Ghost Ships and Maritime Mysteries

Watch/Listen to this Episode Ghost Ships and Maritime Mysteries License Info Ghost Ships and Maritime Mysteries Transcription Ghost Ships and Maritime Mysteries

What Is a Ghost Ship?

The hosts outline two primary categories of ghost ships. The first includes haunted or legendary vessels, such as the Flying Dutchman or famously haunted ocean liners like the Queen Mary. These ships are believed to carry supernatural presences, cursed crews, or lingering spirits. The second category involves abandoned ships that are found intact but mysteriously devoid of people. Often, food remains on tables, cargo is untouched, and lifeboats may or may not be missing, raising disturbing questions about what caused the crew to flee.

Both types inspire fear for different reasons. Haunted ships suggest something followed the crew beyond death, while abandoned ships imply a sudden, terrifying event that forced sailors to abandon their safest refuge in the middle of open water.

The Mary Celeste: The Classic Ghost Ship

Perhaps the most famous real-world ghost ship, the Mary Celeste was a merchant vessel discovered adrift in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872. The ship was seaworthy, its cargo largely intact, and there were no signs of violence. Yet the entire crew had vanished.

One explanation discussed involves a slow leak that may have caused the crew to fear an imminent sinking. In this theory, they abandoned ship in a lifeboat, only for the Mary Celeste to stabilize and continue drifting while the crew was lost at sea. While this explanation is plausible, the lack of definitive answers has allowed the story to endure as a cornerstone of maritime mystery.

The Flying Dutchman and Cursed Voyages

The Flying Dutchman represents the mythical extreme of ghost ship lore. Said to be commanded by a doomed captain cursed for arrogance, mutiny, or defiance of supernatural forces, the ship is fated to roam the seas forever. Sailors have long believed that seeing the Flying Dutchman is an omen of death or disaster.

The hosts discuss how variations of this legend appear across cultures, often involving a tyrannical captain, a dangerous passage like the Cape of Good Hope, and a supernatural punishment that traps the ship between worlds. The story has influenced literature, including classic sea tales, and continues to shape how we imagine haunted oceans.

Modern Ghost Ships and Abandoned Vessels

Ghost ship stories are not confined to the distant past. The episode explores more recent cases, such as the Carol A. Deering, found abandoned off the coast of North Carolina in the early twentieth century. Despite investigations involving government agencies, no definitive explanation was ever reached.

Other examples include drifting ships lost during storms, decommissioned vessels breaking free while under tow, and even reports of luxury ships allegedly overtaken by animals after being abandoned. These modern cases show that the phenomenon of empty ships continues, even in an age of advanced navigation and communication.

Frozen Crews and Sudden Death

Some ghost ship stories are even more disturbing, involving crews found dead aboard their vessels. The Octavius, allegedly discovered frozen solid in Arctic waters, tells a grim tale of explorers trapped by ice. Logbooks suggest the crew slowly succumbed to the cold, leaving the ship to drift with its final moments preserved in ice.

Another infamous account, the Ourang Medan, describes a ship whose entire crew was found dead with expressions of terror. While often considered fictional or exaggerated, possible explanations include chemical leaks or toxic cargo. These stories highlight how fear, isolation, and environmental danger can combine to create legends that blur the line between reality and myth.

Science, Psychology, and the Sea

Beyond the supernatural, the hosts examine rational explanations for ghost ship phenomena. Sudden storms, navigational errors, toxic fumes, and psychological stress can all cause crews to abandon ships. Extended isolation, monotony, and sensory deprivation at sea may lead to panic or poor decision-making, sometimes with fatal consequences.

Natural phenomena such as St. Elmo’s fire, mirages, and unusual light refraction may also explain sightings of glowing or phantom ships on the horizon. These effects could easily be interpreted as supernatural by sailors unfamiliar with the science behind them.

Why Ghost Ships Still Haunt Us

Ghost ships endure because the ocean itself is a vast liminal space, a place between safety and oblivion. When something goes wrong at sea, there are few witnesses and even fewer answers. Each abandoned vessel becomes a floating question mark, inviting speculation and fear.

This episode of the Wondering Monsters Podcast ultimately suggests that ghost ships are powerful because they combine real historical tragedy with humanity’s deepest anxieties about isolation, the unknown, and loss of control. Whether explained by science, psychology, or folklore, these stories remind us that the sea remains one of the most mysterious environments on Earth.

Links from the Show

• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and the Wild Man Tradition
• The Legend of the Headless Horseman and Sleepy Hollow
• What are Liminal Spaces and Why Do They Feel So Weird?
• Are Ouija Boards Real?
• Hellhounds in Mythology & Folklore

Watch & Listen to the Full Episode

Enjoy where the conversations of silly meet strange at the Wondering Monsters Podcast.

Watch on YouTube Watch on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Other Platforms

Licensing Information

• Title: Entry of the Gladiators
• Composer: Julius Fučík
• Library of Congress (Public Domain)
• Podcast theme song version edited/arranged/mixed by Dan Swift

Unless indicated, images appear in their original form.

Images were generated using AI from MyNinja.ai, NightCafe, lenso.ai, Gemini, or ChatGPT

Transcription

*Transcription was automatically generated and may contain errors.

(Music)

Baba: My advice would be to get well intoxicated before showing up. (Laugh) And then just, no, no, no. Learn about the latest sightings of Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, and aliens. And whenever anybody brings up something related to government, trail off. Trail off, that's your best bet.

WDG: Or talk about ghost ships, let's bring up the ships.

Baba: Yeah, so talk about ghost ships. Let's bring this back to port. Sorry, guys.

WDG: But we're not. Extra editing for you, Dan.

