The Ourang Medan, The Mystery of the Deadliest Ghost Ship in History

In June 1947, the Dutch freighter S.S. Ourang Medan was traveling along the straits of Malacca, when the ship suddenly sent out a chilling distress signal.

"All Officers, including the Captain, are dead. Lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead."

This first message was followed by a series of indecipherable Morse code sequences until finally, a last ominous transmission:

"I die." 

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Ourang Medan's grim SOS was picked up by British and Dutch listening posts around Sumatra and Malaysia, who worked together to determined where the signal was coming from and alerted nearby ships.

American merchant ship Silver Star was first to reach Ourang Medan. They waived and shouted at the vessel to check for signs of life above deck. But there was no answer. Only eerie silence.

The US ship decided to send out a rescue team to board the ship to look for survivors. But what they found was a blood-curdling nightmare.

The entire Dutch crew was a ghastly pile of corpses – eyes wide open in horror, mouths are frozen in an eternal scream, arms stretched out as if saying stop as if saying no more.

Inside, they found the captain with the same twisted expression on his face as that of his men, dead on the bridge of the ship. Now nothing more than a dead captain, leading a dead ship.

His once strapping officers are now cold corpses straggled on the wheelhouse and chartroom floor. Even the ship’s dog wasn't spared a horrific death.

But the most harrowing is finding the radio operator, fingertips still on the telegraph where he sent his dying message.

After seeing the chilling devastation on board, the Silver Star decided to tow the Ourang Medan to port. But it wouldn't make it to shore, as thick clouds of smoke started rising from the lower decks and interrupted the rescue.

The crew barely had time to sever the line and move to safety, before the Ourang Medan exploded. The blast was apparently so big that the ship “lifted herself from the water and swiftly sank,” taking with it all the answers to its mysterious end to the bottom of the sea.

Or so the story of the Ourang Medan goes.

Some details may differ slightly in each version of the story. Like it happened in February 1948 instead of June 1947. Or that the waters that day were choppy instead of calm. And that the crew wasn't just dead, but they were decomposing at a faster rate. 

While in some versions, the details are, well, too detailed. Like one of the two American ships that heard the distress signal was named The City of Baltimore. That the smoke from the lower deck before the explosion came exactly from the Number 4 hold. Or that the poor canine aboard was a small terrier.

But whichever version of the story you've heard (or told), the basic plot points remain the same - Ourang Medan's entire crew met a gruesome and inexplicable death, and then very conveniently blew up and sank to the bottom of the ocean, leaving us all with an unsolved nautical macabre mystery.

So what happened to the Ourang Medan?

Theory #1: It was a cover up.

The most commonly pointed out loophole in the tale of the Ourang Medan is the vessel's lack of paper trail.

The Lloyd's Shipping registers don't have any mention of the ship. It's not in The Dictionary of Disasters at Sea that covers the years 1824-1962. It wasn't in the Registrar of Shipping and Seamen either.

There's no trace of it in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Nothing in the Dutch Shipping records in Amsterdam. The Maritime Authority of Singapore also doesn't have the ill-fated ship in any of their records. 

In other words, the Ourang Medan was a ghost ship, even before it gained notoriety as one. Because there's no tangible proof that it even existed.

But as espousers of this legend would explain, it's because the Ourang Medan is part of a transnational government cover-up involving the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, China, the United States, and possibly many others.

They believe that the ship was deliberately expunged from all maritime records because it was being used to smuggle a secret cargo of lethal nerve gas to Japan.

Saying the Ourang Medan's voyage is linked to Army Unit 731 founded by Japanese bacteriologist Shirō Ishii, whose main objective was to bring back a weapon of the chemical, gas, or biological variety, that could win the war in their favor.

But as the Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the use of all chemical and biological weapons in war, the only way a large shipment of poisonous gas could make it across the other side of the world without raising any suspicion from authorities is by loading it as inconspicuous cargo, in an old, beat up Dutch freighter.  

This theory also provides a convenient and somewhat plausible explanation for the grisly death of the Ourang Medan's crew. With that much hazardous chemicals on board, a gas leak would've certainly led to the immediate death of everyone in the ship.

However, it wouldn't explain why the rescue crew from Silver Star wasn't affected by the poisonous gas when they boarded the ship.

Or why, like the Ourang Medan, there’s no mention of the Silver Star in Lloyd's register.

Theory #2: It was carbon monoxide poisoning.

