Speaker 1: Story one. I never thought a dive in the dark
Speaker 1: waters off the coast of Maine would become the most
Speaker 1: bone chilling experience of my life. My name is Lena,
Speaker 1: and I've always been drawn to the murky depths, a
Speaker 1: passion that started in my hometown and grew into an obsession.
Speaker 1: It was early autumn, and I had arranged a dive
Speaker 1: with a small crew, including my longtime dive buddy Mark,
Speaker 1: who had grown up hearing tales of the eerie legends.
Speaker 2: Of our local waters.
Speaker 1: Little did I know that one fateful descent would leave
Speaker 1: me questioning everything. The day was overcast, the sky a
Speaker 1: heavy gray, mirroring my unsettled mood. As we prepared our
Speaker 1: gear on the creaking deck of an old research boat.
Speaker 1: You sure about this, Mark asked, his tone half joking
Speaker 1: but laced with genuine worry as he tightened his equipment. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I replied, my voice steadier than I felt. We had
Speaker 1: done countless dives together, but there was something unusual about today.
Speaker 1: The water's surface was rippled by a brisk current, and
Speaker 1: the wind seemed to whisper secrets I wasn't ready to understand.
Speaker 1: Without delay, we plunged into the cold Atlantic, the water
Speaker 1: swallowing our shapes and numbing our limbs. We descended along
Speaker 1: a guideline, a routine we trusted implicitly in low visibility dives.
Speaker 1: But as we dropped below forty feet, a strange sensation
Speaker 1: gripped me, an unsettling feeling that the depths were watching us.
Speaker 1: You feel that, I murmured to Mark, who was scanning
Speaker 1: the darkness ahead. His only reply was a tight nod,
Speaker 1: his expression shadowed by a flicker of fear. At around
Speaker 1: fifty five feet, the familiarity of our group vanished. Mark
Speaker 1: and I exchanged uneasy glances, and the silence between us
Speaker 1: grew dense with unspoken questions, where is everyone. Mark's voice
Speaker 1: was a low whisper that barely carried through the oppressive water.
Speaker 1: We lingered at the bottom of the guideline, our pulse
Speaker 1: racing as seconds stretched into minutes. The usual chatter of
Speaker 1: our dive group was nowhere to be heard. Instead, the
Speaker 1: only sound was the relentless pulse of our own breathing
Speaker 1: and the distant echo of water against metal. Time became
Speaker 1: a torturous loop. I checked my depth gage and regulator,
Speaker 1: every instrument, affirming that nothing was wrong. With our gear,
Speaker 1: yet an overwhelming dread clawed at my insides. Lena, this
Speaker 1: isn't right, Mark finally said, his eyes darting to the
Speaker 1: faint outline of the guideline disappearing into the void. I
Speaker 1: could only agree silently. We needed to abort, but something
Speaker 1: compelled us to wait, a hope, misguided, perhaps, that our
Speaker 1: companions would surface any moment. Then it happened. A faint,
Speaker 1: muffled sound, as if someone was calling out from beyond
Speaker 1: the veil, reached our ears. Hello, I called, my voice,
Speaker 1: trembling as I tried to pierce the dense obscurity.
Speaker 2: There was no answer.
Speaker 1: Only the sound repeated in my mind, like an echo
Speaker 1: from another world. Did you hear that? Mark asked, his
Speaker 1: face contorting in confusion. I nodded, and our eyes met
Speaker 1: in a shared silent terror. After what seemed like an eternity,
Speaker 1: we ascended slowly, our movements mechanical and desperate. Breaking through
Speaker 1: the water's surface, we were met with a disquieting sight.
Speaker 1: The boy was adrift, and there, slumped against it was
Speaker 1: one lone figure from our team. His eyes were wide
Speaker 1: with disbelief as he stared blankly at the horizon where
Speaker 1: our boat should have been the boat. It's gone, he
Speaker 1: whispered in broken sentences, his voice cracking with panic. The
Speaker 1: shock of it all struck me hard. Only moments ago,
Speaker 1: I had believed in the safety of numbers, in the
Speaker 1: comfort of routine, now uncertainly loomed like a specter over everything.
Speaker 1: Within minutes, our minds raced through the possibilities. Had we
Speaker 1: been abandoned by a careless crew? Was this some twisted prank?
Speaker 1: Mark tried to calm us down, suggesting that maybe the
Speaker 1: boat had drifted away due to the swell, leaving us
Speaker 1: temporarily stranded, but his words did little to soothe the
Speaker 1: terror that gripped us. As we clung to the buoy.
Speaker 1: Each wave seemed to carry away a piece of our sanity,
Speaker 1: the cold water now mingling with an even colder dread.
Speaker 1: In those final moments of isolation, I found myself alone
Speaker 1: with my thoughts in the vast, indifferent ocean. Why are
Speaker 1: we here, I whispered aloud, unable to shake the feeling
Speaker 1: that something far more sinister than.
Speaker 2: A lost boat was at play.
Speaker 1: The water around us churned ominously, as if in response
Speaker 1: to my questioning.
Speaker 2: I could almost believe that the depths had decided.
Speaker 1: To reclaim us, pulling us into their eternal abyssal embrace.
Speaker 1: It was then that the unexplainable struck. A sudden, inexplicable
Speaker 1: current surged beneath us, tugging at the buoye as if
Speaker 1: guided by an unseen hand. Mark grabbed my arm with
Speaker 1: a desperate strength, his eyes wide with terror, Lean a
Speaker 1: hold on, he shouted, through gasps and frantic splashes. The
Speaker 1: buoy That small marker of hope in a vast sea
Speaker 1: of dark barakness began to drift rapidly. The lone figure
Speaker 1: at the boy faded into the growing distance, and we
Speaker 1: were left clinging to our rapidly vanishing lifeline. Panic had
Speaker 1: taken complete control. The cold was now a secondary concern
Speaker 1: to the terror of being lost in an endless, indifferent
Speaker 1: blue void. Every muscle tensed as we struggled against the
Speaker 1: pull of the current. Our frantic strokes almost synchronized in
Speaker 1: their desperation. It was as if the ocean itself had
Speaker 1: turned hostile, determined to erase all traces of human presence.
Speaker 1: I could hear Mark's panic breathing and the splashing of
Speaker 1: our limbs, Each sound magnified a thousandfold in the oppressive
Speaker 1: silence of our isolation. For what felt like an eternity,
Speaker 1: we battled the unseen force, our minds oscillating between a
Speaker 1: desperate survival instinct and an overwhelming, paralyzing fear. It was
Speaker 1: not a situation that could be solved by reason or logic,
Speaker 1: a primal horror that left little room for explanation. Each
Speaker 1: was a torment, every moment a battle against the inexplicable.
Speaker 1: In our struggle, the familiar rhythm of our hearts was
Speaker 1: replaced by a cacophony of rapid beats echoing in the
Speaker 1: hollow of our chests. In a final desperate surge, we
Speaker 1: managed to regain enough control to pull ourselves toward the
Speaker 1: disoriented figure who had now reappeared briefly near the boy.
Speaker 1: His gaunt face and wild, unseeing eyes spoke of an
Speaker 1: experience so profound that it had shattered any semblance of normalcy.
