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The Haunted Grove
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We craft immersive scary stories that blur the line between reality and nightmare, perfect for late-night listening or satisfying your Creepypasta cravings. Our growing collection features everything from subtle psychological horror to full-blown supernatural encounters.
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The Haunted Grove
I Boarded The S.S. Ourang Medan...I Wish I Hadn't
Some horrors are meant to stay buried at sea...and some distress signals are better left unanswered. This is the story of when I boarded the S.S. Ourang Medan.
When the Silver Star received a cryptic distress call—"All officers dead, possibly whole crew dead...I die"—they had no choice but to investigate. What they discovered defies rational explanation: an entire crew frozen in postures of extreme terror, their faces locked in silent screams, without a single wound or sign of struggle. But the most disturbing detail? The unnatural cold emanating from the corpses themselves, "as if something had drawn all the heat out and left nothing behind."
The deeper they ventured into the silent vessel, the more disturbing the mystery became. A half-finished letter abruptly ending with "it's coming from below." Strange crystalline residue coating surfaces in the cargo hold. Glass canisters leaking unknown substances. And most chilling of all—rhythmic tapping sounds from beneath a warped deck plate, as if something was trying to force its way through the steel.
Before they could uncover the truth, the Orang Medan erupted in flames that moved with unnatural purpose, sending the ghost ship and its secrets to the ocean floor. Though officials wrote sterile reports of a derelict vessel lost at sea, rumors spread—chemical weapons, nerve gas, government cover-ups. But those who were there know the sea sometimes keeps horrors we're not meant to comprehend.
Join us for this bone-chilling firsthand account that will make you question what truly lurks in the ocean's depths. And remember, some distress signals are better left unanswered. Subscribe now for more immersive tales that will keep you awake long after the episode ends.
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I never told anybody the full story until now. Even as I speak these words, I can feel that old hesitation clawing at me, telling me to keep quiet like we all agreed to that day. We thought burying it would keep us safe. Maybe it has, or maybe it's just been waiting. This isn't just another ghost story. Ships like the Orang Medan aren't supposed to exist, but I was there when she died and I can tell you this whatever killed her crew, it came from below. I'd spent most of my life at sea and the Silver Star was just another ship for me to crew.
Speaker 1:That morning had been ordinary, in a way that only the sea can be. Everything polished by the sun and the salt until it felt like a repetition of a repetition. The lines were perfectly coiled and the paint was blistering in the same places it always blistered and the galley turned out bread that tasted faintly of diesel and memories. We were three days into a run that promised nothing more than heat, boredom and card games that ended in the same arguments. I was checking a stubborn length of hose on the foredeck when the first burst of code crackled through the bulkhead speaker. Just a static cough, a hiccup it was the kind of noise you stop paying attention to. After your first season I didn't even look up until Pike, our radio man, stuck his head out of the shack like a mole in those old arcade games. Skipper. He called, not loud but sharp. The word snapped hot in the air. Captain Rojas was only a few paces away, making his slow rounds with a chipped mug in his hand. He didn't even break stride, he just turned and angled for the radio room, his eyes narrowing the way they did when a squall line approached out of nowhere. I trailed after him without even thinking, wiping my palms on my coveralls. The radio room felt colder than the deck it always did, the way sealed spaces do when the sun is hammering down outside.
Speaker 1:The radio receiver hissed a long needling breath. Pike's pencil had scored a dull groove across the paper by his elbow. Dots and dashes scribbled in ragged lines Morse code. He didn't even look at us. He was listening to the incoming transmission with his whole body, his head cocked and his eyes unfocused, like a man straining to hear his name across a crowded hall. Repeat, he murmured to no one. Repeat, repeat.
Speaker 1:Another burst came through, sounding like a cough again, and then a run of clean signal, delicately quiet, brittle even. He wrote fast, pencil jittering, and at the end of the transmission he stopped, almost frozen in place, with a look of horror plastered on his face. Well then, what did it say? Captain Rojas barked in a soft but demanding way. Pike looked around the room at us as if he was choosing his next words carefully. He took a deep breath and read aloud what was on the paper. All officers, including Captain, dead, lying in chart room and on bridge, possibly whole crew dead.
