Don't mess with the ocean.
Why is that a hard rule for some?
It's like people can't help themselves.
Though it is vast and beautiful, the ocean takes life every day.
RedditorDankestKush420wanted to hear from the people who have survived the darkness of the sea.
They asked:
"Deep sea divers, what are your horror stories?"
I almost drowned from a small but wave on the Florida coast. So a deep dive is a lifelong HELL NO for me. But go ahead... tell us some stories.
Poof. Gone.
GIF by VPROGiphy"I was watching a documentary about saturation divers the other day. Absolutely scary stuff. They live in a dome under the sea for several days/weeks so they don't have to decompress every day."
"There was this interview where one diver told a story about a colleague just vanishing. He was right behind him at one moment and then was gone in the next. No signs of an accident on the safety line, no sounds, no light signals, he was just gone."
PenguinSwordfighter
Implosions
"I used to work at a dive shop, a regular customer of mine told me on one of his deep cave dives at around 300 feet his main light imploded, and both of his backup flashlights failed. While this happened he also lost his guide line (read: life line back to the surface)."
"He was in a large room, so he dropped a reel with line on it and swam back and forth basically fishing for the guide line. He eventually hooked it and located it, but then had to make a decision which way to follow the line. The correct choice would lead him to safety, while the wrong choice would lead him deeper into the cave system. He made his choice and slowly followed the line out."
"He reached his first spare air tank that he staged and knew he chose the right direction. He had a long wait at each of his staged decompression tanks. It took him, from what I recall, around 7 hours to properly decompress and make it back out of the cave, all while not being able to see a damn thing."
pwnstar
side-by-side...
"I went on a group dive trip with someone who was pretty experienced, and he was telling us a bunch of stories about his wreck dive down to an old WWII-era Japanese warship sunken in the Pacific. One somewhat morbid but funny story was when his group went into the ship and saw several pairs of shoes strewn about, lying perfectly side-by-side."
"After they all surfaced later, one girl in the group was like, 'Why did they leave their shoes behind like that?' and everyone else just looked at each other like, 'Oh man... who's gonna tell her?' Anyway, the real horror story is about a father and son duo who had decided to go on this trip as a bonding experience. So the thing to note about WWII shipwrecks is that after over half a century, they're pretty much rusted to oblivion."
"One bad kick will effectively disintegrate a perfectly-preserved captain's log, just from the motion of the water. Well, the duo was exploring the inside of the ship, and suddenly someone hears a loud CLANG! The father and son had wandered into an enclosed room, and the door had slammed shut with both of them inside."
"At that point, the guy telling the story paused, and someone else in the group was like, 'Wait, so what happened to them?' And the guy was like, 'What the hell do you mean, man? They got trapped and f**king died!' And in that moment, I decided f**k that s**t - I am never, ever diving down to go check out the inside an old WWII warship lmao."
yungbabo
Unreal
"For as long as I been around the internet 1 diver story stuck with me. Not because of paranormal or unexplainable events. This person's story said they were deep diving with their father and literally saw a Lovecraftian size creature envelope his father ahead. After all was said and done at the surface he come to find out later his schizophrenia had come to while he was deep sea diving. I couldn't imagine seeing something your brain was telling you was real. Especially in that setting."
SunnyvaleRicky
Vortex
Joe Biden Reaction GIF by GIPHY NewsGiphy"One time when I was on a diving boat with some friends, one of the guys on there told about a story about how he used to be an underwater welder, and one time he and some other guys witnessed someone getting sucked through a hole the size of a tic tac."
Dragon_King3199
Why do people even go that far down?
Everywhere
marine life wildlife GIF by KQEDScienceGiphy"I’m by no means a deep sea diver, but I am a licensed diver, sea urchins are massive and everywhere, like you really don’t expect their size and how common they are."
drewdreds
Wrecked
"Did a 60M/200ft dive on a wreck in a shipping channel. The dive boat skipper should call up the harbour master and check if there are any ships scheduled, and if there are not good to dive. Anyway did the dive. 25 mins bottom time so a fair amount of deco."