Speaker 1: Something's not right, he stammered, his voice barely audible over
Speaker 1: the pounding of our hearts. We exchanged one last look,
Speaker 1: a mixture of fear, regret, and an unspoken acknowledgment that
Speaker 1: we had witnessed something beyond our understanding. Then, as abruptly
Speaker 1: as it had all begun, the water stilled, The relentless
Speaker 1: tug of the current eased, leaving us suspended in a quiet,
Speaker 1: haunting calm. The boy drifted lazily on the surface, and
Speaker 1: the lone figure, as if if released from a nightmare,
Speaker 1: began to stir, his movements, robotic and devoid of the
Speaker 1: terror moments before. Without warning, the world above broke into
Speaker 1: a haze of light and color, as rescue boats materialized
Speaker 1: on the horizon, their engines thrumbing in the distance, relief
Speaker 1: and bewilderment ward within us, the surreal nature of the
Speaker 1: moments before still haunting. Every fiber of our being known
Speaker 1: in the unexplainable is razor thin, and sometimes it is
Speaker 1: best not to cross it at all. And with that
Speaker 1: final thought, the incident ended as abruptly as it began,
Speaker 1: leaving behind only a lingering terror, an eerie void, and
Speaker 1: the unmistakable knowledge that some parts of our world remain
Speaker 1: forever shrouded in darkness.
Speaker 2: Story two. I'm Nate.
Speaker 1: I live in Jupiter, Florida, and I've been diving since
Speaker 1: i was sixteen. I'm thirty two. Now what happened on
Speaker 1: That dive of last summer still makes me feel sick
Speaker 1: when I think about it. It was a solo morning
Speaker 1: off a wreck i'd been to dozens of times, the
Speaker 1: Coral Queen. It's a sunken casino boat about five miles offshore.
Speaker 1: Depth bottoms out around ninety feet. Visibilities usually decent if
Speaker 1: you go early and beat the tourist charters. That morning,
Speaker 1: the water was like glass. I remember feeling calm, like
Speaker 1: it would be a good dive. I dropped in just
Speaker 1: after sunrise. Everything was normal. I followed the line down, equalizing,
Speaker 1: breathing easy. The Queen came into view like a ghost
Speaker 1: out of the blue. Its frame looked peaceful, fish sliding
Speaker 1: through rusted windows. I clipped my torch to my BC,
Speaker 1: just in case. It's always darker inside the wreck. I
Speaker 1: planned to do a quick pass through the main lounge,
Speaker 1: check out the staircase, then loop back out. I wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to be a hero. I'd done this before. The
Speaker 1: entrance was tight but familiar. The lounge was full of
Speaker 1: silt and shadows. Fish scattered in my light as I passed.
Speaker 1: It was quiet still. I kept an eye on my
Speaker 1: pressure gage. Everything was smooth and then I saw the curtain.
Speaker 1: That's what stopped me. On the far wall, right above
Speaker 1: the old bar counter, there was this red velvet curtain. Heavy.
Speaker 1: It swayed slightly like there was a current inside. But
Speaker 1: there wasn't, not in the wreck, not like that. I
Speaker 1: knew immediately something was wrong, because that curtain shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been there. I'd never seen it before, and I'd been
Speaker 1: through that exact room a dozen times. The wreck had
Speaker 1: no fabric like that left. Most of it was stripped
Speaker 1: or rotted long ago. I hovered staring at it. My
Speaker 1: light flickered just once, and I swear to God, behind
Speaker 1: that curtain, I saw a movement. I'm not talking about fish.
Speaker 1: Something pulled the fabric back just an inch or two,
Speaker 1: just enough to see what looked like a hand, pale,
Speaker 1: wet human. I froze. I remember holding my breath out
Speaker 1: of instinct, even though that's the last thing you should
Speaker 1: do with a regulator in your mouth. I didn't blink,
Speaker 1: I didn't move. The hand didn't move either. It just
Speaker 1: stayed there, fingers slack, like it was resting or waiting.
Speaker 1: I blinked, and it was gone. The curtain settled, no current,
Speaker 1: no sign of anything. I thought, maybe I imagined it,
Speaker 1: Maybe I had nitrogen narcosis, though I was only at
Speaker 1: sixty five feet and it had never hit me before.
Speaker 1: Then my torch died. One second I had light, the
Speaker 1: next I didn't. Black. I flicked it, tapped it nothing.
Speaker 1: I reached from my backup, clipped it off my chest,
Speaker 1: clicked it on. It lit for maybe half a second
Speaker 1: before flickering out too. Now I don't scare easily underwater.
Speaker 1: I've been tangled, bumped by sharks, cotton currents. But this
Speaker 1: was different, This was wrong. I turned slow and careful,
Speaker 1: trying not to stir silt. I could barely make out
Speaker 1: the exit through the faint light filtering in from the
Speaker 1: rex open windows. I started heading for it, and then
Speaker 1: I heard it, clear as day, even through water and regulator.
Speaker 2: Nate.
Speaker 1: It came from behind the curtain. That same soft, wet
Speaker 1: voice repeated, Nate, you're here. I wanted to bolt, but
Speaker 1: my limbs wouldn't move. I felt like my body didn't
Speaker 1: belong to me. My hands trembled, my fins scraped rusted floor.
Speaker 1: Then something stepped out from behind the curtain, not swam stepped.
Speaker 1: It had legs. I couldn't see its face completely, just
Speaker 1: the outline. It looked human, but swollen, bloated skin like fish, belly, hair,
Speaker 1: floating in a dead way, like it wasn't really underwater.
Speaker 1: And its eyes, Jesus, they were wide open, like it
Speaker 1: had drowned mid panic, pupils fixed in milky. It raised
Speaker 1: one hand toward me, still not swimming, just walking like
Speaker 1: it was walking on dry land. Nate, it said again,
Speaker 1: this time, you shouldn't be here. I panicked, finally moved
Speaker 1: kicked backward. My tank clanged against a rusted beam, and
Speaker 1: I dropped down, scrambling, stirring silt. Couldn't see, couldn't tell
Speaker 1: where the thing was. Then a hand touched my shoulder,
Speaker 1: cold solid. I screamed into my rag, spun around. Nothing there,
Speaker 1: no hand, no curtain, just silt and shadows. I bolted.
Speaker 1: I don't remember how I got out. I honestly don't.
Speaker 1: Next thing I knew, I was outside the wreck, kicking
Speaker 1: up toward the light, my heart hammering in my ears.
Speaker 1: I did my safety stop at fifteen feet, shaking so
Speaker 1: bad I thought I'd pass out. I kept looking down,
Speaker 1: waiting for it to follow, for that voice, but it
Speaker 1: didn't I surfaced, hauled myself onto my boat, ripped off
Speaker 1: my gear, and puked over the side. I sat there
Speaker 1: in the sun, wet suits, soaked and sticking to me,
Speaker 1: just staring at the water. It looks so calm, like
Speaker 1: none of it had happened. Story three. I live in Kingston, Ontario,
Speaker 1: right near the edge of the Saint Lawrence River.
Speaker 2: Lawrence River.
Speaker 1: It's a small city, peaceful mostly, but if you dive,
Speaker 1: you know this place is different. Beneath the surface, the
Speaker 1: river holds onto things, not just wrecks, not just history things,
Speaker 1: and I think I touched one. This happened two summers ago,
Speaker 1: late August. The water's just warm enough to be bearable
Speaker 1: in a seven millimeter wetsuit, and the visibility surprisingly decent.
Speaker 1: I was diving the Wolf Islander two, a scuttled ferry
Speaker 1: that sits in about eighty feet of water. It's a
Speaker 1: popular wreck, straightforward, good for intermediate divers, but the current
Speaker 1: rips through there fast, especially because it's smack in the
Speaker 1: middle of a shipping channel. You get careless, you drift
Speaker 1: right into the path of a tanker. That day, I
Speaker 1: was diving with Mike, my regular buddy. We've done dozens
Speaker 1: of dives together, same gear configuration, same signals, same predive checks.
Speaker 1: We briefed like usual, clipped into the down line, and
Speaker 1: started the descent, no problems. The wreck came into view
Speaker 1: around forty feet, shadowy and silent, like it always is.
