For our Curse-O-Meter this episode we bring the ghost ship of the Orang Medan.

But before that we also discuss:

-The extraterrestrial sphere recovered in Colombia

-The internet betting pool for the return of Jesus Christ

-and the safe return of Annabelle the doll to her home museum.

Listen Here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, probably cursed listeners. For our Curse-O-Meter this episode, we bring the ghost ship of the Orang Medan. But before that, we also discuss the extraterrestrial sphere recovered in Columbia, the internet betting pool for the return of Jesus Christ, and the safe return of Annabelle the Doll to her home museum. I’m your probably cursed host, Chris. And I’m Sheryl. And we are both enjoying our summertime slushes here. To say that it’s a perfect treat for spooky time.

This is not sponsored by 7-Eleven, or Circle K, sadly.

Yep. They will not return my calls for sponsorships. Guess we gotta try smaller. We’re also recording this still before the predictions of that manga artist who said Earthquake’s gonna get hit by a huge thing in Japan, so we won’t have an update for you yet. But soon. But soon. The news will have an update, or not. That’s right. No news is good news.

Worst case scenario, we can bring it up in the next two episodes of your record.

That’s true. Yeah. But we do have new news here for you. Newer news. As we do at the start of every episode, we will take three recent news articles feeding to the Curse-O-Meter to calibrate it for the main topic. I will give it the first news story here. Scientists studying spherical UFO say they’ve discovered alien technology. This is from May 7th by Stacy Liberatore for DailyMail.com. Nice.

Good job, DailyMail.

Scientists have released the first X-ray images of a mysterious sphere-shaped object recovered in Columbia, which locals claim is of alien origin. The UFO was spotted in March over the town of Buga, Buga? Your guess is as good as mine.

Yeah, that’s true. I couldn’t tell you. Nope.

You can post the phonetic spelling in our comments if you know. So the UFO was spotted zigzagging throughout the sky. It was recovered shortly after it landed, and the group of people who recovered it said it weighed about four and a half pounds and had the temperature of a refrigerator when touched.

So cold? I think so. Okay, just checking.

I think this is first-hand accounts translated and maybe like…

Oh, yeah. Literally translated? And not colloquially. The man who touched it felt sick for days after touching the object. So a bad refrigerator. Maybe just don’t touch random things that fall from the sky that you find on the ground. It includes dead birds.

Maybe he lost the rock-paper-scissors. Yeah. Or he got dared and he had to do it. Another in the group states, when I poured water on it, it started the smoke and the water vaporized instantly and suggested the interior was hot and exterior cold. The same man also said the government contacted him to hand over the sphere, but he refused saying it would never be seen again. That’s very ominous of him. Yep. The government would probably take it and not give it back.

I mean, the government can just arrest him, so… Oh, that’s true. Yeah, he should maybe not taunt them.

Don’t say you have it. Just say what mysterious alien sphere. Yeah, what are you talking about? Scientists examining it say it is of artificial origin and shows no evidence of welding. Its internal structure is composed of high density elements. The outer layer appears to be the densest, comparable to human bone. Findings suggest that the outer layer could be made of titanium or steel, but more composition analysis is needed to confirm this. As for the centre, testing indicates the sphere has an internal structure, more porous or less dense than the outer shell. And X-rays revealed 18 small dots within the centre of the object, arranged in a non-random pattern, and it’s speculated they are sensors, bolts, or fragments of microspheres.

I’m gonna say they’re alien eggs.

Yo, yeah. Yeah. It’s just a incubator. Yeah.

This is how the beginning of the end of the world happens. They just kind of all hop out because it’s hot on the inside, cold on the outside.

Murder babies. Yeah. The scientists refer to the 18 points as a chip due to their precise arrangement and location within the sphere. The exterior of the sphere also displays symbols that look like ancient scripts, including runes that are of Aghem and Mesopotamian origin.

An AI translation of the script said this, and we can all trust everything AI tells us. The origin of birth through union and energy in the cycle of transformation, meeting point of unity, expansion, and consciousness, individual consciousness. The researchers say we interpret it as a message to humanity, encouraging a collective shift in consciousness to help Mother Earth, especially considering the current issues with pollution and environmental decline.

What kind of scientists are we talking about? I don’t know. Space scientists? Scientologists? Yeah. It seems very… not that it matters, but Mother Earth is a very non-science concept. There we go. That’s the word I was looking for, concept.