American author and inventor of the term Bermuda Triangle, Vincent Gaddis, speculates that it was carbon monoxide poisoning is the answer to the mysterious deaths of the Ourang Medan crew.

According to his theory, burning fuel from a malfunctioning boiler system produced carbon monoxide fumes that poisoned the crew.

When breathed in carbon monoxide enters the bloodstream and prevents red blood cells from carrying oxygen around the body. At high levels, carbon monoxide can cause dizziness, vomiting, seizures, loss of consciousness, and even death. 

The trouble with this theory is that Ourang Medan is not an enclosed space. Fumes could've simply escaped into the atmosphere, and lives of the crew working the upper decks of the ship would've been spared.

Theory #3: It was pirates.

What's a story about a ghost ship without pirates, right?

There are theories claiming that pirates invaded the Ourang Medan and killed everyone on board, which although doesn't explain some accounts saying that there were no visible wounds on the victims' bodies, it does fit with the Strait of Malacca's long history with piracy as far back as the 14th century.

Because of its geography - narrow and dotted with many islets - it makes it ideal for a surprise attack towards ships using it as the trade route to China and Europe.

Theory #4: Ghosts

One of the most repeated, but arguably, also the most inconsequential detail in the story of the Ourang Medan is the extreme chill the rescue team felt as soon as they entered the hull of the ship, despite it being 110°F outside.

Inexplicable drop in temperature plus the frightened expressions on the crew's faces set in a vast, unforgiving sea, equals ghosts did it.

There aren't many supporters of this theory, but what's a ghost ship story without a ghosts-did-it theory?

Theory #5: Aliens

You might think that the alien theory is the most far-fetched, the most uncreative, the most cop out theory explaining the phenomena of the Ourang Medan, but it's a very popular theory, with entire books dedicated to it.

The story of the Ourang Medan has all the elements of a good mystery - inexplicable deaths, unknown assailants, world powers, war, pirates, ghosts, and multiple highly-plausible conspiracy theories. 

Which is probably why it still fascinates us to this day, even if it's already been dismissed by historians, researchers, and the casual internet fact-checker alike as a hoax.

But if it's good enough for the CIA to release a document in 1959 saying, that the Ourang Medan holds the key to many of the sea's mysteries, including that of sightings of huge fiery spheres that come from the sky and descend into the sea, then, it's certainly a hoax worth retelling.

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Sources:
1. Death Ship: The Ourang Medan Mystery, http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2011/11/death-ship-the-ourang-medan-mystery/
2. The Myth of the Ourang Medan Ghost Ship, 1940, http://skittishlibrary.co.uk/the-myth-of-the-ourang-medan-ghost-ship-1940/
3. S.S. Ourang Medan, http://www.crime-mystery.info/great-mysteries/ss_ourang_medan/the_hoax
4.S.S. Ourang Medan, https://www.historicmysteries.com/ourang-medan/
5. CARGO OF DEATH, https://web.archive.org/web/20070205223141/http://www.neswa.org.au/Library/Articles/A%20cargo%20of%20death.htm
6. LETTER TO<Sanitized> FROM C.H. MARCK, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01731R000300010043-5.pdf
7. Did the Ourang Medan “ghost ship” exist?, https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/20263/did-the-ourang-medan-ghost-ship-exist
8. The SS Ourang Medan: Death Ship (Updated), https://shortoncontent.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/the-ss-ourang-medan-death-ship-updated/
9. Mysterious Death at Sea: the Disturbing Discovery at the S.S. Ourang Medan, http://weekinweird.com/2011/07/17/mysterious-death-sea-disturbing-discovery-s-s-ourang-medan/
10. The Mammoth Book of Unexplained Phenomena: From bizarre biology to inexplicable astronomy, https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=YHCeBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT263&dq=Vincent%20Gaddis%20ourang%20medan&pg=PT263#v=onepage&q=Vincent%20Gaddis%20ourang%20medan&f=false
11. Vincent Gaddis, http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Vincent_Gaddis
12. Crime on the high seas: The World's Most Dangerous Waters, http://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/15/worlds-most-pirated-waters.html
13. The World's Most Dangerous Waters, http://time.com/piracy-southeast-asia-malacca-strait/

Voynich Manuscript: The Ancient Book Nobody Can Read

The Voynich Manuscript has been dubbed as the “the most mysterious manuscript in the world.” It is considered a manuscript codex, the nature, language, date and origin of which have long remained a mystery. Over the years, the Voynich manuscript has caused a lot of controversy and debate, with some arguing that the ancient medieval text contains an encoded message written by an unknown author. Many skilled cryptographers have studied the document and attempted to break the supposed code it contains. However, up to now, none of them were able to crack it.

