Ourang Medan: Ghost Ship

**Discussion begins at 4:00**

Today, we are going to talk about the tale of the SS Ourang Medan.  This ghost ship was reportedly discovered adrift in the Strait of Malacca in the late 1940s. According to the story, various ships received a chilling distress message from the Ourang Medan stating that the entire crew was dead, followed by a final cryptic transmission: "I die." When rescuers eventually located the vessel, they found the crew's corpses scattered across the deck, their faces frozen in expressions of terror, with no visible signs of injury.  Efforts to tow the ship back to port reportedly failed. Before the vessel could be salvaged or investigated further, it allegedly exploded and sank without a trace. The cause of the crew's deaths and the subsequent destruction of the ship remain unexplained, fueling speculation. Theories have ranged from carbon monoxide poisoning and chemical weapons to paranormal phenomena or alien encounters.   Today we take a deep dive into the legend of the SS Ourang Medan,  one of the most eerie and enigmatic maritime mysteries ever told.

Transcript

The season of love.

Welcome to the season.

The season.

The second annual.

This is the, it only took one, two times for me to understand the pun of the whole name.

Last season, I didn't understand the season.

Took me a minute.

Here we are.

It's summer, it's hot.

Yep.

And we're talking, you know.

Oceanic creatures.

Summer, summer conspiracies.

Oceanic conspiracies.

But before we get into it, again, just a reminder that this is Kait's last week out.

Her last week battling Big Pharma.

Yes, but she will be back, you know, for the next five episodes.

She's ready.

Before we conclude our season.

Our season.

And the ticker summer break.

Yes.

As far as our drink check.

I'm ready at the.

This drink check's yummy.

Yeah, this is viral, but you hadn't seen it, you said, right?

No, I had no idea what you were making.

It's viral.

It's viral.

On the reels.

Well, on Instagram, which you tell me is several weeks.

Yes.

Yeah, I've never even saw it.

So we're having a water hazard, but it felt very summery, you know?

It's delicious.

Yes.

We had, it's just vodka with some blue Gatorade, a little splash of lemonade, a little splash.

I had to do a splash of 7Up because there was no sprite at the CVS.

It kind of tastes like what we would drink in high school.

In high school, I was thinking a little bit like something we would have drunk, we would have consumed out of a large cooler.

Oh, I was thinking like, a whole water bottle that we all spent $30 on.

You never brought your alcohol and water bottles?

Not like they're doing these days?

That's what I would do.

Yeah, but you didn't do that.

You weren't that hip.

No, no, no, no, not borgs, not borgs.

Like we would get Poland spring water bottles.

Okay.

With like vodka in it.

And that's what we would buy off somebody.

Oh, okay.

Yep.

So this is, oh, I was thinking, so yep, I was thinking this tasted like something that you might that might have been mass produced.

Yeah.

At a party in college.

Fetty Wap playing in the background.

What?

Fetty Wap playing in the background.

I don't know what Fetty Wap is.

Isn't it Fetty Wap?

1738, Heywood's Appello.

You don't know that guy?

I don't know what you know.

He only has one eye.

He's in jail right now.

Okay.

You don't know Fetty Wap?

Oh my God.

All right.

But you like this one, yeah?

Yeah, I do like this one.

It feels dangerous.

It doesn't taste like there's alcohol in it.

It also tastes hydrating.

It feels like we're hydrating.

We're drinking the Gatorade.

And then actually I left the lemonade on my kitchen counter.

So this is like an IV hydration.

Lemonade flavored IV hydration.

Yeah, we're like doubly hydrating.

Yeah, exactly.

We got our electrolytes on the max.

So we talked a lot last season about the undiscovered ocean and the mysteries of the ocean.

Our belief that that's where the aliens are right now.

Yeah, 100%.

And so we're going to have a couple more fun, interesting summer topics.

Colleen's back with us next week with the-

I got Megalodon coming up.

Megalodon.

But we're going to start the first one with kind of a strange ghost ship story.