All right. I have input the first story. Sheryl will put in the second news story.

This article is titled Jesus is Coming in 2025. Thousands of people wager on the return of Jesus Christ. Finally.

I feel like they’ve been teasing us forever.

I know. This is from the Jerusalem Post from June 9th of 2025. Users of Polymarket, a decentralized prediction platform, have wagered over half a million dollars on whether the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur by the end of 2025.

An unusual blend of theology and speculative investment. We should place our bets. I think we should go check and see what it’s at by the end of this article.

Let’s just see how much has gone up or down. Polymarket allows users to place bets on outcomes of real-world events, turning everything from political elections to global catastrophes into tradable market assets. In this case, the platform is hosting a market of one of history’s most profound prophecies, the return of the Messiah. Despite the buzz, only about 3% of participants are betting in favor of Jesus Christ returning in 2025.

So I found it. Yeah. It’s still at 3%. Okay.

Well, that’s good.

But there is almost $700,000 in the pot. Wow.

The bet is inspired in part by the Millennial Day Theory, which interprets the biblical creation story as a symbolic timeline, representing each day as a thousand years.

That’s always weird about how they do that. I know. Like how do they even decide it’s like an even 1,000 years?

Not even that, but like if the world was made in 8,000 years. No, 7,000 years. The world was made 7,000 years. Like that’s nothing. I don’t know.

I don’t think that’s enough time for all of history to have happened.

No. According to this theory, humanity is approaching the metaphorical Saturday.

A thousand years of Saturday. A thousand years of Saturday. Oh, that sounds so nice.

Uh-huh. A prophesied era of peace following Christ’s return, 6,000 years after creation.

You all get the day off is what he says.

Uh-huh. But in the world of crypto and prediction markets, virtually no topic is off limits. Polymarket resolves its bets through a consensus of reliable sources. I have that in air quotes. Though it remains unclear as to what criteria define that consensus. Hmm.

Well, if anyone can help them define it, it is Jesus Christ.

That’s right. Polymarket functions by allowing users to buy shares, for and against outcomes. The current price of a yes share for the second coming of Christ hovers around 3 cents, reflecting the collective market skepticism. In the event that it does not occur, those who bet no stand to divide about $136,000 amongst themselves.

Okay, so yeah, this has gone quite a bit. Yeah. But the split is still the same. Yes.

I would be curious to see how many people would take it to tip it to 4% or higher. Oh yeah. Yeah. In contrast, the yes bettors would split over $4,000. Unless of course they turn out to be right. Jesus comes back. We’re all going to die. No one needs money anymore. Eternal Saturday.

Yep. How would one verify the return of Jesus? Who determines what counts as a credible source for such a profound and supernatural event, and perhaps more provocatively, should people be placing bets on something so sacred?

I think it would be in the Bible if we weren’t allowed to do it.

I’m pretty sure it does say something about gambling. Oh. Yeah. I have to double check. It’s been a while since I read the Bible, but Jesus was mad at people casting lots, which is gambling in the church. Oh yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if it actually says no gambling anymore, but…

We’re casting lots on the internet, which is not a church. No. Unless the servers housed in an old church. This we need to figure out.

Reactions on social media have been mixed. Some users responded with the humor. If Jesus really did come back, would anybody recognize him? And others have voiced anger at seeing the betting as an insult of Christianity’s more sacred tenants. Aw.

Thank you for the second news story, Sheryl. I’m going to put in the third news story here to complete calibration of the Lord Canarvon Curse-O-Meter, titled, Haunted Annabelle Doll Back in Custody After Acclaims It Went Missing Was Never Out of Control. This is by Ritu Singh on June 2nd for NDTV.com.

The Annabelle Doll sparked online panic after claims it went missing during a paranormal tour in the US. Did I tell you that Sidney messaged us about this? No. Oh, she tagged us, our probably cursed account, on TikTok and said put it back. However, the Doll’s owner confirmed it’s safely back home and was never out of control. Tony Spara, Annabelle’s current owner, stated, The Doll was taken on a brief tour to several locations to show the Doll to enthusiasts of the paranormal. The Doll was never out of our control. We take extreme precautions when handling or transporting the Doll. I heard that the Annabelle Doll was going on tour and I thought, oh, you and I got to go see this. Yep. All the dates were, like, in America. Oh, I bet. Which we don’t want to get disappeared.

