Real-Life Seafarers Share Their Haunting Tales From the Ocean

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JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor
Nov 9, 2023 7:00 PM EST

Ah, the sea. Nothing like the salty spray grazing your face, waves churning and rolling, inviting you to parts unknown. There is something endemic in humans that draws us oceanward. Maybe it's an ancient instinct to find resources, maybe it's the promise of adventure, or maybe it's the pull of mystery. That's the thing about the ocean, after all. It holds unknown enigma and phenomenon of which we land-dwellers can only dream. It's the last frontier (or is that space?) for boundless imagination and stories yet to be told. 

Remember when sea shanties were trending on TikTok? I feel like that was us returning to our sea-faring selves, embracing the gallant sailor lifestyle that perhaps we all long for. I forget that there are real people now who spend their lives at sea and that they have stories to tell much like Odysseus did. That's what Reddit is for. So dive with us into the deep, expansive blue of sea tales from real-life sailors, as they regale us with their strangest sights. 

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  • 01
    r/AskReddit u/tylo144. 15h For those who have careers that keep them out at sea for long periods of time, what is the creepiest thing you've seen out in the water?
    via u/tylo144
  • 02
    YourGFblew Me • 13h I worked on the sailboat one summer in the Bahamas and something that you see a lot when you're in the ocean is kayaks and life jackets floating around and you always radio them in but they always just fell off a yacht or something and it's never a big deal. Once we found a kayak floating and it had a fishing rod in the rod holder which basically meant someone was using it
    via u/YourGFblewMe
  • 03
    ONK WH CLAIMS www. ThanklessTask • 11h Some 20 years ago... On the MV Explorer (since sunk) down near the Antarctic circle, sailing around the 'bergs and occasionally making landfall... We rounded into a small bay area, and there, amongst the ice and coast was an unmarked sailing yacht. Which is odd as generally yachts have some identifying markings on them. To add to it, they didn't respond to any radio contact, and whilst I wasn't privy to the conversation (and it was a long time ago), some cr
    via u/ThanklessTask
  • 04
    fd1Jeff 13h ● This sort of qualifies. Former navy here. Somewhere off the coast of Italy saw a very, very small boat, not much bigger than a rowboat, about 9 or 10miles offshore. This was sometime around midnight. There was no light from land, and no other ships around. It had a light. Our ship captain said it was a fisherman, and the fish would be attracted to the light at that time. Imagine being in a rowboat about 10 miles off shore in the middle of a pitch black night, waiting to see what fi
    via u/fd1Jeff
  • 05
    Comrade_Fuzzybottoms ● 12h I used to be an oilfield diver in the Gulf of Mexico. I'd say about 80% of the dives I logged were at night. Mostly 500 ft and under DSV's. It's very eerie feeling sitting on the downline doing in water decompression in the middle of night. I'd always ask topside to turn off my headlight. Like a worm on a hook. Just bobbing in the darkness.
    via u/Comrade_Fuzzybottoms
  • 06
    Bipdisqs • 12h I am a recreational sailor who travels for weeks at a time at sea. I once saw a flame on the water not ten yards from me. Just freaking burning at midnight.
    via u/Bipdisqs
  • 07
    5M1T 13h ● Not so much creepy, as eerie, but being out in the blue at night in a lightning storm in a slack wind. The ocean was very flat - no big rolling swells - just tiny little ripples. The whole world would be black, and then there would be a flurry of bolts, and the whole world would be silver. The ocean looked like nothing so much as aluminium foil that had been scrunched up, and flattened out the water looked like mercury, and all the little ripples made these very dramatic black shadows
    via u/5M1T
  • 08
    MyMomsSecondSon • 12h night, Somewhere in the Atlantic, nice cold as decided to step out and look at stars. About ten minutes on and a boats mast pops up, sits there a few minutes and then back under. No alarms, nothing. Just some sub boys getting a bit of late night o2 in the middle of nowhere next to some friends.
    via u/MyMomsSecondSon
  • 09
    doublestitch • 14h A dead human body. It was the tropics and it wasn't in good shape. We turned it over to the authorities at nearest land. There were enough teeth left to identify it by dental records. Here's hoping the man's family got closure.
    via u/doublestitch
  • 10
    or Tub-a-guts 12h ● The bioluminescent animals (or whatever they are) in the water is pretty amazing. Our toilet would fill up with seawater and if you took a in it in the middle of the night it would agitate the water and it would glow sometimes
    via u/Tub-a-guts
  • 11
    Outside_Awareness_53. 14h Empty boat far out at sea
    via u/Outside_Awareness_53
  • 12
    LittleMsSavoirFaire • 12h One time on an airport trip my Uber driver was saying that he used to do security on tankers. That they would run across empty vessels more than you could possibly imagine, just floating, contents undisturbed, wallets, photos, everything. They would hail them with no response, and, not knowing if it was a trap to get close enough to take over the ship (pirates and ransoming the ship is apparently also more common than you'd think. Not the people tho. Just the cargo). An
    via u/LittleMsSavoirFaire
  • 13
    Herb4372 11h ● In 20 years the weirdest that work out here.... I've seen is other people There's about 40% of the sailors like what they do and are good at it. Another 40% that are good at it, but would do something better if the money was right. But there's another 20%.... If they lived ashore for more than 6 months a year they'd end up dead or incarcerated. There's no more "west" for them to go to so they went offshore and became our problem.
    via u/Herb4372
  • 14
    clubber_lang. 11h I was drinking in an airport bar and met a woman who worked as a commercial fisherman, on her way to SE Asia for R&R with her family. Real salt-of-the- earth lady. She regaled me with stories about her work, all the good stuff about working in her world, all the reasons she kept doing it for decades. I asked her what the scariest thing she saw out on the open ocean was and, without any hesitation, she said "Oh, an underwater UFO. I saw one rise up out of the ocean next to my bo
    via u/clubber_lang
  • 15
    kingbane2 14h ● i have a friend who works on ships. he said the single scariest thing he had ever seen was looking out a window and seeing a wave that he said looked like it was 100 meters high pass right by their boat and suddenly disappear. he knew about rogue waves but he said seeing one that big, and that close, and watching it suddenly just vanish was so creepy and shocking that he was literally stunned for a minute.
    via u/kingbane2
  • 16
    Javka42 12h What I'm learning from these comments is that the ocean makes people poets.
    via u/Javka42

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