U. S. S. DECATUR

Location: The USS Decatur used to rest at the Anacostia Washington Shipyards on the southeast end of Washington D.C., but now, the ship rests at a point about two hundred miles off the Virginia coast where it was sunk as an artificial reef for fish and coral.

Description of Place: The USS Decatur is a Fletcher-class destroyer at 376 and a half feet weighing 2,050 tons. She was powered by a 60,000 standard horse power engine and two propellers with a top speed of 35 knots. She could carry a full crew complement of 335 men. Her armament included five 38 caliber gun, ten 40 mm AA guns, seven 20 mm AA guns, ten Mark 15 tubes, six depth charge projectors and two depth charge tracks.

Ghostly Manifestations: During World War Two, three brothers from Tennessee in the Navy were stationed on the USS Jefferson, and when the ship sank in the North Sea, two out of the three brothers perished to a watery grave, victims of a German mine in the North Sea. The following day, it's rumored that the faces of the two brothers could be seen floating in the sea, appearing and disappearing, keeping pace with the USS Decatur who had picked up several of the survivors from the Jefferson. During the rest of the journey to the Shetland Islands, their faces were seen by practically everyone on board. It is said they stopped appearing after the third brother soon passed on board from hypothermia. Many people believe that the apparition of Theodore "Teddy" Cyrus roams about below the docks looking for his brothers, who were trapped below the Jefferson when it sank. During the Early Nineties when the ship sat in the Washington Shipyards, several people reported seeing a white-uniformed, blue-eyed young seaman moving through the confusing internal labyrinth of the huge ship.

Staff of the old derelict call him "Teddy" or "Old Ted."

D.C. tour guide David Deschenel, who served on the Decatur in 1989-1990, says Teddy seems to know a lot about the ship. Now a newspaper columnist, he also serves as the host of D.C. Ghost Tours around the city's more illustrious haunted locations, such as the Old Stone House, McLean Mansion, Halcyon House and the courtyard at Fort Lesley McNair before ending up on the deck of the old Decatur for a historical tour peppered with ghost stories of people's sightings.

"This apparition knows things about the engine that even I don't even know," said Deschenel. "It's fascinating because I'm one of these hard nuts to crack on something like this. " Deschenel adds there has been more than just a few accounts of Teddy's presence in the engine rooms.

There have been other unexplained occurrences. Constance M. Applegate, a local military historian at the time had a minor historical exhibit on the Decatur, but she has personally experienced strange phenomenon. On separate occasions, she has been walking the corridor and heard the rustle of clothes and footsteps behind her. She turned around, but there was no one there.

Since 1995, Applegate has been trying to save the old ship as a potential museum, even going as far as having a painting and restoration crew on board to restore rooms and perform repairs, but all too often, the men she hires get unnerved and spooked by something and refused to come back. Apparently, there was work crew who had taken a break, and when they returned, they surprised something that rushed past them down the hall so far they couldn't tell what it was. In other instances, visitors and staff have reported incidents of ship lights going on and off by themselves.

Teddy is apparently not the only ghost to be seen on the ship.

In October 1997, a group of boy scouts reported seeing a dark-haired man wearing dungarees and a denim work shirt jump from one deck to another deck below. There was no one there, and when they ran down to see if the man was injured, there was no one to be found. Two assistants helping set up for a tour reported walking out of their offices and seeing a shadowy US sailor watching them from a distance who then turned and motioned through a doorway.

"I like to think the ship really isn't inanimate." Deschenel comments. "There's a lot of history here, and I like to think the ship has kept its personality and energy. There's something more here than just a pile of steel."

For the October 2000 issue of Naval History Magazine, writer Tamara Millegan interviewed several people associated with the ship. One of them was an assistant named Hector Daley, who was originally skeptical of ghosts and the paranormal. He described an incident that occurred during Fleet Week in 1996 when nine high school kids decided to take a chance to stay on board the ship:

Daley had another encounter several years later while painting atop a scissor lift.

"I was like at twenty-eight feet, stretched to the maximum. I was up there until about 8:30 at night, and I was by myself on the ship. I wanted to finish the section I was working on before I left. I had still about two to three gallons of paint left in my machine, when I started hearing voices, aircraft crews talking shop talk, dropping tools, and working on airplanes, talking about the airplanes they were working on, and parts, and home, and I started wondering who it was. It went on intermittently for another eight to ten minutes, but I never saw another person.

The experiences of Daley and Applegate are not isolated incidents. A Philadelphia Herald News article by Chloe Boreanaz describes a gathering of almost two hundred that turned out on the ship to hear from a local psychic, Dawn Rochner of Collinsport, Maine. Nearly 40 people, many self-proclaimed skeptics, described similar experiences. One of them, Cam Brennan, remarks,

"I'm not a true believer in all of that stuff, but I saw what I saw. One day I saw an officer in khakis descending the ladder to the next deck. I followed him and he was gone. I have no explanation for it."