"During the 12M deco stop we could hear the rumble of a very very very large engine. Hmmm. Kept getting louder. And louder. And louder. During the 9M stop it got REALLY loud we looked at each other, gave two thumbs down and bolted back down to 18M and just hung there figuratively shi**ing our drysuits until it got quieter after a few minutes."
"We then resumed our deco. A small pod of dolphins came in to have a gander at us which was cool. A big f**k off panamax sort-a-size ship had come within 100M of our deco buoy. Never dived off that boat again."
thedugong
Gruesome
Not sure if anyone has mentioned it, but the [Byford Dolphin Diving Bell Accident] (https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/4x1a2c/comment/d6blno6/) is pretty gruesome and scary. Basically, when deep see divers were returning to the surface, they were in a decompression chamber at a very high pressure."
"And there was a catastrophic failure of the decompression room that meant the air depressurized several atmospheres almost instantaneously and killed a couple divers by literally exploding them from the pressure release. Not sure what could be more of a gruesome tale than that."
anon_e_mous9669
The Worst
"Not my story but still wanted to share: it's the story of a diver who was hired to remove and bring back bodies from a bridge that collapsed into semi deep water with numerous cars on it. Some people made it out of their cars and some didn't. But the worst thing that he saw was the bodies of children still stuck in the cars while the parents saved their own lives. The thought of going into murky water to essentially fish up corpses that are like a day old chills me every time I think about it."
sarper97
Nope!
Not Gonna Happen No Way GIF by FaZe ClanGiphy"I went diving to a wreck around 200ft down, and I heard this terrifying roar and saw some creature almost twice the size of a blue whale. Noped right outta there as soon as I saw that, I'm not going there again, I'll stay in my lifepod."
Overgrown_fetus1305
Roar
"I saw a lion fish at 27 feet in Cozumel a couple weeks ago. I made it out okay though."
Fieos
"Lion fish generally aren’t very dangerous. Yes, they have toxic spines but it’s not exactly easy to end up with their spines in you. You’d have to be pretty damn careless to do it. I’d honestly say there’s a lot of common eels that are substantially more likely to hurt you. I’ve got a pair of fins with some large chomp marks from a mean ass wolf eel."
Tlentic
LA Craziness
"Totally late, but this is an amazing account of a police diver that had to dive in the La Brea tar pits in L.A. iI’s intense. La Brea tar pits dive"
vroomvroom450
The body
"Mr. Ballen on YouTube has some really nice videos on cave divers and horror stories, you should check him out."
Pelios
"I watched one of them today 😭 the one where the guy goes back to retrieve a diver that died who was never found and during the rescue, he disappeared too and drowned."
"The other divers there launched another rescue group and he was found holding the guy he was retrieving and both of their bodies were brought to the surface and were laid to rest. the parents of the young original diver felt guilty about the one who died getting their son’s body. Such a sad story."
lunababygirl09
On Holiday
"So I was at this diving resort where there was one instructor/guide who spoke my language. He told me about how 10 years ago he and his friends had been diving in open sea, it was supposed to be a 30m dive but there was a heavy downdraft and they all got sucked down, he's guessing 70m."
"With a lot of effort most managed to get out of that current and into another one which luckily brought them back up. One of them didn't. He saw his friend drown. He told me this when I asked about safety at the resort and he didn't bring it as a cautionary tale. I've spend the rest of my holiday with another guide who spoke broken English."
Aggressive_Tear_769
Intense
Horror Reaction GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy"Nothing to add myself but this is my favorite compilation of diver horror stories. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdIni-VEHJ4 Warning some of them are pretty intense and involve witnessing murders."
Kryptosis
Thanks Dad
"Not my story but my dad's, he said they've been diving around 40m down in some ocean/sea I don't really remember, in the middle of the descent he noticed his bubbles didn't go up, they went down to the abyss, he looked at his wrist depth meter and he saw he started to descent way faster then he was supposed to, he got caught by an underwater current."
"He said that inflating his jacket didn't really work nor did releasing the led weights from his pockets. thanks to his massive freaking testicles he found a way out of it. I sometimes scuba dive with him, in shallow waters, but the idea if this happening f**king terrifies me."
