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A Submarine Haunting


Your Favorite Ghostwriter

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In Germany a submarine was called an U-boat, or "Unterseeboot". At the outbreak of World War One, Germany had 33 of them. With the possibility of rich prizes off the British and Irish coasts and in the Channel, in early 1916 an entire flotilla of 24 U-boats was launched in the North Sea. One of them was the U-65, and from the very beginning there was talk about "jinxes" and "hoodoos".

During the construction of an U-boat, no woman was allowed on board (at the sight of a woman, the sea grows angry) and no flowers too, as wreaths are made of them. And carrying a black bag was forbidden, because this was a token of disaster. And of course, at the launching, a bottle had to be broken over the bows, as a libation to the gods.

All these precautions were double necessary with the U-65, because one day at the shipyard a heavy steel girder crashed to the ground and killed two workmen. And some time later yells were heard, coming from the engine room. The rescuers found the sliding door in the bulkhead jammed and when they got through, three men were lying dead on the floor, amid lethal fumes. An inquiry failed to establish what had happened. It couldn't have been carbon monoxide from the diesels, because they were not running. Chlorine from sea water getting into the batteries then? But the submarine had been in dry-dock...

Of course, this was only the beginning. Full story full speed ahead:

We All Live In A Haunted Submarine

What happened there really? Was this haunting merely a hallucination? Is this story only an urban legend? Or...?

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Thank you so much for posting this!!! I've had a wonderful time looking for information!

It's a great story and it's obvious that it's been added to over time.

Here's a link you might be interested in

scroll down a bit for a great article

The discrepancies between the articles are very interesting don't you think?

For example, the captain was the same the entire time, apparently he was not beheaded in an on-shore accident. And there was no "der Schwarze" on board the U-65 or UB-65 at any time, not that I could find anyway.

It's also interesting that the American's witnessed UB-65 exploding on July 10th 1918, and yet she is credited with destroying the Portugese ship "Maria Jose", off Lundy Island, on July 14th 1918. :huh:

link to uboat site

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I was informed years ago (I forget by whom) that the only original source for the Paranormal and Curse stories connected with the U-65 was a book of legends published by a German pastor after the War.

Can anybody contribute further details here?

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I wonder what the number of crew was upon the U-65 when in service, I know they do not employ Women aboard the U.S. Submarines because of the Tight Courters, I mean some of the Births, Sleeping bunks are even around the Torpedo tubes because they need to make every cubic inch of space count, and the Sleeping is done upon a rotation of shifts. I was in a Ported Russian Submarine and I can say they are very small inside, if there is any haunting going on, it would be noticed by many once detected, I don’t believe there is any section un manned and any point when in service and submerged. In the Late Robert Monroe’s Detailed journal of his Out of the Body Esperance’s, he writer’s of his OBE’s while doing a tour of Duty as a Submariner, but other than that this is the first I have ever heard of a Paranormal event upon a Submarine while in service of War or Peace Time. Thanks for the Story here upon the U-65, Your Favorite Ghostwriter, Great Story :tu:

Pavot

Edited by Pavot
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I was in a Ported Russian Submarine and I can say they are very small inside, if there is any haunting going on, it would be noticed by many once detected, I don’t believe there is any section un manned and any point when in service and submerged.

But not everybody sees ghosts, it is probably a clear minority even in "most haunted" places.

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But not everybody sees ghosts, it is probably a clear minority even in "most haunted" places.

So you mean that even in a old Church side grave yard or in an old Abandon asylum or Mansion or Motel, that if a Ghost an apparition(s) were to materialize not all whom where present and looking into its direction would see it, I never really considered it that way, your very write Sir, thank you for pointing that out.

Also it is I suppose just as wrong to assume the Apparition needs to fit the stereotype of size and shape as well.

Pavot

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I wonder what the number of crew was upon the U-65 when in service,

Pavot

I don't know what the normal crew number would have been, but when she went down there were 37 souls on board.

(according to wiki) ;)

OTR, I'm still looking for that German pastor...... :D It's amazing how much of this original story is just not true according to the evidence from reliable sites. I don't doubt that something might have been amiss on this ship, but the embellishments are without shame. It is human nature to exaggerate I suppose.

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And every story grows and distorts with the retellings. It's like that old parlor game where one person whispers a sentence to another person, who in turn whispers it to another, and so on, until the last person states aloud what he or she was told. It's never the same thing that started out.

I think most ghost stories work this way, and not just ghost stories, either, but ALL stories, even so-called "true stories." Every eye-witness to an event will notice something different from what another eye-witness noticed. When they tell what they've seen, they tell different stories, sometimes very different. It doesn't necessarily mean that people are lying. Everything depends on one's perspective. This is why there's no "original form" of a myth or legend, only different versions of it, each with its own focus, its own perspective, its own particular details.

Edited by CausticGnostic
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And every story grows and distorts with the retellings. It's like that old parlor game where one person whispers a sentence to another person, who in turn whispers it to another, and so on, until the last person states aloud what he or she was told. It's never the same thing that started out.

That's the reason that when I research classic 19th Century ghost accounts I almost entirely limit myself to 19th Century books, magazines and newspapers. It eliminates all those fanciful 20th Century re-hashings and additions.

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That's the reason that when I research classic 19th Century ghost accounts I almost entirely limit myself to 19th Century books, magazines and newspapers. It eliminates all those fanciful 20th Century re-hashings and additions.

I like the 19th century accounts... but they are also told "under influence" (for example, by spiritism, highly popular in those days). I'm with the Gnostic here: all ghost stories, "true" or not, have something of an urban legend. Mostly there is some "truth" in it, question is: where exactly? But also, I don't think this really matters. If people believe hard enough in it, it becomes "true" in some sort of way... and at least, for these people! That's why I like these stories so much, they are real "faction" stories, made out of facts & fiction.

I think most of the after-war retellings (in lots of anthologies!) of the Haunted Submarine Story originate from an article written by Lawrence Wilson ("The Haunted U-Boat") and also published in "Fifty True Mysteries of the Sea" (Century Books, 1979).

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