Because of the enigma surrounding the Voynich manuscript, many questions are left in the air. Does the Voynich manuscript really contain a secret message? If so, is this encoded message an unknown language that we are unable to break? Or, is the book a complete hoax?

What is the Voynich Manuscript?

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex that is hand-written in an unknown writing system. The text is believed to have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance, and it is named after Wilfrid Voynich, the Polish book dealer who purchased the manuscript in the early 20th century. The Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, which include the American and British codebreakers from the two World Wars. And since no one has succeeded in the deciphering its contents, it remains a famous and exciting case in the history of cryptography. At present, the manuscript is safeguarded in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and is referred to as a “Cipher Manuscript.”

History of the Voynich Manuscript

Much of the early history of the book is unknown, and like its contents, the history of ownership of the Voynich manuscript is contested and filled with some gaps. However, it has generally been agreed on that the text and illustrations of the manuscript are all characteristically European. According to a radiocarbon dating performed by researchers of the University of Arizona on the manuscript’s vellum in 2009, the Voynich manuscript could be dated between 1404 and 1438.

The first confirmed owner of the text was George Baresch, an obscure alchemist from Prague who lived between the 16th and 17th century. Upon his death, the manuscript was passed on to his friend Jan Marek Marci – a rector of Charles University in Prague – who in turn, sent the text to Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher from the Collegio Romano. There are no records of the book for the next 200 years after it remained in the library of the Collegio Romano. It is assumed by some that the book probably remained there until the troops of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy captured the city in 1870 and annexed the Papal States. The new Italian government seized many properties of the church, including the library of the Collegio. Before this could be initiated, many of the university library’s books were transferred to the personal libraries of its faculty, and one of them was the Voynich manuscript which was in the private library of Petrus Beckx, the university’s rector at the time.

Around 1912, the Collegio Romano sold some of its holdings discreetly, with Wilfrid Voynich acquiring 30 manuscripts in the process. Among them was the mysterious manuscript which now bears his name. In 1930, the manuscript was inherited after Wilfrid’s death by his widow Ethel Voynich. When she died in 1960, she left the manuscript to her close friend Anne Nill, who sold the book in 1961 to antique book dealer Hans P. Kraus. When Kraus was unable to find a buyer for the manuscript, he then donated it to Yale University in 1969.

Description of the Voynich Manuscript

The physical characteristics or the codicology of the Voynich manuscript have been studied by various researchers. Some of its pages are missing, but there are currently around 240 vellum pages in existence, with a size of 23.5 by16.2 by 5 centimeters. The manuscript contains mainly texts, consisting of over 170,000 characters that is mostly written in an unknown language which runs left to right. The book also contains various illustrations which can be identified according to different styles and subject matter.

Based on the subject matter of the drawings found in the text, the contents of the manuscripts fall into six sections: botanical, astronomical, biological, cosmological, pharmaceutical and recipes. The botanical folios contain drawings of 113 unidentified plant species. The astronomical illustrations include astral charts with radiating circles, suns and moons, as well as Zodiac symbols. A biological section contains a myriad of drawings of miniature female nudes, while the cosmological section consists of an elaborate array of cosmological medallions which possibly depict geographical forms. The pharmaceutical folios are filled with drawings of over 100 different species of medicinal herbs and roots, while the last section contains continuous pages of text – which are believed to be recipes – with star-like flowers marking each entry in the left margin.

Purpose of the Voynich Manuscript

The overall impression given by the surviving leaves of the manuscript led some to believe that the Voynich manuscript is meant to serve as a pharmacopoeia or a book containing directions for the identification of compound medicines, or to address topics in medieval or early modern medicine. However, the unusual and intriguing details of the drawings have fueled many theories about the book’s origin, its contents, as well as the purpose for which it was intended.

Theories About the Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich manuscript is the subject of many hypotheses, particularly about its language, the Voynichese. According to the “letter-based cipher” theory, the manuscript contains meaningful text that was written in some European language that was intentionally rendered obscure. This was done by mapping the message to the alphabet of the manuscript by means of a cipher whose algorithm operated on individual letters. The main argument of this theory maintains that it is difficult to explain a European author using a strange and mysterious alphabet if not to conceal information. For most 20th-century experts who attempted to decipher the text, like the informal team of NSA cartographers led by William F. Friedman in the early 1950s, this particular theory is heavily supported as a working hypothesis that could unlock the alleged secrets of the manuscript.