Mhaul
No Air
"Not me but I read a post from someone who went diving a lot a while ago. She said there's something that happens to the brain if you go too far down too quickly or something? Or maybe it just happens randomly. But you can start hallucinating. She said that at some point she was swimming down and all of a sudden started hearing children crying and calling for her to swim more downward toward them. Then her oxygen was going to run out and she would have definitely drowned if her diving partner hadn't grabbed her and forced her to the surface."
ToastedMaple
Don't Watch
Breathe Chris Hemsworth GIF by NETFLIXGiphy"Always hated the idea of deep sea diving. Saw 'Last Breath' a couple weeks ago and even though I knew what the outcome was I was still so nervous and scared watching it."
Shovel1708
Well that is all I need to hear. I'll stay on dry land, thank you.
When you watch "The Little Mermaid", you think that life under the sea is the greatest place on Earth.
The crystal blue waters and the cool, calm ripples.
The musical numbers.
What a lie. The ocean is death waiting to happen.
There are things we've long suspected waiting for us.
And things we couldn't have possibly thought could be real.
Get out of the water kids.
Let that crazy old lady give the diamond to the sea as a sacrifice.
Redditorthis_is_not_me_6wanted to discuss all the things we may not want to know, but should about the sea... they asked:
"What are some disturbing facts about the ocean?"
The ocean is a sea of mess.
Feed Me
hungry feed me GIFGiphy"The largest biomass migration takes place every night when deep sea animals come up to feed."
Supraman83
Pitch Black
"I remember watching a YouTube interview with a military diver. He described how when you’re doing a covert op you spend a lot of time just underwater doing nothing with no lights on until it’s time to move. He specifically mentioned how he had to get used to having large things bump into him in the pitch black."
Freaked_The_Eff_Out
Sonar
"The sonar we use for deep sea mapping really screws up a number of species especially whales, dolphins and porpoises. Imagine walking around and a tornado alarm decibel-level noise triggers right next to you. We do that every time we use that high-powered sonar and it basically f's up their own sonar abilities causing them to be unable to communicate and navigate."
Reyltjj
Scattered
"Once did a night dive where we covered our lights while resting on the floor at about 50'. You cover your light and wave your hand and you can see bioluminescent bacteria in the water. Well I was looking up when we uncovered our lights, there were hundreds of barracuda between us and the boat. They scattered from the light though."
bwtaha
Gone
Looking I See You GIF by Shark WeekGiphy"Lost sailors in the sea who cling to wreckage basically have their skin dissolved by salt water after soaking for more than 3 days."
SnooOranges4231
At this point I feel like a shower may even be dangerous. Water issues...
Hot Bubbles
hot tub jacuzzi GIFGiphy"'Hot tub of despair' is a lake under the ocean, in the gulf of Mexico. It is highly concentrated with salt and has dissolved methane. Any creature that enters dies."
Abathur11235
the bottom...
"There are perfectly-preserved shipwrecks from ancient Greece preserved at the bottom of the Black Sea. The water is so deep that it becomes anoxic (oxygen free), which preserves organic materials like wood. Shipwrecks are cool, but I find the phenomenon a little disturbing, since there is probably no life down there."
"Here's an article from a few years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/23/oldest-intact-shipwreck-thought-to-be-ancient-greek-discovered-at-bottom-of-black-sea"
colorforge
When you bleed...
"The ocean is blue because all the other pigments are absorbed. So after a certain distance down everything thing becomes a monotone blue color, unless you have some other light source. The freaky part is if a diver gets cut underwater the blood looks black, like ink. All the red has long since been absorbed so there’s no wavelengths left to show you a red color when you bleed."
Lord_of_the_Canals
Not a Care
"I tell new scuba divers this: The ocean doesn’t care about you. It’s not actively trying to kill you. But it will do a lot of things on its own that will absolutely kill you if you’re not prepared and paying attention. I realize this could apply to any natural environment but it feels much more apt when talking about the ocean. One wave that you weren’t prepared for can make your day pretty bad. For the ocean it’s just business as usual."
bg-j38
Poison
Marine Life Sea GIF by BBCGiphy"Just one millilitre of coastal water taken from the ocean's surface can contain up to 10 million viruses. The number of viruses decreases further offshore and deeper into the water."