Speaker 1:No one spoke. You could hear the minute hand on the wall clock stagger forward. The deck pitched beneath my boots in a swell, so lazy it felt like a breath. The next line came slower, as if the words were stuck in his throat. Pike swallowed hard and managed to eke out the last two words on the transmission I die. Pike set the pencil down so gently it didn't make a sound when it touched the desk.
Speaker 1:Source, rojas asked. Pike shook his head once subtly, as if he didn't want the motion to disturb whatever fragile thread of signal remained unknown. It's not tagged and there's no call sign. It's off. I can get you a bearing, maybe? He said. The captain's face did nothing. Get it? He said in a low, barely audible tone. Pike put a hand to the loop antenna, turning the dial in increments that sounded like teeth clicking. The speaker's hiss shifted in pitch. It widened and narrowed. He? He spun the loop again, slower this time, and the noise sharpened like a wire drawn tight North Northwest. He said, standing by for repeat if they have anything left.
Speaker 1:We stood there listening to the absence. It felt like being held just underwater, ears full and lungs hot. The world, a muffled, humming pressure that could crush you if it wanted. I realized I'd braced one hand on the doorjamb, my fingers dug into the paint until they hurt. Could be a trap. Jory muttered behind me.
Speaker 1:He was our bosun, a man who had been everywhere that had a dock long before he had a passport. His voice had the sandpaper scrape of a chain dragging across concrete Pirates. Fake maydays. All the time he said They'll pull you in and cut you to the bone. Ro Mayday's. All the time. He said They'll pull you in and cut you to the bone.
Speaker 1:Rojas didn't look back. We don't ignore it. He said the code came again, but there was no translation needed. We all knew what it said A latitude and longitude floated up through the static Numbers, like a prayer recited in a fever Pike wrote them down, read them back and asked for confirmation. That would never arrive. He desperately tried to get some feedback from whoever sent the transmission, adjusted the set, coaxed and pleaded but nothing more came. That puts them just out from the Malacca Strait, he said. Finally, his pencil hovering 22 miles, maybe less. The bearing matches Set the course 2-7-0, the captain said already, moving Quarter ahead, called the engine room.
Speaker 1:I want all hands on deck medical kit ready and get our crowbars on the lines. We go in smart. A low grumble went through the ship like an animal. Rousing Orders, traveled in a conveyor of short sentences and habit. As we turned, the bow adjusted as if embarrassed by how easily it could be made to point in another direction Somewhere below Delaney cursed at a valve that always chose the worst moment to stick, and then the engine settled into a throbbing agreement with our new intent Get the boarding kit, jory told me, grapples, axes and flares just in case, and a couple of masks. He said it like a joke but he didn't smile.
Speaker 1:We worked while the ship chewed up the miles. The gear came out of storage in thumps and clanks as it landed on the deck. Canvas straps creaked as the first aid chest yawned open, exposing bandages lined up like bleached ribs and morphine ampoules twinkling in the sunlight. I found an old wooden case with our rebreathers in it. They smelled like the inside of a rubber glove and last year's oil change. Do you think they're all dead? Benny asked. He was the youngest deckhand, two months into his first contract and still moving, like the deck might vanish under him at any moment. I think we're gonna go look and then we're gonna know. I said, but I wished I hadn't. We passed a fishing trawler so far off our starboard. It looked like a toy boat, left in a bath. It didn't alter course. Maybe it didn't hear the call, or maybe it did and preferred to catch fish over ghosts.
Speaker 1:Back in the radio room, pike worked the set like a man trying to tune a dream. All he got was scraps, echoes of chatter on distant channels, a weather report from a coastal station and once a bark of something that might have been a human voice or just the radio deciding to make its own speech. Each time his face would lift hopeful, but then it would flatten. Any name, rojas asked. Pike hesitated and then pointed to the paper where he'd written the coordinates In small letters. In the margin he'd scribbled unknown. Could be a derelict, jory said. Appearing in the doorway with a coil of line over his shoulder Could be a prank, could be some naval boys playing chicken, or it could be nothing. It's something I said, but I didn't know why I felt so sure.
