PROCEED WITH CAUTION, POTENTIAL SPOILER-ISH CONTENT AHEAD.
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If you're at all a fan of horror games, you may have heard of "The Dark Pictures: The Man of Medan."
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This post is going to be talking about the origin story of that. While I don't address the game itself, there is the potential this could reveal or spoil some of the plot.
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I was originally just going to do a short little snippet of this in the "Interesting Facts" thread, but it quickly spiralled out of control. So, that said, on to the story
Sometime in 1947 or 1948 in the Strait of Malacca, an American Merchant Ship named "The Silver Star" reported receiving a distress call from another ship, identifying itself only as "The SS Ourang Medan."
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This distress call was said to have been picked up by several listening posts as well.
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Amongst a string of garbled Morse Code they crew could not decipher, the message they received was as follows:
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"All officers including Captain are dead, lying in chatroom on bridge. Possibly whole crew dead."
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This was followed by more indecipherable Morse code, and then: "I die."
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And then the call went silent.
After triangulating the position, The Silver Star quickly made their way to the Medan. Even so, it took them several hours to reach the stranded vessel, and upon arrival they could see no sign of the crew.
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Disturbed, the crew of the Silver Star set to board the Ourang.
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Reportedly what they found was the entirety of the crew, including the dog, dead, their faces masks of terror and pain. Some seemed to have died in positions fighting off unseen opponents. The captain is said to have been found at the table in his cabin, holding his pen. The communications officer's body was found with his fingers still on the Telegraph. Yet despite the crew's obvious distress, there was no evidence of what had caused it.
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As they searched the ship, the crew of the Silver Star claimed to feel the temperature drop sharply when they entered on of the boiler rooms, despite it being a warm day.
They claimed to find several bodies in the boiler rooms, many of whom were "sprawled on their backs, their frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouths gaping open and eyes staring; the dead bodies resembled horrible caricatures."
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After searching the ship and finding no one alive, the crew of the Silver Star made the decision to return to their own vessel. Their hope was to bind the Ourang to their own vessel and tow it back to the mainland with them. However, shortly after they managed to get the Ourang tethered, smoke began to pour from one of the condemned ship's boiler rooms.
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The fire quickly spread, consuming the entirety of the ship. The crew of the Silver Star barely had time to cut the lines before the Ourang sank beneath the surface.
Theories:
The American ship, the Silver Star, was, apparently, a real ship. It has records and official documentation, and some claim to have even been able to locate and talk to members of it's elusive crew.
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The Ourang, however, has no records. Given it's location (which was outside the usual course taken by trading vessels) there is a theory that perhaps the ship was smuggling goods, and did not want to be identified by it's true name. It is possible it could have even been assigned a false name to avoid Association with it's origin or destination.
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This feeds into an additional theory that the ship, if real, may have in fact been smuggling dangerous chemicals - specifically potassium cyanide and nitroglycerin. Some theorize there could have been a boiler malfunction that caused carbonmonixed poisoning. However, carbonmonixed would not necessarily account for the crew on the deck of the ship, nor for their terrified expressions.
Other rumors are that the ship was perhaps smuggling biological weaponry, particularly nerve gas, possibly developed by the Japanese. Conditions in the cargo of a smuggling ship being less than ideal, these chemicals may have started releasing their toxic gases, causing vivid and disturbing hallucinations and that would have terrorized the crew. It also may have interfered with their bodies' ability to process oxygen at all, even while above deck. Eventually, as with the carbon monoxide, the crew would have suffocated to death.
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The nitroglycerin, unattended and mixing with the salt of the ocean water, could then have possibly have triggered the explosion that sent the ship to it's eventual watery grave.
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The Ourang is rumoured to have come from Indonesia, possibly the island of Sumatra, whose biggest city shares the name "Medan" with the vessel.
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"Ourang" is the Indonesian word for Man.
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Thus:
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"The Man from Medan."
Tbh I left some things out. There's at least two researchers who dedicated quite a bit of effort trying to find out if this was real and the facts behind it, there's mentions of other accounts of the Ourang so it's hard to know which is the most accurate of the original tale.