Hoo hoo hoo, like SpongeBob.

So we're talking about the SS Ourang Medan.

Ourang Medan.

This was Megan before recording.

Ourang Medan.

Yeah, well, I was-

Wrang.

I Googled the pronunciation.

So this was a ghost ship.

It was reportedly discovered adrift in the Strait of Malacca in the late 1940s.

Where is Malacca?

Like what part, what continent are we on?

We're in Indonesia.

Indonesia.

Okay.

Kind of-

Okay.

That makes sense.

Near Malaysia, near where our MH370 story took place.

And so according to the story, various ships received a chilling distress message from the Ourang Medan stating that the entire crew was dead, followed by a final cryptic transmission, I die.

I died.

Yeah.

So this guy's like Collin for help.

He's like, everyone's dead.

He's like Collin for help.

And then finally he goes, I die.

Okay.

And that was the last radio message from the ship.

Okay.

When rescuers eventually located the vessel, they found the crew's corpses scattered across the deck, their faces frozen in expressions of tear with no visible signs of injury.

Efforts to tow the ship back to port reportedly failed.

Before the vessel could be salvaged or investigated further, it exploded and sank without a trace.

The cause of the crew's deaths and the subsequent destruction of the ship remain unexplained, fueling speculation.

Theories have ranged from carbon monoxide poisoning and chemical weapons to paranormal phenomena or alien encounters.

Oh my gosh.

Today, we take a deep dive into the legend of the SS Ourang Medan, one of the most eerie and enigmatic maritime mysteries ever told.

Oh my gosh.

Do you have thoughts on ghost ships?

Like do I believe they're all haunted?

Yeah.

What do you, just in general?

I feel like we talked last season about ghost ships.

I think when we talked about like the Bermuda Triangle and stuff.

Yeah.

I don't know if I have like too much knowledge to have an opinion.

I do feel like ghosts are real.

So I would feel like I would believe in a haunted ship.

When we talked about the Bermuda Triangle last year, we talked about, I gave a statistics.

It was kind of like, there's a lot of ghost ships.

A lot more than I realized.

Yeah.

But then I think we decided that most of those ghost ships were like people who just like couldn't pay the taxes or something.

They just let it out to sea.

And then claimed the insurance.

Yeah.

But again, this is supposed to be one of the most famous ghost ship stories.

Now, what's like, did you say this was it an Indonesian military ship?

Like, what was the?

I'm going to tell you about that.

Okay.

What's the details of that?

I'm going to tell you.

I'm having to record indoors in my prescription sunnies.

Funny.

Because I did not put contacts in this morning.

I keep thinking you're like locked in.

And I left my regular glasses in the car, which she's been watching TV with her sunglasses on this whole time.

I also could just gone back to my car and got them.

It's funny.

Anyway.

Okay.

So let's go back nearly 80 years to 1947.

Okay.

Southeast Asia has been recently liberated from the Japanese, but a cold war is on the horizon.

There's a multinational naval presence in the area, and Dutch merchant ships are the most common.

The Silver Star, an American vessel, intercepted a distress call from a Dutch steamship, the SS Ourang Medan.

An officer recalled, We were about 200 miles southwest of the Solomon Islands when we intercepted the following signal, SOS from the steamship Ourang Medan.

Beg ships with shortwave wireless get-touch doctor.

Urgent.

What?

With our shortwave set, we relayed the call for help.

Medical stations in Germany, Rome, and France replied, We informed the Ourang Medan and asked her to transmit her request.

The Ourang Medan replied, With its auxiliary transmitter, probable second officer dead.

Other members, crew also killed.

Disregard medical consultation.

SOS.

Urgent Assistance Warship.

I have a side note here.

What I learned in investigation, this story.

Do you know what SOS stands for?

Oh, I at one point I did, but I don't know now.

Okay, it stands for Save Our Ship.

Isn't it Save Our Soul?

Maybe you're right.

You're probably right.

