Right now, there has been plenty of focus on exploring the depths of outer space. People love to fantasize about what it would be like to colonize Mars, expanding humanity further into our solar system. However, most fascinated by space don’t realize we have something just as mysterious right here on Earth.
Namely, the ocean. Most of our planet is covered by water, and there are secrets in these inky depths that may cause you to never sleep again. That’s certainly what one young explorer discovered when she went searching for answers in an old submarine and found far more than she bargained for.
Who is this explorer? What did she find, and what was her final, shocking fate? Keep reading to find out!
The search for a sunken submarine
Our story begins with a woman named Kelsey Johnson. She was engaged in the kind of exciting activity that most of us can only dream of. Namely, she was a passenger aboard a ship (The Mariner) on her way to explore one of the ocean’s greatest mysteries.
Decades ago, a submarine named The Patriot had disappeared. It was assumed lost with all hands, but its final fate has never been ascertained. Johnson was on her way to do just that on behalf of the Navy. But she was having trouble sleeping the night before her mission, worried about what she might find at the bottom of the Arctic Sea.
As it turns out, she was right to be worried.
The mystery of the submarine’s fate
Kelsey Johnson wasn’t the only one who was fascinated by the disappearance of The Patriot. It’s one thing when we know what takes down a ship, whether it’s an internal fire or even an attack from an enemy nation. In the case of the missing submarine, it had disappeared years ago, and there were no real answers as to what happened.
While there weren’t answers, there has always been plenty of speculation. Some thought there was simply an accident aboard the ship that ended up sinking the vessel. Others thought that some hidden vortex beneath the ocean’s depths may have sealed everyone’s fate. And the most fringe theories even involved fantastical monsters like Cthulu!
The one mystery no one could have guessed, however, would end up haunting Kelsey Johnson. Literally!
A specific mission…and specific concerns
As far as missions go, Kelsey Johnson’s was pretty straightforward. She and her team had been contracted by the Navy to accomplish a series of related goals. They needed to find the sunken submarine, discover what happened to it, and then report their findings back to the military. Easy, right?
Maybe a little too easy. Johnson had a nagging worry in the back of her mind that went beyond simply leading her team into the unknown. And it all had to do with a mysterious note that she had once dismissed but now had the potential to provide the answers she was looking for.
A mysterious note
Before assembling her team and agreeing to the mission, Kelsey Johnson had conducted a small mountain of research into the fate of The Patriot. Most of what she found was practical in nature…for example, reports about where it was last sighted and eyewitness accounts of those who had last interacted with the crew. Some of this was older research, and among some old files was a note as bizarre as it was mysterious.
That note was allegedly written by one of the sailors and left at his last port of call before the disappearance. She was quick to say “allegedly” in her mind because the note read more like a horror story than a sailor’s log. It described the crew hearing mysterious voices at all times and the radar picking up signals that made no sense. Most fantastically, it described the crew encountering what appeared to be the ghosts of long-dead sailors now haunting this ship.
In all likelihood, the note was just somebody’s exercise in creative writing. Still, Johnson couldn’t shake her suspicion that she might discover the note was true and that she might be leading her own team into a watery fate.
Chasing ghosts into an unknown fate
The rest of Kelsey Johnson’s story moves pretty quickly. Through a combination of Navy-provided technology and her own research, they found The Patriot very quickly. And her team was very cautious, boarding the ship with Hazmat suits to keep themselves safe.
However, the ship yielded no real answers as to what sunk it. Her team found signs of physical fighting and even gunfire, leading many to think that there was a mutiny onboard. She kept her own suspicions secret…namely, that this fight could have been caused by supernatural intruders.
Kelsey John never shared her suspicions or the contents of that note with anyone. She didn’t want anyone to think she had gone crazy at the bottom of the sea, and that meant keeping one more secret from the Navy, from her team, from her family…from everyone. Before leaving the ship, she looked over her shoulder and saw what appeared to be the ghost of an old Navy captain. He gave her a smart salute before his bones collapsed into a dusty pile…apparently, she and her team had given him the peace needed to move on.
Her instructors had always reminded her that the ocean was constantly trying to kill her. Now, she lays awake at night thinking about how many more undead stalk the ocean depths, yearning for some kind of release from their unending torments.