Danny C: That's all good, all good. So ghost ships, there are two kinds of flavors of ghost ships when I hear the term ghost ships. I think many people are going to think the same thing. One is you have the haunted vessels, something more of like the Queen Mary, for instance, which I was on, but more of that later. Or like the Flying Dutchman, those types of ships, or the legendary ghost ships, or something like that. And then you have this other grouping of ships where they find the vessel and nobody is there. Or sometimes people are there and they might be in weird stories of frozen positions, or their mouths, their faces are all contorted, or something like that. A lot of times, what they find is the same. The crew is gone. The lifeboats may or may not be gone. The food might be on the table. There's still plenty of food. I know at least one of them, it looked like that. They were in the middle of a meal when all of a sudden everyone was gone. So in my research, like I said in the past, history and English, my two worst areas of knowledge. And I think with history, most of that is because of names. So I have 30. I have 30 ships here that I was able to locate. And a lot of them, for me, it's kind of like, wait, which one is this? What is that?

Baba: We will talk about four of them today because of our tangents. We sure will.

Danny C: We sure will. So, OK, then the top four that I found, we have … if you want to talk about the Queen Mary and the Flying Dutchman, those are more of like the haunted, kind of legendary ships. And then we have the Mary Celeste and the Octavius. So I'm thinking we could start maybe with some of those, and then maybe branch out and see what others are floating alongside of us and see what we end up.

Baba: Yeah, yeah. See what floats up in the …

Danny C: Baba, why don't you start with the Mary Celeste? I feel like that is the most well-known story.

Baba: Yeah, so the Mary Celeste was one that … OK, so we've got this ship. OK, so it was a merchant ship. OK, we're talking about the 1870s here. And then mystery has never been fully solved, which is good. That leaves us some open ends to play with. The ship … I believe it sails out. The crew disappears. It reappears with the lifeboat missing. And then it sails off again. And it recurs like several times over. Several people find the Mary Celeste. I'm trying to think if this was the one … All right, so one of the explanations for this was that it got a hole during its voyage. It's got a hole in its hole. And it takes on water. But it doesn't sink enough. So the crew gets freaked out, takes the lifeboat out because they think this ship is sinking. But what happens is it actually reaches a certain level of equilibrium because there's not enough to actually capsize the thing because of the location of the hole. So it actually reaches a balance and then just continues floating around. Perfect cover-up story for what was clearly mermaids. But we'll get to them. But the Mary Celeste … this is one that's been documented to show up several times … is believed to be an actual 100% … well, 100%. A high likelihood that this is actually just a ship that's floating out there that's being carried around by ocean currents and is still trucking about. I believe its last sighting … OK, well, its last log entry was 1872. That's not what I asked for. I thought you were supposed to be AI. This just gave me 1872. This wreaks a cover-up.

Danny C: OK, so a quick search on my end. It was found and operated for seven more years before sinking in 1885.

Baba: All right. So you see, this isn't even accurate. Google used to be good.

WDG: I think that's a new corporate slogan.

Baba: Yeah, yeah. That's right.

WDG: It used to be like, dude, I'm evil or something like that. Now it's like, we used to be good. And it kind of means, yeah, that's a little bit of a double entendre.

Danny C: So what I found, it says in 1885, the ship was intentionally crashed into … I can't pronounce that … a reef off the coast of Haiti, which again, to your point, sounds like cover-up. Why would they intentionally crash and sink the boat?

WDG: Look, it's full of ghosts. I feel like that's why. Mermaid ghosts.

Baba: So there's more to that story than meets the eye.

WDG: Something weird that I came across that's interesting, and I guess it's probably more of a list to the more folklore-y thing. But a lot of ghost ships, there's at least dozens of them, tend to appear as lights, flaming kind of things. Because I guess they were burned, the idea they were set on fire. So when they reappear, they're on fire. But the whole ghost ships and ghost lights are pretty much related, I guess, because until more recent times, the instances of things like St. Elmo's fire, basically static charges and stuff building up around the masts and things would cause plasma glows. So things would glow. You know, like essentially, now that happens with planes and things too. But yeah, so there's this weird ghost lights and ghost ships often appear in the same way. So when people see a lot of ghost ships, or at least in the past, that appear is like, I guess that's … isn't that what the Flying Dutchman is supposed to look like? It's supposed to be kind of glowing kind of thing.

Baba: Yeah, yeah.

WDG: And it's just like, so these ghost ships often appear as these kind of like phantom lit up ships off the horizon or whatever.

Baba: Yeah, the Flying Dutchman is an interesting one. And there's some debate about it, because there are variations in the captain's name. There are variations in where it was supposed to have sailed from and things like that. But the Flying Dutchman is interesting. And yeah, and when that shows up, it's supposed to be a straight up ghost ship. It's like its … its sails are fully billowed, even when it's in headwind. It's just … it's just this weird … that was probably the one in Garfield's Halloween.

WDG: And I think the Pirates of the Caribbean, like most of it is centered around it, at least in the main trilogy, I guess, is centered around that ship.

Baba: You know, like the Flying Dutchman seems to be one that like drove a lot of this kind of thing. I mean, it still does kind of go back to … I mean, it's just … it's a weird story of haunting when you take it to the sea, you know, because is it that different than the headless riders? You know, a boat where they never reach their … oh, they're constantly searching for their destination. I'll back up a little. So the Flying Dutchman was supposed to be a boat that was captained by various names, as I mentioned, but Hendrik van der Decken. I was going to say Van Tassel at first. Yeah. See, it's back to the … This is so … Riders again. Yeah, if there's a van in there, you're … there was one of the names was given …

WDG: Or Van Gogh, Eaeless Rider, or No. Earless Patriot, or No.

Baba: Or Van Damme. Van Damme. There was a Van Damme that was one of the … it was one of the names given for a captain of this ship. All right, everybody. Let's talk about Hendrik

WDG: van der Decken. John Van Decken, famous captain of the one-story.

Baba: Famous captain of the time cop, the USS Time Cop. USS Double Impact, back on the sea. Yeah, so the boat goes out on the ocean, as one would, and is sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, which is known for being rough, rough weather.

