Entire crew of downed ship is doomed
[ranking: 1]
"One of my uncles was on a sub in the south pacific during WWII. After they'd sink a ship they'd surface. The crew of the enemy ship would swim to their sub and clung to it as it submerged. Many sleepless nights filled with nightmares of men pounding, scratching and screaming as they slowly drowned."
Sailor comes across errant suicide in the middle of the ocean
[ranking: 2]
"I came across a man who'd hung himself on his boat five or six miles off shore about four or five years ago.
The eery and truly creepy part was realizing what it was. We just saw a boat out in the middle of ocean's nowhere without anything other than blue horizon in sight, at the break of dawn, and there was fairly thick fog, as it had rained the night before.
Realizing that the figure hanging from the boom was a man was one of the most haunting things I'll ever see."
Seemingly impossible thing happens in ocean depths
[ranking: 3]
"My dad's crew was shark fishing off the bank of a smaller tanker ship, basically attaching meat chunks to hooks and throwing them off the back to trawl in the ocean (South east asia/australia area). My dad for fun made up this large (steel alloy? Described it as being incredibly durable) hook to use. They attach a large chunk of meat too it and throw it off the back. A while later they haul it back in, only to find the meat is gone and the hook is bent completley straight. There was nothing it could have snagged on in the deep ocean as the boat was driving through.
My dad and the crew were sufficinently unerved, to think that something large down there could bend a large hook like that."
Lifelong sailor describes the effects of fog
[ranking: 4]
"Fog at sea at night really f*cks up your senses. Everything is quiet and you can't see anything but the boat immediately around you. You keep looking for lights on other ships and listening for fog horns or the sound of engines in the distance and your brain starts playing all manner of tricks on you. In a busy shipping lane it's a serious business and in a very real way it could be life or death if you miss a ship that hits you and sinks you. You start to see lights everywhere around you. You start hearing engines creeping up on you. You stop your boat and cut the engine to see if you're hearing anything real and you enter an even stranger world of sensory deprivation. It's eerie as hell."
Crew mate spots something ominous amid unusually large swells
[ranking: 5]
"I have family who sailed around the world. One day in the North Atlantic, their sailboat was going over some GIGANTIC swells. They didn't have breaks at the top, so it was safe, but the boat was rising and falling way beyond the neutral.
At the bottom of a trough my uncle looked up to see the sun behind a wave and the silhouette of a whale inside, above him."
Aircraft carrier crew sees object flying at impossible speeds on radar
[ranking: 6]
"I was on an aircraft carrier. No flight operations, I was the junior guy that had to sit around and watch the radar/ CNN/ basic instinct on continuous loop...
I noticed a blip which was no big deal. Either commercial or a French carrier (Foch?) had something go on, however, the next blip showed it had traveled quite a distance. At seven seconds per sweep, it was running over 2,000 MPH. My first thought was that it was an SR-71 type badass but my radar was for ATC, that thing would have to be pretty low for me to see it (50,000 feet, tops). The next return verified the speed. It was the fourth turn that qualifies as "creepy." The aircraft had turned 90 degrees. It was headed south, then it turned east. We had planes that could run that fast, but nothing that could turn that fast (that I'm aware of, in the early 90s). Another sweep and it was gone.
buddy of mine in the CDC (combat direction center) saw the same thing. Both of us were pretty excited about it. Reported it up and they blew it off.
So, I don't know about cow mutilation or alien abductions, things like that, but I was (am) absolutely convinced I saw a UFO."
Unexplained, "unknown lights" just under the surface
[ranking: 7]
"I am in the US Coast Guard, and I recently was assigned to a ship. I was going through our log books to look up something and noticed that on the bridge an "Unknown Blue Light" was observed beneath the water's surface the night before. This intrigued, me so I started looking through more of the logs. Apparently, every two to three weeks they enter lights of varying colors in places you would not expect. Usually white, red or green lights are on the horizon, or in the sky (ships and aircraft). But they seem to report colored lights under the water, sometimes moving around, sometimes stationary. Lights in the sky moving at extreme speeds then immediately stopping or disappearing altogether.
Sometimes lights are visible to the naked eye but when we try to look at it with FLIR or night vision they are undetectable."