Speaker 1:The captain lifted the chart from the table, folding it in half and tucked it under his arm. We'll see it soon enough. He said. Keep your eyes open. Nobody plays hero. We board it if it's safe and we leave if it isn't. He looked at each of us in turn. His gaze wasn't a threat, but it wasn't a comfort either.
Speaker 1:We reached the coordinates in less than an hour. There was nothing there but water, but then a smudge on the horizon to the northwest resolved into a darker smudge and then into a line, and the line into a hull, cutting the horizon at an angle that made my stomach tighten. She was listing just enough to look like a hand, frozen in place, raised for help. There were no flags, no answering call, just a shape the color of an old bruise against the sky, dead ahead. The lookout called, though we could all see it. Steady Rojas said quietly I felt the same something pass along the deck that had passed through the radio room, the ship taking a breath it didn't want to take. We adjusted the course. Another tick, the smudge became a ship with a name we couldn't read yet and a silence so complete it seemed to extend beyond her steel and into the air itself.
Speaker 1:Pike tried one last time Unknown vessel, at latitude. He gave the numbers. This is the Silver Star. Do you copy? Do you require assistance? The only answer was the receiver's hiss, thin and steady, like someone shushing us from very far away. From a distance, she could have been any rust-bellied freighter caught between ports too long, but up close something was wrong. The ship sat heavy in the water. Her bow angled just enough to feel unbalanced like a chair with one short leg. The sun was high, but her steel looked cold, shadows clinging to the seams and the rivets as if the light was trying to avoid her.
Speaker 1:We drifted closer on the captain's orders. Our engines throttled down until they were barely more than a pulse beneath our feet. No radio call and no waving hands on deck. No movement at all behind the glass of the bridge. She didn't even rock with the swell. It was as though the sea had decided to hold her in place. The winds died. Jory muttered behind me. He was right. It wasn't just calmer, it was still my shirt, which had been plastered to my back all morning, loosened against my skin. The air felt heavier, the kind you breathe in slow, without realizing it.
Speaker 1:Benny leaned over the rail, squinting at her hull. Looks like no one's been topside in weeks. He said there's no footprints in the dust. Wait, what is what's that? The captain cut him off Eyes on your station. It was habit for Rojas to keep the chatter tight during approach, but the way his voice clipped the words felt different.
Speaker 1:This time we eased into her shadow. The change in temperature was immediate. It was cool and damp. My nose caught a sharp scent that didn't belong to the ocean. It was something acrid and chemical. Just my nose caught a sharp scent that didn't belong to the ocean. It was something acrid and chemical, just faint enough to ignore if you wanted to. Pike leaned out of the radio room and shook his head. Still nothing. If they're transmitting, it's not to us. Maybe they switched off after the call, benny said, or maybe there's no one left to switch anything? Jory replied. The captain's gaze stayed fixed on the freighter. We'll find out soon enough.
Speaker 1:From this, close details began to emerge. The paint on her hull had bubbled in irregular patches, possibly from the heat. One lifeboat was gone. Its davits hung empty, but the release ropes were frayed, not cut, clean. The letters on her stern had once been white but were now dulled to a bone gray, flecked with rust Through the haze of salt and sun. I could just make out the name Orang Medan. It meant nothing to me at the time. Later I learned it was J'for man from Medan, but in that moment it just sounded unfinished Lines ready. Jory called.
Speaker 1:We drew alongside the ship, scraping softly against her steel. I was close enough now to see the streaks along the hull where something dark had run down from the deck. At first I thought it was rust. Then I saw it had dried in thin, irregular patterns, more like something spilled and left to bake. A sound carried down from above a faint metallic clink like a loose fitting tapping against steel in a slow breeze. But there was no breeze Could be the mast, benny said, though his voice had gone small. We matched her speed, meaning we were dead still in the water. The sea slapped lazily at our hulls and every sound seemed amplified. I could hear the faint groan of her superstructure, the low thrum of our engines idling and even the soft creak of my own harness straps when I shifted my weight. I glanced up at her bridge and for a moment I thought I saw something, a dark shape passing behind the glass. My pulse kicked up, but when I blinked it was gone. You see that? I asked Jory quietly. He shook his head, eyes fixed on the rail above. Doesn't matter, we go in like planned. He shook his head, eyes fixed on the rail above. Doesn't matter, we go in like planned.