SuvenPan
No Air
"There are parts of the ocean which are dead no oxygen in the water which means nothing can survive, no fish no plankton nothing at all. They are spreading exponentially. Whilst they are tiny now and have been. At the rate of growth. They’ll cause serious problems before the end of the century."
Emergency-Tiger4339
The Fisher Items
"Most of the plastic pollution in the ocean is not from straws, shopping bags, or consumer items as most of us were led to believe. It’s from fishing nets and fishing gear."
TheSheekGeek
Heartless Lover
"It doesn't hate you. It doesn't love you. It doesn't even know you exist. When it destroys/capsizes your boat your boat didn't even cause a change in its movements. I am a sailor and I am in love with a cold heartless *itch who couldn't care less whether I live or die."
Intelligent-Lie-7407
Swimming Dead
twd GIF by The Walking DeadGiphy"When sea creatures die in the ocean and their bones sink to the deep ocean floor, zombie worms eat the bones. The skin secretes an acid dissolving the bones, digesting the remaining fat and protein left behind."
creeeeaaach
Remains
"Well Crippin should have dumped his wife's remains in the ocean because not an ounce of food goes to waste including the bones. If you need to get rid of a mass grave don't bury dump at sea and the entire body will be eaten which will actually be beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole. We shouldn't be burying people but dumping them at sea."
TwistedDecayingFlesh
Dipped
"When you dip your toe in the water you are no longer at the top of the food chain."
Kermitsfinger
"Isn’t that true on land as well? If you go hiking, grizzly bears and mountain lions could still mess you up. Same thing if you go to the savannah. There are plenty of animals there that are higher than you on the food chain."
outofdate70shouse
Giant Squids
"We don't really know whats it in I can say that for thousands of years we drew sea monsters believing they lived in it. Surprising a lot of stuff we found in those pictures were in the ocean. (Giant Squid recently ). Just makes you think what else is actually down there that we don't know about."
ghigoli
the 1%
Mr Bean Beach GIF by Working TitleGiphy"Only 1% of its floor has been explored. It’s pretty common knowledge by now, but most people don’t understand how absolutely insane it really is. We know more about the surface of mars than we do our oceans floor."
LandscapeLost992
Underwater
"I’m a scuba diver and one thing that really scared me when I first started off diving, you hear SO MUCH more underwater then you ever will above on the surface, I’m not even talking about like the shifting or just the water itself moving, your hear things like fish clicking and other things like that, cuz underwater sounds move and travel a lot more so you hear a lot more and much quicker, was pretty out of nowhere when I first went under."
Cogburn____CG
This is why I hate the beach. I'm staying on dry land forever.
We really don't know much about what's in our oceans. That's a very scary thought. It's also enormous, so the stories of people who have been lost out in it for weeks at a time can really creep you out. What the hell are we doing out there? Isn't being on land freaky enough?
Oh, and did none of you watch Jaws? If that's not reason enough to stay on land, I don't know what is. Some of you are way too brave for your own good.
As beautiful as the ocean can be, many people have had some unnerving experiences. We heard some of them after Redditor anchorwitch asked the online community,
"Sailors, scuba divers, surfers, and others…have you seen or experienced anything on or in the water that gave you the creeps? What is your creepiest ocean-related experience?"
"I encountered a moray..."
"I encountered a moray eel chomped in half on a night dive. Eel was still swimming."
alexnewberry
Half along what axis? Inquiring minds want to know.
"Had a pool of dolphins..."
"Had a pod of dolphins swim under me and my friend, grazed our legs. The waves sucked, we were just hanging out on the boards."
"Immediately thought bull shark or nurse, checking if we were food. Then we saw dolphins popping up. They were just passing through I guess."
iBelieveinSpace
I'm convinced dolphins do that on purpose for funsies.
"I've had some of the best and worst..."