Rochner describes the spirits of the Decatur as confused and bored, and they are making themselves known because they want to know what happened to them. They don't know they're dead, and they want to know what happened to them. She as well as others wonder of death is so traumatic they those who pass over acquire a form of selective amnesia. They don't recall dying and go on trying to act as they did when they were alive.

Steve Barnette, a former Boston police officer now with the Collinsport Ghost Society, is also a former Navy seaman. He speculates the ghosts get excited when other Navy or military officers appear on board. He remarks: "Our visit to the USS Decatur in 2007 was largely uneventful, but there were several parts of the ship below decks where we did get a very uneasy feeling. We ventured into one section of the crew quarters that was lit only indirectly by a red light at the end of a corridor. This generally would mean that you weren't supposed to be there, but I took a few steps in just to get a feeling for the place."

"The room was cold. Not necessarily abnormally cold as the ship is made of steel, and it was a cool day. Enough that you would notice it was cooler than other parts of the ship we had come through. It was also quiet. Again, not something you would generally notice but with a ship full of visitors walking about it stood out in my mind.

"While I stood there in the near darkness soaking up the atmosphere and trying to see what was in this room, I got the strong feeling that I wasn't alone, the same type of feeling you get when somebody gets inside your personal space. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I got goose pimples on my forearms. I got the strong impression that somebody, something was moving toward me or around me. I backed up toward the hatch I came through and stepped out.

"Like I said, it was uneventful, nothing actually happened, but a very odd experience in that one part of the ship." He continues. "I believe spirits of dead sailors and officers wander the narrow passageways of the USS Decatur. Doors open and close on their own, objects move across floors and fall off of shelves, people have been pushed and grabbed by some invisible force and sounds from the past echo through the stairwells."

There were many such accidents aboard the Hornet. Several people have reported seeing a mysterious headless crewman pacing up and down in this area, but no on knows who he is. Other times, only his footsteps can be heard walking across the floor. People who have seen this decapitated soldier report it to be the most frightening and disturbing experience of their lives.

History: The U. S. S. Decatur was laid down on March 15, 1944 by the Bethlehem Steel Company of Quincy, Massachusetts and launched June 26, 1944, sponsored by Mrs. Eunice Howell, wife of businessman G. Thurston Howell III. It was commissioned October 13, 1944 with Captain Theodore G. Wallace in command, his last command before retiring. His following captain was Captain James G. Treacy. The Decatur saw her duty through the Korean and Viet Nam wars, but after both conflicts she saw activity mostly in the training and patrol of both Navy and Marine troops. Re-commissioned twice, she operated off California until March 1966, sailing then for a 6-month deployment with the 7th Fleet. She based in the Philippines for exercises, maneuvers, and search and rescue missions off the coast of China, and called at major Far Eastern ports until returning to San Diego in 1960. She trained Air Group 15 that spring, which deployed with her on the next 12th Fleet deployment. Arriving in Manila on August 1, 1969, she embarked under Rear Admiral T. E. Duncan, Commander Carrier Division 1, and sailed as his flagship during operations off the Philippines, Okinawa, and Japan. She returned to San Diego in October 1990.

Following overhaul at Bremerton, her refresher training was interrupted by the Gulf War Crisis and ordered to embark for Iraq, staying overseas until she was ordered back to Washington D.C. for refitting, but instead, she was demoted into a troop ship picking up and delivering troops to and from the Middle East. The Decatur was decommissioned on November 8, 1995.

From 1995 to 2005, Deschenel and Applegate operated their historical and paranormal tours on the boat, but when they tried to renew their rent on the ship, they were refused. It was decided there was not enough relevant history to keep the Decatur intact. It was subsequently armed with explosives and was sunk as part of an artificial reef on February 6, 2009. Since then, local fisherman off shore report they hear the sounds of huge engines and men shouting orders in the area where the Decatur rests on the ocean floor, taking her secrets with her.

Identity of Ghosts: Besides Teddy, a least one of the ghosts on board is that of Captain Edward Parker, reported by Federal agent Seeley Booth, a former Navy Ranger, who confirms the Decatur carried Parker's body home after he was killed in action in 1990. Since then, Captain Parker has been described wandering around his grave at Arlington National Cemetery. No one knows who the headless figure is or the presence in the crew quarters.

Source/Comments: Bones (Episode: "The Hero In The Hold") Activity and history loosely based on the U. S. S. Hornet in Alameda, California; U. S. S. Sullivan in U. S. S. Lexington in Corpus Christi, Texas; U. S. S. North Carolina in Wilmington, North Carolina; the U. S. S. Cabot in New Orleans, Louisiana and the Cities Service Tanker Docks in New Orleans, Louisiana, port for the SS Watertown.

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