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Picture this, if you will: a once-proud vessel of war, the USS Cavalla, now docked in quiet repose at Seawolf Park on Pelican Island. Its glory days of battle long behind it, this World War II-era submarine finds itself in a different kind of conflict—a battle between the past and the present, the living and, perhaps, the dead.
Galveston, Texas, is where our tale unfolds, as the USS Cavalla has become an unexpected theater for ghost hunters, those modern-day seekers of the unexplained. After the sun dips below the horizon and the last of the daytime visitors have wandered away, these paranormal investigators step aboard, armed not with torpedoes and radar, but with cameras, thermometers, and instruments designed to detect the slightest hint of the supernatural.
On a recent evening, the submarine’s cold steel corridors once again played host to these seekers of shadows. This isn’t the first time, mind you, that the Cavalla has been the subject of such attention. The Galveston County Daily News reports that for two weekends this month, the ship has been a hunting ground—not for enemy vessels, but for spirits.
Aubrey Flaherty, the assistant curator at the Galveston Naval Museum, speaks of these ghostly forays with a mixture of amusement and pragmatism. The museum, which also oversees the USS Stewart nearby, has found that these spectral investigations bring a certain kind of attention, a new audience, if you will. Flaherty mentions that the video footage gathered during these nocturnal missions often finds its way into the museum’s Halloween advertising—a time when the lines between the seen and unseen are said to blur.
One such investigator, Annette Luevano of Texas Ghostly Gatherings, has boarded the Cavalla three times, each visit yielding what she claims to be evidence of the beyond. Cold spots, unexplained sounds, and the flicker of a shadow playing checkers in the corner of her eye—subtle signs, she insists, that something lingers in the depths of this old war machine.
But these apparitions, she warns, are not as Hollywood would have you believe. There are no dramatic crashes, no voices booming from the ether. No, the truth, as it so often is, is far more subdued.
As for Flaherty, she remains a skeptic. Her loyalty lies with history, with the stories of courage and sacrifice etched into the metal hull of the Cavalla. The paranormal? Well, that’s someone else’s concern.
And so, the USS Cavalla continues its silent vigil, a vessel caught between the memories of the past and the mysteries of the present, waiting for the next curious soul to step aboard, whether they seek history or hauntings.
