The USS Juneau and the USS Sullivans
This particular WWII ship haunting is probably the most heartbreaking. Before the U.S. Military instituted the Sole Survivor Policy (ensures you never have your ENTIRE enlisted family in the same unit or ship), the five Sullivan brothers were assigned to the U.S.S Juneau. In 1943, the ship was sent to the Guadalcanal, the location of one of the fiercest and longest battles of the Pacific Theater. A Japanese Destroyer shot a torpedo into its side and…the USS Juneau went down.
Rescue efforts didn’t come for days, and in the end, from either exposure, sharks, or wounds, there were only ten survivors out of 697 sailors. All five of the Sullivan brother died. Remember that Saving Private Ryan moment, when the sweet mother stops her housework to meet the suited men coming to her door, and collapses on her porch? Imagine that without the hope of having one last son surviving. They were just all gone. This event also instituted the Sole Survivor Policy I mentioned, which to this day ensures this kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore.
The USS Juneau wreckage is unreachable for recreational divers.
If you want to dive the wreckage of the USS Juneau, become a robot. It lies over 4000 meters below the surface, near the Solomon Islands, in an area called the Iron Bottom, which is absolutely chock full of wreckage. Good luck, non-robot person, getting down there.
So where’s the ghostly activity? Today, there’s a ship named after the brothers, USS The Sullivans, the only ship in the Navy named after more than one person.
If you visit the ship, you might hear radar equipment switch on mysteriously, or hear strange voices when no one’s around. A portrait of the five brothers hangs in the ship, but if you try to take a picture, you’ll capture only four of them. It’s said the fifth brother doesn’t want his picture taken, so you’ll always get a light obscuring that image. Ghost hunters and others who’ve experienced the strange phenomenon believe George is the brother who haunts the ship, looking for his lost brothers, still trying to protect them.