Speaker 1: We didn't penetrate, just to circuit around the upper deck,
Speaker 1: checking out the wheelhouse, poking around some door frames. Everything
Speaker 1: normal until it wasn't. We were heading back to the
Speaker 1: line around twenty five minutes into the dive. Mike was
Speaker 1: in front on my long hose seven feet so he
Speaker 1: could lead, and I'd keep a hand on his calf
Speaker 1: to stay in contact. The current was nasty, but manageable.
Speaker 1: He was breathing off my octo because just a few
Speaker 1: minutes earlier he'd signaled that his primary was empty. I
Speaker 1: checked his SPG myself bone dry. That alone should have
Speaker 1: rattled me more. He should have had at least a
Speaker 1: third of his tank left, but we'd have issues with
Speaker 1: a leaky SPG once before, so I shrugged it off.
Speaker 1: My tank was still good, plenty of gas. I thought
Speaker 1: we were fine. We were halfway to the ascent line
Speaker 1: when I let go of his leg to clear a
Speaker 1: jammed bolt snap on my waistder ring maybe three seconds max.
Speaker 1: When I looked up, he was gone. I whipped my
Speaker 1: head around, felt the current tugging at me harder now,
Speaker 1: like it had picked up in those few seconds. I
Speaker 1: spotted him downstream, maybe twenty feet off, flailing upside down,
Speaker 1: both fins above his head, like he was caught in
Speaker 1: a windstorm, and his regulator was gone. My heart bottomed out.
Speaker 1: He'd ripped it from his mouth when he got pulled.
Speaker 1: I watched him grab one of the midlines strung between
Speaker 1: the wreck and the ascent line. He held on barely,
Speaker 1: his body bending backwards, like the river was trying to
Speaker 1: break him in half. I kicked hard toward him, fighting
Speaker 1: the drag. My mask almost flooded from how fast I
Speaker 1: was breathing. I reeled in the long hose as I
Speaker 1: went seven feet of it, trailing like a lifeline. He
Speaker 1: was still upside down, mouth open, eyes wide as hell.
Speaker 1: I jammed the regulator between his teeth. He bit down hard.
Speaker 1: It hissed, but something was wrong. He shook his head,
Speaker 1: clawed at it. I realized it was upside down. He
Speaker 1: flipped it himself just in time, but in the process
Speaker 1: he lost his grip on the line, he flew backward.
Speaker 1: I caught his BCD by sheer luck, but that tore
Speaker 1: me off the midline too.
Speaker 2: We spun together, tumbling.
Speaker 1: I wrapped both legs around the line like a python,
Speaker 1: hooked my ankles anchored us.
Speaker 2: We hung there, him.
Speaker 1: Hyperventilating, me shaking so bad I couldn't check my own air.
Speaker 1: Then everything went wrong in a way I still can't explain.
Speaker 1: The water got dark, not low visibility dark, something else
Speaker 1: like it thickened. Everything beyond five feet turned pitch black,
Speaker 1: like we were sitting in ink. Mike noticed two. His
Speaker 1: head snapped around, then locked onto some passed my shoulder.
Speaker 1: His eyes they changed. I've never seen that look in
Speaker 1: a person before. It wasn't panic. It was like he
Speaker 1: wasn't seeing the river anymore. He was seeing something else.
Speaker 1: He tried to speak regulators, still in just a garbled moan.
Speaker 2: I turned. I swear on my life.
Speaker 1: Something was there, hanging, just at the edge of the dark,
Speaker 1: not swimming, not drifting, hanging. It looked like a diver,
Speaker 1: but wrong. No bubbles, no movement, just hovering, maybe fifteen
Speaker 1: feet away. The suit was old, not vintage, ancient canvas
Speaker 1: maybe like early nineteen hundreds hard hat gear, only there
Speaker 1: was no helmet, just avoid where the head should have been.
Speaker 1: It moved, not toward us, just a slight shift, like
Speaker 1: it was acknowledging us. My guts twisted, my chest started cramping.
Speaker 1: My arms were locked holding onto Mike in the rope,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't move anything else. Then the current died,
Speaker 1: not slowed, just stopped. The river was still. That thing
Speaker 1: started drifting forward. I don't remember unclipping my reel. I
Speaker 1: don't remember what I did with the rest of the hose.
Speaker 1: I just remember digging my gloves into the rope and
Speaker 1: kicking for the ascent line with everything I had. I
Speaker 1: pulled Mike with me. He wasn't kicking, he was just
Speaker 1: staring over my shoulder, paralyzed. We hit the line and
Speaker 1: didn't stop. Blew our safety stop came up too fast.
Speaker 1: I don't care. We surfaced just off the stern of
Speaker 1: the dive boat. I screamed before my regulator was even
Speaker 1: out of my mouth. The captain yanked us up, swearing
Speaker 1: at us the whole time, said we came up like torpedoes.
Speaker 1: Didn't care. We stripped gear on deck, Both of us
Speaker 1: puking over the rail. Mike didn't talk, not on the boat,
Speaker 1: not in the car, not for two days. When he
Speaker 1: finally did, all he said was it looked at me.
Speaker 2: That was it. I checked with other local divers.
Speaker 1: Nobody's lost a diver in a canvas suit down there,
Speaker 1: no local wreck matches that kind of gear. But one
Speaker 1: old timer at the shop said something weird. He told
Speaker 1: me there were rumors, stories passed down from the freighter
Speaker 1: cruise about something in the Saint Lawrence that wasn't a
Speaker 1: wreck or a fish story.
Speaker 2: Four. I'm Rick.
Speaker 1: I live in Newcastle, UK and about thirteen years ago
Speaker 1: I went to Australia to do my pad I Open
Speaker 1: Water certification. It was meant to be this big adventure
Speaker 1: sun reefs, clear water and a couple of pints with
Speaker 1: Aussie's at the end of it, you know, bucket list stuff.
Speaker 1: I wasn't new to swimming or the sea, but diving
Speaker 1: was different, more intimate. I guess you feel like you're
Speaker 1: inside the ocean's lungs. This happened on the second day
Speaker 1: of training. We were near the Witsundays. Water was stupidly
Speaker 1: clear and everything went smoothly at first, barracuda zipped past.
Speaker 1: Some clownfish peaked from a coral cluster, and a sting
Speaker 1: ray flapped its wings beneath us like a ghost. Everyone
Speaker 1: was loving it, all thumbs up in hand signals, but
Speaker 1: I was struggling to equalize. It started subtle, just a
Speaker 1: pressure in my right ear. I tried the usual pinched
Speaker 1: my nose blue, gently swallowed, got a small pop, but
Speaker 1: the pressure didn't go still. I figured I could muscle
Speaker 1: through it. Probably stupid, but I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: that guy who aborted the dive, not when I'd flown
Speaker 1: nine thousand miles for it. The rest of the dive
Speaker 1: went fine. We hit about twelve meters, floated through canyons
Speaker 1: of coral, came back up slowly. By the time I surfaced,
Speaker 1: the pressure was still there, only now it had turned
Speaker 1: into this sharp, itchy throb.
Speaker 2: I got back on the boat, sat.
Speaker 1: Down, pulled off my mask and said to the dive master, Hey,
Speaker 1: I think I've got something in my ear. He barely
Speaker 1: looked up. Just water trapped in there, mate, happens all
Speaker 1: the time. Doesn't feel like water, I said, feels like
Speaker 1: something's jammed in. Use a cotton bud. When you get
Speaker 1: back to the hotel, it'll sort itself. So I tried
Speaker 1: to leave it alone. Everyone else was drying off, laughing
Speaker 1: about a jellyfish someone nearly sat on. But the pain
Speaker 1: in my ear was getting worse, dull but deep, like
Speaker 1: something was moving behind the ear drum. I kept sticking
Speaker 1: my pinky in against my better judgment, and I could
Speaker 1: feel something not liquid, not air, something solid. It didn't
Speaker 1: hurt when I pressed in, it hurt when I pulled
Speaker 1: my finger back out.