WDG: A terrible name for …

Baba: That's it. Yeah, like … Ironically named Cape of Good Hope, or aptly named, because hope is the only thing that's going to get you past it. And so he's pushing through here, and there are terrible storms, and there are variations on this. One is at the crew mutinies, because in almost every account of this, the captain is an asshole. That seems believable. So in most of these, the captain's an asshole.

WDG: Well, because it's like merchant vessels at the time. You're basically like in Dendred's servants, you were conscripted, meaning you got drunk in a bar, and you end up on a boat, now you're on a boat. Yeah. Like, you know, it's like you don't have a lot of … there's not a lot of …

Baba: It's the opposite of the stowaway, which probably comes from stole away. I stole away on a boat. I stole away. But yeah, the opposite of that is that you got stole away. You got drunk and kidnapped. So the crew mutinies, and in one version of it, Van der Duchan shoots the leader of the mutiny and throws him overboard, after which some supernatural figure shows up and says, basically, you're an unreasonable man, Van der Duchan, if that is your name. And now you're going to have to rethink your ways. And then he shoots at the figure, which in some accounts it ricochets, or it comes right back to him and shoots him in the hand. Van der Duchan gets shot in the paw. And then we've got the curse. You will forever roam the seas, unable to reach your destination, you and your crew. Which at this point, the crew has to feel like the dog and to build a fire. You know, like, what the heck did you have to have more twigs for? So yeah, we would have got there eventually. And then it roams the sea forever, and other ships see it. And if you see it, which you'd wonder how they know about this part, if you see it, you die. And then somehow that gets back to, someone put it in a bottle as their last moments. But yeah, so you've got this ghost ship with a ghost crew of the dead, forever piloting, sailing the sea. And really bad luck if you ever see it. Another version of it. He they're going around this thing, Cape of Good Hope, and they say, hey, we can't do this. We've got to stop. And he just is insisting on it. And he says something to the effect of. By God or by the devil, I'll sail this sea, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so punished for his hubris, here comes either God or the devil, depending on or an angel, depending on the telling that says, wish granted, you will forever sail the sea and whatever. So this is the cursed ship, the the Flying Dutchman, reported by by various sailors as being something they see at sea or whatever. But it's this drives all kinds of things. It was a big, a big cultural splash. Sorry for the the the water joke, a big cultural splash that shows up in in all kinds of things. Not the not the uncoolest of which, because one piece is really cool. On one piece as. I won't tell you where, because you got to watch it. It's only it's only like 1100 episodes. Oh, yes, guess where it is. If you know it, don't put it in the comments. People, other people haven't seen it yet. But if you haven't seen it, guess where it might be. Especially if you've never seen one piece at all. Just guess wildly where it could be. So the rhyme of the ancient mariner is probably is very likely, at least partially inspired by by this telling or this this story of the Flying Dutchman. Yeah, the other also partially inspired probably by whatever. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was imbibing at the time. Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. Right. So there's a captain, also an asshole who decides after they haven't had they've had this good weather or whatever. And so he gets ticked off or not ticked off. Help me out, guys. Is it good weather that causes them to shoot the albatross or bad weather that causes them to shoot the albatross? I feel like it's like good weather. And they're saying the crew is kind of made the albatross kind of their their little mascot. And the captain gets mad and shoots the albatross, after which the curses of heaven come upon them and they're forever. They don't have any good winds after that. So the crew hangs the albatross around his neck to remind him of what a bad thing he did. And then everybody dies and everybody stuck at sea forever. But at night, oh, no, no, no, the captain doesn't die at first. At night, his crew gets up and pilots this thing, but he's forever stuck at sea. And then he now and then so until he finally looks into the ocean and sees the slimy things and blesses them, realizing that they're kind of OK, too. And then the albatross falls off his neck into the ocean and he he can come to port. But he has to travel the world for the rest of his life or maybe for the rest of time to tell this tale. So nobody else does it. And he kind of like he gets this guy about to go into his wedding. And so of this

WDG: long story, if there's something seemingly stereotypical about sea captains, as they really do like to tell tales, so this might not necessarily be a curse for him. This might actually be like just his just his deal. Like, oh, tell you a tale like, oh, God, you're going to stay in character forever.

Baba: Yeah, but yes, that is.

WDG: What else do we have? Though we're Bermuda Triangle thing or it's like, but at least it's related to that, like it's like the Carol A. Deering, right? It's pretty modern when it's like modern compared to a lot of ghost ship type things. Yeah, it's like like lost in the 20s. And it's lost off of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. So the outer banks, which, you know, it's like, but the thing is, the boat comes like the same thing like they're saying it comes to shore. It's like they're like they find the boat. It's like it's the crew is all gone, but there's like food and everything. They don't know what happened to the crew. It's like, you know, that kind of idea. There's it just like, but they know that they're like there was there was actually like an investigation that ended up happening by the like the State Department and things involved in it because somebody claimed they found a message in a bottle, which later turned out to be fake. It's like that's a person made up that it basically said like they were attacked by, I guess it was something like oil, like an oil crew, like a like a like wailing oil crew or something like that, you know, like whenever it was like and it gave rise to you at the time, there's like, you know, the people are scared about like Bolsheviks and stuff, you know, because it's just like, you know, so this I think it's like the 20s. And so there's like the State Department stuff gets involved. They start investigating this thing and the Navy and all. And they like and part of the investigation is like, well, they had it. They were in Barbados and the captain had an argument with the crew. So like they there might be a possibility that there was mutiny something like that happened, or for some reason, there was like there was cause for them to abandon ship. But in coming up the back, like in their travels up the coast, they had gone through what would then be later known as like, you know, the Bermuda Triangle thing. So like this is one of the earlier like, even though it's before the whole Bermuda Triangle hype and stuff like that, it kind of falls as one of the earlier parts of the Bermuda Triangle being like a bad area. But if anybody knows anything about the the outer banks in North Carolina, shipwrecks are not an uncommon thing. If there's going to be a ghost shipyard, that's a notorious pirate haven for like people like Blackbeard and things, you know, like hanging out, you know, pirating ships around there. And like it's very hard to navigate. Lots of ships. You know, it's like you might as well be. But it's a ship didn't wreck. It just was missing its crew. But it could have hit bad weather and the crew abandoned the ship and then were lost to sea, but the ship didn't actually sink. But still, it's like it's again that weird thing. Like it's just like, why is it there? But yeah, it's like so that gives it into some of the it's like used as some of the Bermuda Triangle speculation of like, well, maybe it was the Bermuda they got lost in the Bermuda Triangle and then the boat just got out or something like that kind of idea. So that was a that's kind of a weird one. Another thing I came across, and this is like exactly a ghost ship, but it's counted as this. It's a it was like like the the reports from like like 2013 or something. But it's like an old Russian cruise vessel that they were basically decommissioning like a luxury cruiser. And I had been in service for a while. I guess I had like Arctic like it could navigate Arctic waters or whatever. And on its way to take it to be scrapped, it disconnected from the boat. I got lost out and it was like out in the Atlantic somewhere, just floating. And like there was like tabla stories about how the boat was over this like luxury cruise ship was overrun by cannibal rats. Like I know it was like all these people were worried that like, oh, it might end up in Ireland or in the UK like it might crash there and with all these, you know, cannibal rats. Oh, my God. And I just like had this like really funny idea of like this kind of like ratatouille idea of like all these rats on a cruise ship like part of like this, like it's not really a ghost ship. I mean, it's a ghost ship in the sense of like there's no crew or anything. And then I'm guessing it just got lost in in the Atlantic somewhere in Sank. But it's a yeah, but this but yeah, but, you know, partying rats on a what an abandoned, what an abandoned luxury

