For deep-sea fishermen and sea captains, the sea is home.
But the briny deep is home to danger, mystery - and terror.
Here are some of the strangest and creepiest things ever found underwater.
Fishermen are hunting for a valuable catch, but they’re more likely to fish out trash in
some places. Who hasn’t seen the cartoons of the fisherman plucking an old boot out
of the water? But one fisherman, only known as TheLightningCount1 when he posted this story on
Reddit, found something much creepier. He pulled an old briefcase out of the water, and opened
it thinking it may contain something valuable. Instead, it held multiple old, damaged children’s
shoes. Was this the quarry of a traveling shoe salesman...or something more nefarious?
The ocean is full of strange things - some that can’t be explained.
If you’re fishing or sailing solo, being on the open sea can be incredibly lonely.
So it’s not a surprise that many fishermen have reported odd experiences - hearing strange sounds
or voices that can’t be explained by any logic. This has led to many people believing
that the ocean is haunted, but one fisherman thought the spirits may be trying to save him.
He was alone on his small fishing boat when he suddenly heard a loud voice - “Move Over” - when
there was no one within a half-mile. Was it his mind playing tricks on him, a territorial ghost,
or a warning? He didn’t stick around to find out.
The ocean can be dangerous - sometimes for what it doesn’t do.
A Marine Corps veteran only known as chadywacker on Reddit did a tour of duty, spending a lot of
time on ships. He was sailing through the Pacific when suddenly everything went eerily quiet.
The wind stopped completely. Looking down at the water, it looked like a perfectly smooth pane of
glass only broken by the moving ship. While this wasn’t a threat at all to the powerful military
ship, it was a chilling reminder of what happened to many ships in the past - a sail-powered ship
that found itself in the doldrums could have easily become stranded with little hope of rescue.
But as we go deeper, things get stranger.
The oceans are full of litter, but few are more memorable than the next item. When Neil Armstrong
launched into space on the Apollo 11, the engines from the rocket fell away as planned and landed
in the ocean not far away from the launch site in Florida. And that’s where it stayed until
decades later - when a man with deep pockets decided to recover this piece of living history.
Jeff Bezos funded a deep-sea search, recovered the now degraded engine,
and kick-started his ongoing mission to conquer space with the power of Amazon.
And it’s not the only industrial machine you’ll find below.
World War I and World War II were the most brutal wars in human history, and the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans were home to some of the most intense combat. That left the seas littered
with the metal skeletons of what were once powerful war machines. The remnants of planes
are the most common, frequently being shot down high above the sea. But explorers will also find
massive submarines sunken by their fellow ships, along with occasional tanks and trucks that met
unfortunate fates. But no matter their original purpose, they’ve all been reclaimed by the sea.
And that’s what happens to just about anything brought to rest in the deep sea.
It’s one of the creepiest sights you’ll encounter in the seas - what looks like a person,
frozen deep below the water and covered in barnacles and rust. But it’s not a person
at all - it’s a statue. How does a statue wind up under the water? Some were built a very long
time ago and the city they were a part of now rests underwater after a disaster. Others may
have fallen off-board from a ship. And others may have actually been built or placed underwater,
like the famous Christ of the Abyss, built in Italy to memorialize a fallen scuba diver.
But even stranger than finding one odd thing under the ocean - finding a lot of them in one place.
Ah, New Jersey. Who doesn’t love the Jersey shore, where you can find boardwalks, cheesesteaks - and
a mysterious train graveyard. It was 1985 when a group of divers found a collection of old train
cars deep below the water. Even odder, there was no record of how they got there. Could they have
fallen off a destroyed barge? Were they jettisoned off a ship to make it lighter during rough seas?
Or was there crime involved? The early steam trains were dated back to the 1850s,
are still in good condition, and remain a popular location for divers to explore.
But one wreck has even more reason for people to keep coming back.
Large destroyed ships at the bottom of the ocean are nothing new, and the search for the Titanic
captured the public’s attention. But one ship still has people fascinated. The RMS Republic
sank after a collision years before the Titanic, although only six people died. It wasn’t found
until 1981, its ruins near Nantucket Island. So why are people still determined to explore it
today? Simple - money. Many reports indicate that the Republic has massive amounts of
money on board, in the form of gold coins. Some reports say $250,000, others say three million.
But that was in 1909 dollars - which would multiply the value of any cargo by roughly thirty.
What’s larger than a massive ship underwater? How about a whole city?
The city of Heracleion was one of Egypt’s key cities during the last days of the Pharaohs,
but much like that reign, it didn’t last forever. Natural disasters including earthquakes and
tsunamis damaged the city until the soil under it liquefied, leading much of the city to sink
into the sea. There it stayed - until 1933, when a British pilot sighted the ruins deep in the water.
Explorers have since found countless remnants of the ancient civilization including coins,
pottery, boats, and even a small Greek temple. The finds have been described
as the closest thing to discovering the legendary sunken city of Atlantis.