Speaker 2: I tried again.
Speaker 1: This time I felt a resistance, a texture like wet
Speaker 1: paper or maybe cartilage. It shifted just slightly, and then
Speaker 1: something scraped. I jerked my hand away. There was blood
Speaker 1: under my nail. I told the dive master again. He
Speaker 1: looked annoyed. You've probably scratched yourself. Don't poke around in there.
Speaker 1: That night, the pain got worse. I couldn't sleep. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just the ache. It was this crawling sensation, like
Speaker 1: something was shifting just behind the drum, like something was alive.
Speaker 1: Next morning, I skipped the dive and went to a clinic,
Speaker 1: small places, bare walls, buzzing overhead lights. The GP checked
Speaker 1: my ear with the outoscope and instantly recoiled.
Speaker 2: What's that, I asked.
Speaker 1: He didn't answer it first, just told me to stay still,
Speaker 1: then went to grab tweezers. He put on gloves and
Speaker 1: leaned in again. I think there's a foreign object, he muttered.
Speaker 1: Might be a bit of coral, maybe some shell strange.
Speaker 1: The tweezers went in. I held my breath and then
Speaker 1: I screamed, not because of the pain, though it was bad,
Speaker 1: but because I felt it pull back whatever was in there.
Speaker 1: It retracted deeper into the canal on its own. The
Speaker 1: doctor jerked away, Okay, okay, we're not doing this here.
Speaker 1: I'm referring you to Karen's Base Hospital. You need an
Speaker 1: e NT specialist. I never made it to Karen's that night.
Speaker 1: I was back at the hostel, trying to keep calm,
Speaker 1: lying on my side with my bad ear up. The
Speaker 1: pressure kept building every few minutes. It felt like something
Speaker 1: was tapping from inside, not like a heartbeat, like fingernails.
Speaker 1: I sat up around two am, dizzy from the pressure,
Speaker 1: looked in the mirror, pulled back my ear, shined a
Speaker 1: torch into the canal. I saw a movement. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a reflection, it wasn't fluid. There were legs, thin pale legs,
Speaker 1: like an insect, but translucent, and something else, curved like
Speaker 1: a hook, pressed against the skin, just inside the entrance.
Speaker 1: I don't know what made me do it, but I
Speaker 1: grabbed the tweezers from my bag, sat on the bathroom floor,
Speaker 1: head tilted, hands shaking like hell. I slowly pushed the
Speaker 1: tweezers in, aiming for the shape I saw. When I
Speaker 1: touched it, it moved. It didn't retreat this time, it
Speaker 1: surged forward. The pain was indescribable. It didn't burst out.
Speaker 1: It climbed out, first a segment of something, then a bend,
Speaker 1: then the rest unfurled, a wet, translucent thing about the
Speaker 1: size of a pinky finger, segmented with tiny cilia or legs,
Speaker 1: thrashing at the sides. I screamed, dropped the tweezers. The
Speaker 1: thing hit the tile and skittered fast as lightning, toward
Speaker 1: the drain. I saw it, really saw it under the light.
Speaker 1: It didn't look like anything I'd ever seen in books
Speaker 1: or videos. Not a shrimp, not a worm. It was
Speaker 1: more like a cross between a leech and a centipede,
Speaker 1: but jelly like and almost featureless. No eyes, just a
Speaker 1: curved appendage at the front that looked like it could
Speaker 1: hook and hold. I tried to stomp it, but it
Speaker 1: was gone before I even stood, slipped right down the
Speaker 1: drain and then nothing, no pain, no blood. My ear
Speaker 1: felt empty, hollow. I sat there for an hour, breathing
Speaker 1: through my teeth, listening, but the tapping was gone.
Speaker 2: Story five.
Speaker 1: I live in a flat above a coffee shop in Open,
Speaker 1: on the west coast of Scotland. I've worked as a
Speaker 1: dive guide for eight years, mostly taking tourists around wreck
Speaker 1: sites and sea locks. We get these eerie mornings, sometimes missed,
Speaker 1: curling over the harbor, like it's hiding something. But that
Speaker 1: Thursday was different. It wasn't just fog. The air felt wrong.
Speaker 2: Still.
Speaker 1: We had a group booked for the Breide wreck and
Speaker 1: I wasn't about to cancel because of a weird feeling.
Speaker 1: I was leading two Dutch tourists, both experienced divers. We
Speaker 1: dropped in at ten thirteen am. I remember the time
Speaker 1: exactly because of what happened next. The water was colder
Speaker 1: than usual, not just cold. It bit into my skin
Speaker 1: through the suit. I chalked it up to nerves and
Speaker 1: shook it off. The SS Breida sits about thirty meters down,
Speaker 1: split down the middle from bomb damage. It's a peaceful dive,
Speaker 1: normally surrounded by silt and curious pollock. Drifted through a
Speaker 1: brake in the hull, my torch light sweeping over crates,
Speaker 1: tangled steel and collapsed beams. I was a few meters
Speaker 1: ahead of the others, weaving through a tight corridor of rusted.
Speaker 2: Metal and shadow.
Speaker 1: That's when my tank clinked against the ceiling, barely touched it,
Speaker 1: and suddenly my buoyancy compensator vests started to inflate. At first,
Speaker 1: I thought I'd hit the inflator hose, but the button
Speaker 1: was untouched. The vest kept swelling. I tried dumping the air. Nothing.
Speaker 1: I pressed the deflate button again and again. No hiss,
Speaker 1: no change. Panics set in real fast. When your vest
Speaker 1: inflates uncontrollably, you shoot to the surface like a missile,
Speaker 1: and from thirty meters that can mean an embolism. You
Speaker 1: don't get second chances with that. I kicked downward hard,
Speaker 1: pushing against the sudden lift, grabbing at a beam to
Speaker 1: anchor myself. I waved at the others, but they didn't
Speaker 1: see the light from my torch shook wildly. I fumbled
Speaker 1: for the manual inflator too, and tried again to release
Speaker 1: the air, but the vests just kept growing tighter around
Speaker 1: my chest. Then the pressure in my ears changed fast.
Speaker 1: I was rising, my regulator almost yanked from my mouth.
Speaker 1: My legs thrashed. I remember screaming into the mouthpiece, not words,
Speaker 1: just instinct. I twisted to grab something, anything, but the
Speaker 1: wreck slid away beneath me. All I could see above
Speaker 1: was green, black haze and my own bubbles. Rushing faster
Speaker 1: than I was. I had maybe ten seconds before I'd
Speaker 1: hit the surface. Then something yanked me down. At first
Speaker 1: I thought it was a beam from the wreck, maybe
Speaker 1: I'd gotten snagged, But when I looked down, there was
Speaker 1: nothing there.
Speaker 2: Just water, no rope, no metal, no hand.
Speaker 1: But I was dropping faster than I'd ever moved underwater,
Speaker 1: like someone had filled my suit with lead. My ears
Speaker 1: screamed as the pressure surged back. I flailed in the dark,
Speaker 1: heart hammering. The world spun. When I leveled out, I
Speaker 1: was back in wreck, back in the same corridor, but
Speaker 1: something was off. The silt was still too, still, like
Speaker 1: it hadn't been disturbed, like I had never been there.
Speaker 1: My torch flickered, then died. In that blackness, something brushed
Speaker 1: my arm. It wasn't a fish, it was cold and dry.
