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A Night On An Old War Ship

Emily, USA
October 2001

My name is Emily and I am 12 years old. I have a true scary story to tell everyone. It happened to my Girl Scout troop last summer.

Laura, our troop leader got permission for a sleepover on board an old ship. It is a destroyer from World War II.

We spent the day looking at all the displays, watching the movies of sea battles and exploring the ship. When it closed at 8:00 we had to stay in our room. It is a big room with lots of bunks, the same one the sailors used to sleep in. We put our sleeping bags on them so it would be more comfortable.

I couldn't fall asleep then a little later one of my friends Erika woke up and she had to use the bathroom. We had to leave the room in pairs so no one would get lost or hurt. We had to go up the stairs onto the deck and than back inside at the top to get to the bathrooms. When were started to go back down the stairs, we got there just in time to see a man get off the bottom step and walk into a room. I thought it was maybe a guy who worked there and we wanted to say Hi. But when we got to the room he went into, it was empty and there was no other way out. That room was called a radio room. Erika and me got freaked out but went back to sleep because we didn't want to wake anyone up. They probably would not believe us. I finally went to sleep.

I got woken up later when some of our troop because talking and whispering. Everyone was sitting up in their bunks even Laura our troop leader. Before I could ask what was going on I started to hear sounds. It sounded like men talking and sometimes screaming and banging but the sound was like very soft. A chaperone who was one of the girls mothers went to go find what the sound was coming from. She came back but said she did not see anything but the sounds went on for a while before they stopped.

Now everyone was scared. The only way we would go back to sleep was if we paired of and slept in twos.

When we left the next morning and got back to our troop leader house we went on the computer to find some history about the ship. We learned that in 1945 a Japanese kamikaze plane hit it. Those are planes that crash into ships on purpose. 34 people died on the ship when that happened.

Everyone in my troop now believes in ghosts and we think that the sounds were of the people who were killed. It also got us to like history ;-)

~Emily

Emily, USA
00:00 / 01:04
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