Out of all the stories of mysterious deaths and disappearances at sea, the story of the SS Ourang Medan is one of the most chilling.
The SS Ourang Medan was a Dutch cargo ship from 1947, that wrecked in Indonesian waters and when rescuers came aboard, they found horrific death—corpses with mouths and eyes wide open, curled into “horrible caricatures” with no sign of physical injury. Before anyone could examine the bodies, a fire broke out in the ship’s hold, and the ship was hastily abandoned.
A morse code message was discovered with the words “All officers including captain are dead.” This was followed by another message reading “I die.”
There are many theories about what happened, ranging from carbon monoxide poisoning to old-fashioned ghost stories, but none of them take into account a simple fact. At no point has anyone discovered any evidence that the Ourang Medan itself actually existed.
It shows up in no freight logs, insurance documents, fleet registries, or construction records, and some sources can’t even agree on whether the ship was Dutch or Indonesian.
Source: Mandatory