Speaker 1: I turned sharply, bubbles escaping from my regulator in a
Speaker 1: sharp hiss. I reached for my backup torch, hands trembling,
Speaker 1: snapped it on the beam, landed on a face, not
Speaker 1: a diver, A man, pale, bloated, suspended inches from me,
Speaker 1: eyes open but dead. His mouth was wide, too wide,
Speaker 1: like it had been torn. His skin moved, something was
Speaker 1: underneath it, then his arm twitched. I kicked back so
Speaker 1: hard I slammed into a beam. Pain lit up my spine.
Speaker 1: My mouthpiece almost slipped out. The figure drifted forward, arms
Speaker 1: slowly raising, not from buoyancy deliberately.
Speaker 2: I didn't wait.
Speaker 1: I turned and swam, blind and fast, crashing into the
Speaker 1: wreck sides, scraping my gear, not caring. My vest was
Speaker 1: still overinflated, but I didn't stop to fix it. I
Speaker 1: didn't stop at all. I just wanted out. I reached
Speaker 1: the exit hole in the hull and pushed through my torch.
Speaker 1: Caught a glimpse of the Dutch divers. They were ahead
Speaker 1: of me, now swimming toward the boat. They hadn't seen
Speaker 1: a thing. I floated up carefully, this time, manually releasing
Speaker 1: air from my vest. As I rose, one hand clenched
Speaker 1: around my knife, though I didn't even know why.
Speaker 2: Every shadow under me felt like it moved.
Speaker 1: When I broke the surface, I ripped off my mask
Speaker 1: and shouted to the boat crew, waving frantically. My voice cracked.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember what I said. Later, back on shore,
Speaker 1: I checked my dive computer. It logged the incident. Sudden
Speaker 1: ascent followed by an abrupt descent of exactly eleven point
Speaker 1: two meters in less than three seconds, impossible unless something
Speaker 1: pulled me. The data was there. I didn't imagine it.
Speaker 1: I never told the tourists what I saw. I don't
Speaker 1: take people to the Braido anymore. I haven't dived since.
Speaker 1: Whatever was in that wreck, it wasn't a hallucination. It
Speaker 1: wasn't nitrogen narcosis. Story six. I live in Reno, Nevada,
Speaker 1: but this happened off the coast of Belize about six
Speaker 1: years ago. I've only talked about it once to my brother,
Speaker 1: and I made it sound like a panic dive. But
Speaker 1: that's not the truth, not even close. I was on
Speaker 1: a dive trip with my girlfriend Alana. We'd been together
Speaker 1: about a year. She'd just gotten her open water shirt,
Speaker 1: and this was our first dive vacation together. We were
Speaker 1: staying on a tiny island resort that catered to divers,
Speaker 1: just one dive shop, a few bungalows, and not much else.
Speaker 1: No phones, no internet, just the reef. We'd done a
Speaker 1: few shallow reef dives already. The last dive on the
Speaker 1: third day was the big one, the Blue Hole. It's
Speaker 1: famous giant sinkhole, hundreds of feet deep, surrounded by reef.
Speaker 1: We weren't going all the way down, only to about
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty feet, but even that's serious, especially
Speaker 1: for someone new. Alana was nervous. She kept asking me
Speaker 1: about nitrogen narcosis and what happens if your regulator fails.
Speaker 1: I tried to keep her calm. Just stay with me,
Speaker 1: I told her. We do the safety stop and we
Speaker 1: come up slow, it's all good. The dive itself started fine,
Speaker 1: flat seas, clear water, a little current, but nothing unmanageable.
Speaker 1: There were six of us in the group, plus the
Speaker 1: dive master. We descended along the reef wall, the light
Speaker 1: fading fast As we dropped about ten minutes in, Alana
Speaker 1: tapped my shoulder. Her mask was flooding. I saw the
Speaker 1: panic in her eyes immediately. She was trying to clear it,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't doing the proper technique, just flailing. I
Speaker 1: swam over and made the hand sign to stop pause,
Speaker 1: shook her head. She was rising fast. I grabbed her
Speaker 1: BCD and pulled her down. We were still at around
Speaker 1: sixty feet, too deep for an emergency ascent. I deflated
Speaker 1: her BCD to stop the rise, and she started kicking
Speaker 1: at me, actually kicking. I remember thinking she's going to bolt,
Speaker 1: She's going to get the bends, or an embolism or worse.
Speaker 1: Then something else happened. We were both hovering maybe fifty
Speaker 1: feet down. I saw her eyes shift, not at me,
Speaker 1: but past me. Her arms stopped flailing. She went completely still.
Speaker 1: I turned to look behind me, expecting the group or
Speaker 1: maybe a big fish. There was something in the water,
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen feet away. No bubbles, no tank, just a person,
Speaker 1: no gear, no mask, nothing, just a pale figure floating vertically,
Speaker 1: arms down at its sides, staring right at us.
Speaker 2: At first I thought it was a dead body.
Speaker 1: Then it moved, not swimming, drifting but against the current
Speaker 1: toward us. I grabbed Alana's arm and shook her, trying
Speaker 1: to break her stare. She didn't move. I turned back.
Speaker 1: The figure was closer, too close. Its face wasn't right.
Speaker 1: It looked human, but the features were off. The mouth
Speaker 1: was open but not breathing. Its eyes were black like
Speaker 1: they were full of ink. I grabbed my dive light
Speaker 1: and shined it directly at it. Nothing, no reaction, no flinch,
Speaker 1: just hovering there, inches from me now.
Speaker 2: Then Alana bolted.
Speaker 1: She kicked upward hard, no control, inflating her BCD as
Speaker 1: she went. I tried to grab her fin but missed.
Speaker 1: I went after her immediately. As I rose, I looked
Speaker 1: down one more time. It was still there, but now
Speaker 1: it was moving again, fast upward, following us. I caught
Speaker 1: up with Alana around twenty feet. She was coughing in
Speaker 1: her regulator, her eyes wide and leaking. I tried to
Speaker 1: slow her ascent, held on to her. Dumped air from
Speaker 1: both our BCDs made her look at me. We hovered
Speaker 1: at fifteen feet. Did the safety stop or tried to,
Speaker 1: But the moment I looked down again, it was there,
Speaker 1: just below us. Looking up I could see its mouth
Speaker 1: now wide open, more than humanly possible. Not a scream,
Speaker 1: not a breath, just void, like staring into a drain.
Speaker 1: I remember yelling into my regulator, but it came out
Speaker 1: as bubbles. I kept watching it, trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of what I was seeing, and the longer I looked,
Speaker 1: the more I felt this pulling, not physical, but like
Speaker 1: it wanted me to follow. It felt like gravity in
Speaker 1: the wrong direction. Alana grabbed my arm and yanked me
Speaker 1: toward the surface. We ascended too fast, way too fast.
Speaker 1: I felt it in my chest, the pressure shift, the panic,
Speaker 1: But all I could think about was getting out of
Speaker 1: the water. We broke the surface like we were shot
Speaker 1: out of a cannon. The boat was about thirty feet away.
Speaker 1: Alana didn't speak, just swam hard for it. I followed,
Speaker 1: checking over my shoulder every few seconds. I swear to you,
Speaker 1: I swear on my life it was still there, just
Speaker 1: below the surface, watching. When we got on the boat,
Speaker 1: we were both coughing, half crying. The dive master was
Speaker 1: yelling at us, asking what happened, why we surfaced early,
Speaker 1: why we didn't finish our stop. Alana looked at me
Speaker 1: like I was a stranger. I thought you were trying
Speaker 1: to drown me. She said, what, You grabbed me and
Speaker 1: dragged me down. I thought you were trying to kill me.
Speaker 1: I tried to explain, but she shook her head. I
Speaker 1: didn't see anything, just you. That's the worst part. She
Speaker 1: doesn't remember it. Story seven. I live in Cape Coral, Florida,
Speaker 1: grew up around water. By the time I hit twenty four,
Speaker 1: I already had over eighty dives logged that year. I
Speaker 1: booked a solo weekend dive trip down to Key Largo
Speaker 1: just to clear my head and get under for a bit.