No, not right now in the current state. We’re not going to see Annabelle.

We only want to be disappeared by curses and not ice. Correct. The Doll is blessed by a Catholic priest before moving it while on tour and after it is returned to the museum. On the tour, a Catholic priest, Father Bob, traveled with us the entire trip.

Ah, man, that sounds like a cushy job for Father Bob.

Just riding around with the Doll.

Yeah. First class, I hope. You just got to say some prayers on occasion, gets free food and hotel and pretty good.

Mmm-hmm. Some people believed Annabelle’s tour stop in New Orleans was a bad omen, citing the Not-Away Plantation House fire on May 15th and the inmate escape from the Orleans Justice centre on May 16th. However, most of the escaped inmates have been recaptured.

Yeah, it’s fine. They’re mostly all back. Don’t worry about it.

Just imagining Annabelle running like Chucky Style and flipping open the… You know, in movies they have that one switch that opens every cell door at once. She’s just like, yoink.

I wonder if that coincides with her being missing. Yeah. Did she go set the fire herself and let inmates free?

You know, it’s hard to say. There was a lot of people saying that Annabelle was missing, but the owner saying she wasn’t missing. Yeah, fair. So maybe it was missing, but the owner was trying to stop mass hysteria and panic from taking hold.

What if he just went and bought another doll that looks just like Annabelle?

Oh, and he hopes no one notices?

Yup, and the real Annabelle is still out there somewhere. It’s in the White House. Uh-huh.

According to Tony Sparrow, the owner, Annabelle is safely back at the Warren Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut, under lock and key. Or so he claims. All right. Well, that finishes the calibration phase of the Curse-O-Meter. We’ll get it to spit out the results now. Please stand by. And the Curse-O-Meter results for the mysterious extraterrestrial orb of Columbia. The Curse-O-Meter says, probably cursed.

Yeah, we don’t know what it is, but the guy who touched it, it made him sick. That’s bad. Yup.

And it’s also, it feels like a refrigerator. Which if it’s cold, means that it could have alien ghosts inside. Or alien eggs.

And I’m still leaning towards the alien eggs.

That’s the baby sphere. Uh-huh. And the results for the second news story about the betting pool on if Jesus will return or not this year. The Curse-O-Meter says, probably benign.

I wouldn’t recommend necessarily betting on the end of the world, but if we’re gonna go there anyway, you may as well have a little fun.

I’m still pulling for eternal Saturday. That’s fair. Saturday all day every day. I’ll never be back to work, boss.

I don’t think it works like that, but maybe.

Well, if anyone can do it, it is the offspring of God. Uh-huh. And the results for the third news story about the Annabelle doll mysteriously going missing and found and the owner says everything’s fine, but things weren’t in Louisiana. The Curse-O-Meter says, definitely cursed.

Yeah, I’m, I still think that seems rather fishy that he’s like, oh no, no, no, it’s not missing. Look. But like, where was she that whole time? Why did people think she was missing to begin with?

Yeah, did Father Bob screw up? Yeah. And he just bought a similar looking doll and the other dolls on the loose? Yep. It kind of feels like end times some days if you look at the internet.

I mean, we did just have betting on the end times in the previous article, so.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Brought about by Annabelle. That’s correct. Jesus is gonna fight Annabelle?

That would be, that would be a fantastic new movie from the people who are bringing out the Winnie the Pooh and the Steamboat Mickey and all those other random horror movies now.

I’d watch it. Yep. So would I. Jesus in his like robes and sandals, like punting a tiny one foot tall doll. Yep. Take that Annabelle, you old jerk. Well, now that we have our Curse-O-Meter nice and calibrated here for the main topic. Before we talk about that, we are going to head over to the Probably Cursed Museum and Gift Shop to talk about today’s artifact dropping on the shop. This month’s addition to the Probably Cursed Museum and Gift Shop is a Milgros Wood Child’s shoe. If you’re like me, I’ve never heard of this item before. It’s a wooden shoe form. Originally what a cobbler would use for shaping children’s shoes. Only the outside of this one is plated with several metal charms called Milagros or the English translation is Miracle.

So this is like a miracle shoe. This artifact would have been made by its owner. The charms on it might be things they desired for themselves. This particular Milgros has things like houses, fish, dogs, human faces, praying hands, and the whole thing is covered in these tiny charms like every inch except for the bottom.