Many people, now Google's telling me, many people believe SOS stands for Save Our Ship or Save Our Souls.

There we go.

But in reality, they do not stand for any specific words.

So it doesn't have any meaning?

Oh my gosh.

Well, that was my fun fact.

It's just such a media.

You're such a media.

Okay.

I just fact checked.

Fact check.

SOS stands for Nothing, guys.

Okay, whatever.

So anyway, back to this quote, I'm sorry, from this, from this, from this guy, American Vessel.

Okay.

At the end of the 16 hours, we sighted a big ship on the horizon.

It flew no flag, was listing slightly to the starboard and propeller motionless.

From our bridge, we could see it was the Ourang Medan.

We launched two lifeboats with eight men in each and rowed across the Ourang Medan and boarded her.

Bodies of sailors were lying about on the deck.

We could find no sign of a wound on any of them.

Death seemed to have taken them by surprise at their posts.

On the captain's bridge, we found the body of a second officer.

We counted 12 bodies, three of them deck officers, but we reckon the Ourang Medan should have had a crew of about 40.

The boarding party allegedly felt a cold, eerie drop in temperature as they ventured into the cabin where they found the radio operator dead in what appeared to be mid-transmission.

The captain ordered his crew to tow the boat back to port, but as the sailor secured it, a fire broke out on the Ourang Medan.

They literally cut ties to save themselves and the ship exploded and sank.

Oh my gosh.

Then 10 days later, a lifeboat washed up on the Marshall Islands.

Have you heard of them?

Yes.

We talked about the Marshall Islands when you talked about what really happened to Amelia Earhart.

That was your episode.

Yeah, I remember that.

What did you decide?

The crabs ate her?

Yeah.

Oh, I forgot about the huge crabs.

OK, so again, this lifeboat washed up on the Marshall Islands 10 days later with one survivor and six corpses.

The survivor, Jerry Rabbit, was discovered by a missionary.

Rabbit claimed he was recruited in Shanghai to work on a former Chinese steamer.

He claims that after leaving Shanghai, the vessel took on 15,000 crates of unknown cargo at various Chinese ports and was bound for Costa Rica.

He said that crew members began complaining of stomach aches and fatigue.

After one crew member died of a reported heart attack, Rabbit looked at the ship's logbook and found that they were transporting sulfuric acid, cyanide and nitroglycerin.

I wrote, why did the guy have an MI with so much nitroglycerin access?

I can't believe it's sublingual, buddy.

Why would he pop in that?

Anyway, he said he stole the logbook and escaped in a lifeboat with the six other men.

He died several days after telling his tale to the missionary.

Oh my God.

So that is, again, the extensive backstory.

Wait, he was on the ship?

Yes, Jerry Rabbit was on that ship.

Was on that ship.

Okay.

But he and a small cohort had fled when people were dropping dead.

Okay.

He grabbed the logbook and he washed ashore, and then this missionary found him and he told him the story.

And then he died.

Okay.

I'm with you now.

Okay.

What do you think about that official recount of what happened?

So they were all just dropping dead.

Yeah.

And so he ran away.

I feel like they probably had something like the plague or something.

What killed this whole boat full of people?

The plague?

Yeah.

Something like that.

I mean, arguably, the norovirus could have done it, you know?

That's a pretty ugly norovirus to take out that whole ship of potentially 40 people.

I don't know.

Okay.

My initial thought is some type of bacteria, viral disease.

Okay.

So you're not even thinking really of anything conspiracy.

No, not initially.

I'd be like, okay, why would people be dropping dead on an isolated ship?

Well, what would kill a guy who's literally transmitting the radio and then he just says, I die?

Well, and then he dies.

Is he speaking another language?

No, they're...

Oh, it's Morse code.

And that's the...

So Morse code is the same no matter where you are.

Is Morse code only translated to English?

I've never thought about it.

Yeah.

No, Morse code is not...

Morse code is just the letters.

So I guess you would have...

I guess it would be a different...

