Real-life "ghost ship" has a SECRET | The disturbing case of the SS Ourang Medan

in 1947 a disturbing distress signal was sent out kind of in all directions like a blind distressed signal from some point in the indian ocean numerous american dutch and english ships along with other international listening stations heard this distress signal and once they triangulated where it was coming from they sent out a search party to go see who needed help when they arrived on scene they discovered something that would become one of the most famous maritime mysteries of all time this is the story of the ss orang madan what's going on guys mr ballin here i was a navy seal for a little while and now i tell strange dark and mysterious stories on the internet youtube is my new passion and i'm gonna be posting at least two times a week going forward and if you like this kind of content please right now hit like on this video and subscribe to my channel turn on notifications so you don't miss any of this stuff thank you very much before we get into the story i want you guys to be looking at this through the lens of trying to decipher whether or not you believe this really happened because there is a large percentage of people that say this is just an urban legend however there is a couple details that make it really hard to just write off number one you have a number of international ships and listening stations that all reported hearing this same distress signal and it's a very unique distress signal that we'll get into in addition you have the us coast guard and one of their you know fairly credible publications published a story about this case five years after it happened and then you have the fact that this case has been around since 1947 it's been 70 plus years and no one's officially debunked it so let's dive in in 1947 several dutch american and english ships along with a number of listening stations picked up the strange distress signal that was coming from somewhere in the indian ocean the distress signal which was in morse code went like this an officer including the captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge possibly whole crew dead then there was a burst of indecipherable morse code and then it ended with two words i die then silence one ship that heard this distress signal was the silver star it was an american vessel that was kind of patrolling the waterways around the the coast of malaysia and with the help of other ships uh in and around the indian ocean and some of the listening stations they were able to triangulate the location of this distress signal and they pinpointed a ship called the ss orang madan that was located right at the end of the strait of malacca which is the primary shipping lane between the indian ocean and the pacific ocean and so they this ship was basically drifting out towards the indian ocean and so the first thing that the silver star does is they try to send a message back to the orang medan but after numerous failed attempts they decide the captain of the silver star decides that we need to go investigate because something is obviously not right here so the silver star tells all the other ships in the area uh along with the other listening stations that they are going to be the search party they're going to re reroute and head for the orang madan because at this point anybody that had heard that signal is is saying like what do we do like are we gonna go investigate are you after a couple of hours of heading straight for the orang madan uh they see off in the distance this the ship you know from the eyes of these very experienced sailors on the silver star they knew almost immediately that this ship is dead in the water uh it's just drifting which is not a good sign especially if you combine that with the signal they got as they get closer and closer to the ship it becomes creepier and creepier because they're looking up and in the in the bridge where you know the steering wheel would be they can't make any personnel there's no one up there there's nobody standing on the edge i mean they just sent this distress signal you would think with a ship that's dead in the water that they would be lining the outside of the ship trying to signal someone down but no it's just quiet no one on board all lights off just drifting bobbing in the choppy waters of the indian ocean and so as they get closer they start blowing their whistle to try to attract anybody on the orang medan to signal them back they're also doing more uh morse code to try to get their attention again not being picked up and so finally after all these failed attempts and just the general weirdness around it the captain of the silver star decides we need to board this ship so the silver star crew members they knew before they boarded that almost definitely they were going to find something terribly wrong with this ship there's just too many red flags about it they were anticipating something bad but i don't think that they were really prepared for just how bad this was going to be so they board the ship and right away on deck is a number of of crew members that had passed away they're all deceased and the the mystery really kicks in in the position the body position of all of the dead crew members they were all all on their back with their hands outstretched in front of them as if defending themselves from some unseen assailant above them even strangers they had this abject this this look of abject terror on their face as if the final moments before they died were just excruciatingly painful and terrifying even the dog was in a position with its teeth bared looked like it was growling up into the sky all of them and so obviously the the silver star crew members are you know shocked at what they find and they're kind of looking at each of these dead crew members and they're like what is going on so they make their way up to the bridge and everybody's also dead in the same position basically fighting with some unseen assailant in their final moments before they pass the the person who had been sending out the distress signal had literally slouched over the the telegraph like their finger was literally on the telegraph he's the only one that was not doing this he was on the telegraph and had passed away in that position so they go down into the bowels of the ship normally inside of a steel ship in the boiler room it's going to be pretty hot there's no real ventilation to speak of not to mention outside it was over 100 degrees they went down into the boiler room and down into the ship and it was strikingly cold some of the crew members from the silver star said it felt like it might have been about 40 degrees fahrenheit they found more crew members also passed away also fighting with something in the air with that look of abject terror on their face so all of the crew has perished in this very bizarre way there was no overt damage to the ship it just appeared that the engine had been turned off but ultimately the ship had no real damage to it at all i couldn't find anything the crew despite meeting a fairly unfortunate end also had no signs of outside injury external injury something had obviously caused them all to perish but there was no injuries outside their body in addition all of them showed signs of rapidly decomposing uh considering they had just been tapping away that distress signal hours earlier uh unless the the person communicating the the distress signal had been the last one alive for a long time it doesn't really add up that they had decomposed as quickly as they had relative to when this distress signal was sent so the captain of the silver star taking into account all of the strangeness decides not to touch any of the bodies leave them where they are get off the ship tie a tow line to the orang madan and tow it in we're going to have experts look at this and figure out what happened and so they attach the tow line the crew members of the silver star and as soon as they begin to move it they notice the crew of the silver star that smoke has begun billowing out of the uh inside of the orange medan and so not taking any chances they cut the toe line and they literally jump back onto the silver star right as the orang madan explodes in fact there was a quote which basically said it exploded with so much force that it was lifted out of the water entirely and then splash back down and rapidly sank so now you have no you have no evidence you have the testimony of the people that were on the ship uh but other than that you have you have no evidence the ship is now gone the captain of the silver star and his crew just have to go back to the mainland to try to make sense of what they just saw because you have all these people that were involved and want to know what happened and they're like well let me tell you we saw this horrible thing on board and then it exploded and it disappeared and so that's where the mystery kind of ends but but here we go let's get into what the primary critique is because that's important here too and then we'll hear the the rebuttal which i think is also pretty important so people that believe this story is just a legend will point to the fact that there really isn't a good record of the ss orang madan ever existing um there's this one very important publication called lloyd's shipping registers where you would expect the orang madan to be registered but they're not others will say that well orang madan translates to man of madan and madan is near a it's near sumatra and that's where they were registered so they weren't in lloyd's shipping registers they were in another registry but either way there is contention around whether or not this ship ever existed but for those who say that this could be true they say that well there's a good reason why those records don't exist because someone's trying to cover it up according to a german researcher who had spent decades covering the orang madan case he published in uh the the death ship on the south seas it's a publication from 1953 that the orang medan was transporting illegal materials things like nitroglycerin and potassium cyanide these are things used to create weapons and there might have been a leak that led to the the death of everyone on board no physical injuries but they passed away and then also after they tied that toe line uh the materials could have detonated you know perhaps they detonated that kind of thing and so that still leads some questions right i mean then how did the how did the silver star crew not also get exposed to these chemicals as soon as they got there either way it's a fascinating story and i hope that you took something from it so if you haven't already i would really appreciate it if you liked this video then you hit subscribe on my channel i'm gonna be i will be posting at least two times a week going forward content just like this so i hope you'll join and that's going to do it guys thank you

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 671,252

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Id: zrVObXVuwJw

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020