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The Yardarm Knot - a ghost story

Discussion in 'Naval Warfare in the Pacific' started by KodiakBeer, Mar 22, 2013.

  1. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    Maybe this would be better in Free Fire, but it does involve the Pacific so I'll post it here. If a moderator wants to move it, my feelings won't be hurt.

    Some years ago I was enjoying some soda pops in the one and only bar on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea. There was a big refrigerator vessel moored there called the Yardarm Knot. This ship would take on packaged fish from factory ships and run it down to Seattle or Saint Paul, Dutch Harbor, etc, to transfer the product. The workers onboard were essentially just warehouse workers, and I ended up at a table with couple of young guys who had just quit. The cost of tickets to get out of there and eventually back to Seattle was going to eat up every penny they had earned, but they claimed to have seen a ghost and they were getting off at Saint Paul since that was the first port they had hit.
    The vessel was just a big series of freezer holds kept well below zero. One day while they were working in the hold, one of them spotted an elderly man in a military dress uniform walk past. He called out and the second man looked up and saw him as well. The older man walked into a wall of fish boxes and just disappeared. They were shocked, but none of the people who had been on the vessel for a while were surprised when they told them about it since many of them had similar encounters. I wasn't able to get much information - they couldn't tell me what kind of uniform, only that it had medals and ribbons on it. The man had been very old, at least in his 70's, so even that didn't make sense since nobody is wearing a uniform at that age. He was perfectly clear - like a real person, not a vague shape or misty outline.
    Some time later at Dutch Harbor I chatted with some more guys from the Yardarm Knot and some of them had also seen people wandering around in the holds. Some in uniforms and some naked, and none of them responding to workers - as if they couldn't see or hear those around them.
    I had an old friend back in Kodiak, a retired merchant engineer who went by the name "Diesel Dave." One time I told him about these stories and it turned out he had been employed on this vessel some years before. He hadn't seen anything himself, but he confirmed that workers in the freezer holds saw people on a pretty regular basis. He told me that the ship had originally belonged to the navy and delivered frozen foods to the western Pacific, and carried bodies back to the US. I was able to confirm that. The ship had originally been the USS Octavia and served late in the war and immediately post war when bringing bodies back had become a priority. Then it had been decommissioned and sold to a Seafood company where it continued in service for many more years.

    I don't really believe in ghosts, having never seen one myself. I think there may be an element of hysteria involved here - you're on ship in the Bering Sea for months at a time, fatigued, maybe a little seasick, working like a dog in a misty freezer and... you know the history of the ship you're on. So, maybe you see things. On the other hand, that's a lot of people seeing things for a lot of years and always in the same part of the ship.
     
  2. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    Ooooeeerrrrr mrs....As a believer in ghosts Or spirits...Sounds good to me...
     
  3. Victor Gomez

    Victor Gomez Ace

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