Like, French Morse code in French is not gonna be the same.

Same in English.

Yeah.

Like, are we having just a translation issue?

Oh, but I just feel like something...

I'm thinking very literal.

I'm just thinking a guy is operating the radio and like...

I dead.

Dies at the...

I died.

Yeah.

Maybe he meant, I'm dying.

Well, initially he said, send help, and then he said cancel the help, everyone's dead.

And then he said, I'm dying.

Oh my God.

And what was the time between each thing?

I mean, it sounds like this, him asking help, and then them, they reached out to other people, they looped in, it sounds like probably not very much time.

Okay.

Okay.

I don't know.

What do you think?

Well, let me tell you about some of the conspiracy theories.

Okay.

Yeah.

Let me hear the theories.

Cause I don't know if I could think of one besides being literal.

Okay.

So I told you that Jerry Rabbit looked in the ship's logbook and found that they were transporting sulfuric acid, cyanide, and nitroglycerin.

Oh, were they getting cyanide poisoning?

So was the ship-

I forgot about that.

Yeah.

Was the ship transporting agents or other toxic substances left over from World War II?

Did seawater enter the ship's hole due to poor weather conditions or lack of maintenance reacting with the cargo to release toxic gases?

And that could potentially be why when they were towing the boat in, there was an explosion.

Oh.

So what are these substances?

Well, cyanide.

I don't know that.

Let's start with nitroglycerin.

Okay.

It's highly explosive.

It's used in dynamite.

Oh, I didn't know.

It is very sensitive to heat shock and friction and has very strict transportation protocols.

No sunlight.

Sulfuric acid is extremely corrosive and so adding water would cause it to boil due to intense heat released.

The vapors can damage your respiratory tract, can release a flammable hydrogen gas when it comes in to contact with metal, and hydrogen can asphyxiate a person in an enclosed space.

It is extremely flammable and explosive as well.

And then we have cyanide, which we know inhaling cyanide can lead to death within minutes.

It starts with a headache, confusion, nausea, vomiting, seizures, loss of consciousness, cardiac arrest.

So I guess we don't know though, when they found these people, were they covered in a rash?

Were they covered in vomit?

I don't know.

So World War II had recently ended.

Unit 731 was a unit of Japanese scientists, which conducted dangerous experiments on American, British and Australian POWs.

This included making dangerous biological and chemical weapons to help Japan eliminate its enemies.

So this theory is that the experiments and biological weapons from Unit 731 were secretly sent from country to country.

And so was that what these people were moving?

Because again, Jerry Rabbit said he was just like picked up and offered this job with no background check or anything.

They were in Japan, Shanghai, and they were just like, you want a job?

Hop on this boat.

And then another theory is that the boilers had maybe malfunctioned or they just had like improper ventilation systems, which commonly happens in poorly maintained ships.

So that could have led to maybe carbon monoxide poisoning.

Did you say carbon monoxide poisoning?

It's cyanide poisoning.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because you were kind of all over carbon monoxide on our hikers.

Oh, I forgot about that.

In the tent, which is what I think Carrie also said.

Was there no ventilation?

Yeah.

Oh, if there was a fire.

I don't know.

So that's kind of what they're saying here is maybe it was carbon monoxide poisoning again, which again, carbon monoxide is a clear, a colorless, odorless gas would have killed the crew quickly without any visible signs of trauma, which kind of aligns with the condition in which the bodies were reportedly found.

But again, this is like famously a peaceful way to go.

Like you just fall asleep sort of, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think.

Yeah.

Peaceful way to go.

Just fall asleep.

And so these people who are found like in screaming positions or suffering positions, that might not be accurate.

But for cyanide poisoning though, because that's when you're in pain and you feel like you're suffocating, right?

Too.

I think I'm leaning towards some type of poisoning theory.

Okay.

There's also, it could also be piracy.

Could pirates have kind of come on board and done this.

But again, no evidence of trauma.

No.

