The sea can be a creepy mistress indeed, as two Reddit threads dedicated to sailors and people who've spent time in seclusion reveal. These 16 sailors, fisherman, Navy officers, divers, swimmers, and casual boaters recount bizarre encounters, horrifying sightings, and strange occurrences while out to sea, in the ocean, and hunting in large swamps. You'll think twice about going near large bodies of water after reading this list.
People Describe The Creepiest Thing They've Seen At Sea,
A Plane Crashes Out of Nowhere
"Not amazing in a good way, but on the flight deck during flight ops, business as usual, launching planes and dodging jet blast. All the sudden the air boss calls out to get ready for emergency landing. In like 3.5 seconds the landing area was completely clear, before i could even realize what was said. Well, the jet didn't make it to landing. I watched a 60 million dollar f-18 just go into the ocean. The pilots ejected, and needed to get pulled out of the water of course. It all happened so fast I would almost swear that the helicopter pilots literally appeared out of thin air, spun that bitch up and were hovering over the water with a rescue swimmer roping out in an instant. This all happened in what seemed like less than 5 minutes. I was in total shock and sick to my stomach because nobody immediately knew whether or not the pilots were okay. They were, both had quite a few broken bones. The same jet I watched take off minutes before was deep six'd."
Three Stories of Monstrous Catfish
"Live by a dam on the Mississippi river in Iowa... The divers that have to go down and check the concrete always only go down once, after that there done. Just nope the fuck out. One guy I know did 2 tours in Iraq he said it was nothing like that... Just freely be swimming along and all of a sudden 3 foot mouth of a cat fish just sitting there, waiting for something to swim by and into its hell hole. Water is always so murkey that you can't see from end to end of it. I remember when I was a kid, you could snag for carp down there. My dad hit a 7 foot cat that weighed in at around 85 lbs, but we couldn't keep them so we had to throw them back...
"Grandfather said similar things. He worked at a power plant right along the river and they had divers who would routinely need to go under and patch things up for the power plant under water. Said majority of them when down once and never again after seeing the size of some of the catfish below which they claimed could probably eat them.
"One of my art teachers in high school was also a diver and often did dives in one of the lakes in Arkansas. He regaled us with tales of catfish the size of small cars. He also had photos of the towns and settlements that got abandoned and flooded when they made the lake. Cool stuff."
Monster After the Storm
"On a 41 foot sailboat in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, with about 7 other men, doing a shake-down/test cruise, planned to be out for about 12 hours. Mid 1980's, not as reliable weather prediction resources. We get caught in a tropical storm, winds gusting into the 50 mph range, just this short of a weak hurricane. We had just barely rigged storm hawsers and storm sails because the one fellow onboard who was the best sailor sensed the storm was almost on us, otherwise we would have died. During the storm itself, I expected to die at any time. In fact we made a "Securite, securite...." call on the radio (if you have time at sea you know what I'm talking about, if not, it's not that important). For what seemed like 15 minutes, we were in a maelstrom, no visibility, but then it passed. We would live!
"This was at about 3pm, and although there was cloud cover of course, the ambient light was such that you could see 2 miles or so in any direction.
"If you're familiar with the sea, you know that such storms, particularly in shallower depths near land masses, dredge a lot of things of the sea floor.
"We're all on deck, working lines, checking damage, etc. and the bay around us is choppy and churning and foaming. Old timey sailors often used the saying 'the sea is confused.' I look about 15 feet of the starboard side and something swims to the surface, breaks the surface, looks at us, then submerges again.
"It was like a thin man, with humanoid shape, arms articulated like a man, a human head, but its skin was covered in scales like a snake. It looked at us, blinked its weird, heavy-lidded eyes, then dove back under.
"So maybe you need to know a few things about me at that moment. No drugs, no alcohol, no injuries. I was elated because I was glad to be alive, but my senses in that situation were sharpened, not dulled. I had, at that time, about 6 years experience on ships and fishing boats, and had seen squid, octopi, flying fish, sharks, skates, etc. all around the world. I was not the type of guy to see a patch of seaweed and call it a sea monster.