Speaker 1:The captain gave the order to hold position. Grappling lines swung and hooks scraping against her deck. Before catching we drew the boarding ladder up from the Silver Star's rail until it clinked against the Medan's side. Prepare to board, the captain said. I checked my mask, checked Jory's and watched him check mine with a quick squeeze of the strap. That somehow felt like a handshake in church. Benny swallowed and made his face a map of blank courage. We looked up at her dead portholes, her rust like dried blood in the seams and waited for a flag to move or a line to shiver or a bird to land. But nothing On my mark. Rojas said his voice even Go.
Speaker 1:The moment before my boots hit her steel, I noticed something else. The water between our ships looked different. It was darker, almost oily, though I couldn't see a spill. The smell was stronger now, metallic and chemical, and underneath it something sour like fruit left to rot in the sun. Jory was first up the ladder. I followed, feeling the heat of the sun vanish with each rung, until the shadow swallowed me completely. By the time my hands gripped the top rail, my skin was prickling, not from the temperature but from the quiet.
Speaker 1:I pulled myself onto the deck of the Orang Medan. The steel was cold under my boots, too cold. And that's when I saw the first body. The deck of the Orang Medan was coated in a thin film of grit body. The deck of the Orang Medan was coated in a thin film of grit made of salt, crystals, rust, dust and maybe ash. It crunched under my boots, making every step sound like it carried twice the weight it should.
Speaker 1:Jory had already unhooked his safety line and was scanning the expanse toward the bow. His stance had changed. He wasn't standing like a man boarding an abandoned vessel anymore. He was standing like a man in a place where he shouldn't be. Jesus, he muttered. I followed his gaze.
Speaker 1:The first body was lying on its back near the starboard rail, arms bent at odd angles, as if thrown there by force. The man's face was wrong. His eyes were wide, the whites clouded and the pupils filmed over with a dull gray. His mouth gaped open and his lips were drawn tight, as though frozen in mid-scream. I'd seen men die before Drowning, impact and even disease, but nothing had ever left a face like that. The skin was pale, not blood-drained pale, but ashen, almost bluish, and stretched taut over the bones. There were no visible wounds and no blood.
Speaker 1:We moved towards the wheelhouse, more bodies. One slumped against the wall beside the companionway door, head tilted back, so far it looked broken. Another lay face down, one arm extended towards the bridge ladder as if he was trying to climb it when death had stopped him cold. None of them showed signs of a struggle. There was no overturned gear, no torn clothing. It was as though death had passed over the ship in a single silent sweep, catching each man exactly where he stood.
Speaker 1:The smell deepened the farther we went. The metallic tang was strongest here, laced with something sharp and chemical and beneath it a faint, rotting sweetness. It made the back of my throat itch. I knelt beside one of the bodies, just close enough to study the details. The man's hands were curled into loose fists, fingers rigid. His nails were blackened, almost as if burned. I reached for his collar to check for identification, but the instant my glove brushed his shirt I felt a chill. It wasn't the coolness of a corpse that had been laying in the shade, it was deeper a cold that seemed to live inside the flesh, as if something had drawn all the heat out and left nothing behind. Jory noticed the way I froze Cold, he asked. Colder than it should be, I said.
Speaker 1:The wheelhouse door hung ajar. Inside the captain of the Orang Medan sat in a chair against the far wall, binoculars clutched in his stiff fingers. His head was turned towards the window, eyes fixed on some point beyond the horizon. The officer beside him was half-collapsed over the chart table, mouth frozen open wide enough that the tendons in his jaw stood out like cords. The chart beneath him was smeared with pencil marks, loops and notes scrawled all over latitude lines. But I couldn't focus on that. My eyes kept going back to their faces. They weren't just afraid, they looked like they had seen something.