Speaker 1: I'd been through a rough breakup, and the water's always
Speaker 1: been my reset button. I wasn't looking for anything deep,
Speaker 1: just reefs and maybe a wreck or two. The second morning,
Speaker 1: we were scheduled to hit the Spiegel Grove big shipwreck,
Speaker 1: five hundred and ten feet long, sunk intentionally in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two. It's popular sometimes crowded. That day, the
Speaker 1: water was flat, sun like a torch overhead, visibility supposedly excellent.
Speaker 1: There were eleven of us on the boat, all strangers.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a buddy, but I struck up a
Speaker 1: conversation with this guy, Mark said he'd log thirty.
Speaker 2: Dives but never done a wreck.
Speaker 1: Before new gear fresh certification, his confidence seemed to outweigh
Speaker 1: his experience. Dive Shop required him to take a guide.
Speaker 1: The guide, a local instructor named Henry, had two students
Speaker 1: with him doing their advanced open water checkouts. Mark was
Speaker 1: assigned to tag along with Henry, and I figured I
Speaker 1: might as well join that group. Safety in numbers. Before
Speaker 1: we entered, Henry laid out the plan. He'd then the
Speaker 1: mooring line first, then the students, then me, then Mark.
Speaker 1: We'd regroup at the bridge of the ship around seventy
Speaker 1: feet down. Standard stuff. Now before the dive, Mark and
Speaker 1: I double checked gear. Everything looked okay, but his tank
Speaker 1: strap felt a little loose. I mentioned it and he
Speaker 1: tightened it without much thought. Looking back, I should have
Speaker 1: pressed harder. We dropped into the water and hit current
Speaker 1: like a freight train. It was ripping sideways. I had
Speaker 1: to white knuckle the descent line to stay on course.
Speaker 1: Took longer than usual to reach the deck. When I
Speaker 1: got to the bridge level, I stopped. Something wasn't right.
Speaker 1: Henry and the students weren't there. I hovered waiting, then
Speaker 1: Mark descended and floated next to me. His eyes were
Speaker 1: wide behind the mask, his regulator bouncing from heavy breathing.
Speaker 1: I gave the okay signal. He returned it. Then I
Speaker 1: saw it. His tank was half slipped out of his
Speaker 1: BCD strap and swinging behind him in the current. I
Speaker 1: grabbed his shoulder and turned him at the tank. He
Speaker 1: didn't realize it had slipped. I moved behind him and
Speaker 1: started working the strap, trying to loop it back around.
Speaker 1: It had somehow knotted around his first stage and was
Speaker 1: twisting every time he moved. We were at seventy feet
Speaker 1: current yanking at us, and I was burning through air
Speaker 1: faster than I liked. After a few minutes, I managed
Speaker 1: to get the strap around the tank, not perfectly, but
Speaker 1: enough to hold. A plastic piece was missing, probably floated off.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to take any chances. I gave him
Speaker 1: the thumbs up and time to go back up. He nodded.
Speaker 1: We ascended slowly, hands tight on the line. A few
Speaker 1: meters up, I noticed Mark's breathing sounded strange, sort of bubbly,
Speaker 1: like wet gurgling. I made eye contact and he looked panicked.
Speaker 1: He yanked his regulator out shook it, put it back
Speaker 1: in more bubbles. His second stage had cracked. Water was
Speaker 1: leaking into his mouthpiece. He motioned something frantic. I held
Speaker 1: up my alternate and he took it. His breathe thing
Speaker 1: steadied a little. We surfaced after a slow safety stop,
Speaker 1: hauled ourselves back onto the boat. I expected Henry to
Speaker 1: be up already, but he wasn't. The other two students
Speaker 1: were back chatting quietly in the corner. Mark coughed salt
Speaker 1: water out of his lungs. I asked him if he
Speaker 1: was okay, and he just nodded. Ten minutes past then
Speaker 1: twenty Finally Henry surfaced, calm slow climbed up like it
Speaker 1: was just another dive. He didn't even ask Mark how
Speaker 1: he was doing. Mark didn't say much, just stared at
Speaker 1: his tank like it had personally betrayed him. Now, that
Speaker 1: should have been the end of it, but that night
Speaker 1: I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about how Henry and
Speaker 1: the students weren't at the bridge. I hadn't seen them
Speaker 1: at all during the dive. That's not normal. Even if
Speaker 1: visibility was lower than expected at that depth and distance,
Speaker 1: we should have crossed pass. I went to the dive
Speaker 1: shop the next morning to drop off my rental gear,
Speaker 1: and casually asked one of the instructors, so Henry's group
Speaker 1: go back down again today?
Speaker 2: She looked confused.
Speaker 1: Henry, Yeah, a guy from yesterday took a couple students
Speaker 1: out with him to the grove. She paused, Henry hasn't
Speaker 1: worked here in almost two years. I laughed, thinking she
Speaker 1: was joking. But she wasn't. She told me Henry went
Speaker 1: missing in twenty twenty three. Last scene diving the Spiegel
Speaker 1: Grove with two students. The whole group never surfaced. Coastguards
Speaker 1: searched for days, never found the bodies. They found all
Speaker 1: their tanks still clipped to the mooring line. I felt
Speaker 1: my stomach drop. I pulled up my go pro footage
Speaker 1: later that day, just to make sure I wasn't going crazy.
Speaker 1: I'd clipped it to my chest for the descent. Most
Speaker 1: of it was shaky current pulling me hard, bubbles in
Speaker 1: the way, But around the seventy foot mark, when I
Speaker 1: hovered near the bridge, when I was supposed to be
Speaker 1: looking at Henry and his students, there was no one there,
Speaker 1: no fins, no bubbles, nothing. But if you freeze frame
Speaker 1: at two forty three. Right when I turn to look
Speaker 1: at Mark and signal his tank is loose, there's something
Speaker 1: behind him, way off in the distance. It doesn't look
Speaker 1: like a diver, more like someone crawling along the hall,
Speaker 1: not swimming. Crawling, no bubbles, no gear. The shape turns
Speaker 1: just barely like it noticed the camera. Then it slides
Speaker 1: behind the port side and disappears. I didn't show Mark,
Speaker 1: I didn't tell anyone. But I've never dived the grove again.
Speaker 1: Story eight. I live in San Jose, California, and I've
Speaker 1: been diving off the coast for about eight years. I'm
Speaker 1: not a professional, just a weekend guy who loves the ocean.
Speaker 1: My most disturbing dive happened last October on my birthday,
Speaker 1: when I joined a charter out of Monterey Bay. It
Speaker 1: was a full day outing, two boat dives during daylight,
Speaker 1: and then a night dive for those braver stupid enough
Speaker 1: to stay.
Speaker 2: I was the latter.
Speaker 1: My two buddies had backed out of the night dive,
Speaker 1: said they were too wiped after the second descent. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I was beat two, but one of the other solo divers,
Speaker 1: guy named Mark, offered to buddy up.
Speaker 2: I figured I'd regret skipping more than I'd regret being tired.
Speaker 1: The plan was simple, a controlled descent into the kelp
Speaker 1: forest off Point Lobos, thirty feet max, slow loop, then back.
Speaker 1: We went down just after sunset, with lights on in
Speaker 1: full tanks. I followed Mark's lead. At first it was beautiful,
Speaker 1: still water, our beams catching fish darting between swaying kelpstalks.
Speaker 1: It had that weird, calming feel you get on a
Speaker 1: good night dive, quiet like the whole oceans holding its breath.
Speaker 1: About fifteen minutes in, I noticed I was breathing faster,
Speaker 1: not panic, just that creeping discomfort, like something was off.