Danny C: like for fun, for fun. What was the name of that ship? It was the I would hear you say that the Russian vessel.

WDG: Yeah, I don't it seemed after a Russian actress. I'm not going to go for literally if I can pull it up. Yeah, it's like something like old gov or something like that. The Louis Boy of Orlova. I don't know. Don't forget about me. Russian language.

Danny C: You did a better job than I would have done.

WDG: I am. Yeah, this is not a I'm sorry. I apologize for butchering your life. You're. There's

Baba: a weird one. I only just encountered it. So it's like, I don't even know the full story on this. The joyita in 1955 was found drifting. No crew, no distress call. And all the clocks stopped at the same time. Weird.

WDG: Yeah, that's that's a kind of well, that's weird. And all the clock stopped at the same time. Then maybe it was like electromagnetic. So, you know, so here's a weird thing. Do we count like, you know, in ghost ship lore? You think like the Philadelphia Experiment counts towards ghost ships? I thought about that. Like, you know, because I mean, it does disappear as supposedly a reappear later on, you know, its crew is definitely according to the legend, not in very good shape, you know. Yeah, certainly they're fused and supposedly fused into things. You know, if in fact this is that is a thing. But that's a that's a that's a kind of a weird one.

Danny C: And so talking about we talked about the Titanic in one of the past episodes, and I think it was a sleepy hollow one. So actually I was talking about how different things just I really find so fascinating. The Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Experiment is one of those that falls in that category for me. Just so, so cool, so weird. Has a little bit of everything as, you know, seemingly a time slip. It has teleportation, people being trapped, you know, being becoming one with the ship, all kinds of really, really things that make for a really, really great story. I'd have to look into that a little bit more, but I'm pretty sure if I remember right, it's there's so much more story to it than fact. Or is it? Yeah. So we'll definitely have to explore that one a little bit more, because I love that story as an awesome one. But I definitely think that kind of falls into it. You know, the whole concept, you know, it appears, disappears. I can't remember how long that took place, if it was over the span of a couple of minutes or days. As far as I know, it was never replicated again. I think it was just during that very small window. People saw it and I think it was obviously Philadelphia, I think down in I'll say it was down in Maryland and then in New York, I want to say too. But I can't I can't quite remember the full story, but that was it. You know, you don't hear from it again. Like you don't people don't see it again. Yeah.

WDG: That would be kind of interesting if they did, if it just kept popping up in random places. So so like so so the ship really like obviously there's just like go ship, go ships. They're just like, you know, this is just abandoned, you know, like rats are now the crew, like the crew, right? Like they're just like people aren't on them. And then there's just like mythical ghost ship, right? Like often the crew of the damned or these like one ships that were set on fire. And like now they're like these glowing ghostly things. When we start talking about the like things like, you know, what's I guess it's like, what's what's this like the scary version? I guess it is the crew of the damned, right? Like because like if you see them, you die, right? That's like that's kind of usually or it's like a bad game. It's a bad omen. So I see it like, but again, it's like I think it's a bad omen only for sailors or people going on a voyage. I mean, let's worry about because we don't do a lot of like other than like for the average person who doesn't do like commercial stuff or like sport fishing or, you know, or owns a super yacht, you know, like. Like most people are not sailing as much as they were, you know, back in the day when that was like if you wanted to get across the ocean to another continent, you need to get on a boat. And now it's like, well, we get on a boat for fun or we get on a boat for like a luxury cruiser. Are you doing like it? And aside from that one, you don't hear too much about like the, you know, the Flying Dutchman version of like the, I don't know, Carnival Cruise ship. Right. Right. Oh, God, it's by the tourists of the day. Like the captain was a real jerk and then the all the tourists mutiny. And now it's like, and it was like the Disney cruise line of the dam. You know, it's like, you know, I mean, unless it was the none of this honey do is ripe. Throw them over. Yeah, yeah. They said all inclusive.

Baba: That's all. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, they don't seem to have that. Those tend to be the ones that are more like that, that type that we mentioned before, like the there's something haunted on the ship. Oh, don't be in room number. I don't know how they room number these. I've never been on a cruise deck. I'm on too many lists.

WDG: Someone's doing.

