Pretty interesting overview of using degaussing to avoid mines.
Misunderstood origin of the “Philadelphia Experiment.”
Check out “dazzle paint” which I came across recently for the first time, for another bit of unusual wartime evasion.
Submarines still do deperming.
When I got my Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist Qualification aboard USS Kearsarge in 2008 learning about the degaussing system was part of the qualification. You can see it here in the Personnel Qualification Standard page 61, items 109.23 and 109.24http://www.desron.herrickmi.us/esws.pdf. While I have forgotten most of it now, I seem to remember that the purpose was anti-mine as well as taking care of all of the electronics onboard the ship and on the aircraft landing on the ship. We had to learn where all of the windings were, and where the different controls were.
Here’s a picture of the degaussing room on the USS Alabama.
Which sucked for the guy who left his wallet on the US Spadefish that one time … 
Tonyfop beat me to it, I was going to say as of 1992 ships still had the gear in use.
Oh, I was going to make a joke about this, but it’s true?!
Almost certainly. Someone misunderstood the then-new notion of degaussing ships (which was, I believe, semi-secret during the war) and making ships “invisible” to mines turned into all kinds of nonsense about teleporting invisible ships around. There may have even been an accident with the gigantic equipment (100-foot coils powered by high voltages) that introduced the other facets of the legend.
I’m going to assume the bits about people disappearing and getting stuck in the walls are exaggeration.
It’s an urban legend/paranormal claim. Like many of such, it’s based on the faintest grain of truth but a few decades of embellishment have obscured that.