There is also another theory – the “codebook cipher” theory – claiming that the “words” found in the Voynich manuscript could actually be codes that can be looked up in a “dictionary” or codebook. Another theory holds that the text of the manuscript is mostly meaningless, but contains meaningful information hidden in inconspicuous details – for example, the second letter of each word, or the number of letters in each line. Needless to say, none of these working hypotheses have successfully decoded the message concealed in the words and illustrations of the manuscript, if there were such hidden information in the first place.

Is the Book a Hoax?

Because of the bizarre features of the texts of the Voynich manuscript, as well as the suspicious contents of its illustrations, there are also theories that support the idea that the manuscript is nothing more than a hoax. According to the supporters of this theory, if no one is able to extract the meaning of the book’s contents, then perhaps it is because the document contains no meaningful content at all.

Those who argue for authenticity, however, maintain that the manuscript appears to be too sophisticated to be just a hoax. While hoaxes during that period were usually crude, the Voynich manuscript exhibits several subtle characteristics that only become evident after careful statistical analysis. If the book is simply a hoax, why would the author employ a complex and difficult algorithm if no one in the expected audience could be able to tell the difference?

Marcelo Montemurro, a theoretical physicist from the University of Manchester, for example, studied the linguistic patterns in the Voynich manuscript extensively. He found the presence of semantic networks like content-bearing words occurring in a clustered pattern, as well as new words being utilized when there was a shift in topic. With this evidence, Montemurro believed that it is highly unlikely that these features were just “incorporated” into the text to make a hoax seem more realistic.

At the way things are going at present, the Voynich manuscript is still a long way from being understood, and it will most likely remain a riddle for a very long time, if not permanently. What we can be sure of is that the manuscript will continue to become a subject matter that sparks intense debates among scientists, pseudoscientists and mystics. And even without wild speculations, the Voynich manuscript is, without a doubt, a fascinating artifact of mankind’s history and culture. 

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Sources:

http://www.messagetoeagle.com/the-ancient-book-nobody-is-able-to-read-voynich-manuscript/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_voynich_manuscript_the_book_nobody_can_read
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unsolvable-mysteries-of-the-voynich-manuscript
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/voynich-manuscript
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/12/01/the-pleasures-of-incomprehensibility/
http://www.crystalinks.com/voynich.html

The Secret of Real Life Magic Mirrors of The Far East

There are those among us that seek to find proof that our ancient ancestors possessed advanced knowledge and technology that equal – if not surpass – the things we know and are able to do in modern times. And among the strangest objects in the world that seem to serve as evidence of advanced ancient knowledge are the so-called “magic mirrors” of the Far East.

What Are Ancient Magic Mirrors?

The Chinese and Japanese of ancient times were owners and makers of precious and rare mirrors that are made of solid bronze but at the same time can seemingly and magically let light shine through them. To the Chinese, they referred to these previous artifacts as “mirrors which are permeable to light.” In the Western world, however, they came to simply be known as “magic mirrors.” And since their introduction in the West, these rare “magical” mirrors have baffled scientists for many years.

The front of a magic mirror was made of cast bronze and is generally circular in shape, with size of about 15 to 20 centimeters in diameter. The polished surface of the bronze, or the mirror’s front side, functioned normally as a mirror since it can produce a faithful reflection of the objects in front of them.  

The back of the mirror, on the other hand, was decorated with various characters and patterns. On the reverse surface, there is usually a modeled drawing or carvings that can be landscape featuring trees, water, birds or animals, or they can contain inscriptions and perhaps even a figure of Buddha.

In many conditions of lighting, when a magic mirror is held in the hand, it appears to be perfectly normal mirrors. However, the “magic” happens when the mirror is held in bright sunshine. When an especially bright beam of light is reflected off a magic mirror and onto a clear surface, its reflecting surface can be seen through. Hence, it becomes possible to inspect the written character or patterns on the back of the mirror from the reflection cast on to a dark wall. It is as if the solid bronze had become transparent, making this luminous effect one of the most unexpected and the most captivating mankind has ever seen.