Speaker 1:Benny had come up behind us, his boots scuffing against the steps. The moment he crossed the threshold he swore softly under his breath what the hell happened to them. Nobody answered. The air in the wheelhouse was heavier, as though it hadn't moved in days. I could hear the faint hum of the Silver Star's engine from across the water, and it struck me then. The Orang Medan had no sound of her own, no engine thrum, no groan of shifting steel. Even the flag's halyards were still. Pike's voice crackled through, the portable radio clipped to Jory's harness Anything. Jory pressed the transmission button. Bodies all over, no signs of life, looks like the whole crew. There was a pause. How Jory's eyes swept the room and then met mine, we don't know yet.
Speaker 1:We left the wheelhouse and moved aft. The mess hall door had been left open, chairs pushed back from the tables as if the men had stood up. Mid-meal Plates sat where they'd been left, scraps of food dried and curled at the edges. The flies should have been thick by now, but there weren't any. A fork lay on the floor beside a body slumped over the table. His mouth hung open, his face locked in the same expression as the others, one hand clutching the edge of the table so tightly that the skin on his knuckles split.
Speaker 1:The farther we went, the colder the air seemed to get. My breath didn't quite fog, but it felt close and that smell, that chemical sting layered over rot, clung to everything. When we reached the entrance to the engine room, jory stopped dead. The hatch was open but a haze lingered just inside, not smoke exactly, something more like a shimmer, as though the air itself was bending. Keep your masks ready, he said quietly. Something's off down here. I couldn't shake the feeling that the ship was watching us. Every porthole felt like an eye and every dark corridor like a mouth, and we hadn't even seen the worst of it yet. The engine room hatch yawned below us, breathing out that metallic stench in slow, invisible waves. My mask slung ready around my neck and the smell clung to my sinuses like it was trying to set roots.
Speaker 1:Jory went in first, one hand on the ladder, his flashlight beam slicing into the gloom. I followed Benny bringing up the rear. The light caught motes of dust or something like dust, turning lazily in the still air. The walls were damp, not with condensation, whatever. It was felt tacky like oil or residue from something, but was never cleaned up. Halfway down the temperature dropped again, not the gradual cool of descending into the lower decks, but a sudden shift, like walking through an invisible curtain. My fingertips prickled through my gloves.
Speaker 1:The engine room was as silent as the rest of the ship, but the silence here felt heavier. The engines themselves stood cold and lifeless. Their surfaces streaked with rust and odd patterns, almost like handprints. Two more bodies were waiting for us there. One was the engineer, sprawled on his side beside the main control panel, arms outstretched as if he'd been reaching for a switch. When something stopped him, his other hand clutched a wrench so tightly that I had to pry his fingers open to see the skin beneath, frosted white, as though he'd been holding onto ice. The second body was younger, maybe an apprentice. He was half under a workbench, eyes locked on the gap between two bulkheads. His expression was different from the others. It was not a scream, not a fear exactly, but a kind of fixed, awful focus. What the hell was he looking at? Benny asked Nothing. Now Jory said, though his voice was tight.
Speaker 1:We moved through the rest of the engine room, checking gauges, valves and dials, anything that might hint at what happened here. Their readings were frozen in strange positions, as if they'd been locked mid-function. There was no sign of sabotage and no obvious damage. It was Benny who noticed a small trail of black marks on the deck plates leading towards the cargo hold. They weren't spills, exactly More like drips, spaced irregularly, each with a faint scorched ring around it Oil, he guessed. I crouched and touched it with one gloved finger. It wasn't wet, but it left a faint black smear on the fabric and the smell was strong, sharp and almost sweet. We followed the trail.
Speaker 1:The crew quarters were next. Narrow bunks lined each side of the passage, thin mattresses sagging under the weight of still forms. Some of the dead lay curled under their blankets like they died in their sleep. Others sat upright against the bulkheads, eyes fixed on nothing. There were no signs of a struggle. There was no overturned furniture and no signs that they'd even tried to escape. It's as if whatever had killed them had done it without sound and without even a warning.