"I made an instant decision that I was not going to say anything. What could I say? 'I just saw a strange creature, take my word for it!' The men on this boat were all mechanics and engineers and professionals. Why get a reputation as a flake? At the time it was important for each of us to get 'D' skipper or OOD qualifications, and saying something like that would be frowned upon.
"And as I stood there in my life vest, soaking wet, hooked onto the steel lifeline, glad to be alive, one of the other sailors, a USN Captain J_______ S________, with over 30 years experience in the surface navy, piped up and said,
"'I just saw a brown thing pop up on the surface! It looked like a lizard man, with a scaley face. It blinked at us with these big eyes and then went back under!'
"'Yeah, I saw it too,' I said. No one else said that they had seen it.
"Then we sailed back to the pier later that day and didn't speak of it again."
A Massive Surprise
"I almost hit a sea turtle the size of a mattress off the coast of Washington. It suddenly appeared and I threw the engine in reverse and swerved hard to port throwing passengers off their seats. I looked out the starboard window as I went by and seen two eyes staring at me on a head the size of a basketball."
Blast Off!
"I was fishing in 17 foot Mohawk canoe off the main bridge in Titusville, FL. About 2000, my kids were small. It's teeming with fish in that area and I headed for a trough that NASA cut out to build the fuel railroad system out to the launch area. It holds black drum as well as other tasties.
"I have a trolling motor on the side of the canoe and I head for my spot down the south shore. Over to my left, just as I arrive at the south end of the trough, I see a pod of manatee in the water about 75 yards away. I have a little camera stowed away and I decide to get some up close pics for the kids.
"I turn west into the middle of the lagoon area and head over shallow water and grass beds with my trolling motor turned to 5, top speed. I notice it appears VERY shallow immediately ahead of me and I cut the motor quickly to 0.
"That's the last thing I remember before the loudest noise, that came from all around me. Water exploded. Around and under my 75lb canoe with 150lb me in the back.
"The front of my canoe went up at over a 45% angle and the rear of my canoe, with me in it, came off the surface of the water some amount such that my battery came off the floor. In the front of my canoe, all my tackle and such was launched into the air. I remember seeing a single large pinfish (not mine but one belonging in the water) arcing over the whole mess as I gripped the gunnels.
"It's not obvious what happened to me for a minute. I was so afraid and so vulnerable and unsure if it would happen again.
"I reattached things back at my trolling motor (wires had come loose, I think) and went to the shoreline (where the railroad passed) and got out and tried to piece my equipment back together and my experience.
"The pod of roughly 21 manatees (number from ranger) had come into the lagoon area recently and as it turns out, they have a similar danger signal to beavers--they slap the surface of the water. When that many do it, and it's in 2 feet of water, and they are really frightened by my entry into the area, it can almost violate the laws of bowel physics.
"Trust me I know."
Possessions Following a Tsunami
"I was en route to northern Japan after the terrible tsunami happened for disaster relief (Marines). Anyway, I had stepped outside to a catwalk for a smoke after not seeing the sun for a few days. Turns out that it was extremely foggy and snowing, which I had never thought about. The ship was basically reduced to a crawl, it was all very silent and quite peaceful. After chain smoking for 10-15 minutes I started to hear things hitting the ship. Had trouble seeing at first but once I saw the roof of a house and a crib float by, I realized where we were. Ran back to my living area to grab some friends. We all get back out there and silently observed people's lives floating by us. Not super crazy or bizarre, but it's something I'll never forget. Spent the next week and a half dealing with crazy weather shifts doing my part in the clean up effort."
Strange Glow
"RAN 2000ish, Indian Ocean on watch maybe 0200. Pitch black except for stars and quiet apart from the diesels. I notice a humming sound, sorta halfway between hearing it and feeling it. This goes on for a while, but all of a sudden it got a lot more intense and suddenly I notice a glow way under the water. I thought it was bioluminescence on a shark or whale or something but it kept floating up and suddenly just SHOT off maybe half a naut mile taking the hum with it in about 1 or 2 seconds.