Sheryl and I found this on a road trip last year on a stop in Penticton, BC. And it is visually striking as I’ve stated I’ve never seen anything like this.

Yeah, it was a very bizarre thing to find.

Yeah, and it’s like hefty and weighty like you pick it up and it feels cold to the touch. If you’d like to take a look and maybe have it for yourself, visit our artifacts section at probablycursed.etsy .com. And while you’re there, peruse all of our other artifacts. You might find the perfect thing for your curio cabinet at home.

Just a reminder to everyone, any of the items from our Probable Care Shop come with the certificate of… this is not really authenticity.

It’s a certificate signed by us.

Yes, almost like a thank you for helping us reach our goal of opening our own Cursed Item Museum. Before we start on our main topic, as I do with most of our episodes, I have a haunted update.

Haunted update. Wait, I want to play a new sound effect for that. I think the mysterious noise is one of the works best for that.

So this haunted update is a bit of a shorter one, but it also kind of feels like a previous or a continuation of the previous update. So if you haven’t heard that, I recommend you go back and listen to the previous episode.

Listen to every previous episode if you haven’t. Yes, that’s correct. There’s an ongoing saga of weird stuff in our house.

I’m now pretty convinced that the dog is actually seeing a ghost in our house. Like he’s acting a little weird. At this point, I think we have two ghosts. One is the ghost of a child, and I kind of feel like it’s maybe a little girl. She likes to poke Freddy when he’s on the floor in the living room. We occasionally see him just like flinch and run away with his tail between his legs.

Yeah, he’ll just be lying there, not moving, and then suddenly he’ll get up and run away like he’s been chased away.

So we also have heard the pitter-patter of feet running through the house a couple times. So, assuming it’s a little girl. It’s a little something. Yes, that’s correct.

On two feet because it sounds like bipedal. Yep. Could be a chicken.

I hope it’s a chicken. The ghost of a magpie.

I hope we get plenty of those.

Yeah. The other spirit, I think, is an older male. He is the one who we caught coughing in the video from last month. He also likes to move things in the house, like pushing our Halloween decoration off the table. And I think the dog likes having him around because last night when Chris and I were changing the doorknob on the office door, Freddie was in our bedroom behind me and he was staring into an empty corner of the room.

So I jokingly said to Freddie, Hey, are you talking to a ghost? And I swear he gave me a look like, of course. And then he looked back into the exact same corner of the room.

Keeping his eye on whatever it is there.

Yeah, and he started wagging his tail a little bit. I don’t know. Maybe he was responding to me. Maybe he was seeing something I wasn’t seeing. Neither of them feel malicious.

So I’m not concerned. And like our house is old, but it’s not that old. We’re talking the late 70s. Yeah. And we have looked it up. There is no record of anyone dying in our house.

We’re the third owner of this house.

I’m pretty sure. And the other two people moved out. So no deaths. Strange things happening.

Strange things. Also something evil keeps letting the air out of my bike tires. So I would like that to stop, please.

Yeah, whichever one of you cursed Chris with the bicycle curse, you need to remove that immediately. It’s rude.

My back tires like popped twice to the point where I had to get to replaced. My seat broke off one day. I’m going to have to put my bike up on our shop. It was a probably cursed item at this point. Oh, a ghost bike. Ghost bike. There’s ghost trains. Why not a ghost bicycle?

It could be like James Dean’s car.

Oh yeah. Yeah. If you want to check out any of our other cursed artifacts, you can go to probablycursed.etsy.com. We have a good selection of cursed items on there, along with some vinyl stickers, some hand-painted things. Sheryl’s going to be uploading some ghosts up there, I think.

Some hand-crafted ghost jars. At some point. We’ll see. And if you have anything cursed or evil that you need to get rid of in a hurry, we would like to take it off your hands. You can email us at probablycursedpodcast@gmail.com, and we will talk about taking your haunted possessions off your hands and into ours…

So, on to our main topic. Today’s story is about the Orang Medan.

I always think you’re saying orang-utan when you say this.

I know. It’s… So technically, the orang part, so Orang Medan, translates to man of medan. So those of you who have played the video game man of medan, that’s why it’s called that. So I’m an orang.