Speaker 1:In one cabin a half-finished letter sat on a desk, the pencil still resting across the page. The writing was in Dutch. It was neat and deliberate, ending abruptly mid-sentence. The last few words translated roughly to it's coming from below. Benny read it twice and then set it down with exaggerated care, as if the paper itself might burn him. We pressed on. The deeper we went, the more I felt the air changing. It was not just colder now, but denser, like it was resisting us. My flashlight beam seemed to fade faster here, swallowed by the shadows, before it should.
Speaker 1:At the base of the next companionway we found another door. Stenciled across it in faded black letters, were the words Cargo, hold, authorized Personnel. Only the trail of black marks ended here. Jory tried the handle. It turned, but the door wouldn't open more than an inch. Something heavy blocked it from the other side. He leaned into it grunting, and after a long moment it gave way with a groan from the steel hinges.
Speaker 1:The smell hit us first. It was stronger than anywhere else chemical and sweet layered over something coppery. I pulled my mask on the rubber ceiling, tight against my face, our lights sweeping over the interior. Crates filled most of the space, stacked high and lashed with heavy ropes. Many were intact, but their sides marked with codes. I didn't recognize Strings of numbers and letters and hazard symbols, but several had been damaged. One had burst open entirely, its contents hidden under a tarp that had a dark stain spreading across it. I stepped closer, my boots crunching on the scattering of crystalline debris. It wasn't salt, don't touch it. Jory said sharply. Something about the way he said it made me step back without question.
Speaker 1:From somewhere deeper in the hold a faint sound reached us, a tapping, irregular, like metal ticking as it cools. Benny froze, you hear that. We stood there listening. It came again, softer this time and then stopped entirely. When it didn't return, jory exhaled slowly let's finish the sweep and get out of here. We backed out of the hold, closing the door behind us.
Speaker 1:I tried not to think about what might still be in there. Waiting the way back up to the main deck felt. Longer the stillness had settled over us now, not just in the ship but in our bodies. Longer. The stillness had settled over us now, not just in the ship but in our bodies. None of us spoke. When we emerged into the daylight, the glare felt wrong after so long. Below, the silver star floated beside us like a lifeline, the only familiar thing in this entire floating grave.
Speaker 1:The captain was waiting at the rail. His expression unreadable Report. Jory shook his head they're all dead. No sign of cause, no injuries. Cargo hold is sealed, partially breached in some places and something's off down there. The captain's gaze flicked to me Off how I thought of the letter, the strange residue and the tapping in the hold, and I just said I don't think we want to know. We should have left then, reported what we saw, cut the lines and steamed away before the tide could carry the orang-medan's shadow any further into us.
Speaker 1:But Rojas wanted answers. The captain didn't board with us often, but when he did, you felt it. He moved through the maze of dead bodies without looking at the faces, his boots, finding the cleanest paths as if he'd memorized them. He stopped at the cargo hold door, studied the stenciled warning and put his hand on the latch Mask up, he said. Jory didn't argue, and neither did I. We pushed the door open again.
Speaker 1:The smell poured out thicker than before, flooding the corridor even through the filters of the masks. It had weight, a chemical density that coated your tongue. Inside the air was thick and heavy and the stack crates loomed like monoliths, some of them bound tight and others fractured and splintered, leaking their contents into small glittering piles, the crystalline residue crunched underfoot. As we made our way through, rojas approached one of the damaged crates and knelt down His gloved hand, brushed the side and then jerked back like he'd touched a live wire. Cold, he muttered looking at us. Colder than ice I swallowed. It's the same with the bodies. He didn't answer. He reached for the tarp covering the fully broken crate. The fabric was stiff and stuck to whatever was beneath it by the crust of that blackened residue. The captain gave it a swift jerk and it came free with a brittle tearing sound. Underneath were glass canisters, each about the length of my forearm, held in padded slots. Most were intact. Two were shattered. The inside of the crate was lined with that same crystalline coating, shimmering faintly in the flashlight beam. What is this, benny? Whispered. No one knew, or no one would say.
