Obscure Occurrences : The Mysterious Case of the SS Ourang Medan

Eerie Distress Signals

 In 1947, multiple Dutch, American and English ships picked up a disturbing morse code distress signal from a random area of the Indian ocean. The distress signal said that “An officer including captain are dead, lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew is dead”. This message was followed by meaningless morse code after which it said “I die”. After conveying this message, the signal ended.

 After hearing this signal, the ships that heard it were able to determine the exact location from where it was sent. It was determined that the ship that sent it was a Dutch freighter ship named the SS Ourang Medan and the signal seemed to be coming from the end of the Strait of Malacca.  As this location was close to an American merchant ship named the Silver Star, they tried sending return signals to the Ourang Medan but despite trying multiple times, they never got any reply. Thus, the captain of the Silver Star decided to re-route and sail towards the Ourang Medan.

Boarding the Ourang Medan

 A couple of hours later, the sailors of the Silver Star discovered the Ourang Medan at a distance. The ship appeared to be completely down and it was drifting through the water with its flow. This sight combined with the distress signal they had received earlier, made them anxious about the state of the Ourang Medan’s crew. As they went closer and closer to the ship, the crew noticed that the ship appeared completely deserted. There was no one on board and all the lights of the ship were turned off. They started blowing their whistle and sending morse code signals to the ship to get the attention of its members but they did not get any response.

 With the obscurity surrounding the Ourang Medan growing, the captain of the Silver Star decided to board the ship. After boarding the ship, the crew members of the Silver Star found multiple crew members of the Ourang Medan lying dead on the deck. All of their corpses were lying on their back with hands stretched in front of them. It appeared as if they were defending themselves from an assault and all of their dead faces depicted extreme fear. Also, their dog appeared to have died while growling at something.

Corpses, Corpses and even more Corpses

 The crew members of the Silver Star were caught entirely off guard by what they had just seen but they kept walking into the ship. As they made their way up to the bridge, they found multiple other crew members of Ourang Medan dead literally in the same position. The only corpse that was in a different position was the body of the person who sent the distress signal. He had apparently died while still sending the signal as his finger was still on the telegraph.

 After completely checking the ship and discovering multiple other corpses, the crew members of the Silver Star descended into the bowel of the ship and they were greeted by strangeness. With no ventilation and the boiler room above it, the bowel is always really hot but, the bowel of the Ourang Medan was uncharacteristically cold. In fact, the crew members of the Silver Star said that they felt as if it was around 4 degrees Celsius. Despite so many dead crew members, the Ourang Medan only had its engine turned off and did not have any notable damage. Also, the dead members did not have any external injuries and all of them were rapidly decomposing. This was particularly strange as the crew had sent distress signals just a few hours before getting discovered.

The Explosion of the Ourang Medan

 Not knowing what caused their death, the captain of the Silver Star ordered his crew members to not touch any of those bodies. He decided to tow the ship to the mainland and seek the help of experts to understand what truly happened to its members. Thus, they tied a tow line to the Ourang Medan and started sailing towards the mainland. Within a few moments after moving the Ourang Medan, the crew members of the Silver Star started seeing smoke coming from its inside. The smoke exponentially increased with time and they decided to cut off the tow line.

 Moments after cutting off the tow line, the Ourang Medan completely exploded. It exploded with so much force that it was literally lifted out of the water fully and it quickly sank into the depths of the ocean. The explosion of the Ourang Medan left behind no proof of its strangeness. The Captain of the Silver Star and his crew members headed to the mainland in search of answers to the things they witnessed inside the sunken ship but they were not able to find any. The only proof of this incident is the testimonies of the crew members of the Silver Star and the other ships that received the disturbing distress signal of the Ourang Medan.