Mm-hmm. So sometime in the late 1940s, ships traveling in the Straits of Malacca near Sumatra and Malaysia received a mysterious SOS morse code. The message simply stated, We float. All officers, including the captain, dead, in-chart room and on bridge, probably a whole of crew dead. And there’s like a bunch of gibberish words, and then it ends with I die.

Creepy. So those are the last documented words from the Orang Medan. Two American ships sailing in the area heard the message and decided to investigate. With the help of the British ship called the Malaya, and a Dutch ship called the Sumatra, the Americans were able to triangulate the position of the vessel that had sent the mysterious SOS. It was then that it was identified that the vessel in distress was a Dutch freighter known as the SS Orang Medan. And the closest ship to the location of the coordinates was an American merchant ship known as the Silver Star.

Ah, the Silver Star. I don’t know if you mentioned it. Where was the ship discovered?

It’s near Sumatra and Malaysia in the Straits of Malica.

Right, you said that. Yeah, I was just pondering what if this is a continuation of last episode’s Bermuda Triangle. This is a whole other spooky ocean.

I was thinking about it while we were out walking the dog today and my brain was like, it’s like a Canadian thing. As soon as the water unfreezes we’re just like, boats! Water! Travel!

We can sail again. The boat is free.

That’s right. So it must just be a Canadian thing in the summer. People should be prepared for at least one story about boats. Anyway, back to our story. Due to the nature of the SOS, the captain of the Silver Star immediately steered his ship back towards the last known location of the Orang Medan. It took several hours, but they finally managed to locate the ship. As the Silver Star got closer to the Orang Medan, they could see no signs of life on the decks of the boat. All efforts to contact the crew had failed, so the captain of the Silver Star organized a search party to investigate the ship.

The crew boarded the freighter, and as the search party walked around the Orang Medan, it became clear that the SOS had accurately described the scene on board. There were bodies everywhere. Crazy. The faces of the dead were locked with expressions of complete terror. Their eyes wide with fear, their arms and hands were positioned in such a way that it seemed like the dead had been trying to fend something off. The captain of the Orang Medan was found on the bridge, and the man who had been working the telegraph to send the Morris code message was found slumped in his chair with his hands still resting on this ending key.

Oh wow. It was his last act.

He basically put the words I die and he died.

He’s a man of his word. That’s right.

If he was still alive, I would say give that man a job. Even the ship’s dog, a small terrier, had died with its lips curled up almost like it was in mid-growl. The terrier died of terror? Yep, strangely enough, there appeared to be no physical damage to the Orang Medan itself or any of their crew.

Just everyone straight up died.

Yeah, everyone died. They all looked like they were in pain or in terror or something. Something was not right.

So the, I’m just trying to paint the picture in my mind. Yep. The Orang Medan, it’s a freighter. Yes. Is it like just a big metal cargo ship? Yeah. Okay.

I could look up, I didn’t, but I could look up like a freighter ship from the 1940s. Yeah.

Is like, there’s probably photos of the Orang Medan itself. We’ll get into that. Okay. All right. That makes it a little bit harder to use for the show notes.

That is correct. So a few other things also seem odd. For instance, the temperature outside, with the air temperature outside, was 100 degrees Fahrenheit. So that’s about 38 degrees Celsius. Toasty. Yeah, really hot. But there seemed to be a chill emanating from somewhere in the ship. It’s not AC. No, it is not AC. Not, not in the 1940s.

Maybe they had an alien sphere.

I hope so. What was even more strange was the fact that even with the cooler temperature on the ship, it appeared that the bodies of the dead crew were decaying much faster than they should have been.

Oh, so they’re just sort of putrefying right before their eyes.

Because keep in mind, they’ve only been dead for like several hours. So like… And the ship is cooler. Yeah. Something is, something is amiss. The search party returned to the Silver Star to report their findings to the captain. After hearing the description of the site on board, the Orang Medan, the captain of the Silver Star made the decision to salvage any cargo that they could from the vessel.

Although the record from the CIA reading room stated that the Silver Star attempted to attach a tow line to the Orang Medan so they could drag it back to port. So there’s some conflicting story aspects here. I guess so.

I mean, maybe they started off doing one and then the other. Like, oh, there’s just so much stuff on here. Let’s just take the whole ship. Instead of carrying everything over.

Either way, it’s not really as important of the story. Because when the crew attempted to board the Orang Medan again, before they could set foot on the actual bridge of the boat, the crew from the Silver Star noticed smoke and flame billowing out of the lower decks near Cargo Hold number four.