Speaker 1:From the far end of the hold, the tapping started again. It was louder this time. We all turned towards the sound. It was coming from behind a stack of intact crates in the deepest part of the bay. Rojas motioned for us to move, our boots crunched over the residue. Each step seemed to echo too much, like the steel itself was listening.
Speaker 1:When we rounded the last stack, we saw the source A crate unmarked like the others, laying on its side, its lid partially pried loose. The metal bands around it had been bent from the inside, edges flared outwards. Something had forced its way out. The tapping came again, not from inside the crate but from the deck plate beneath it. Three sharp knocks, a pause and then two more. I didn't realize I had stepped back until my shoulder hit Jory's Something alive. Benny's voice shook in the mask Not anymore, Rojas said, though he sounded like he didn't believe it.
Speaker 1:The deck plate under the crate was warped upward in a subtle curve, as though something below had pressed against it hard enough to bend the steel, and then stopped. We stood there too long waiting for it to happen again, but it didn't. The air felt thicker with each breath. Finally, rojas said We've seen enough Out. We backed away, sealing the door behind us. The latch clanged shut, but the sound didn't carry far. It felt muffled. It had been swallowed by the ship.
Speaker 1:Back on the main deck, I yanked my mask off and sucked in warm air like I'd been drowning. The chemical taste didn't fade. I glanced at the water between our ships. A strange dark sheen was spreading, curling away from the Medan in slow ribbons. And then I realized something. The cool draft we'd felt when we first boarded hadn't stopped. It was stronger now and sliding over the deck like a sigh. It was coming from below. It began with a sound I didn't notice at first, a low hiss, somewhere between escaping steam and a long exhale.
Speaker 1:We were back on the main deck preparing to return to the Silver Star when Jory froze mid-step. His head turned towards the aft hatch, the one that had led down to the hold. You hear that, he asked. I did. Now the hiss was growing, layered with the soft crackling like dry leaves catching flame. Then the smell Not the cold metallic tang we'd been choking on all day, but something hotter and acrid and sharp enough to sting your eyes even from a distance. Day, but something hotter and acrid and sharp enough to sting your eyes even from a distance. Smoke, benny said, pointing A thin dark thread was curling out from the hatch seam, rising in a slow spiral before being whipped away by the wind. The cool draft that had been spilling up from below was gone. In its place was a pulse of heat, faint at first, but then building fast. Rojas was already moving. We're done here. Back to the Silver Star Now.
Speaker 1:We started towards the boarding ladder but the hiss behind us deepened, taking on a strange, almost wet undertone like boiling sap. When I glanced back, the smoke was no longer a thread. It was rolling out in thick waves, dark as oil, hugging the deck before rising, and something in it was moving. I don't mean the way smoke curls and shifts in the air, I mean it was twitching like a muscle under the skin. Move, jory barked. We hit the ladder hard, boots clanging on the rungs.
Speaker 1:The Silver Star's deck loomed closer, but so did the noise A sudden rushing roar deep in the Medan's belly, followed by a series of metallic bangs that rattled up through her frame. I was halfway across the gap when the heat slammed into me Not the warmth of a normal fire, but the searing blast of a furnace door flung open. Rojas was last over, and the moment his boots hit our deck he shouted to cut the lines. The crew obeyed without question, ropes snapping back as the gap between the ships widened. The Medan's deck was a haze now, figures of dead bodies barely visible through the churning smoke. The heat shimmered around them, distorting their shapes until they looked like they were moving. And then the first explosion came from below a deep, concussive whomp that seemed to lift the ship up by its bones. The whomp from the first blast hadn't even faded when the second one came, sharper and higher, like something tearing loose in the Medan steel gut.
Speaker 1:We were already pulling away, the engine straining, when the deck of the ghost ship buckled in slow motion. Smoke roared out of its hatches in thick black columns and for a split second it carried that same unnatural shimmer, as if the heat inside was alive. A third explosion ripped through the hull and this one had teeth. A wave of fire erupted from the midsection, orange and white at its core, licking skyward before curling over and collapsing back into the ship. The blast hit us seconds later, a hot, shoving wind that rattled the silver star's rigging and stung my skin. I hit the deck hands over my head as debris twisted steel, burning fragments of wood and something that might once have been a lifeboat David, raining into the sea around us. When I looked up, the Medan was listing hard to port. The fire ate her faster now, the glow spilling through her seams like molten veins. And then she went down with a long sigh swallowed by the black water, leaving only an oil slick skin rippling across the surface.