Speaker 1: My light flicked past something that didn't belong. A shape, pale,
Speaker 1: human sized, hanging vertical in the water, motionless behind the kelp.
Speaker 1: I froze Mark, I said through my rag, even though
Speaker 1: I knew he couldn't hear me. I pointed, trying to
Speaker 1: get his attention, but he was about ten feet ahead,
Speaker 1: shining his light along the seafloor. I turned my beam back.
Speaker 1: Nothing just blades of kelp drifting like fingers, I told myself.
Speaker 1: I imagined it just light bouncing.
Speaker 2: Weird.
Speaker 1: I've seen tricks like that before diving messes with your perception.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching.
Speaker 1: My chest felt tight, and I couldn't tell if I
Speaker 1: was cold or just scared. Then my tank snagged kelp,
Speaker 1: not unusual. I turned slowly and reached back to untangle it,
Speaker 1: but my fins bumped something, something soft. I whipped around, light,
Speaker 1: flailing through the water. It was a face, a woman's face,
Speaker 1: pale and dead, maybe two feet from mine. Her eyes
Speaker 1: were open black, her skin was almost translucent in my light,
Speaker 1: like jellyfish flesh, and her hair floated in dark strands
Speaker 1: around her mouth slightly open, no regulator, no mask, just there.
Speaker 1: I screamed, bubbles everywhere. I backed up instinctively and got
Speaker 1: more tangled in the kelp. My heart slammed so hard
Speaker 1: I thought I'd pass out. My light flickered and cut off,
Speaker 1: pitch black. I was gasping full panic. Couldn't move. I thrashed,
Speaker 1: trying to find my backup torch. I clawed at the kelp,
Speaker 1: but it only wrapped tighter. I felt something brush my hand,
Speaker 1: cold soft skin. She was still there. I think she
Speaker 1: touched me. The backup torch finally clicked on and I
Speaker 1: aimed it straight ahead. Nothing, no face, no body, just water.
Speaker 1: But the kelp around me had coiled unnaturally tight, not
Speaker 1: just snagged, wrapped like rope. I started slicing at it
Speaker 1: with my dive knife, barely aware of where Mark was.
Speaker 1: I didn't care. I need it out. Then behind me,
Speaker 1: clear as day, I heard it a voice, not through
Speaker 1: the water, in my head. It was a woman whispering,
Speaker 1: let me up. My chest locked. I screamed into the
Speaker 1: regulator again and hacked at the kelp until I broke free.
Speaker 1: I didn't even try to find Mark. I kicked up
Speaker 1: as hard and fast as I could, risking a dangerous ascent,
Speaker 1: but I didn't care. I just wanted to air an
Speaker 1: open sky. I broke the surface and yanked my mask up, gasping.
Speaker 1: The dive boat was maybe twenty yards away. Someone saw
Speaker 1: my light and waved Mark's surface. Two minutes later he
Speaker 1: swam to me, yelling, what happened? You shot up like
Speaker 1: a rocket. I couldn't answer. I couldn't speak Back on
Speaker 1: the boat, I sat shivering, not from the cold, just
Speaker 1: trying to make sense of what I saw. Mark said,
Speaker 1: I got tangled and panicked, said I must have imagined
Speaker 1: the face. I didn't argue, But that night, in my
Speaker 1: motel room, I found something in my wet suit hood
Speaker 1: A piece of hair, long black, not mine, not synthetic,
Speaker 1: not from the suit. It smelled like salt and rot.
Speaker 1: I flushed it. I haven't dived at night since, and
Speaker 1: I never will again. Story nine. I don't talk about
Speaker 1: this often. It makes people uncomfortable. But I know what
Speaker 1: I saw and I know what I felt. My name's Gavin.
Speaker 1: I live in Monterey, California. Been diving for over fifteen years,
Speaker 1: mostly around the Bay Point Lobos, Lover's Point, Carmel River.
Speaker 1: I've logged hundreds of dives. That day, everything was normal,
Speaker 1: cold water, solid visibility. It was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: solo deep dive along a kelp wall I knew well
Speaker 1: near mackaybe Beach. It was late October, gray sky overhead water,
Speaker 1: around fifty two degrees fahrenheit. I went in just after dawn.
Speaker 1: The sun hadn't made it through the clouds, which made
Speaker 1: everything underwater look a bit dimmer. Even with my light,
Speaker 1: kelp swayed slow and steady above me, like tall underwater trees.
Speaker 1: I dropped to about eighty feet That's when I noticed
Speaker 1: the sand looked wrong. The bottom was torn up, like
Speaker 1: something massive had bulldozed through the area. Sea stars overturned,
Speaker 1: giant holes where abalone should have been clinging. No sign
Speaker 1: of fish, no sign of anything really, just this long
Speaker 1: path of destruction that.
Speaker 2: Cut through the kelp like a scar.
Speaker 1: At first I figured it was poachers or maybe a
Speaker 1: storm surge, but it didn't look like either. The pattern
Speaker 1: was too clean and too fresh. Sand still clouded parts
Speaker 1: of the water, like whatever had done this had just
Speaker 1: passed through. I hovered, checking my gauges, all good, My
Speaker 1: heart rate was a little up, but I told myself
Speaker 1: it was nothing, just eerie. Maybe a sea lion stampede.
Speaker 1: I'd seen them do weird things before. Then I heard it.
Speaker 1: It sounded like a low moan or maybe a groan,
Speaker 1: muffled through the water, not mechanical, organic. It didn't come
Speaker 1: from above, it came from deep in the sand trench.
Speaker 1: I turned, scanning with my dive light, thinking maybe I'd
Speaker 1: see a trapped animal, but there was nothing, just that
Speaker 1: strange moaning, again, low and drawn out. My gut twisted.
Speaker 1: I've heard whales through the water before, even infrasound but
Speaker 1: this was closer, much closer, and wrong. I should have surfaced,
Speaker 1: that's on me, but I was too curious, or maybe
Speaker 1: just too stupid. I followed the disturbed trench. It led
Speaker 1: toward a drop off I'd never seen before. That's when
Speaker 1: I noticed the water temperature dropping fast. I checked my
Speaker 1: dive computer. From fifty two degrees fahrenheit to forty three
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit in less than a minute. I hadn't changed depth,
Speaker 1: and the light my dive torch started dimming. It was
Speaker 1: fully charged. I tapped it. It flickered, then went out
Speaker 1: total blackness. I still don't know why I didn't panic,
Speaker 1: Maybe shock. I reached for my backup light clicked it on.
Speaker 1: It worked, but the water around me looked murkier, like
Speaker 1: shadows were moving in it. Then I saw something rise
Speaker 1: from the trench. It was long, that's the only word
Speaker 1: I can use. Long and slow, not swimming, rising like
Speaker 1: it had been lying beneath the sand for a long time.
Speaker 1: And decided now was the time to wake up. The head,
Speaker 1: or what I thought was the head, emerged first. It
Speaker 1: wasn't shaped like anything I've seen, almost like a stretched
Speaker 1: eyeless seal skull, no mouth, just folds of pale, sagging skin,
Speaker 1: and something under the skin that pulsed. The body followed
Speaker 1: whiter than a man's torso, ribbed like a centipede, but
Speaker 1: smooth like whale skin. It didn't move with muscle, It
Speaker 1: just flowed codd. I froze. I couldn't move. It passed
Speaker 1: ten feet from me and never turned, never paused. But
Speaker 1: I felt it see me. I swear to you, I
Speaker 1: felt it look inside me. My dive computer alarmed depth warning.
Speaker 1: I had dropped fifteen feet without realizing my buoyancy was shot.