And I feel like the guy doing the code would have been like pirates, mayday pirates.

Or SOS because they're not an airplane.

But yeah.

And they're not like.

You're right.

Not like what's going on, why are people dropping dead?

Would have been like, yeah, we're under attack.

Yeah, exactly.

I hear you.

That is very valid.

So we can take pirates off the list.

Yeah.

Get that out of here.

Then we have something paranormal.

Oh, hold on.

I'm listening.

Was this supernatural or extraterrestrial?

This comes from the fact that of the kind of those weird messages, the weird mysterious messages and the kind of unnatural postures of the bodies that were found.

And again, where do we decide all the aliens are?

Underwater.

Underwater.

Yep.

Particularly to...

We're talking where the trenches are.

Yeah.

And isn't there a trench over there?

Yeah.

Hold on.

Hold on.

Hold on.

Hold on.

Was it aliens?

I don't know.

Can't close that door.

Was it octopi?

Who could be aliens?

You know?

We'll talk about that later in the season, not in this episode.

I was like, wait a second.

No, we're doing, isn't Kait doing octopi?

I think so, yeah.

Yeah, Kait will tell us all about the octopi guy who may be aliens.

I'm about to provide another option.

Okay, here we go.

That's going to be anticlimactic.

Oh no.

This famous story the Redditors have been looking into, the TikTokers and Instagrammers have been researching.

The ship story.

These rabbit holes people have been going down.

Is this all just a maritime myth?

It's made up.

I hate to throw, I'm going to throw this back to our most popular episode.

Gabriella Rico Jimenez, the model murdered in Mexico by the Illuminati.

Is made up.

If you haven't listened to that episode, it's an earlier episode.

So we can't-

For some reason, it's our most popular episode.

We can't vouch on the sound quality.

But we might have gone viral in another country or something.

We did do a deep dive on that one and debunked a lot of it.

So kind of in a similar way, this whole myth, this whole ghost ship that is the most famous ghost ship of all time, is made up.

Might just be an elaborate myth.

Well, how do we have proof proof for that?

Well, let me tell you.

So the first newspaper account of this story reportedly appeared in 1940 in Britain.

1940.

Okay.

Did not make its way to the US until 1948, when the story of the Ourang Medan was printed in reputable publications like the San Francisco Examiner.

Okay.

So we have like legitimate newspapers on different continents telling the same story of the Ourang Medan.

Eight years apart.

Oh my God.

Why did the stories emerge?

Years apart and what caused many of the details and then to differ so drastically.

There was another record of the story that came out in the 1952 edition of the US Journal Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council.

And in this story, it said, quote, Perhaps one of the most perturbing sea dramas occurred in February 1948.

Radio silence was broken with urgent SOS from the SS Ourang Medan, a Dutch vessel, then proceeding through the Straits of Malacca.

A strange, the strange distress call transmitted in Morse code, eerily read SOS Ourang Medan.

We float, all officers, including the captain, dead in chat room and on the bridge.

Probably whole of crew dead.

A few confused dots and dashes later, two words came through clearly.

They were, I die.

Then nothing more.

Oh my God.

Later, the Ourang Medan was found adrift approximately 50 miles from her indicated position.

When the vessel, which had stumbled across her, sent a boat over to investigate the sailors swarming aboard the Ourang Medan, found a sight seldom seen.

There wasn't a living person or creature on board.

There were dead men everywhere.

Bodies were strewn from the decks, in the passageways, in the charred house and on the bridge.

Sprout on their backs, the frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouths gaping open and eyes staring.

The dead bodies resembled horrible characters.

Even the ship's dog was found dead.

Oh my God.

Yet the body seemed to bear no sign of injury or wounds.

This is again, just saying that we have like a 1940 story, a 1948 story, a 1952 story.

So it's somebody, it's like a repeating social story.

We have before social media.

Yeah.

So we have 1940 reports in the November 21st edition of the Yorkshire Evening Post and the November 22nd edition of the Daily Mirror, which both cite AP as their source.