"I've had some of the best and worst experiences of my life cave diving. Moments where I was totally at peace in a completely alien environment and just one with nature in a way that I don't think is possible outside of a few very special situations."
"I've also had a few moments where I thought I was going to die alone, in the dark, underwater. Only one of those moments was a true close call. The others were mostly psychological and valuable learning experiences. It's not for most people and it takes a certain mindset, but my life would be noticeably emptier without it. Risks and all."
helodriver87
Cave diving is like taking all of the claustrophobic horror of standard caving with the deadliness of diving.
"When a 10 foot mako..."
"When a 10 foot mako swam past as we were diving with lemon and nurse sharks. A little bit of poop came out."
[deleted]
Ha. I initially read this in a way that made it seem like you were terrified that the ten footer pooped.
"The creepiest..."
"The creepiest for me was seeing a 12 foot tiger shark swimming in the distance when I was diving in Hawaii. The water was clear but there was a little haze. It was just far enough away that i kept losing track of where it was. Then I would turn my head around and see it behind me again."
verac23
Nooope.
I have seen way too many killer shark movies.
"Thankfully no..."
"Thankfully no, but I had a buddy who swears part of his route was “haunted with shrimp”. I could never quite get a full explanation of what that meant, but he’d get a funny look in his eye and goosebumps when he talked about it. Weird stuff."
[deleted]
Damn, I need to know this now. Don't leave me hanging!
"There were days..."
"There were days/nights out on the Persian Gulf when the sea was perfectly calm and looked like glass. The stillness always gave me the creeps for some reason."
Tonys_Grundle
It becomes disorienting. Your mind does weird things when you have no point of reference.
"Noticed in my peripheral vision..."
"Snorkeling - noticed in my peripheral vision a massive moray eel that was longer than me, about 6’, and about one foot away from me just swimming beside me , it was no threat but scared the crap out of me at first ,more than seeing a shark in the distance."
Dengareedo
When an eel passes by, and you think you might die, that’s a morayyyyy
"I was young..."
"I was young (maybe 2nd grade?) and was out on a lake with my friend. At the time, I was really into fishing, so that’s what we were doing. I was leaning down over the water to take a look at what was going on in there, and a MASSIVE gar pike came right up to the surface and charged past us. I still think about it."
fcker5000
That would absolutely leave an impression!
"Looked up..."
"Was snorkeling around Clearwater with my nieces. Looked up and thought I saw a shark for a split second so I made us all go in. They were pretty mad at the time. The next day we wake up and it’s on the news that a girl was bit by one at the same beach later that day."
[deleted]
Sounds like you definitely dodged a bullet!
The ocean is terrifying, friends. Moral of these stories: Probably best to stay on land and mind your business.
Have some stories of your own? Feel free to tell us more in the comments below!
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The ocean is enormous and we don't know everything that's down there. How could we possibly know? That's what makes the ocean so alluring, even terrifying, for some. The fear of the unknown is powerful and there are few things that can make you feel so inconsequential as being out there... seeing nothing but ocean and sky for thousands of miles all around.
Safe to say that I don't like the idea of spending all that time out there, and neither would those who were kind enough to respond after Redditor DagothSlur asked the online community,
"What would be the creepiest thing for humans to discover in the ocean?"
"Imagine diving so far down..."
"Dry land. Imagine diving so far down that you surface but it's not your surface."
AdamoclesYT
Everything about the situation breaks all of the laws of marine science that you've come to believe as fact. Creepy, indeed.
"A very advanced..."
"A very advanced spaceship with human-like remains inside."
killer_putin
This reminds me of the book Sphere! It was a good time... until the ending annoyed me.
"Welded shut."
"A door in the ocean floor. A metal hatch, ancient and corroded, with a wheel in the center. Welded shut."
[deleted]
I think this may have been a SpongeBob episode.
"The remains..."
"The remains of a much more advanced civilization that has been lost to history under the ocean."
DelightfullyUnusual
Atlantis, anyone? Fun to think about.
"A smaller..."