"Nothing can move that quick underwater. I reported it and it was logged but nothing came off it.
"Heard stories from shipmates about the same thing happening but the glow goes into the air, dunno about that but what I saw I have no explanation for."
A South Atlantic Fisherman's Tales
"I do a lot of offshore fishing in the South Atlantic. Some cool and crazy things I've seen while boating:
"I got caught once in the annual migration of spinner sharks. Went right through a school that I would guess would be at least 10,000 or more sharks that just happened to be working on a very large bait school. You could count no less than 10 sharks breaching the surface about ever second. It was one of the scariest experiences yet one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen and there I ended up right in the middle of the madness. I literally had one shark land in the bow of the boat and another break the cowling on the outboard while several others bounced off the sides. Heres a video of what a single spinner looks like when breaching.
"Once I almost hit a dead body when returning from a trip at the end of the day. It was just turning dusk and I was coming in from about 15 miles offshore after a day of fishing. I was crusing around 25 knots when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something bright yellow just off the port side of the boat and almost made impact with it. I slowed down and turned the boat around in an attempt to find whatever it was I almost hit but was unsuccessful and it was getting late and the sun was almost down so I decided it would be best to just head back in. The next day a body in yellow waders washed up onshore about 25 miles to the North. I can't say for sure if it was the same yellow object I almost hit but I'd be willing to bet it was.
"Encountered a great white while surfacing from a dive in about 75' of water which was extremely unusual because great whites shouldn't be anywhere around the area of the Atlantic where I fish. This was confirmed a few days later by multiple other boats that spotted the same shark and eventually made the news.
"One time I saw an Otter dragging a leather back sea turtle to shore that it somehow managed to kill."
Peculiar Mommy
"I worked on a cruise ship for 7 months as a youth staff taking care of kids while the parents party it up. At certain parts of the day we close the playroom to the older kids and just let parents with their children that are under 2 come in. This woman comes to the gate with a double stroller with two of the ugliest looking babies I have ever seen in my life. She asks if she can come in with her babies. Of course, I oblige but something seems a little off. She takes the babies out of the stroller and puts them on the blanket that we have toys placed upon in the middle of the room. It is then that I realize what was so strange about these babies: They were dolls. This woman was taking pictures of them with the toys and pretending they were alive, names and all. I just looked over at my co-worker and she's giving me the same look of shock and horror that I had on my face. We had no clue what to do or say. News spread quickly to other crew member on the ship about her. Apparently she bought gold bracelets for them at the jewellery shop on board. That woman is by far the most amazing and strangest thing I have ever witnessed at sea."
Stories from Mum's Partner
"Mum's partner is fisherman.
"A couple of things that came to mind:
"The incredible amount of Great White shark encounters they have out at sea - obviously attracted by the bait or something. Stories of being circled and harassed by sharks for sometimes up to days, in at least one or two occasions resulting in them having to go back in.
"Freak waves. Sadly, the amounts of fisherman killed by freak waves is too high. Imagine Mother Nature just unleashing a huge wave out of nowhere that obliterates a fishing boat, killing those on board. He's participated in many searches for bodies and those of lost fisherman at sea - including hauling numerous bodies on board and liaising with police in the searches.
"My favourite though, was something he actually saw on land while out at sea. On an incredibly remote and rugged part of Tasmania's West Coast the crew noticed what appeared to be a dog on the beach. As they got closer they noticed it was sniffing around in some seaweed and walking a bit differently to a dog. As they continued to get closer they also noticed something else - it had what appeared to be the outline of stripes along its back half. Yes, still to this day they believe they saw an "extinct" Tasmanian Tiger (or Thylacine). Regular sightings are still reported in Tasmania and many local fisherman have also reported seeing them in that particular area."