{"id":3512,"slug":"uss-indianapolis-indianapolis-indiana","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Indianapolis delivered the bomb and then nobody came. On July 30, 1945 — twelve days after it had dropped the components of Little Boy at Tinian — the cruiser was hit by two torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58 and sank in twelve minutes. Three hundred men went down with the ship; nine hundred went into the water. The Navy didn't know the ship was lost — the mission had been secret, the distress call wasn't received, and the Indianapolis wasn't reported overdue.","The five days in the water are the worst survival story in naval history — the men scattered in the Philippine Sea with no rescue coming, the sharks working the edges of the groups, the salt-water hallucinations, the sun and the exposure and the ones who drank the ocean and died of it. A patrol plane spotted the oil slick by accident on August 2; by the time the rescue ships got there, 316 of the 1,195 were alive. The Navy court-martialed the captain — the only captain in the war tried for losing his ship to enemy action — and the survivors spent fifty years getting him exonerated.","The memorial in Indianapolis is the ship in stone — the granite cruiser outline on the canal walk downtown, the names of the whole crew etched on one face and the story on the other, dedicated in 1995 by the survivors who'd spent half a century pushing for it. The wreck was found in 2017 by Paul Allen's expedition, sitting upright in eighteen thousand feet of water — the ship on the bottom, the memorial on the canal, and the crew's name cleared.","The Indianapolis is the archive's abandonment file — the ship that delivered the weapon that ended the war and was left in the ocean for five days, the crew the sharks took while the Navy didn't know to look, the memorial the survivors built because the institution wouldn't."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The USS Indianapolis is the archive's waiting file — the cruiser that sank in twelve minutes after delivering the atomic bomb, the nine hundred men who spent five days in the water while no one came, the memorial the survivors had to build themselves fifty years later.","A ship the Navy forgot keeps its survivors — the file's suggestion being that the Indianapolis's haunting is the delay: the five days no one knew to search, the captain the Navy blamed, and the memorial that the men who lived it finally got built."]}],"name":"USS Indianapolis","aliases":[],"type":"SITE","type_label":"Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","LOCAL_FOLKLORE","LEGEND_SITE","MILITARY","MARITIME_DISASTER"],"groups":["dark-history","legends"],"desc":"July 30, 1945—the sinking that fed the sharks.","full_desc":"USS Indianapolis is a site in Indianapolis, Indiana. July 30, 1945—the sinking that fed the sharks. HauntHunt files it with military history, maritime disasters and dark history. The presence its accounts keep returning to is the one they call the 900. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend, 1 documented fact and 1 named or described presence — documented record and retelling kept side by side. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Indianapolis","county":null,"state":"Indiana","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":39.776664,"lon":-86.145935,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"SHIP batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":3832,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"The dead are reportedly remembered. The 900 is the name the reports keep returning to. USS Indianapolis in Indianapolis, Indiana carries the report the way old places do — as part of its identity. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. Sources including 'USS Indianapolis' keep the claim in circulation. A ghost with a name outlasts a ghost without one; the reports keep it employed.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"The 900","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"USS Indianapolis","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":3833,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported a presence at the memorial. The reports at USS Indianapolis are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. It's anecdotal evidence in the strictest sense — stories, repeated, unresolved. 'USS Indianapolis' carries the account. The figure remains the site's most-repeated sighting.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"USS Indianapolis","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The July 30, 1945 sinking is documented. USS Indianapolis' past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. Sources including 'USS Indianapolis' carry the record. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":"1945-07-30","confidence":null,"source":{"name":"USS Indianapolis","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The dead are reportedly remembered. USS Indianapolis' file is thin on proof and long on persistence — the standard profile of American place-lore. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. It's the version the place will be remembered by, whether or not it's the true one.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"USS Indianapolis","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"The 900","claimed_identity":"The 900","verified":null,"summary":"The dead are reportedly remembered. The presence goes by The 900. The reports at USS Indianapolis are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. The account appears in 'USS Indianapolis'. The lore has a face now: The 900. The reports keep the address on the map. The lore keeps its witness.","behavior":"The dead are reportedly remembered.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"USS Indianapolis","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"USS Indianapolis","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"USS Indianapolis","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis","desc":"List of ships with the same or similar names","extract":"Four ships of the United States Navy have been named USS Indianapolis:\n\nUSS Indianapolis (ID-3865) was a cargo ship commissioned 12 December 1918 and decommissioned 9 July 1919.\nUSS Indianapolis (CA-35) was a heavy cruiser commissioned in 1932 and sunk in July 1945.\nUSS Indianapolis (SSN-697) was a Los Angeles-class attack submarine in service from 1980 to 1998.\nUSS Indianapolis (LCS-17) is a Freedom-class littoral combat ship, commissioned in 2019.","img":null,"score":89},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}