Welcome to Haunted Ships, a guide to ghost ships, haunted ocean liners, riverboats and the strange mysteries of the sea. Each story gets the same treatment: the real history of the ship and the people who sailed in her, the legends that have grown up around her, and, where possible, tips for visiting the place in person. The legends are told the way sailors and guides tell them and are kept separate from the documented history, so readers can make up their own minds.
The stories range from a famous haunted liner you can still sleep aboard in California to the most famous phantom ship of all, haunted riverboats, and wrecks on the Great Lakes. Pick one below and start reading.
Featured ships
The Queen Mary, Long Beach
The 1936 Cunard liner turned hotel, her wartime days as the “Grey Ghost”, and the legends of Door 13 and the old pool.
The Flying Dutchman
The phantom ship of the Cape of Good Hope, from sailors’ yarns and Wagner’s opera to a royal sighting in 1881.
The Mary Celeste
Found adrift off the Azores in 1872 with ten people missing: the facts, the fiction and the best theories.
USS Alabama Battleship Ghosts
The WWII battleship saved by Alabama’s schoolchildren, and the footsteps said to echo near her gun mounts.
USS Constellation Ghosts: Baltimore’s Haunted Warship
The last all-sail U.S. Navy warship, her anti-slavery patrols and the ghost of Neil Harvey in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
USS Constitution Ghosts: Old Ironsides History & Legends
The Boston frigate that beat HMS Guerriere in 1812, and the thin, hedged ghost lore of Old Ironsides.
Battleship North Carolina Ghosts: History & Legends
The Showboat of Wilmington, her 1942 torpedo hit, the kids who helped save her, and the young sailor said to walk her passageways.
USS Lexington, the Blue Ghost: History & Ghost Stories
The WWII carrier the Japanese kept reporting sunk, and Charlie, the young sailor said to explain her engine room.
The Whydah: Black Sam Bellamy’s Ghost Ship and the Witch of Cape Cod
The 1717 nor’easter that wrecked Black Sam Bellamy’s pirate ship off Wellfleet, and the legend of Goody Hallett, the Witch of Wellfleet.
The W.H. Gilcher: Lake Michigan’s Lost Steel Freighter and the Ghost in the Mackinac Fog
The record-setting steel freighter that passed the Straits of Mackinac into an October 1892 gale and vanished with all hands, and the legend that she still steams out of the fog.
The Phantom Schooner of Saginaw Bay
A becalmed schooner, a sailor’s dying curse, and the dark phantom said to sail Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron.
The Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals: The Carroll A. Deering Mystery
The 1921 mystery of the five-masted schooner found aground off Cape Hatteras with her sails set and all eleven crew gone.
The Ghost Ship That Never Was: Tillamook Spit, a Vanished Town, and the Coast’s Real Phantoms
No documented phantom ship haunts Oregon’s Tillamook Spit, but the town of Bayocean the sea swallowed and the real wreck behind Terrible Tilly’s ghost ship make a story worth telling.
The Palatine: A Real Tragedy That Became Block Island’s Burning Ghost Ship
The Palatine Light began as a real 1738 wreck, the Princess Augusta, and wreckers and a poem turned it into Block Island’s burning ghost ship.
The Equator: Everett’s Ghost Ship That Was Taken Apart
Stevenson’s South Seas schooner ended up as a ruin in Everett, picked up a one-line ghost story, and was taken apart in 2023.
Le Griffon: La Salle’s Lost Ship and a Ghost Story Written 200 Years Later
The first ship lost on the upper Great Lakes vanished in 1679; her curse and phantom were written down two centuries later.
Haunted Riverboats
James T. Staples: Alabama’s Doomed Riverboat
The 1913 boiler explosion that sank the James T. Staples on the Tombigbee a week after her captain’s death.
The Eliza Battle: Alabama’s Burning Ghost Steamboat
The 1858 fire on the Tombigbee River and the phantom steamboat seen near Pennington on cold nights.
The Delta Queen and the Ghost of Mary Greene
From Scotland to Chattanooga and Houma, and the friendly ghost said to watch over the boat.
The Timour No. 2: The Wreck That Should Haunt Jefferson City
The 1854 boiler explosion below Jefferson City, an eyewitness who never forgot it, and a wreck with no ghost story, yet.
The Platte River ‘Ship of Death’: Wyoming’s Ghost Ship That Was Written, Not Seen
A frost-covered phantom ship on Wyoming’s North Platte, and why the evidence says it was written in 1948, not seen.