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One website went into rather disturbing accounts of a Japanese research team (which they labelled "worse than the Nazis" in terms of cruelty and depravity) that some theorize may have been connected to creating whatever was on board, and the theory was they were selling bio-weapons to the US I believe.
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At least one accounting claims the Ourang levitated out of the water after catching fire...
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It starts getting very muddled after awhile so I tried to just keep to the most prominent and repeated of the rumors, and the ones most likely to have some grain of truth in them.
I find it interesting that they've never actually been able to verify the existence of the ship, so we may never know if any of this actually has any foundation, or if it wasn't just a case of spooked sailors telling tall tales
.
If you're at all a fan of horror games, you may have heard of "The Dark Pictures: The Man of Medan."
.
This post is going to be talking about the origin story of that. While I don't address the game itself, there is the potential this could reveal or spoil some of the plot.
.
I was originally just going to do a short little snippet of this in the "Interesting Facts" thread, but it quickly spiralled out of control. So, that said, on to the story
.
This distress call was said to have been picked up by several listening posts as well.
.
Amongst a string of garbled Morse Code they crew could not decipher, the message they received was as follows:
.
"All officers including Captain are dead, lying in chatroom on bridge. Possibly whole crew dead."
.
This was followed by more indecipherable Morse code, and then: "I die."
.
And then the call went silent.
.
Disturbed, the crew of the Silver Star set to board the Ourang.
.
Reportedly what they found was the entirety of the crew, including the dog, dead, their faces masks of terror and pain. Some seemed to have died in positions fighting off unseen opponents. The captain is said to have been found at the table in his cabin, holding his pen. The communications officer's body was found with his fingers still on the Telegraph. Yet despite the crew's obvious distress, there was no evidence of what had caused it.
.
As they searched the ship, the crew of the Silver Star claimed to feel the temperature drop sharply when they entered on of the boiler rooms, despite it being a warm day.
.
After searching the ship and finding no one alive, the crew of the Silver Star made the decision to return to their own vessel. Their hope was to bind the Ourang to their own vessel and tow it back to the mainland with them. However, shortly after they managed to get the Ourang tethered, smoke began to pour from one of the condemned ship's boiler rooms.
.
The fire quickly spread, consuming the entirety of the ship. The crew of the Silver Star barely had time to cut the lines before the Ourang sank beneath the surface.
The American ship, the Silver Star, was, apparently, a real ship. It has records and official documentation, and some claim to have even been able to locate and talk to members of it's elusive crew.
.
The Ourang, however, has no records. Given it's location (which was outside the usual course taken by trading vessels) there is a theory that perhaps the ship was smuggling goods, and did not want to be identified by it's true name. It is possible it could have even been assigned a false name to avoid Association with it's origin or destination.
.
This feeds into an additional theory that the ship, if real, may have in fact been smuggling dangerous chemicals - specifically potassium cyanide and nitroglycerin. Some theorize there could have been a boiler malfunction that caused carbonmonixed poisoning. However, carbonmonixed would not necessarily account for the crew on the deck of the ship, nor for their terrified expressions.
.
The nitroglycerin, unattended and mixing with the salt of the ocean water, could then have possibly have triggered the explosion that sent the ship to it's eventual watery grave.
.
The Ourang is rumoured to have come from Indonesia, possibly the island of Sumatra, whose biggest city shares the name "Medan" with the vessel.
.
"Ourang" is the Indonesian word for Man.
.
Thus:
.
"The Man from Medan."
.
One website went into rather disturbing accounts of a Japanese research team (which they labelled "worse than the Nazis" in terms of cruelty and depravity) that some theorize may have been connected to creating whatever was on board, and the theory was they were selling bio-weapons to the US I believe.
.
At least one accounting claims the Ourang levitated out of the water after catching fire...
.
It starts getting very muddled after awhile so I tried to just keep to the most prominent and repeated of the rumors, and the ones most likely to have some grain of truth in them.