But undersea architecture doesn’t have to be ancient.
Imagine you’re drifting through the waters off the coast of France, and you see a bizarre sight.
It looks like an underwater high-rise office building, and it does have countless residents -
but none of them are human. This is an artificial coral reef, designed to help the valuable ocean
lifeforms rebuild after human damage to their habitat. They start out looking like sleek metal
structures in different forms, and then have marine life attach to them. They grow on them,
transforming the object into a permanent reef that provides food and hiding places for fish.
But really, humans don’t have to provide bizarre or creepy things to the ocean.
The ocean does just fine with that on its own.
How do you find a river...deep under the water? It might look like magic, but the Cenote Angelita
Cave is actually a strange natural phenomenon. The massive cave looks like it has a stunningly
clear water flowing through it, the result of a cloud of hydrogen sulphide released by organic
debris in the cave. It causes the seawater to separate from the fresh groundwater in the cave,
creating the illusion of two different streams of water flowing through the same underwater area.
If this was a video game, following the underwater river would definitely lead to a bonus level.
This next strange phenomenon will “point” you right to it.
It’s a common site in a cave - a rock formation pointing downwards. You’re used to seeing them
made out of ice, hanging from the rafters. But located in the ocean? It’s called a brinicle,
and these dagger-shaped ice formations are surprisingly common. Seawater freezes in the cold
polar oceans, and this means the salt particles are expelled from the ice. That creates a powerful
blast of dense, cold, salty water that freezes at a lower temperature. When it hits the ocean water,
ice forms around it - creating a long, sharp, hollow icicle that looks a lot like a finger.
But there’s nothing scarier under the water than something you just can’t identify.
It was 2011 and treasure hunters from Sweden were searching the floor of the Baltic Sea.
They weren’t prepared to see something genuinely bizarre - a circular-shaped object at the bottom
that had indentations in the front that made it look a lot like the famous Millennium Falcon from
Star Wars - a spaceship. Could this be a sunken UFO? Anything’s possible, and tabloid magazines
immediately latched on to the story. While geologists analyzed it and said it was likely a
glacial formation, that hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists from latching on to every image.
Of course, sometimes the scariest thing about the ocean is its residents.
Remember those pillbugs you saw as a kid? Little bugs that would curl up into a ball
when you touched them. They were kind of cute - but they’d be a lot less cute if they were up
to two feet long. They look more like giant alien monsters that are the first wave of an invasion,
but they’re a lot less menacing than they look. These sea-bed scavengers are an essential part
of the ecosystem, eating organic debris that would otherwise pollute the ocean,
and they can be found scurrying along the bottom of any large body of water.
They’re completely harmless to humans, so maybe just give them a wide berth.
When it comes to ocean creatures, sometimes size is the most disturbing part.
The jellyfish is a pain in the butt in the best of circumstances, delivering painful stings to
any diver who comes too close. Some can even be deadly. But most are small and easy to avoid.
Not the Lion’s Mane Jellyfish, a massive moon-shaped creature that can be seven
feet across - and that’s before you look at the tentacles. It pulls a massive web of tentacles
behind it that can be over a hundred feet long. Their sting isn’t particularly deadly,
just painful, but their massive body can cause a lot of stings - even after they’re dead. In 2010,
150 tourists were stung by chunks of a dead Lion’s Mane on a New Hampshire beach.
For a lot of deep sea creatures, this next creature is the last they’ll ever see.
The deep sea is full of bizarre creatures, but few as terrifying as the anglerfish.
Fish see a small, glowing light in the distance, float towards it - only to discover it’s attached
to a hungry fish that reveals a mouth full of sharp teeth and - gulp. The anglerfish is one
of the best predators of the deep sea, but its size surprised many deep sea fishermen.
This fish can grow to almost four feet in length and over a hundred pounds - meaning
it might not be only a threat to deep sea fish. Whatever you do, don’t go towards the light…
But no mystery under the sea captivated people quite like this one.
The year was 1901, and the discovery of a shipwreck near the green island Antikythera
revealed something shocking. Buried deep within the wreckage was a massive piece of machinery,
full of gears and inscriptions. It was obviously a highly advanced machine - but
it dated back to ancient Greece. It puzzled scientists, and many readers wondered if it
had come from a lost civilization - or even aliens. It would be decades before a full
understanding of the machine became possible, and it’s now known as the first analogue computer,
used to track astronomical positions and eclipses, as well as the Olympic cycle at
the time. Reconstruction efforts are still ongoing, and the machine now known as the
Antikythera Mechanism remains one of the biggest mysteries in the ocean’s history.
For more bizarre mysteries, check out “Weirdest Unsolved Mysteries”, or watch “Real Life Ghost
Story - Mystery of the Mary Celeste Ghost Ship” for another eerie tale of the seas.