Speaker 1: My ears were screaming from the pressure change. I looked
Speaker 1: back up and couldn't see the surface anymore. The kelp
Speaker 1: canopy had gone dark, like something massive had blocked out
Speaker 1: the light above me.
Speaker 2: That was the moment. That's when it hit me.
Speaker 1: Pure hard fear, not just fear of death, fear of understanding,
Speaker 1: Like my brain finally caught up and realized I was
Speaker 1: looking at something I was never supposed to see, something old,
Speaker 1: older than the ocean. The thing disappeared into the darkness below,
Speaker 1: back into the trench, gone without a sound. I shot
Speaker 1: back up too fast. I know it was a dumb move,
Speaker 1: but I had no control anymore. My brain just screamed up.
Speaker 1: I breached the surface, coughing and ripped my mask off, gasping.
Speaker 1: No one else around boat was fine, sky still gray.
Speaker 1: I was only down for twenty six minutes, but it
Speaker 1: felt like hours. I've never been back to that site.
Speaker 1: Story ten. I live in Huntington Beach, California, about a
Speaker 1: mile inland. I'm thirty one now, but this happened when
Speaker 1: i was sixteen something. I've never been able to shake
Speaker 1: even after all these years. I've only told a few people.
Speaker 1: No one really gets it unless they've been underwater in
Speaker 1: total darkness, with nothing but your breath and a flashlight
Speaker 1: between you and whatever else might be down there. I
Speaker 1: was working toward my advanced open water Peaudoisert at the time.
Speaker 1: One of the electives was night diving. I'd already chosen
Speaker 1: deep diving and fish identification. My instructor offered to let
Speaker 1: us double up, so we scheduled a deep night dive
Speaker 1: off Catalina Island.
Speaker 2: I was pumped. Night dive and deep dive in one go.
Speaker 1: More fish to log, and I figured I'd be a
Speaker 1: step closer to rescue diver. The group was mostly kids,
Speaker 1: around my age. Four of us plus the instructor Rick
Speaker 1: solid guy ex Navy calm as a statue. The plan
Speaker 1: was simple to send to one hundred and twenty feet
Speaker 1: follow Rick's light, no wandering, no hero stuff. Catalina is
Speaker 1: beautiful during the day, clear water, thick kelp forests, curious
Speaker 1: sea life. But at night it's something else. It's not
Speaker 1: pitch black, not exactly. Your light cuts about ten feet ahead,
Speaker 1: but it's like floating in ink. Quiet, too quiet. You
Speaker 1: can hear your breath louder than anything else. We dropped
Speaker 1: just after nine pm. Everything went fine at first. I
Speaker 1: logged two scorpionfish, a giant kelpfish, and an octopus in the.
Speaker 2: First twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: We were cruising low through the kelp canopy, flashlights swinging slow.
Speaker 1: Everyone was chill until Eric, one of the guys in
Speaker 1: our group, started drifting out of formation. I saw him
Speaker 1: kick a little too hard, spinning slightly toward a slope
Speaker 1: in the rock wall we were told to avoid. Rick
Speaker 1: flicked his light fast in the no pattern. I could
Speaker 1: see it clearly. Eric must have missed it or misread it.
Speaker 1: He turned and swam deeper into the kelp, toward a
Speaker 1: shadowed crevice in the rock. I thought maybe he saw
Speaker 1: something interesting, octopus maybe, but he wasn't supposed to leave
Speaker 1: the formation. I turned to signal Rick, but he was
Speaker 1: already heading after him. I followed, and the other two
Speaker 1: stayed where they were hovering in place.
Speaker 2: He got tight fast.
Speaker 1: The kelp started thickening around us, and I had to
Speaker 1: hold my light with both hands just to push through
Speaker 1: without tangling.
Speaker 2: My heart rate kicked up.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see Eric anymore, just flickers of his fin light,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty feet ahead. Then Rick's light dropped out of
Speaker 1: sight gone. I froze, not like a metaphor, I literally
Speaker 1: couldn't move for a second, just me the sound of
Speaker 1: bubbles and black water pressing in on all sides. I
Speaker 1: blinked hard and kept moving slowly. When I found the crevice,
Speaker 1: it didn't look natural. It wasn't some little nook in
Speaker 1: the rock wall like you see sometimes where the reef
Speaker 1: folds in on itself. It was this long, narrow opening,
Speaker 1: too symmetrical, perfectly oval, no jagged rock, just a smooth darkness.
Speaker 1: I could see Eric's fin light inside it, motionless, just
Speaker 1: hovering there. I flashed my light into the opening, it
Speaker 1: didn't reflect back. It felt like the beam just disappeared,
Speaker 1: like I was pointing it into a tunnel made of velvet.
Speaker 1: Then Rick appeared out of nowhere. His light snapped on
Speaker 1: next to mine and lit up Eric. The dude was frozen,
Speaker 1: staring straight ahead regulators still in mask on, but not moving,
Speaker 1: not even blinking. Rick swam up behind him and touched
Speaker 1: his shoulder.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 1: I watched Rick try again, harder this time. Eric finally
Speaker 1: twitched like he'd just woken up. Then he bolted, I
Speaker 1: mean full panic mode. He kicked so fast he nearly
Speaker 1: knocked Rick's mask loose, shot right past me into the kelp.
Speaker 1: Rick signaled for me to stay. I nodded, breathing fast.
Speaker 1: He swam a little closer to the crevice, maybe five
Speaker 1: feet away, and aimed his flashlight inside again. Then something happened.
Speaker 1: The water shimmered, not like a currant or silk cloud.
Speaker 1: It shimmered like heat does above asphalt, but underwater and
Speaker 1: only inside the crevice. Rick's beam flickered, and the kelp
Speaker 1: around us suddenly started swaying like there was a surge.
Speaker 2: But there wasn't.
Speaker 1: My pressure gage read steady, My compass started spinning, just slowly,
Speaker 1: turning like I was moving, but I wasn't. And then
Speaker 1: Rick dropped his light. It just slipped out of his
Speaker 1: hand and sank no reaction. He hovered there, frozen like
Speaker 1: Eric had been. I reached for him, but stopped. He
Speaker 1: was mouthing something, not talking, mouthing like he was trying
Speaker 1: to scream, but no sound came out. His eyes were
Speaker 1: wide behind the mask. He turned slowly toward me, and
Speaker 1: I swear to God, his pupils were dilated all the way,
Speaker 1: no color left, just black eyes.
Speaker 2: I didn't wait.
Speaker 1: I kicked upward as hard as I could, not caring
Speaker 1: about safety stops or ascent speed. My lungs felt tight,
Speaker 1: my head light but I couldn't stay down there. The
Speaker 1: kelp scraped past my arms and mask like fingers. I
Speaker 1: didn't look down once, not even when I felt something
Speaker 1: tug lightly at my fin I breached maybe one hundred
Speaker 1: yards from the dive boat, threw off my mask and screamed.
Speaker 2: The deckhand hauled me up.
Speaker 1: I kept yelling Eric, Rick, there's still down there, something's
Speaker 1: down there. They pulled Eric out five minutes later. He'd
Speaker 1: surfaced on the opposite side, shaking so bad. They had
Speaker 1: to tie him down to get his gear off. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't talk, not for hours. Eventually he just said, I
Speaker 1: was inside something. I don't know what it was. Rick
Speaker 1: came up last, almost twenty minutes after we did too long.
Speaker 1: He was conscious but vacant. EMTs took him to a
Speaker 1: hyper barrack chamber immediately. I visited him a week later
Speaker 1: in Long Beach Memorial. He looked at me once, then said,
Speaker 1: don't ever go back there. It's not a cave. I
Speaker 1: asked what he meant. He just kept repeating, it's not
Speaker 1: a cave. It's not a cave. I haven't gone diving since,
Speaker 1: and I never will