Speaker 1:We kept our distance for over an hour, circling the patch of sea where the orang-medan had gone under. The slick spread, slow and wide, faint rainbow sheens rolling across the swells, the late afternoon sun, breaking them into colors too sharp to look at for long. Pieces of her drifted in the current charred wood and a twisted scrap of railing and a life buoy with half its letters burned away, leaving only the word orang. But no bodies surfaced, not one. The captain gathered us all on the main deck. We stood there in a half circle with salt on our lips and smoke still clinging to our clothes. We didn't see anything today, do you hear me? He said firmly. We found no survivors and no remains. The orang-medan is gone. That's all that goes in the log. It wasn't an order so much as a warning. We nodded and nobody argued. Nobody asked questions.
Speaker 1:The run back to port felt longer than the approach, even though the seas stayed glassy and calm At night. The bunks creaked with every roll and I could hear the men shifting restlessly, boots padding along the passageway at odd hours. In the galley. Conversation stopped when I walked in On the second night. Pike pulled me aside. His face was drawn tight and his eyes rimmed red. I keep hearing it. He whispered in the static. I keep hearing that distress signal. Maybe it's just in your head, I said. But even as the words left my mouth. I didn't believe them.
Speaker 1:Benny got sick the day after we left the site A deep, wet cough that rattled in his chest. The medic checked him over and said it was probably just the air down in the Medan's lower deck. But Benny swore he could taste the chemical frost in every breath. He signed off at the next port and I never saw him again. Jory lasted a few days longer. Then one morning I found his rack stripped bare and his duffel gone. He'd left a note on my pillow, just one sentence. It's still down there.
Speaker 1:We made it back to our port. Officials came aboard with clipboards and men who didn't really say their names. They asked polite questions with no weight in them. They nodded at Rojas's log and one of them set a hand on the radio like he was feeling for a pulse, and then pulled his hand away fast as if he'd found one. The report filed under our voyage said what it needed to say Distressed, received Approach made Derelict vessel, sighted, no survivors or remains on board A fire, an explosion, lost at sea. There were boxes for these kinds of things and we checked all the boxes. Rumors run faster than ships. The next few days.
Speaker 1:Other crews were glancing at us in dockside bars and not meeting our eyes. Someone told someone that we'd towed the Medan and cut her loose. Someone else said chemicals, nerve gas smuggling and cyanide. I watched as the word radioactive passed through the room like a priest with a bowl of ashes. If you ask the men who were there men still breathing and not fond of talking they'll tell you the same plain things you already know.
Speaker 1:The sea doesn't want to explain itself. There was a ship and then there wasn't. They'll leave out the faces. They'll leave out the cold you could feel in a dead man's shirt. They'll forget to mention how the smoke can look like a muscle when it wants to, like something flexing a body it hadn't meant to have.
Speaker 1:When people ask me now because sometimes they still do whether I think it was poison or piracy or something the government mislaid, I tell them the only truth I can carry without breaking Maybe, maybe it was one of those. Maybe it was a valve that failed. Maybe there was no ship at all, only a story that used us like a body. All of those maybes keep men sane. But there's another truth that lives in my lungs like old smoke, and it itches the back of my throat when the radio hisses at night.
Speaker 1:I've been at sea most of my life and the sea has kept most of me. I've learned to leave some questions where I found them. But every time the radio wakes and whispers a voice made of weather and chance, every time the hull has a thought to share in the hard hours. I remember a ship that sighed and went under and faces that died, looking at a thing I never turned fast enough to see. And I remember the cold, a cold that seemed to live inside the flesh, as though something had drawn out all the heat and left nothing behind. And in the cold I can almost hear a breath sliding slow and steady along the back of my neck, whispering the words I die. I haven't told anyone that part until now. I die. I haven't told anyone that part Until now You've been listening to the Haunted Grove Podcast.
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