The highly disturbing case of the SS Ourang Medan challenges our beliefs about what's certain.

June 1947, the Strait of Malacca. A freighter called the Ourang Medan is said to have sent a Morse distress call: "SOS from Ourang Medan. We float. All officers, including the captain, dead in chartroom and on bridge. Probably whole crew dead." Then two words: "I die." The story says the Silver Star, 6,507 tons, found her drifting about fifty miles from her reported position, and that smoke rose from number four hold before she went down. Every detail comes from a printed page. Not one comes from a ship. This episode goes looking for the ship where every ship is written down: Lloyd's Register of Shipping, the Dictionary of Disasters at Sea (1824–1962), the Admiralty, the Registrar of Shipping and Seamen, the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, the Dutch shipping records in Amsterdam, and the Maritime Authority in Singapore. The real Silver Star, built in 1942 as the Santa Cecilia, and the roughly one year that name existed. British maritime writer Roy Bainton's search, and a letter from Essen, from a professor who had chased the same ship for forty-five years. The earliest Dutch printing anyone has found: De Locomotief, Semarang, February 3, 1948, three installments, two photographs, and a note of its own. How the story travelled: Albany in 1948, the U.S. Coast Guard's Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council in 1952, a 32-page German booklet in 1954, a letter to the CIA in 1959. A page of the Yorkshire Evening Post dated November 21, 1940. Then three theories: a toxic cargo, carbon monoxide, and no ship at all. Every ending is open. CASE FILE Nº 008 — Bermuda Triangle Myth: what happened to Flight 19?:    • Bermuda Triangle Myth: what happened to Fl...   If stories like this keep you up at night, subscribe — every week, Darkumentary opens another case file that history never closed. #OurangMedan #GhostShip #UnsolvedMysteries #Documentary #Darkumentary ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE All archival footage is in the public domain and is used as period illustration only. None of it shows the Ourang Medan or the Silver Star. Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision (Beeld en Geluid), via Open Beelden - Public Domain Mark 1.0 "Radio Holland" (1926), Haghefilm / Willy Mullens - openbeelden.nl/media/1450786 Governor-General De Graeff arrives at Belawan (1929), Haghefilm / Willy Mullens - openbeelden.nl/media/1448974 "Nieuwe Hengelosche Courant" (c. 1934), Haghefilm / Willy Mullens - openbeelden.nl/media/1449038 Polygoon Hollands Nieuws, 1947 week 27 ("Nieuws uit Oost en West"), Polygoon Hollands Nieuws (producer) / Beeld en Geluid (custodian) - openbeelden.nl/media/1185736 U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) - public domain, U.S. Government works U.S. Navy, Naval Photographic Center film 428-NPC-10707 (1945) - NAID 2133267, copy via Internet Archive (NPC-10707c) U.S. Navy, Naval Photographic Center film 428-NPC-1322 (1943) - NAID 75946, copy via Internet Archive (NPC-1322) U.S. Navy, "Armed Guard on Merchant Marine Ship" 428-NPC-16151 (1945) - NAID 80318, copy via Internet Archive (NPC-16151) U.S. Army Signal Corps, "Occupation of Singapore, Malay Peninsula" 111-ADC-5261 (1945) - NAID 19060 U.S. Army Signal Corps, "Trieste, Free Territory of Trieste" 111-ADC-7984 (1950) - NAID 21755 Office of War Information, United News newsreel "Last Liberty Ship Launched" 208-UN-111 (1944) - NAID 39018 Ford Motor Company Collection, "Ford Motor Company of Malaya, Singapore" FC-FC-4254 (1949) - NAID 93383 (rights conveyed to the U.S. Government, 1962) Ford Motor Company Collection, "Trip on Benson Ford Freighter" FC-FC-4027 (1927) - NAID 93132 (rights conveyed to the U.S. Government, 1962) Prelinger Archives, via Internet Archive - Public Domain "Boats" (1938) - archive.org/details/Boats1938 Archival footage has been cropped, re-timed and color-graded for this video.