"A smaller, but exact replica, of our society and every person in it."
rachelbriana
Would that include a tiny version of a submarine that descends deep down in their miniature ocean to find an even smaller but exact replica of our society and every person in it?
"Imagine bumping into..."
"A huge eye. Imagine bumping into what you thought was coral, but then they separate to reveal a massive eyeball."
dazedan_confused
Okay, but what if I don't want to imagine that at all??
"Survivors..."
"Survivors in the shipwrecks."
KittKatB
This has actually happened! Air pockets are absolutely a thing.
"I mean..."
"Cthulhu. I mean that would be scary."
[deleted]
The ghost of H.P. Lovecraft would feel so, so vindicated.
"Can you imagine..."
"Can you imagine if we were the sky to some comparable civilization that lives beneath? Like to them, it would be like aliens or angels descending from above."
Rozeline
They'd have to know that humans are real, no? I think all the plastic would be a dead giveaway.
"A more intelligent species..."
"A more intelligent species planning domination beyond the water."
_amorcultist
Then you might want to read The Swarm. Sounds like that would be the perfect book for you.
Yeah, it's safe to say that the ocean is a freaky place. I'm at the point where I enjoy looking at it but don't exactly want to spend any time in it.
Can you blame me?
Have some suggestions of your own? Feel free to tell us more in the comments below!
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Often, thoughts of life sailing large ships across the high seas feel like distant fantasies.
We encounter those scenes in novels, high budget films, old myths, and video games.
But we cannot forget that there are so many people across the world that earn their living working as a crew member on a large ship that crosses vast distances of open water.
The consumer products we buy and the food we eat is so often only at our door thanks to the hard work of freighters around the world.
And, as one recent Reddit thread illustrated, each of those ships has a crew full of people with stories to tell.
The unique conditions of exhausting, difficult life far from land can't help but make for some very eerie occurrences, whether they be real or imagined.
HijoDelSombreron asked, "Sailors, seamen and overall people who spend a vast amount of time in the ocean. Have you ever witnessed something you would catalog as supernatural or unusual? What was it like?"
Some people discussed the times they truly felt that they'd come into contact with a haunted, supernatural being. There simply was no other way to explain a horrifying feeling they got out of nowhere.
Saving Spirit
"Sailed on tallships for a good while, among other things."
"Saw some green flashes, a moon bow, lots of phosphorescence, big whales, st elmo's fire on our mast (steel ship this time)."
"But the only creepy story was at port. The only person who had ever died on the ship was over a hundred years ago, and he fell from the rigging. Went splat. One of the crew was up furling sails, and was about to step out onto the foot rope that runs along the yard. He said he got an overwhelming urge to not step on it, and felt a tug on his harness keeping him from stepping out."
"He was so freaked out he kept the other two guys behind him from getting on the line as well. The other guys started getting a really bad feeling too, and they decided to check out the footrope. It had been really degrading on the inside, even through the outside looked mostly fine."
"The line probably would have snapped as they climbed out there, and they would have fallen, as you are pretty much free climbing until you get to a stopping point."
A Heaviness
"When I was roving patrol on a submarine I always thought I saw someone walking parallel to me down missile compartment upper level. If I was on the port side then I saw them on the starboard side and vice-versa. I always chalked it up to pipes and valves creating weird shadows. Additionally, it felt 'heavy' on that level like there was some sort of presence - the feeling you get when someone's watching you."
"I never told anyone, then one day a few weeks into patrol, one of the other rovers asked me if it felt 'weird' up there. He specifically said that he saw someone up there too just like I had. We shared stories and then talked to the third rover and he said 'I only go up there to do my rounds every hour then get the fu** out of that haunted level.' "
-- praxis4
Other people shared similar experiences, but often chalked it all up to the work of their own brains. Life on the open ocean is apparently very conducive to hallucinating.
Who's Out There
"In the Gulf of Aden having been at sea for a while and with absolutely blistering heat, I heard my nickname called 3 times. Clearly and loudly. It was my first time with this particular crew and none of them knew my nickname."
"My best guess is dehydration and stress but I'll never forget it."
Was Someone Left?
