SS American Victory
Museum
Tampa
Oct. 9, 2011
Since the month of June has a lot of heat and fewer ghosts, we thought we'd feature the investigation on the SS American Victory. The SPIRITS of St. Petersburg went on the ship during a wet and rainy day (perfect for ghost hunting). We highly recommend anyone interested in naval history, ships, and/or potential paranormal phenomena to check out this wonderful historic landmark docked right here in the Tampa Bay Area.
The SS American Victory was an amazing ship. It is historic, though it’s only known connection to a haunting comes from one of its first missions: to collect the dead soldiers from WWII. The story is that the ship was finished late in WWII and launched in 1945. Its first assignment was, they thought, to help finish the war. Instead, it transported the dead home. The ship was also used in the Korea and Viet Nam wars as well, though no known direct events are known from either of these other wars.
The rain and the tropical depression that came into the area (had it been over the water, it would have been a named storm) may have enhanced the ship experience. For one, there is a theory that rain and weather turbulence enhances ghostly activity. Secondly, the rain kept down others who came to the ship. Only the SPIRITS of St. Petersburg would troop through on a cold, wet day!
I did observe some very interesting aspects with the EMF meter. Though the meter read .0 (incredibly low – lower than most houses, which usually have some residue EMF and register at .2 to .4 EMF). There were certain areas where the EMF rose to a steady rate. The other SPIRITS members would help me look around and at these areas we did find some sort of electronic output. However, in several areas the EMF would fall to “0” and, with questions, would spike. These spikes seemed to come in particular with questions (Are you here?). On occasion, it would also spike again upon request for confirmation. In only one area did the EMF spike with regularity (thus, it was related to a source) – this was in the galley area.
The camera did produce images of orbs, but the ship, itself, is open to the elements. I do not count these as any form of legitimate image. Outside, we did encounter rain/drizzle on and off, so those images are also out.
I do not know that the ship is actively haunted, though the odd EMF spikes would indicate that the possibility exists. I would like to recheck this ship again with more equipment and no rain to see what kind of results were obtained.
For information, please go to their website at http://www.americanvictory.org/