Origins of Ancient Magic Mirrors

There are many historical variations with regard to the origin of these Far Eastern magic mirrors. However, it is generally agreed on that these ancient artifacts appeared for the first time in China around the 2nd century BC and that they were produced in large quantities during the entire period of the Han dynasty (206 BC – 24 AD).  

Discovery of the Ancient Magic Mirrors by the West

The first magical mirror appeared in Europe when the Director of the Paris Observatory brought with him one in the 19th century upon his return from China. It presented an irresistible mystery to the French Academy of Sciences, and despite their efforts to register its behavior, they could never fully understand why it could do what it can do. In total, there are four magical mirrors that were reported to have been brought from China to Europe at the time.

Then in 1878, two engineering professors presented the Royal Society of London with a variety of magic mirrors they had brought from Japan. The English referred to them as “diaphanous mirrors” and for the first time, they managed to make technical observations about their construction. However, nobody at the time could determine what produced the ghostly and beautiful projection of light from the mirror, giving the impression that the solid mirror is transparent in some way when it should not be the case.

For many centuries, the supposed mystery behind these ancient mirrors left scientists and collectors perplexed, and labeled the abilities of these mirrors as “impossible optical illusions” and therefore, “magical.”

The Secret Behind the Ancient Magic Mirrors

Western scientists began their examination of the magic mirrors from the Far East in 1832, but their efforts did not produce their desired results right away. Even in the East, it seemed the knowledge of how to intentionally recreate these magic mirrors were elusive, even though its possibility was not completely out of reach.

About 1,200 years ago, the secret to constructing magic mirrors was recorded in an ancient Chinese text titled the “Record of Ancient Mirrors.” The book supposedly contains the secrets of these enigmatic objects and their constructions. It described the method of crafting solid bronze mirrors with decorations, written characters or patterns on the reverse side in such a way that they could cast a reflection of these images or inscriptions on a nearby surface when light hits the front and polished side of the mirror in a seeming transparent effect. Unfortunately, the book has been lost for over a thousand years.

Magic mirrors were also described in the “Dream Pool Essays” by Shen Kuo in the 11th century, who owned three of these mirrors as a family heirloom. Astonished as how solid metal could be transparent, Shen guessed that some sort of quenching technique was used to produce tiny wrinkles on the surface of the mirror that are too small to be observed by the naked eye.

It was in 1932 when it was finally discovered why the reflections of the magic mirror showed the designs on the back. According to British physicist, chemist and mathematician Sir William Henry Bragg, although the surface of the mirror is polished and seems to look like they’re completely flat, the front is actually curved into a convex form by scraping and scratching before the surface is polished. It is then coated with a mercury amalgam. This complex process creates stresses and buckling, resulting in bulges on the surface of the mirror which is too minute for the naked eye to perceive. These bulges are the ones that match the design carved on the back of the mirror.

And so, when the mirror reflected bright light or sunbeam against a dark wall, the effect reproduces the patterns in a magnified manner as if they were passing through solid bronze by way of these light beams.

It is important to note, however, that while this method explains the creation of a Chinese or Han magic mirror, it is not the same method that is applied in making a Japanese magic mirror, as the optical properties of the images produced by the two types of mirror were not made by the same process. Moreover, unlike the rare Chinese models, there are many Japanese magic mirrors around the world, probably because in ancient Japan, mirrors were considered precious items that were carefully taken care of.

Today, it is rumored that Yamamoto Akihisa is the last manufacturer of magic mirrors in Japan. When the Kyoto Journal interviewed him, the artisan explained part of his technique in making these mirrors, which he revealed that he had learned from his father, who also learned it from his father, and so on, over several generations.

Even now, our generation is just starting to learn about these magic mirrors, and there are a lot of things that we do not know about these ancient artifacts. Perhaps we may never really know the true meaning behind these “magical” mirrors because ancient records describing these mysterious objects are gone forever. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that these ancient magic mirrors in China and Japan are already a part of the magical history of mankind for being undoubtedly one of the strangest objects in the world.

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Sources:

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1352868-ancient-wonders-real-life-magic-mirrors-of-the-far-east/
http://www.ancientpages.com/2011/04/21/mystery-of-ancient-magical-mirrors-some-of-the-strangest-objects-in-the-world/
http://www.faena.com/aleph/articles/the-history-of-the-magic-mirrors-of-china-and-japan/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_magic_mirror
http://www.eastm.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/497/428
http://www.kyotojournal.org/renewal/the-magic-mirror-maker/