Haunted Hangars and Phantom Flights: Aviation’s Spookiest Tales

One of the best parts of an aviation event that includes overnight camping is the stories you hear around the campfire. In the spirit of Halloween, I have a few to share.

If you have ever been to a former World War II air base, you’ll likely be warned that the hangar is haunted. You’ll hear stories about lights activating without human intervention, doors opening unassisted, items being moved, and noise, often period-correct music heard coming from a radio in a building that doesn’t have power, and the sounds of tools being used or people shouting—in an empty hangar.

While these stories may be “prop wash,” they are intriguing to some who believe in paranormal manifestations. One of the theories of why ghosts exist is that when a person dies unexpectedly or violently and has unfinished business on earth, their spirit remains where they died.

This may explain why the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum in Hawaii is often mentioned when aviation ghost stories are told.

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The museum is located on Ford Island, an islet of the island of Oahu. In 1941 it was a naval air station and the operations center for the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet. The base had a fleet of PBY patrol bombers—which were sitting on the ramp the morning of December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked.

Outside the hangars the crater left by the first bomb dropped on the island still remains, and there are strafing marks in the pavement, then a void, then the bullet path picks up again. The void is where a PBY was parked the morning of the attack that killed 2,403 service members.

The first phase of the museum opened on December 7, 2006, in hangar 37. The building still shows damage from the attack, including bullet holes in the windows and pavement.

According to Kathryn “KT” Budde-Jones, who helped create and launch the museum, some who visit the facility have reported sensing an energy in the buildings as if they are not alone, although the building was allegedly empty at the time of their visit.

The hangars are used for restoration as well as aircraft display.

One of the most frequently told ghost stories is about a mannequin posed near the North American Mitchell B-25B. There are people that swear they have seen the mannequin, which is dressed as a seaman, move on its own. Sometimes he has his hand on the propeller, and other times his arm is down by his side. The movement is never overt—it’s more of something you catch out of the corner of your eye.

Americans have a particular interest in ghosts that some of us can trace back to childhood and watching Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! cartoons, which first aired in the 1970s.

For the unfamiliar, it was basically Dobie Gillis meets Lassie as four teenagers, Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy, and their anthropomorphic talking Great Dane, Scooby-Doo, travel the countryside in a psychedelic van, the “Mystery Machine,” solving mysteries that (spoiler alert) usually involved someone trying to scare people away from a place by pretending to be a supernatural entity, such as a ghost or monster.

The teens would search for clues and were often joined by celebrities (Davy Jones, the Harlem Globetrotters, and the Addams Family). The episode always ended with clarinet music playing as the villain is unmasked and the haunting declared a hoax. The villain always makes a statement to the effect of “I would have gotten away with it were it not for you meddling kids.”

A few of the episodes involve the Scooby-Doo gang visiting former air bases that were allegedly haunted. Those were a favorite among many aspiring aviators.

The Scooby-Doo connection went to a different level at EAA AirVenture 2025 when a Carbon Cub owned by Pete Hall of New Richmond, Wisconsin, made the scene.

Hall’s Cub is painted to look like the Mystery Machine. For Hall, the airplane is in remembrance of his son who had the nickname of Scooby.

For the visitors to AirVenture, the plane was a rock star and a trip down memory lane. Over several days it was the talk of (KOSH) as pilots gathered to take photos in front of it, remembering Saturday mornings when they watched the Scooby-Doo show from the safety of their pillow fort.

Sometimes ghost stories hit a little closer to home.

For me, it was my first airport Halloween party. It was in Seattle, and that evening was your typical cold and rainy night in the Pacific Northwest. The flight school threw a party in the hangar. I came dressed as a bomber pilot in full B-17 leathers, so I was really warm as we danced in the hangar to a live band.

The party broke up around 2 a.m. I noticed that one of our guests, a young woman dressed as a 1960s Pan Am flight attendant, was sort of shivering next to the door. She looked to be in her early 20s, and she said her name was Suzy. This was pre-cell phone, and she asked to use the flight school phone to call her father to come pick her up. I had never seen her before, but I figured she was a student pilot.

Since it was so late, rather than waking up her dad, I offered to give her a ride home. Since she was cold and I was sweaty in the leather pants, I loaned her my flight jacket to keep her warm. She lived in West Seattle, a 1930s-era neighborhood.

As we drove, she asked a lot of questions about flight training, and I became very animated and answered them. I was so distracted by the conversation that I didn’t notice she got out of the car with my jacket still on and walked into her house, a white single-story Craftsman home.

I didn’t realize my jacket was gone until the next day. So I drove back over to her house to retrieve it.

A little old man answered the door. When I told him why I was there, he started to cry, saying I was the third or fourth person who had brought her home.

I was puzzled. He pointed across the street. I thought it was a park, but on closer inspection it proved to be a graveyard. He led me a few rows in. There was a tombstone with her name on it, and the dates of her birth— October 1, 1945—and death—October 31, 1962.

Hanging on the tombstone was my flight jacket.