Huge submarine appears seemingly from nowhere
[ranking: 8]
"This was maybe 10 years ago, and I was sailing with my family, moving a sailboat from the Connecticut shore to Boston, and this happened on an extremely foggy day. I also remember the day being pretty windless as well so we were just motoring along instead of sailing.
Now, the general procedure for sailing in such thick fog is to use radar and foghorns to try to prevent any collisions from happening. At some point we started hearing huge, loud horn blasts, just repeating from somewhere to our right in the fog. It seemed normal enough, someone signalling their position to anyone in the vicinity, then after maybe 15-20 minutes of sailing and listening to these horn blasts, we eventually came upon what was making them. Maybe 100 feet from our boat, a huge ass submarine appeared, and looked like it's just sitting still. The weird thing was the suddenness of it's appearance.
An enormous black shape appearing out of the fog at sea was pretty creepy to me at the time."
Fishing boat receives unexpected visitor 10 miles offshore
[ranking: 9]
"I was on a fishing charter boat on Lake Erie, it was around 5 AM, and the water was scary calm and glasslike, and it was so foggy you could not see more than 30 feet if that.
We all started hearing this plopping sound, like somebody was slapping the water with open hands, and it kept getting louder and closer.
At this point we had all slowly moved to the other side of the boat not knowing WTF it was - even the boat captain was standing there in total silence as we all just stood there and listened to this plopping sound getting closer and closer. And to the shock of us all, a deer swam by the boat - yes, a deer - it looked to be a very large buck with at least 10 points on his rack. We were more than 10 miles off shore so it made no sense at all.""
Navy technician describes bizarre sounds coming from the ocean
[ranking: 10]
US navy submarine sonar tech. I've heard some strange sounding fish that people can usually identify or at least have a colloquial name for (such as the boingfish).
Then I've a lot of weird, unnatural, disturbing sounding fish that nobody can identify. Fish that sound like an opera singer singing while puking into a papershredder.
Seaman describes the effects of an eclipse on the open sea
[ranking: 11]
"We saw one in the middle of the English Channel and it was the strangest thing. There was thin cloud but the sun was visible through it. We were within the total eclipse zone and could see the shadow coming from miles away. It looked like the biggest, most angry storm I've ever seen. Generally the darker the clouds the more it's going to hurt. This was a darkness as dark as is possible at sea during the day. Talked to my dad about it afterwards and we both felt a real uneasiness getting worse and worse the nearer it got. Our bodies and subconscious were readying us for dealing with a really shitty/dangerous situation.
It was just like how people sometimes describe sending a ghost. A cold chill and feeling really on edge. It really was like a ghost storm.
A lot of sailing becomes instinctual after a while and you get a feeling about what's coming from watching the clouds and waves off on the horizon. The eclipse gave off every sign of absolute nastiness but passed without any real world effect other than darkness. Really creepy."
Unusual jellyfish completely surround boat in freak thunderstorm
[ranking: 12]
"I was sailing by the coast of Okinawa, when a thunder storm started up in the middle of the night. Strangely, the ocean was completely still and the weather was giving us a wonderful light show. Lightning would strike the water and light up everything around us. Suddenly, lighting struck near our boat and we saw the most incredible sight. Jellyfish. Jellyfish everywhere. There's were not the usual jellyfish that you see around the US, these things were HUGE. The lightning would strike the water, and the jellyfish would light up.
The ocean literally looked like it glowed purple and red that night."
Ocean becomes inexplicably, terminally calm in the middle of the Pacific
[ranking: 13]
On the Pacific side of South America - I believe we were off the coast of Peru or Chile, I can't quite remember - I was working night shift, so I was out on the flight deck to watch the sun come up.
Strangest damn thing I've ever seen. The ocean was dead calm, like a lake. Seriously, no ripples, no waves, just dead calm. Like you found a small pond up in the mountains that was completely undisturbed. The moon was bright in the sky, but there was still a lot of light from it. The moon made it feel all the more eerie. And besides the noise from the ship, it was completely silent. One of the weirdest experiences I've ever felt.
Experienced seaman describes horrifyingly close meteorites
[ranking: 14]
"The thing I have seen a few times that really creeped me out were whilst on watch at night. And on several occasions witnessed meteorites similar if not bigger to the ones caught on dash cams in Russia. Also seemingly close to the ship. Even audible to the human ear if outside on the bridge wings.
Spectacular sights but also kinda terrifying."
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