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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Objective_Aspect8030 on 2024-11-14 20:10:28+00:00.

Losing someone you’re close to is always a horrific experience, but when you lose that someone in a sudden and strange way right before your eyes it hurts so much worse. That someone was my best friend, Harry. We’d known each other for the better part of six years. I first met Harry on move in day at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, he was one of my roommates and we hit it off pretty much right away. I don’t remember how it came up exactly but it turned out we both had a niche interest in cryptozoology. 

In what little free time we were given at the academy we would drive out to the infamous Bridgewater Triangle in search of whatever paranormal activity there might be, ghosts, pukwudgies, UFO’s, you name it. Neither of us truly believed that we’d ever find anything, we mostly just used our little misadventures as an excuse to drink in the woods. The closest we ever came to some kind of supernatural encounter was when we stumbled across a hairless racoon, it was certainly the strangest thing we ever saw out there. 

Those four years were some of the hardest in my life, and if it weren’t for Harry they very well could’ve been the last. As cliche as it sounds he became a brother to me, I’d even go visit his family with him on vacation and holidays. His parents would jokingly refer to me as their long lost kid. Our graduation was one of the hardest days of my life, I’ve never been good with goodbyes even with people I didn’t like but Harry was on a whole other level. I nearly cried in front of his whole family, thank god I didn’t. 

Harry went on to work for a tanker company based out of Seattle and I went off to work on tug boats in Alaska. We kept in touch the whole time but it just wasn’t the same as seeing him in person. Our schedules didn’t line up well either so we couldn’t ever really see each other. That went on for about two years before I expressed interest in going to work on the tanker with him. He seemed pretty excited about the idea and offered to put in a good word for me. He had already worked himself up to the position of Third Mate and was on pretty good terms with a couple of the Captains there so I figured his word was good and went for it. I ended up getting the job and started pretty quickly after finishing my last hitch with the tugs. 

I was even lucky enough to get to work my first hitch on the tanker with Harry, it was the first time I got to really spend time with him in two years and it was nice to have a friendly face to help me adjust to life on the tanker. Working on a new ship is always a nerve racking experience, especially one as large as the one I was now living on. It was about 680 feet from bow to stern (which is relatively small for a tanker). Life aboard was actually really nice, since these hitches are pretty long they make sure there are a lot of accommodations aboard, a dedicated cook, TV’s, a gym and there was even a driving simulator setup. Between Harry and the ship herself it seemed like this was going to be a great fit for me and I was excited to start my first voyage aboard. We would be leaving from LA and heading to Japan, the whole trip should take about 20 days given we avoid any major setbacks. Looking back at it now it’s hard to fathom how differently I would feel on the other side of those twenty days.

The first few days went fairly well, most of life on a ship underway is routine maintenance, cleaning and standing watch. Lookout watches were my favorite, whether it be at the helm itself or just helping to keep an eye out. Not too much goes on in the middle of the pacific so a lot of the time I’d be up there with Harry, and we’d just joke around and share stories with the rest of the crew on the bridge. There were a couple of occasions where we had to make passing arrangements with another vessel or we got reports of free floating containers in the area but aside from that it was pretty uneventful. It wasn’t until the 8th day that it would change. 

I wasn’t on the bridge when this happened but Harry filled me in when he saw me. The incident occurred during the night watch. Lights were spotted on the horizon which is not an uncommon occurrence at all as lights are used to identify ships and communicate critical info, like what sides you are seeing so you can determine what direction the ship is headed. For example all ships have a green light on their starboard side, red on the port, a white light on the stern and masthead, and then there are yellow lights to indicate if they’re towing something. What was uncommon about the lights were their color, apparently it was a horizontal line of interchanging green and purple lights. There are no vessels that use purple lights in any scenario, there was some talk of maybe they were actually red and just looked purple at a distance for whatever reason but even then that pattern of red and green isn’t used at all in the maritime world. They disappeared after about twenty minutes and weren’t seen again. 

It really wasn’t that significant of an incident at all and was forgotten about almost immediately but it was the first in a series of strange occurrences. Harry especially didn’t think much of it, although he did crack a joke saying it might’ve been a flock of Ropen. If you’ve never heard of them, Ropen are a cryptid from the southwest pacific that are basically just glowing pterodactyls. I laughed but deep down I thought about how cool it would be to see some kind of sea monster while we were out here, like how the sailors of old would talk about seeing mermaids or kraken. It was a childish fantasy, but my fantasy nonetheless. 

The next day we would stumble across the next strange occurrence of our journey and this time I would be the one to witness it. I was out on bow watch, where I would stand at the very front of the ship to help keep a lookout instead of up on the bridge. I spotted something floating in the water about 500 feet off our port side, it looked fairly large so I called it out to the Captain on the radio. I then took a closer look through my binoculars, and realized what was in the water. It was a dead whale, there were even a few sharks feasting on it. It didn’t look like it had been dead for long. While it’s not a typical sight, coming across a dead whale is by no means an unnatural one. I’ve seen pictures and videos of scenes just like this before, but what I haven’t seen before is the types of injuries this dead whale had. 

There were the easily explainable ones such as the large chunks of missing flesh from the opportunistic sharks or holes pecked into the surface of the whale from seabirds but then there were the long deep gashes in the whale. They were straight almost parallel lines, and the flesh around the wounds seemed almost charred. I’m by no means an expert on decaying whales so I very well may have just misunderstood what the process of decay looks like on a whale but nonetheless something about it just felt off to me. The bridge team seemed to have gotten a kick out of it, the Captain even took a picture to send to his wife, who was a middle school science teacher, so she could show her class. 

The thought of the Ropen entered my head again, the childish side of me thought maybe, just maybe, this whale was a victim of that flock and the gashes in its side were from the mighty claws of those bioluminescent pterosaurs. It certainly was the funnest explanation I could think of, maybe that’s what I’ll tell my kids someday, if I ever have kids at least. I radioed up to Harry joking about the Ropen to which I got a quick laugh back and a confused Captain asking “What the Hell is a Ropen?” I embarrassingly explained it in the most simple way I could think of “A glowing Pterodactyl”. To which the Captain only said “Oh ok… sweet”.

Another 2 days would go by without incident but the next occurrence would be much more notable. Yet Again I was there for what happened, this time I was up on the bridge at the helm when something strange appeared on our radar. It was showing a large target about 15 miles off of our starboard bow, based on the size of the blob on the radar it would’ve been roughly the same size as us, but it could not be spotted with the bare eye or our ECDIS (boat gps). We were no wear near any land masses whatsoever and even if we were we should have been able to see it, the weather was completely clear and our visibility was well past 15 miles. There was no land and there were no ships. 

Large targets appearing out of nowhere on radar is actually somewhat normal due to subrefraction and other science nonsense I could not care enough to memorize but what isn’t normal is these ghost targets being given ARPA data. ARPA is an addon to radar that will automatically track targets in your area and warn you if they become a danger. ARPA will automatically calculate the target’s speed, course, distance to you, CPA (Closest Point of Approach), and TCPA (Time of CPA). Our ARPA was giving us all of this data on the target meaning that something was actually there and that something was moving. 

According to the ARPA it wouldn’t be a danger to our course and was in fact moving away from us. This was pretty confusing to everyone on the bridge, including the Captain. There was no real explanation for this other than it just being a really weird glitch. However the Captain decided to take extra precaution anyway and ordered the look outs to keep an eye out for our g…

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