Weird. They fled back to the Silver Star only moments before the Orang Medan exploded. It quickly filled with water and sank to the seafloor, never to be seen again. Wow.

Did somebody just throw their cigarette on the ground while they’re looking through the ship?

One of the dead bodies is just holding a cigarette and it fell out of his hand and then boom, who knows.

Oh yeah. Smoking kills.

So the first official mention of the Orang Medan in North America was in 1952. And it came from the US Coast Guard. At the time, they were supposedly collecting witness statements from former crew members of the Silver Star. One witness of the Silver Star described the dead as saying their faces were upturned to the sun, staring as if in fear. Their mouths were agape, open, their eyes staring, resembling horrible caricatures.

I’m kind of getting flashbacks to that pile of frozen scientists from season three of, what was it, True Detective? Yeah, True Detective. Yeah, True Detective.

Yes. Very much like that.

I don’t, wait, were they naked too? Like in the TV show?

It doesn’t say that, but I would assume not.

All right. Yeah. I won’t picture them naked then.

You can if you want. There’s nothing stopping you. The statement from the US Coast Guard also surfaced around the same time as various theories began to emerge about the fate of the Orang Medan’s crew. Over the years, there have been some interesting theories specifically regarding the cargo the freighter may have been carrying. So some versions of the story tell of a sole survivor, an unnamed German man from the Orang Medan’s crew who jumped from the freighter at some point and swam to Taeyongi, I might be pronouncing it wrong, Taeyongi Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where he was found by an Italian missionary and some of the island’s local inhabitants. The German man apparently told the missionary that the Orang Medan was carrying some poorly stored cargo of oil of vitriol, which oil of vitriol, we don’t use that term anymore.

So for all our listeners, under the age of 89, oil of vitriol is severe acid. Okay. Yeah. I had to look it up. Vitriol. Vitriol. He claimed that some of the cargo got damaged en route, allowing fumes to escape and that the fumes were what caused the men to perish. Sounds plausible. Now, because I love science, I actually went and looked up the chemical safety data sheet for the sulphuric acid. I couldn’t just let it go.

So does it let you die in terror?

No. So the Canadian centre for Occupational Health and Safety notes that fumes are expected to be hazardous if sulphuric acid is heated or misted.

So don’t add that. That’s correct. The fumes are extremely toxic and will cause severe irritation of the nose and throat with a possibility of pulmonary edema, which is fluid in the lungs, if inhaled.

So this sounds like wasabi times a thousand. Uh-huh.

The National Library of Medicine in the US also notes that exposure to sulphuric acid fumes can cause drooling, vomiting, blood, and vision loss.

Okay, but not gazing into the sky in terror. That’s correct. With your arms in front of you.

That’s right. Nope, nothing like that. I mean, I would assume it would probably burn your skin because sulphuric acid is not exactly… Yeah.

You’d get some exfoliation at. Yes.

So it could just be that you would be afraid because your whole body was burning, but I don’t know if we’ll ever fully know.

So this German guy held his breath.

Yes, correct. Maybe he noticed that the fumes were starting to escape and he just jumped into the water and swam away. He was like, see you guys.

Maybe he was the one who knocked over a barrel by accident.

It’s possible that he just booked it. I also realized while I was typing this out that I’m probably going to be on some sort of watch list now and combine with everything else that’s going on in the US right now. I’ve decided I probably will not be allowed into the country for a little while anyway. So I may as well continue looking up the effects of poisonous gas.

We should set someone up to steal your identity and then they travel to see if they travel to the States and see what happens.

Yeah, that’s right. I’ll send them with my phone. Another theory is that the Orang Medan was carrying both potassium cyanide and nitroglycerin.

Well, that would make the explode-iness happen.

That’s correct. For the potassium cyanide part, because obviously the nitroglycerin would explain the exploding part, potassium cyanide fumes have similar symptoms to sulphuric acid. So irritated nose and throat, coughing, difficulty breathing, high exposure can lead to headache, confusion, heart racing. Seizures are also fairly common and fun fact that I learned the nitroglycerin from heart meds is the exact same nitroglycerin that’s in explosives.

Oh, so your heart meds could explode. They could explode.

They’ve just been deluded to the point that they shouldn’t explode, but you never know.

I’m imagining it turns it, it dials it down from dynamite to pop rocks.