Baba: Yeah, like, but that that kind of thing is like, oh, yeah, this was a ship that this thing happened on. And and I'm sure if you talk to the crews on those ships. Whether things actually happen on them or not, I'm sure a lot of them have haunted places because you're wandering around in the ocean and near there's a 24 hour crew. You know, like who's on the night shift? Somebody has to be. It's not like everybody just goes to sleep at night and like, you know, I'm sure everything will be fine.

Danny C: But when I was in when we were at California on vacation, we went aboard the Queen Mary and I recommend that tour for anyone. I would have loved to do. There's like a late night tour that I think it starts at like 10 o'clock or nine o'clock or something like that. And you can actually walk around to get access to different parts of the ship that you know, they don't get as part of the whatever. They have several different tours. So this was like a little more encompassing. But it was very cool. The different the different stories that they had, you know, apparently there was this figure that is on this been seen on the stairway and there's a story behind it. I think someone fell down the steps or got pushed down the steps or something like that. And now there's this, you know, entity that haunts that area or something like that. Then there's another one of the cabins. There's allegedly a ghost in one of them that you can see it in the mirror, I think you turn around, nothing is there or something like that. I remember. And then the pool area. Apparently there is a when I was there, they told us there are there cases, people take photos. And then like later, when you look at the photo, you can see an image of a person. And there's been consistency between the photos of like different people. So it's like, you know, someone took this picture two years ago and then someone takes it today and it's like you see this little little girl. I think it is. And then there was another story I heard where the pool area has no water in it. But yet there were like wet foot. Someone saw like wet footprints when they were going through the tour. So a lot of a lot of really cool stories. I recommend anyone has the opportunity to go check out the Queen Mary. Definitely do it. I did not see anything. None of my photos had anything. None of my videos had anything. Very disappointed. But still, I recommend it.

Baba: I also wonder sometimes, like, which of these are like conducive to creating real hauntings? You know, so if we go back to like the ghost rules kind of thing, it's like, well, why did you wind up as a ghost? You know, or why is there an image here that was that's a replaying image of you as a ghost? You know, why? And one of the things we've talked about is the idea of. Extreme emotional situations might create some kind of an imprint on the on the environment, you know, which is really weird when you consider. Ships, because like, what was the environment? Like, so if there's a house, the house tends to stay there, at least in most versions of haunted houses. But ships don't. So it's not like I mean, you can say, OK, like the the Titanic, the Titanic is where it is, you know. Well, yeah, it's there in that space, you know, that could be a haunted space. Right.

WDG: But like it's really hard to go on a ghost tour, though. The Titanic.

Baba: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would not advise it. But yeah, yeah. So and then you've got. So you've got ships that people. OK, so let's talk about the one the the the Iran, the SS Ourang Medan. Sorry. That's probably not how it said.

Danny C: That's actually pretty close. I actually looked that up ahead of time. So

Baba: the crew is found dead. Horrified expressions on all their faces. They all like some of them died with their eyes open. You know, some like, but just these kind of ghastly things. And so if you're and so people boarded the ship and there were was this the one that had all the alcohol on board? I had a bunch of I believe so. It had a bunch of what was believed to be alcohol on board. So the crew that enters the ship is like. Well, it wasn't pirates. And also why are all these people dead with their faces like this? Like, what happened? What did they encounter?

WDG: This is what they were like frozen or something like that. Is that these were not frozen?

Danny C: Yeah, they're two different stories. One is they were like legit frozen, like, you know, below below 32 Celsius. You know, 32, 32 Fahrenheit, zero Celsius. This is more of just like atrophied.

Baba: OK. And just kind of like, yeah, just like locked in like expressions, just locked on their bodies, you know, just rigor mortis, whatever. This is how they are. And so they decide. So the the story is so they see these that are these all these bodies and these barrels and things. They say, well, it's not pirates because they would have taken the alcohol and it's not this, that or the other. So they they say, get off the ship like this is cursed. Something's wrong, whatever. And then I believe so. It's I forget whether it was towing. A lifeboat or something like that. But anyway, they decide they're going to tow this thing. Actually, they're going to tow it on their with their they're going to try to tow it back to Port or whatever. And it explodes. It just blows up and all the evidence goes with it. Now, some of the accounts for it again, it was some of the cover ups. Because that was obviously mermaids, mermaids, because that would be scary and it would make that happen. The Kraken Kraken is known to destroy. It doesn't usually leave. It doesn't like sneak on board. No, he blew it up. Yeah, it blows up. And some people say, well, actually, what it was was they were hauling chemicals and these chemicals started a leak or it's not it's not it's not drinkable alcohol. It's industrial alcohol. And so what happened is it created there is this leak that wound up basically poisoning the crew. Right. And that's why. And that would explain why their faces were like that, because that actually causes these contortions. So that's that's one explanation. Let's see.

Danny C: I'll add to that, that it is considered to be a fictional story. But but I think the timing of it, I believe it's like just post World War Two. I think it was 1947, I think, which is suspect. So again, mermaids.

Baba: Yeah, mermaids. Yeah, because they. Yeah. I mean, if we ever get into gremlins and and and planes, you know, we got some we got some tie together here. World War Two is a funny kind of time.

Danny C: The other story, Bill, that you kind of sort of alluded to was I just had it in front of me. The Octavius, that was found drifting your Greenland crew was frozen solid.

WDG: Yeah. That was what the captain has his logbook. Well, like he was like putting in a log. Like, yeah, when they found him like, you know, so it was like he just died.

