based on on the Hornet. She had many personal stories to tell, which I find more interesting than the second hand ones.
The first stop was CIC. Though somewhat technically interesting, it was also hot and stuffy. I felt there was zippo activity there and the tech people got nothing as well. I the next stop was a Ready room, I think. This was the most interesting for me. There I had impressions of two people, one in the hall, outside the room, and one inside the room. It also seemed to me that these entities were less than full-fledged personalities, they just seemed two-dimensional, somehow. Perhaps these were what are called “residuals,” more like recordings than spirits.
The one in the all seemed to me to be a cook. He was sweaty and dirty and a little angry about something. He was stuck in the hall because he wasn’t allowed in the room, officer country, maybe? The other person was at the other end of the room from me. He was wearing a flight jacket, but he wasn’t a pilot. It took a while to sort out the impressions, but finally I realized that he was dressed more like a WWII Army pilot, not navy. He was extremely angry about something “she” had done.
The tech seemed to react more here than anywhere else. Near the end of our allotted time, I felt both impressions leave. A little while later the guide suggested that we move on, and I spoke up, for the only time on this tour, to vote yay because the entries had all left.
The next notable spot was one of the emergency generator rooms. The guide had a great story about what she, and others, had seen and felt in this room. All the interesting stuff happened on one place, but I couldn’t see where that was, because of the dark and all the people and equipment blocking my view. After she finished her talk and had answered questions. I wondered about the general area and got strong chills in one, particular, spot. I don’t know if that was “the” spot or not. (I’m not too worried about being “right” these days, I just want to experience what I can.)
Sick bay was the last interesting spot. This consists of a suit of rooms including offices, and a variety of examining, operating, testing and treatment rooms. It was interesting because of all the equipment and other details of the era, and because of a general feeling of the place. I had strong chills when I first looked into the entrance, and occasional “bumps” in various places.
I have now accumulated several first-hand accounts of ghost encounters aboard this ship. Most of them seemed perfectly ordinary, except that the “person” vanished, inexplicably. They happen to people alone in the dark, and on the hanger deck, in broad daylight, with hundreds of people present. Most often the ghost was seen by only one person, but sometimes more than one. I can’t help but wonder if many more people see these things, but just never realize it. I mean, how would they? If you saw a “sailor” on a ship with lots of veterans and others wearing various kinds of uniforms, would you notice?
This is an idea that has been forming in my head for a while. If the paranormal exists, then it’s part of nature and it’s happening all the time, all around us, the effects are just too subtle to notice, as a rule. On the other hand, we don’t want to notice this stuff, so it’s easy to edit it out of our experience. We chalk it up to inattention, confusion, wishful thinking or coincidence. Many great scientific discoveries have been the result of someone noticing a series of anomalous events, errors, odd things that were considered not worth explaining, and “connected the dots” to realize that there was a pattern here that said something new about the world.
Right now, the whole paranormal/psychic phenomena area is a mishmash of weird stories and scientific data points. All very confusing and mostly anecdotal, with no clear rules to sort the wheat from the chaff. By far, most investigators and ghost hunters are out to find cool stuff, so that have a good story to tell. It’s not really about advancing understanding, which really isn’t too surprising. I guess we are still waiting for a Newton or Einstein who makes the one, critical, observation that begins to make sense of it all.
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