Just pop rocks inside your heart to keep it alive. So the third cargo theory is that the Orang Medan was carrying Japanese nerve gas that had been stored in China during World War II, and it was en route to the United States. The US military didn’t want a paper trail for the nerve gas, so they loaded it on an unregistered ship, which kind of seems like the most logical theory to me.

Uh-huh. Maybe they’re put this oil vitriol sticker on the box instead.

The other reason I think this is the more logical theory. It’s odorless, colorless, and once it’s released into the air, it’s really hard to detect. So it will cause your eyes to water your nose to run. You might begin drooling, but to an excessive level, there’s even records of people foaming at the mouth. Your pupils will constrict to pimp ricks, and they will stop responding to light because your brain function will be altered and your vision will glow plurry. Crazy. You’ll struggle to breathe, lose fluids from both ends, and sweat profusely.

Did they mention that it was very stinky and moist on the deck of the ship? Nope. Sure didn’t. Okay. So they didn’t lose their fluids from both ends?

They did not. Nerve gas is also extremely painful, and will either leave you unable to move, or you will start having seizures. It does get on your nerves. Yeah. Literally. So remember earlier when I mentioned that the CIA reading room had documented the case of the Orang Medan.

Yep. So some of the information I used for this episode is actually from a declassified CIA document dated December 5th of 1959. It’s a letter written by each C. Mark Jr., who is the assistant to the director of the CIA in 1959.

Okay. So Mark Jr. stated in the letter that he was sure the story of the Orang Medan held the key that would answer questions about the causes of many plane accidents and unsolved mysteries of the sea.

Bermuda Triangle.

Bermuda Triangle. He said it reminded him of tales of sightings from the 18th and 19th centuries of fiery spheres rising from the sea and disappearing into the sea again, which I don’t necessarily make the connection, but power to him.

Some people just like to attach their theory to anything. It’s like the whole ancient air and aliens TV show.

Now, when you had brought up earlier, do we have a photo of the Orang Medan? Yep. A lot of people actually believe the story is unlikely to be true.

Are these government employees who are part of the disinformation campaign so they could have that awesome China, Japanese nerve gas?

Uh, maybe. We’ll never know. So one of the first articles published about the Orang Medan came from Il Piccolo in Christe from Italy. As part of a series, they called Idrami del mare, so dramas of the sea, written by Silvio Shirley. Several newspapers who reprinted the story noted that they were unable to confirm the validity of the story. However, the author himself continued to claim the story is true and died bringing any of the secrets of the story to the grave with him.

I guess you’re not left with a whole lot of evidence when it explodes and sinks to the bottom of the sea.

That’s correct. To start looking at the validity of the story, I need to acknowledge that there are actually no records of a ship called the Orang Medan ever having been registered at the time.

Which is what you want when you’re carting secret nerve gas.

That’s correct. We can confirm that actually the Silver Star was a real ship, but the ship’s logs for the Silver Star have no mention of an attempted rescue. But again, they were an American ship. All the military had to do was go and be like, we need those records.

Yeah, or they just forgot to write it down.

Those who believe the story also have noted that it’s possible that the names, dates, and locations of the circumstances and the ships involved may have been inaccurate, or that accounts were exaggerated. Or as I mentioned earlier in the story, the US military specifically was looking for an unregistered ship. A ghost ship. Yeah, but as it stands, there is no proof the Orang Medan ever existed. A true ghost ship. Uh-huh. The other thing that was interesting, and I don’t know if you caught it at the beginning, but the ships that rescued the, or that were, that helped with the rescue were the Sumatra and the Malaya, which the Orang Medan is supposed to have sunk somewhere between Sumatra and Malaysia. Oh, interesting. So it could be part of like, you know, the game of telephone?

Some details got mixed up. It could have been somewhere else where this happened. Correct.

An article published in the Yorkshire Evening Post on November 22nd, 1940, which is approximately seven to nine years before the story of the Orang Medan arrived in North America, tells a different tale about the Orang Medan. Instead of the cryptic message about the bodies, according to the article, the message from the Orang Medan was originally to urgently request a doctor to come to their boat, which was sailing somewhere near the Solomon Island, not the Straits of Malica.

Maybe they thought the details about a bunch of dead passengers staring into the sky in terror was not fit for print. And so they decided to nice it up a little bit.

Maybe, but keep in mind this came out before the article that we are referring to. So after requesting a doctor, they then requested a warship for some reason. Seems a little odd.