"Distress flares in the middle of the Indian Ocean sailing Nigeria-Japan at night when I was a Third Mate. Looked less than 4 miles away. Altered course to it, called the Old Man. Found nothing and no one over the course of two hours. I was the only one to see it, and I know what I saw. (My watchman was down closing cabin shades.)"
"I understand why we had to move on. Keeps me up some nights though. Did we come so close to saving someone's life, and just leave them there? Alone in the ocean. No food or water. Did someone think they were rescued but we ended up too far from them? Should we have waited until daytime? Did I just hallucinate?"
-- RoCNOD
Group Hallucination
"On my first deployment to south east Asia I was flying over the Sea of Japan and saw a large pulsing aura of red light far enough below the surface I could not make out a source. We were 30ish miles from shore and had not been briefed on any assets in the area that might make something like that make sense. No erroneous indications on instruments or radio chatter."
"Just slow steady pulsing red light. We saw it, circled it a few times, made a note of the time and location we encountered it and my crew chief asked if I wouldn't mind getting the hell out of there. So we finished our transit and I made a note of everything in my debrief. I passed it up the chain of command but they basically wrote it off as some sort of visual phenomenon we had from a long day of flying in dry suits. It's always been hard to imagine our entire crew hallucinating the same thing."
Night Duty
"I was a sailor in the navy. While I was on lookout duty on the bridge at night, a dude walked and stood beside me, breathing hard. I was looking out at sea and I was blocking the stairs going down, so I turned around to whisper 'sorry,' and what do you know, there's no one. I was tired so I chalked this up to hallucination, but it felt real."
-- wolf-bot
Others discussed experiences driven by the very real, believable aspects of the ocean's whims and all the air does out there.
Sometimes, the natural world can terrify us--while it calms us too.
Sudden Stop
"The closest to supernatural or at least something I can't explain, happened half way between Cornwall and the Scillies. We were sailing in a fresh breeze, 5-6 ft. swells maybe. That's perfectly fine sailing weather but the boat will rock and there will be quite a bit of noise from the wind, the sails and waves."
"So we sail happy along when suddenly the sea is perfectly flat and every thing is quiet, like somebody turned the sound off. I look around and the water is pitch dark. It only lasted for a minute and then everything was back to normal but I got a really eerie feeling."
Interrupted Glass
"The ocean water was so still, it appeared that we were sailing on glass; not one ripple. I have never seen this again." -- TheLatty
"Experienced the same while traversing Makassar strait going to Surabaya, Indonesia."
"It was like sailing through a lake and the only ripple you can see was from the wake of the ship. Wished all the of the seas were the same haha." -- Gunner000
Pin Drop Tension
"Spent a lot of time sailing commercially in the Irish Sea, on night watch you are always acutely aware of everything around you due to the silence and darkness. Some of the sounds you hear are deeply unsettling."
"I remember on a perfectly still night just hearing a gentle knocking noise coming from what seemed like the outside of the hull at the waterline. No idea what it was but it freaked me out all shift."
-- Brockers55
Blurring Horizon
"I was standing in the hangar bay waiting for morning muster at dawn somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Looking out at the ocean, I was intrigued by how smooth as glass the water was reflecting the clouds in the sky. Then the most beautiful, confusing, mesmerizing, and terrifying thing I ever saw happened. The water, for a moment, was so smooth that the horizon disappeared from view."
"The water was so smooth and reflective that it was impossible to tell where the water ended and the sky began. I honestly got dizzy knowing I was in the middle of the ocean floating on water, but my eyes were trying to convince me the ship was floating on nothing. Then the water started slightly rippling and the horizon was visible again. Every morning at sea after that I looked at the horizon hoping it would happen again, but it never did. I've never found out what caused this scientifically. The closest thing I could ever find was it was some sort of variant of the fata morgana mirage."
"I don't think I will ever see anything as beautiful in my life ever again. Words fall extremely short at describing the feeling in that moment."
-- rosso222
So if you were ever thinking about signing up for an extended period of time sailing on the open water, make sure you're prepared to encounter some or all of these bizarre events.
You never know what might happen when you're out there.
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