Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome to short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
Speaker 1: Chuck and Josh gear up on short Stuff.
Speaker 2: That's right, this is another fun tale of a ghost ship.
Speaker 2: Ghost Ships are just a lot of fun to talk about,
Speaker 2: and this is the tale of a ghost ship that
Speaker 2: may or may not even exist.
Speaker 1: It's a big one.
Speaker 2: But one thing for sure. One thing is for sure
Speaker 2: is that this story has influenced a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of pop culture.
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, the very least it showed up
Speaker 1: as a video game in twenty nineteen, a horror game.
Speaker 1: I was watching a four hour YouTube video where this
Speaker 1: YouTuber just basically narrated I guess added commentary here there
Speaker 1: to this four hour gameplay.
Speaker 2: Really, you didn't just watch the trailer of the game,
Speaker 2: you watched actual I did four hours. I did.
Speaker 1: I just I mean I didn't watch the whole four hours. No,
Speaker 1: I skipped ahead and it was cute.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, it was.
Speaker 1: Kind of fun. But yeah, I know, I probably watched
Speaker 1: five minutes total of the whole thing to skipping around.
Speaker 1: But it looks very scary. It looks like a really
Speaker 1: cool game. If I played games, I would definitely go
Speaker 1: get it. It's called the Man of Madan. And the
Speaker 1: reason it's called the Man of Medan is because that's
Speaker 1: the English translation from the Indonesian for the name of
Speaker 1: the ship, Wrang Madan. Whrang in Indonesian means man, which
Speaker 1: is why Orangutans are called that they're forest men. I
Speaker 1: think we've said before. So the name of the ship
Speaker 1: in English was Man of Madan, which is a city
Speaker 1: on Sumatra.
Speaker 2: That's right. And it looks like a very scary game
Speaker 2: about people that get upon this scot ship and have
Speaker 2: to contend with ghosts. So what happened with the SS
Speaker 2: Orang Madan was that, Well, here's the story. It depends
Speaker 2: on there's some there's some hinking. It goes on with
Speaker 2: the dates, and we'll explain why in a minute. But
Speaker 2: either nineteen forty seven or nineteen forty eight, or maybe
Speaker 2: even nineteen forty is we'll see. There was a Dutch
Speaker 2: freightership named the Orangmudan that's in an SOS picked up
Speaker 2: by some nearby ships, including the Silver Star, an American
Speaker 2: ship in the Straits of Malacca. Where all that said
Speaker 2: was this we float all officers, including captain dead, lying
Speaker 2: in chart room and on bridge, probably whole crew dead.
Speaker 2: I die.
Speaker 1: That is a creepy message. The only way it could
Speaker 1: be creeper is if it said we all float down here.
Speaker 2: Or I'm right behind you.
Speaker 1: You're right. So this was like the SOS the distress
Speaker 1: call in that silver Star, like you said, was close
Speaker 1: enough that it arrived to help the Orang Madan. And
Speaker 1: when it arrived it was you could basically just telp
Speaker 1: looking at it that it was a ghost ship and chuck,
Speaker 1: before we go into detail, I say that we take
Speaker 1: a break. What do you think?
Speaker 2: Oh, an early break? Okay, okay, let's do it. Suspenseful
Speaker 2: early break, all right. So, like you said, when they
Speaker 2: floated up to this thing, they could tell that something
Speaker 2: was awry. There was clearly no activity on the boat.
Speaker 2: There was no steam coming from the engines, no smoke.
Speaker 2: They said, does someone want to go check and see
Speaker 2: what's going on in that thing? And everyone said, not me,
Speaker 2: not it, not it. And there was one guy that
Speaker 2: was eating some sea rations looked up and what so
Speaker 2: he went aboard and what he found supposedly were people
Speaker 2: on deck frozen in place, with their fearful looks on
Speaker 2: their faces, their eyes wide open, their mouths stretched in
Speaker 2: like they were screaming. Even a dog in mid snarl
Speaker 2: all frozen. Immediately, I thought of another pop culture thing
Speaker 2: this reference. Did you see the seasons this year's True
Speaker 2: Detective Night Country? I think so? Right.
Speaker 1: I tried to, and I couldn't make it past the
Speaker 1: first episode.
Speaker 2: Oh god, it was so good, dude, I know.
Speaker 1: You said that, and I just I didn't see it.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe you should watched more than the first episode.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what I'm saying. I didn't see it coming.
Speaker 1: I didn't see the contours of it being great. I
Speaker 1: actually was like, oh, I can't watch this.
Speaker 2: In your mind's eye. He didn't see how it could
Speaker 2: have been good? Possibly after that?
Speaker 1: No, and believe me, I know stuff. I can figure
Speaker 1: stuff out.
Speaker 2: Well it was did you see enough to see the
Speaker 2: influence here for Night Country?
Speaker 1: When they Yeah, I think it was an episode one
Speaker 1: where they show up and yeah, it's it's a similar thing.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, it was part of the thing, part orang Medan,
Speaker 2: I think for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well put oh you want me to take over it?