Baba: Yeah, like frozen mid mid sentence, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And that was one where so, yeah, allegedly they took according to the logs or whatever they were leaving. Was it Jakarta? I believe it was it was an Asian destination. So they're in might be Indian Ocean. Decide anyway, you'll realize I don't know how to pronounce things. And I don't know my geography. They go through the Northwest Passage, which was like rather warm at this time. And they thought, well, maybe we'll be able to get through it. Now, no one had done that before successfully. And so the ship disappears according to the logs. I guess like there were things were going well at first and then they started doing counter ice and things like that. And so froze to death. But let's get back to the ghost thing. Well, that's that that could do it. That could do it like you're all you're stuck at sea. You don't know what's going to happen. You're running out of food. There's a lot of what, you know, probably not sleeping too well because it's cold. You've got a lot of psychological turmoil. You're in the biggest liminal space anyone's ever been in, except for space itself. I would say that might be grounds for for a real haunting. And yes, supposedly people boarded this ship and were able to get. In fact, I'm not sure if that's even supposed. I think that might just be a straight up real recovery. But I think what happens is they leave the ship and then I think the ship floats off again. So I don't think they actually recovered the ship so much as the logbook.

WDG: I wonder if we do get to a point where we, you know, have like more frequent travel into space, you know, like like that's becomes more of a if we get there. That's a little squirrely path right. But like if we do get there, we're like, you know, like I wonder if we're going to have like more like, well, this like something got lost or something like that gets caught into some kind of gravitational like comes back around and like people see or claim to see like, you know, ghost spaceships or things like that. Or is that just UFOs? Like, I mean, like, I guess we already have that in a sense. But it's like, you know, it's like it's, you know, like, you know, something like, oh, God, it's like, what is this thing? Like, it's like maybe it's the abandoned whatever, you know, crew of, you know, it's like, yeah, I just think it's kind of funny because it's like, like you were just saying, how spaces this other like the next big liminal space, you know, that's like, you know, this kind of unexplored and like, right now, it's pretty the amount of people going out there and seeing things is pretty low. But like, if it does get to a point where we have like, oh, some kind of moon colonies, Mars, like stations and things like that, you know, the stuff that's like, you know, kind of like early colonial type stuff, if we're going to be like, there's ghosts, you know, because there's going to be a good chance a lot that something happens to a lot of ships that things don't make it or like, because I mean, that kind of happens in these the age of exploration type deals, you know, it's, you know, there's good chance if people decide that they want to go to Mars to build something that something's going to go right from. Like, so, you know, it seems like a high probability of,

Baba: yeah, you'll still have the phenomenon of going with the lowest bidder.

WDG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, so you just feel like this, like, yeah, these kind of a wonderful ghost spaceships. I mean, it's kind of in Star Trek, right? There's like, just, you know, like, I mean, like, ships and things like that. So there's like, so it seems like it's already kind of prime for that.

Baba: I would say you definitely have the second kind where something's haunted on the ship. And then, yeah, I think the first kind, too. But it has that same problem of like, when you've got something that vast, are you likely to encounter it again? But I don't know, you're not likely to encounter the Flying Dutchman and things either. But that was spotted by, allegedly by German ships at the end of the 1800s and.

Danny C: But I have to question that, you know, how much of that is more of wanting to come back with the story or you, you think you see something and it's like, well, it must be, it must be that ship.

WDG: I mean, it could be the actual, like, just like the explanation for ghost ship like this, like it had a crew and the abandoned ship for some reason. And that's the thing you see, but you see it there and you're like, well, it's got to be the Flying Dutchman. Or you see, like, you know, like, again, a ship that got like, was getting towed somewhere and it got loose and it's now just floating around the sea. Like, you know, it's like you might just like, you know, it's like, I guess it does sound better when, you know.

Danny C: And going back to that side of things for the ghost ships, you know, the abandoned ones, you know, it's interesting. A lot of them have the same pattern where it's people are in the middle of doing something. All of a sudden they're gone. A lifeboat may or may not be gone. Food may or may not be on the table. It's interesting that no signs of struggle in most of these cases. So it's interesting that whatever happened freaks the people out enough that they left the boat either willingly or unwillingly to leave the stable floating environment to go on a smaller floating environment in the middle of no. It's just so, so interesting. Like, what would what causes that, you know?

WDG: Well, I mean, I guess it would probably be like the one I was talking about that got lost off of, like, you know, shut up in the outer banks or whatever. It's like the storms and stuff can turn really fast in there. If the big boat's going to go down, you don't want to be, you know, like you jump on the lifeboats, you get out or try to get off, like, because that's like if that thing capsizes or something like that, they can turn very – You don't pull it out here, yeah. Yeah, they can turn very quickly. And you might just be like, we have to leave. Like, this is like this storm is so bad or this weather is things or we don't know where we're going. Like, the navigation is off. Like, we got to turn, you know, whatever it is, like, you know, then they got some things that happen. You're abandoning to hopefully try to survive and thinking the boat's going to go down anyway. And then it just doesn't for whatever reason. Like, it just happens to be like, oh, it didn't capsize, didn't it? But you're already – but maybe you died in the storm in the lifeboat, you know?

Baba: Which is – was alleged with the Mary Celeste that, again, like, because they came back with no crew or anything like that, they – and they never were found. So, yeah, that's – yeah, it's some creepiness for sure. And another thing that's, like, related to this, we – I don't know if we'll ever get into this kind of thing, but the phenomena of the USO, the under – the unidentified submerged object, is a thing. And it's basically, like, UFOs that go underwater. Sometimes they actually, like, fly out of the water and sometimes people just see them going into the water. But there's actually, like, enough of this in reporting that, like, it's its own thing. It's its own category of what is technically known as weird stuff.

WDG: Yeah, you know what it is? It's piloted by, you know, it's crab aliens. I mean, crabs are probably aliens. I mean, have you seen crabs and health? Many things turn into crabs. Eventually, like, just evolve into crabs. Crabs are aliens. That's probably it. It's just the crab aliens.

Baba: Octopodes are also high on the suspect list.

WDG: Well, they're all in league with each other, the crab aliens.

Baba: They're in 20,000 leagues with each other. Yeah, yeah. Sorry.

WDG: And they're like – you really don't want to get, like, a crew that's, like, you know, like, crewed by a squid, you know, and, like, a bunch of crabs, you know? Yeah. Crab aliens.

