USS Edson

A Navy destroyer that served 30 years including Vietnam before docking permanently in the Saginaw River as a museum ship.

The USS Edson (DD-946) is a Forrest Sherman-class destroyer that was commissioned in 1958 and served the United States Navy for three decades before being decommissioned in 1988. Named for Major General Merritt Austin Edson, a Medal of Honor recipient for his defense of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal in 1942, the ship saw extensive combat duty during the Vietnam War. The Edson conducted shore bombardments using her three five-inch guns along the Vietnamese coast, and the North Vietnamese managed to damage the vessel early in the conflict. When the ship returned to duty just weeks later, seemingly rising from the damage that should have sidelined her, the crew earned the destroyer the nickname "The Gray Ghost."

The Edson arrived in Bay City, Michigan in 2012 after a complicated journey involving multiple proposed museum sites. She opened as the centerpiece of the Saginaw Valley Naval Ship Museum in 2013. But even before the public could walk her decks, the ship had already developed a reputation for the strange. The most commonly reported ghost aboard the Edson is attributed to Paul Spampanato, son of the Intrepid Museum Director in New York. Spampanato served as caretaker for the USS Edson among other duties, and his devotion to the vessel ran so deep that he actually lived aboard the ship. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, Spampanato suffered a fatal heart attack. Those who knew him believe he never truly left his beloved destroyer.

Museum president Mike Kegley has spoken publicly about the experiences he's had. His tools have seemingly moved on their own from place to place aboard the ship, and his car would start up on its own when parked near the vessel. Ross Gifford, co-owner and operator of the Edson Incident haunted attraction, was himself a paranormal investigator before becoming involved with the ship. "There is actually a real ghost on the ship," Gifford has stated. "We used to be paranormal investigators and that's kind of how we got involved in this whole thing."

The USS Edson also holds an unusual place in television history. The destroyer was featured in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Thirty Fathom Grave," in which sailors discover a World War II submarine wreck and experience mysterious sounds from within the sunken vessel. Though no combat fatalities were ever recorded aboard the Edson herself, the ship's thirty years of naval service, the emotional weight of Vietnam War operations, and the devotion of her caretaker Paul Spampanato appear to have left something behind that neither decommissioning nor a move to a Michigan river could dispel. The Edson Incident now operates as one of Michigan's premier haunted attractions each October, drawing visitors who come for the staged scares but sometimes leave shaken by encounters that weren't part of the show.