Speaker 1: So I also saw I also saw that the people,
Speaker 1: all of the corpses were described as having their arms
Speaker 1: outstretched as if they were trying to fend off some
Speaker 1: unseen something, But there was no trace of anything on
Speaker 1: the ship that would have suggested what had happened to
Speaker 1: this crew and the dog. And they hooked up I
Speaker 1: guess the toe line from the Silver Star to the
Speaker 1: Irang Madan and they started to tow it. But before
Speaker 1: it could get anywhere, the thing caught fire and actually
Speaker 1: blew up, and so any traits of the Orangmudan and
Speaker 1: its mystery sank to the bottom of the Straits of
Speaker 1: Malacca and became enshrined in sea shanties from that moment on.
Speaker 2: That's right, But was this even a real ship at all? No,
Speaker 2: we're not going to take it. They can find out.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about it right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess we should have done it like that. Shack.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's fine. It seems like this probably was completely fabricated.
Speaker 2: There's never been a shipping record of that vessel. No
Speaker 2: like living human ever came forward and said, hey this
Speaker 2: like I was that person eating the sea rations that
Speaker 2: got shoved aboard this thing. There were also depending on
Speaker 2: when the article came out, there were varying details that
Speaker 2: were different, which is always sort of a giveaway that
Speaker 2: it could be fabricated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean the fact that there's like different dates,
Speaker 1: different locations, that kind of stuff. It's at the very
Speaker 1: least the thing's been embellished as we understand it today.
Speaker 1: And there was a researcher named Distelle Hargraves who found
Speaker 1: the first mention of this story all the way back
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty, a good seven or eight years before
Speaker 1: the story supposedly took place. This was during World War Two,
Speaker 1: and it was a British merchant ship, not an American
Speaker 1: ship that came to help out. But the thing that
Speaker 1: does you know, bear a resemblance to the following stories,
Speaker 1: was that there was the ship exploded and there was
Speaker 1: no trace of any thing or any evidence that could
Speaker 1: have explained what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one was kind of fun because I was
Speaker 2: on read it looking at some like theories and stuff
Speaker 2: just for fun, and someone said, hey, I think I've
Speaker 2: figured this thing out. Like everybody knows this is probably
Speaker 2: a hoax, but I think I've actually got the paper
Speaker 2: trail and figured out who this was. And I was like,
Speaker 2: oh interesting, and I started to read it. It was
Speaker 2: Estelle hard Gravees on Reddit Oh really, Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: that researcher. I was like, oh, okay, well that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So what'd she say, what's the explanation.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the same explanation that we have here, which
Speaker 2: is it's late at the feet of one single person,
Speaker 2: not just like a bunch of people that like kind
Speaker 2: of made up this lore. It was actually at least
Speaker 2: Estelle has put it out that it's a reporter named
Speaker 2: Silvio Shirley sh e Rli and wrote this thing in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty and then wrote about it again in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight as supposedly the first time that it had happened,
Speaker 2: which is and you know, it was the same name,
Speaker 2: so it had to be the same person.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I guess he's the he's the culprit.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, it seems like it.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so there were some other parts to this
Speaker 1: story that Shirley added. There was a nineteen forty eight
Speaker 1: Dutch Indonesian newspaper called Der Locomotif, and this was the
Speaker 1: one where we get the story as we kind of
Speaker 1: recognize it today. But one of the extra things that
Speaker 1: gets left off these days is that there was one
Speaker 1: survivor from the Orangmdan who washed up on the shore
Speaker 1: of one of the Marshall Islands was found by a
Speaker 1: missionary and told the story that the ship was actually
Speaker 1: carrying illicit cargo. That's why no one can ever find
Speaker 1: any record.
Speaker 2: Of the ship.
Speaker 1: It's because they didn't want to be found, and that
Speaker 1: the cargo sulfuric acid or nitrogly ghostern or something either
Speaker 1: like off gassed and killed the crew or blew the
Speaker 1: ship up or both.
Speaker 2: That's right, And this missionary supposedly told this story to
Speaker 2: that writer Sylvia Sharley. It's interesting that this article says
Speaker 2: like no one can be sure that it was Sharley
Speaker 2: who made the nineteen forty report. But I think this
Speaker 2: is old because online like this, Cel Hargraves posted like
Speaker 2: screenshots of the actual nineteen forty articles with his name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but everybody knows she's always headed out for Silvio Sharley.
Speaker 1: So can that be trusted in this day and age
Speaker 1: of deep fakes in AI and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point, but it seems like it
Speaker 2: didn't even exist at all, And it may be was
Speaker 2: this like writer writing about it a couple of times
Speaker 2: and embellishing it even more the second time to see
Speaker 2: if it gets more steam. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, full steam ahead. So do you want to hear
Speaker 1: a little interesting tidbit, a little appendum By the way,
Speaker 1: no one knows if this is true, but it's almost
Speaker 1: certainly not. And if it is, it's it has taken
Speaker 1: on some shapes or you can barely recognize the actuality
Speaker 1: of or pick it out. But we based this off
Speaker 1: of a house stuff Works article on it correct?
Speaker 2: Correct, I went among other things.
Speaker 1: You're right, I went and read an additional article on
Speaker 1: all Things Interesting, including some others. But in the all
Speaker 1: Things Interesting article it referenced the house stuff Works article
Speaker 1: that this was based on. Ergo, the universe will collapse
Speaker 1: on it. So amazing, chucks that amazing. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to press my look, so I'm just gonna end this now.
Speaker 1: Short stuff is out.
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