Baba: Yeah. That might be – when we vote for this, that might be the scary version. But so, with the USOs, though, imagine this. You're a ship out at sea, and here's this glowing thing from the sky that goes under the water, or they're circling your boat, or, you know, any of that, you know, because some of this is, like, Bermuda Triangly, you know? So I kind of wonder – this is just pure conjecture, but, like, I wonder how many of these weird – if this actually even happens, you know? If this isn't just military weaponry that we don't know about, et cetera, you know?

WDG: Or just that weird, like, plasma buildup charges. Yeah. Yeah.

Baba: There are other things with, like, the way light can refract and create basically, like, an ocean mirage of boats in the distance, or even cities in the sky. That's, like, another weird thing that's, like, that goes into that Megania airship-traveller-world stuff. Yeah, just talk about weird ships. There you go.

WDG: It's also, like, similar to, like, you know, I mean, like, I guess it, like, you know, the idea of, like, you are just, like, you know, if you think about, like, hey, it's the ocean has a liminal space, right? Just, like, this weird thing that you don't know. The madness does seem, like, a easy thing to start happening if you do get, you know, out to sea and lost, and then you finally do make it back. You probably did, you know, you might have just started going, like, losing it, you know, just being, like, you know, it's a pretty isolated, especially back in the, you know, like, earlier days of just navigation, you know, like, going around the earth, not knowing where you're going, what's going on, you know, just, it's kind of, like, yeah, you might start, like, kind of losing it.

Danny C: Well, I'm curious, do you know how common that was, where, like, someone just, like, loses their stuff on the boat, and it's, like, they're freaking out, and, you know, they got a, you know, baby … contain the person in some kind of way? Was that common? Does anyone know?

WDG: I don't know. I mean, I imagine it's got to be, there's, like, there's, you know, depending on, like, how long you're out at sea, it probably does kind of, you know, kind of, like, you know, it's …

Danny C: It seems to be common for a better … You're just someone building up to it, where you're, you're gone for a couple of days, you do that, you know, several times, and you're gone for a week, for, you know, then maybe 10 days, like, you kind of build up a tolerance, maybe. But I have no idea. I don't know if, uh, I don't know how big of a thing that could be.

WDG: You can build up a tolerance to, like, weirdly, like, being, like, lost in a … at sea. I don't know. Yeah. There does seem to be, like, lots of talk about people, you know, like, you know, mutinying and piracy, and things like that, so there's …

Danny C: I think, I think realistically, the most likely offenders are pirates or mermaids.

Baba: Clearly. Because we do have things about sensory deprivation and monotony causing cabin fever at sea. But, yeah, that would be a likely explanation, you know, if they didn't want us to know. Um … There is quite an association with madness on the sea, though, actually. Also, maybe because you have to be a little bit crazy to go out there all the time. You know, you might have brought it with you. It might not be causally related.

Danny C: So let's, I think we could call this one solved. It's either, you know, people went mad and they decided to go for a walk on the ocean. And people may or may not have gone after them and, you know, walked on the ocean. Or mermaids. I think this is solved. I think …

WDG: You want UFO crab people, I think.

Danny C: Or USO crab people.

WDG: It's gotta be one of those. It's gotta be one of those. Solve.

Baba: So …

WDG: So, or alcohol.

Danny C: We're widening our fishing net here.

Baba: So let's … Let's do a little vote on this, but let's do something a little fun. What would be the version that would get you close to five monsters? What would be the version of this that would do that? So, first of all … And I'll put a couple versions out there. One is … Stuck at sea forever. Forced to travel these vast oceans forever.

WDG: Like you personally? Like you … Yeah. Oh, okay. So you become the captain of the Flying Dutchman, basically.

Baba: Or you get woken up by your slumber to pilot the ship or like work at night. That might be even worse than, you know, because you're stuck forever.

Danny C: I have a … I need clarification on this. Does this mean that, like, legit forever, like nothing can impede you from sailing the seas forever?

Baba: Until … In these worlds, it seems to be until Judgment Day. So, worst it would be however long the Earth's gonna last before the Sun's supernovas. And then, best it would be tomorrow. Because there's always another apocalypse, apparently. There's always another reckoning, you know. But then you might just get tossed into hell anyway, so I'm not entirely sure. So, what would be scary for me? Or … And then the other extreme is like being killed by pirates or being shredded to pieces by mermaids.

Danny C: I'm gonna say this … So, give your rating as is and then make it a five. This is like MythBuster style, you know? It's like, what can we do to make this myth happen?

Baba: Yeah, so my rating as is … I'm gonna say it's still pretty damn creepy because you do have a non-zero chance of winding up on a boat. Even if you're not likely to wind up on one. So, I would say I'm gonna give it a solid three. Uh, because … I think liminal spaces, being stuck in a liminal space is … pretty scary. And any of these versions, like being stuck in the ocean, even when I'm like … in water that's like deeper than I really know what's under me, I can really freak myself out … with that because you don't know what's down there. It could be anything, you know? Maybe not, but for me, it could be, you know, as soon as we're like being in a … even just like being in like a canoe that's going over like a lake or something like that. I don't like that. I don't like not knowing what's under me like that. So, yeah, you know what? To tell you the truth, almost any of these versions would be uncomfortable for me. Any almost any of these would … would give me the … the creeps. So, I'm gonna say right off the bat … solid three to four monsters. I'm gonna give it four. Okay, I'll stop messing around. I'll give it four monsters because … this kind of thing does kind of creep me out. And then … to get it to five monsters, I think it would … I'd have to be like the stuck in liminal space … forever. I think that would … that would do it. That would … because … Oh no, I mean, can you achieve some kind of peace with that? Can you just accept it? I don't know. I think that would … that would get it there for me. The least scary of all of them would probably be … shredded to death by mermaids because to tell you the truth … it'd be over. It'd be over fast enough. Pirates might take you hostage. I don't like that either. That's a different kind of … yeah, like no. I'm gonna say if I had to make my wish about which one it was if I was stuck on the ship … mermaids, but the scariest one would be the liminal space. So tell me what your wish would be too then. Whoever wants to go next.