And then there's a French publication that ran a story in September of 1941.

We have reports from 1947, the February 1948 reports in this Dutch-Indonesian trade magazine.

So the year doesn't line up.

That makes it kind of suspicious.

I don't know about this.

According to Lloyd's Register of Ships, which has kept a record of every merchant ship since 1764, no ship by the name of the SS Ourang Medan was ever documented.

And there are no official INDA reports about the ship sinking.

No shipyard claimed to have built her, and there's no log of her being harbored in any port.

Okay, so that makes it sound like the ship never existed, right?

We have no official record.

Although, you know what, we also know, though you didn't watch the Submersible documentary.

No.

The Submersible, the Titanic Submersibles also never were registered.

Anyway.

But I guess also you could argue, if this ship was really transporting chemical warfare for the Japanese, why would it be?

It wouldn't, you know, there wouldn't be evidence all over the place.

This would be a secret mission.

Yeah, they'd be swiping this.

Yes.

Well, also, if this was all myth, why would they make this story up?

And so they're saying, again, is that why the ship had to disappear?

Because when they found it and they were towing it in, they realized it was...

Yeah, I mean, someone's trying to cover something up, right?

So is that why she disappeared?

It was just up to no good.

They also talk about how a lot of these sources talk about how you could change your ship name mid-trip also, you know?

You could do that.

It's bad luck to change the name, though.

Is it?

Yeah.

It leads to shipwrecks.

It's like a thing.

You don't change the name.

Oh, because then you're cursed?

Yeah.

Well, you know which other ship never existed?

What?

The Silver Star.

The alleged United States ship, which got this distress call and sent them help and found the ships.

The Silver Star, I guess, let me, to clarify, the Silver Star was a United States ship.

Okay.

But, but was not there.

It did not exist.

Or it was not named the Silver Star during this period when this allegedly happened.

So it just doesn't line up that this American ship, the S, the Silver Star was out in the, you know, in Indonesia, I'm with you, you know, and coming to the rescue of this ship.

Also, we have no one who has ever come forward from the Silver Star.

Talking about it.

This day, when I was there, I was on this rescue mission.

It's very interesting.

The wreckage of the ship has never been found.

Although you know what?

That alone is not proof proof to me because we talk about the absurd depths of the ocean that is unexplored.

Because the ocean just eat stuff.

It took hell never find anything.

Took how long for them to find the Titanic?

We're still searching for MH370.

We still haven't found what happened to Amelia Earhart in this area, you know?

We'll never know.

Or the aliens are cleaning it up too fast.

Yeah, maybe that.

So I think the wreckage has never been found, but that alone is not proof this to me.

Yeah.

I told you that Jerry Rabbit stole the log book when he fled, was the only person who made it to shore.

Everyone else on his little lifeboat was dead.

And that he found a, what I say, a person who's like a religious person who's trying to recruit you.

Jehovah Witness?

Not, more of a missionary.

He found a missionary.

So I told you that this missionary found him on the beach and he told his story and he had this log book, but then he also suddenly died.

But even if he was dead, we would have this log book.

Yeah.

And where is this log book?

Where is the proof proof?

This is all fake.

Yeah.

We have the locations listed of these various stories.

In some of the versions of the story, the location was listed in Solomon Islands, and some it was in the Marshall Islands, some it was the Strait of Malacca.

And so these are actually relatively far apart, thousands of miles apart, thousands of miles apart.

Also, Morse code.

Apparently, if he had really written, if he really coded out everything that he allegedly said, it would have been like very tedious and time consuming, especially for such like urgency, right?

So people are like, you probably would have said like SOS, Captain Dead.

You keep it small.

Yeah, SOS, Captain Dead, help.

Like something, yeah.

You probably would have said, all officers, including the Captain Dead in chart room and on the bridge, probably whole of crew dead.

Too wordy.

Like this is exactly too wordy.

