Day 23 - The Ourang MedanFew things scare me more than the sea. It’s massive. It’s dar

Day 23 - The Ourang Medan Few things scare me more than the sea. It’s massive. It’s dark. It’s depths are still unknown to man. Jellyfish live there, and those things are terrifying. So naturally, I’m drawn to stories of hauntings at sea. Some of the most famous accounts of spooky ships include, the Flying Dutchman, the Mary Celeste, and more recently, the Ourang Medan. In the late 1940’s, two American ships, the Silver Star and the City of Baltimore, sailing through the Straight of Malacca received a distress call from a Dutch freighter named the Ourang Medan. The alarming S.O.S. call read “S.O.S. from Ourang Medan… We all float… All officers, including Captain dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole crew dead.” After a few more unintelligible clicks in Morse Code, a final message came through; “I die.” Then nothing more.  The crew of the Silver Star located the Ourang Medan and successfully boarded the ship. According to reports, they found the crew “[s]prawled on their backs, the frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouths gaping open and eyes staring, the dead bodies resembled horrible caricatures.” No survivors were found. Soon after boarding, a fire broke out in one of the ship’s cargo holds, forcing the crew of the Silver Star to evacuate. The fire caused a massive explosion which sank the ship, carrying her mysteries to the bottom of the ocean, never to be explained.  Theories abound surrounding the strange fate of the Ourang Medan. Ghosts and aliens of course make the list. More level-headed researchers posit that the ship may have been illegally hauling chemical compounds or nerve agents. This would explain why the ship wasn’t registered in Dutch shipping registries. It may also explain the mass death of the crew; chemicals inadvertently mixed with sea water could create noxious gases undetectable to the nose. An accidental mixing of chemicals could have caused the ship to explode with such force that she “lifted herself from the water and swiftly sank.”  While a great chiller to tell around a campfire (preferably near near an ocean) the story of the Ourang Medan is widely thought to be a folk tale. Feel free to read more about the fabled freighter at MysteriousUniverse.org. As for me, I’ll stick with true, 100% factual accounts of ghost ships. Ships like the Antonia Graza, the Inferno, and the Aeolus.    Additional source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ourang_Medan -- source link

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