WDG: Yeah, I don't know. I mean like I … I like the boats. Like the whole … the same thing, but it's just like yeah, it's like I'm a little like … like on the haunted ship thing. I think it's like cool to some degree. Not scary, but not scary because like when you … the big crazy ones like right the whole like Flying Dutchman … this idea is like you see you die, you know, that's it. You're gone, right? So it's like there's not a lot of like a lot of these things are like once you encounter it, it's … it's all doomed from here. So it's like so you don't really have like a chance. So it's not like you can get like … it's not something that can really affect you in the long term because … you're doomed. Yeah, um, so I probably like just in the general thing … uh, just for a sheer creepy factor and like, you know, it's a thing unless like unless you get back to tell the tale and it haunts you for the rest of your life. Well that maybe would bring it up a little higher, you know, because it's like that's being stuck in a different type of liminal space. A liminal space of like I saw this ship and then all my crew died and I just made it back by myself and like oh god like … uh, now I have to not force to tell this tale at every bar I get. For the like it's like this is a different type of liminal space of madness, uh, you know, um, but the but yeah, so I'm … ships I think probably like in a weird sense more like less scary. So I'm gonna put it like probably like two. So what would bring it up to a five? I don't know out of the … Like you can't yeah, it probably would be like being like recruited into the crew of the dammed. So now you don't have like a … you know, you don't … So it's not just like you're like the person on the ship leading it around like you're forced to be like rowing or whatever. While you know, while like hellhounds watch you or something. You know, and you're like and you can't ever make board and you're always thirsty and like, you know, you know, like, you know That would probably be like, yeah, because it does kind of like a hell type situation already, right? You know, so that would that would probably be the one to bring it up because like you said like crackins mermaids sea monsters Crab aliens like this is all just blunking the Bermuda triangle like, you know All these things are gonna end this pretty quick, you know, because you're not coming You're not coming back from that. So yeah, so I think that's I probably agree with you, Chris Bring it up that way and probably have to be a in that realm of something that like being stuck in this sort of In between world forever or something, you know, yeah,

Baba: yeah Yeah, that's scary

Danny C: All right so for me, um I think as the the ghost ship in and of itself Like the queen mary or any of these other ones these abandoned ships. Uh, I rate them very low. Uh, I think one For me, it was really cool being on the queen mary It was docked, you know just wandering around like hoping that I would see something that I did not end up not seeing anything Obviously, like I said even the idea of the ghost ship like just having it come back to Back to the dock and there's no one there and it's just weird and creepy but cool So I would be all about that. I don't find that scary at all. You know, nothing about it To make it a five. Honestly, it doesn't take very much Um, put me on a boat in the ocean and we're pretty much out of five Wait a minute When we were kids, uh, I don't think I told you guys this I don't even know if you like even witnessed this uh, but bill we were at your house swimming and Yeah, this huge inflatable island and for my memory, I'm gonna say it was like maybe a six foot diameter And we were swimming. I remember that thing you do.

Baba: I remember that thing

Danny C: Here's the here's more of the story I was swimming underwater and I went to come up and I came up under the island Oh, excuse me. I'm like struggling to like find where the island ends so I can actually get up and breathe And um, it took it took me a good couple seconds and which which was a long time considering I was already Ready to surface when I got

WDG: yeah Yeah, I think a little bit. Yeah.

Danny C: Yeah, and that's that's kind of stuck with me my entire life I need anything with water. Uh, so for me just being on on a bow out at sea I think that's enough But if we wanted to take it up a notch to maybe six or something like that Uh for me seeing probably a um, like a rogue wave coming at me That would be terrifying. I think that would put it over the top Uh followed by like a kraken or something of that nature. That would be really really cool, but also terrifying I think the rogue wave that would that would be enough to just Ah, no

Baba: Yeah, yeah No, I'm I'm with you there. Um scary scary, so um So what's the what's the takeaway from this? What can we give these people anyone who's decided to stay here for some reason? Well, my first advice would be don't shoot an albatross Um, because that seems one that's pretty easy to avoid or a ghost Yeah, if something comes from the sky and tells you you have a bad attitude about sailing don't prove it by shooting them um

WDG: I would say go visit the outer banks not during hurricane season. It's a very cool place and I really like it a lot. Um Has some cool history with pirates and things but maybe stay away from the if you feel like sailing You know all the you know, just be aware that there's lots of shipwrecks out there Hopefully you're not out there on the boat, you know or like it's like or just make sure it's a mild You know, so that's a that's a thought So yeah, so and

Danny C: I said before and i'll say it again I get the opportunity to go see the queen mary, uh, and also if you go in the gift shop you can buy a ouija board there So, uh, if you if you have that urge to do that You can buy your ouija board and try to contact some spirits while you're while you're aboard the queen mary.

Baba: Yes. Yes You know, you guys didn't give very practical advice. You just would what to visit You know if they encounter an albatross and they have an arrow, you

WDG: know We both work for like different tourist, uh associations. We need to get that Oh, that's right. We gotta get that sponsorship in okay like I

Baba: work for the albatross preservation society If

Danny C: you're on a ghost ship and there is still food at the table Don't eat any you don't know what happened to it Don't take deep breaths. You don't know what kind of fumes are running a muck in the in the ship Uh stay off of it and if you

WDG: do board it steal the alcohol Yes

Baba: Do steal the If you've ever encountered, um something strange at ocean, are you are you a fisher a fisherman fisherwoman? Are you a are you a fish woman or fish man? Um, and know some things that happen to some of our missing sailors Let us know we'd like to know more we're always willing to learn more. Please put it in the comments Where the conversation continues?

Danny C: I will also entertain untrue stories Yes,

Baba: yes, or just to

WDG: Just an emoji. Yeah, because I mean this is like the you know Tales, how about this are the tall tales, you know?

Danny C: How about this if you made it this far put a mermaid emoji in the comment?

Baba: Yes. Yes