So people are like, that's probably not, you know, but anyone who has experience with Morse code, you know, you let us know.

We know anybody with experience with Morse code.

What an odd talent to have.

I don't know.

I'm with you.

Pretty much what this comes down to is we have this one man, Silvio Shirley, and he...

He sounds fake.

Yeah.

Well, he's the, I think he's real, but is his story real?

When we go back to try to figure out where, who started this story, right?

Okay.

We have this author, Silvio Shirley.

He's the writer of the very first version of the story in the 1940s.

Okay.

And if we go back to all these other versions of the story that came out after all of those articles cite Silvio Shirley as like a source.

So pretty much what we're thinking is this, he wrote, or like he told this one story in the 1940s and everyone has just been kind of like re copy pasting.

Exactly.

Interesting.

So he, he gave all of these initial details about what happened in the story, but he, no one has ever like verified his version of events.

Obviously, when you like go back to these earlier articles, you know, almost a hundred years ago, nobody's fact check.

No one really fact check it.

I think it just kept getting kind of re published.

So, but, but why someone would, you know, eight years later, republish the same story.

That's kind of and claiming it's a new event.

What was going on?

Eight years later, World War II years.

Well, I mean, World War II is like 1939 to 1945.

Yeah.

I mean, 1940, that's like 1940.

His original story is kind of prime prime time.

And so maybe as part of this, just like instilling fear in people as part of this, just like the panic.

But why was the story getting retold in 1948?

I mean, where we wasn't the war over by then.

It was.

I mean, I guess then you're going into the Cold War.

Okay.

And then it's repeated again in the 50s.

What do you say?

Yep.

1952.

So I'm on board with this guy just told a tall tale and...

It just got out of hand.

And yeah, reporters just never fact-checked him.

And they just thought like, here's an interesting...

I mean, the idea of people, it's like a nice paranormal ghost mystery, right?

And the idea that people were just like, scream, you know, frozen to death in screaming positions.

That's very creepy, right?

Yeah.

And like these weird transmissions, and then the fact that the boat blew up so no one could ever investigate.

I mean, it sounds like an interesting story, an interesting tale, right?

Right.

But I think probably not real.

You agree?

Correct.

Yeah.

I'm like, I mean, if it was real, I don't think it's anything mysterious.

I think they just poisoned themselves by accident, but it's sounding more like it's just a story that got out of hand, like fake news.

Yeah.

So I guess we've debunked this conspiracy theory.

Fake news from the 1940s.

Yeah.

Again, what I am learning also on this podcast is that nothing has changed, you know?

Yeah.

It's always, it's all the same.

Don't trust the government.

Don't trust the press.

Follow the money.

Yeah.

It's like kind of a let down, I guess that like all of this is likely not even real, but I do love debunking viral TikToks, you know?

That's a little bit more fun, but I'm more interested in this man.

This is viral TikTok.

This started as a viral TikTok, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, it did.

I'm interested in Silvio, but I don't think we have enough on him.

Apparently also, like every time he retold this story, like it got a little bit more.

Exaggerated.

Dramatic.

Oh, he was lying through the skin of his teeth.

So very first story of the season, debunked hoax.

Gone.

But I think there probably are other interesting ghost, ghost ship stories out there, but this one, the most famous one.

Not real.

Not real.

It's going to make me question all the ones that follow.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we'll be back next week with a more interesting story.

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That's the number 3 SchemeQueens, all one word.

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Take over for Kait.

What should the people do?

Pause right now.

Send this video to at least two people that you know that like boats, into boats, riding boats, looking at boats, drawing boats, anything to do with boats.

And send this to them.

And then when you're done with that, go ahead and scroll on down.

Give us a five star review.

Like, follow.

I thought you were going to say like, fishing boats, or pontoon boats, griffin boats, lobster boats, tug o boats, pole boats, ski boats, skeetabug boats.

Yeah.

All right.

Share with a friend.

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Keep listening.

Boats and hands.

Otherwise, we'll see you next Tuesday.