Sounds like they’re expecting a fight.

Yeah, a doctor and a warship. Maybe they’re pirates. Maybe. The SOS messages were as follows. SOS from Seenship Orang Medan beg ships with short wave wireless to get in touch with Dr.

Urgent. The second was probable second officer dead. Other crew members also killed. Disregard medical consultation, SOS assistance warship. Which seems a little bit more like what I would expect from an SOS message, but who knows. The rest of the details are pretty much the same. Crew found dead, no damage to the bodies or the ship.

Orang Medan exploded. So skeptics know to the original story from 1940 was written by Silvio, and at the time the world was dealing with World War II. And because of this, the original story from 1940 was likely ignored, and it could have annoyed Silvio. So he rewrote it and then published it again after the war.

Okay, you wrote about it twice. Correct.

So Chris, after hearing this, what do you think? What are your thoughts on the stories? Do you think it’s a real ship or not?

I mean, there’s nothing too supernatural about this ship. And definitely there has been quite a long history of ships moving things that are not on any registry, doing stuff for money for people who don’t want anyone official to know.

And especially during war times, that happened a lot.

Yeah. Yeah, a lot of stuff was kept secret. That’s actually how, that’s why a tank is named a tank. When they’re put on a manifest or being shipped over to wherever they were, they just wrote tanks on it, and people would just assume like fuel tanks or whatever. Oh, cool. Not the, well, nobody knew what a pew pew kaboom tank was.

So it could be something like that. Yeah, that’s interesting.

I think something that could take out everyone on the ship is, and it was one of the things that I remember learning about with regards to the Bermuda Triangle is that a volcanic bubble could have been released from under the ocean and displaced all the oxygen. And maybe it was like hypoxia and they’re all, because hypoxia can cause hallucinations. And you know, one guy starts freaking out, everyone else does. They’re all seeing the same thing in their last moments.

Or maybe even just seeing like the thing they fear the most, because their brain is just firing in weird ways.

Yeah. So yeah, I think something airborne could have taken them all out at once and not made fluids leak from both ends of them. Yes. So I think it’s plausible. Nothing in the story is particularly unbelievable. It’s like a, like varying levels of rare things that have happened. But yeah, that’s what I think. Yeah.

I personally want to believe it’s real. It’s such an interesting story. And as you and I have proven, we love good water based histories.

The sea, the sea calls to us.

From Alberta, in the middle of the prairies.

That’s right. It’s shouting pretty loud. You can kind of hear it.

And I’m kind of happy there’s no way of proving whether or not the story is real or not, because it’s a great mystery. And whether or not it’s true, I like it to remain a great mystery. I like it too. And that’s the story of the Orang Medan.

That was very cool. I like that. Yeah, where I like this trend of sea mysteries that we’ve got going on the sea mystery series.

If we start running into too many, we’ll maybe make an offshoot podcast.

Yeah, or just make a downloadable collection for everybody. That’s right. All right. Well, we’ll take the story of the Orang Medan, put it into our Curse-O-Meter, and we will get it to tell us exactly how cursed the Orang Medan is. Orang Medan? Orang Medan. The Orang Medan.

Please stand by. It’s hard to say Orang Medan. I always want to say Orang Medan. Yeah, I know. I think that is just like a hillbilly song or something. So the Curse-O-Meter says the story of the Orang Medan is definitely cursed.

Yeah, there’s something wrong with what happened to everyone on the ship. And the fact there’s no information that the ship ever existed, something is afoot.

Yeah. And like, it didn’t take much to make the whole thing explode. And whatever killed everyone on board, it had already had gone by the time the rescue ships arrived. Yeah. But it took out everybody except for maybe one German guy who talked to an Italian missionary.

That’s right. He escaped in the water. Like, I didn’t look in the map and see how far away he had to swim, but still seems kind of plausible.

I mean, maybe he got a good current going with him and pushed him along or saved by a friendly dolphin.

Plus, it feels cursed because who would do that to a dog? Poor terrier.

He deserved better. Hopefully he enjoyed his life at sea up until the last day. That’s right. All right, well, that brings us to the end of today’s episode. Be sure to tune in next month or our next episode. I think we’ll start taking a break from the sea and talk about something a bit closer to home again. Until then, you can check us out on our social medias, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Blue Sky, YouTube.

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