Chapter 150: Dead Men Tell No Tales-The Legend of the S.S. Ourang Medan

0:01 Every story has a beginning, but not everyone has an ending. In the shadows of headlines and buried police reports lay the voices of the missing, the murdered, and the forgotten, waiting to be heard and have their stories told. This is the Book of the Dead, a true crime podcast where we remember forgotten victims of heinous crimes, reopen cold cases, re visit haunting disappearances, and uncover the truths buried beneath the years of silence. I'm your host, Courtney Liso, and every week we turn to another chapter, one victim, one mystery, one step Closer to justice. Brought to you by Darkast Network in Deep Podcasts With the twist.

1:13 It's Tuesday and you're listening to Murder on Script. My name's ed. For the past two decades, I've been producing true crime content for some of your favorite networks like Hulu, Oxygen, and of course, Investigation Discovery. And I'm Melissa as Vesti and Walking Talking True Crime Database. We've combined my behind the scenes insight with Melissa's morbid curiosity to bring you a podcast that immerses you in the true crime genre like never before. We highlight victims, cases and bring you exclusive insight from the people who lived through them, with a touch of humor to lightening the darkest stories. This is Murdered Unscripted Dun Dundon.

2:04 Hello, Hello, Welcome to the next chapter in the Book of the Dead. In the very early days of the Book of the Dead, I did a big Halloween weekend where I put out four episodes leading up to Halloween, including a two parter on the Vampire Cult murders, Ronald Clark O'Brien, the Original Candy Man, and the Legend of the ss Urang Madan. If you've been around for a really long time, you'd know that I'm fascinated by this legendary ship that so few people have heard of. But this episode was actually taken off of my feed some time ago for my own personal reasons. However, I happened to like talking about this ghost ship and felt that it was time to revisit the story that some of my newer listeners may not know. With that being said, let's get into the story of what may be one of the most mysterious ships of all time. This is the legend of the ss uranng Medan. Now, before we dive into the story, some of you may actually be familiar with this ship, even if it's just in the abstract.

3:32 If any of you are into video games. The developer super Massive Games created what they called the Dark Pictures Anthology a few years ago, and they put out games inspired by different things in history, such as the Salem Witch Trials, HH Holmes and the Urrong Medan. In the game called Man of Medan, the ship was left floating in the sea a band after its crew mysteriously died. You come to find out that the deaths were caused by exposure to dangerous chemicals causing extreme hallucinations, resulting in the crew literally being scared to death. While just a game, this version is actually one of the more prominent theories as to what happened to the ship's crew. There is a lot of conflicting information out there, and we're going to get into why. But supposedly the legend goes as follows.

4:38 Sometime in the late nineteen forties, along the Straits of Malacca, which is between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, and SOS broadcast was made. The message was received by nearby ships and they were extremely alarmed by what they heard. The message said quote all officers, including Captain dead lying in chart room and on bridge, probably whole crew dead. This message was immediately followed by a series of morse code that no one could make out because it happened so quickly, and then one final message came through and the officer said, I die now. This broadcast transcript comes from an article on Ripley's Believe It or Not dot com and an article for houseduff Works by Alison Trautner. Obviously, the ships that received this transmission were more than concerned for multiple reasons, and one of the main ones was that the crew members sending out this SOS gave no indication as to what caused the death of the crew. They also didn't send their coordinates or what sort of danger these crew members were in. So the ships sailing out to rest to them, we're going in completely blind. According to what seems to be the original legend, an American ship called

6:09 the Silver Star was the ship that answered the distress call and organized a rescue mission. They figure out the approximate coordinates of the urrang Madan's location, and they immediately set sail into the unknown, completely unaware of what horrors could be awaiting them. Aboard the urrang Madan. Supposedly, they arrive and when they call out to the crew, there's no answer. There's no movement on the ship. So the captain of the Silver Star organizes a crew and they bore the urg Madan to help out. When this rescue crew gets onto the ship, they are met with a terrifying site. Not one single sailor is alive. Everyone is dead, and they are all exactly where the man that made the distress call said they would be, their chart room, the bridge. The officer that made the broadcast was found dead in the radio room, and every single person on this ship is lying with their eyes looking up, with their faces turned to the sun, frozen in fear, their teeth bared in horror. Even the ship's dog is dead, frozen mid snarl. According to a nineteen forty article for The Daily Mirror, an officer said of what they saw, quote, we could find no sign of a wound on any of them. Death seemed to have taken them by surprise

7:42 at their posts. It was terrifying. On the captain's bridge we found the body of the second officer. We counted twelve bodies, three of them zack officers. Again according to the original legend, Allegedly, as the rescue crew was looking around trying to figure out what happened, a fire was discovered in the bowels of the ship, smoke billowing out of the cargo hold. The rescue crew abandons the ship, and as they flee back to the Silver Star, an explosion erupts so forcefully that the Urang Madan was literally lifted out of the water before sinking to the ocean floor.

8:26 That same officer said, quote, we decided to check the captain's quarters, but at that moment we heard an explosion in the ship. We abandoned the ship immediately and rowed back to our own. The explosions were repeated. Soon nothing was left to the Urrang Madan but a blazing hulk. The next day, the fire burned itself out and the steamer went under, taking her secret with her. So what happened, how did the crew die and how did this fire start? Is this even a real story or is it a ghost story crewman made up to pass the time that morphed into this horrifying mystery. Well, according to multiple sources, there is allegedly no mention of a ship called the Urang Madan in any shipping registry, and there is no official record of this incident from the nineteen forties when this supposedly occurred. However, various versions of this story have been printed in newspapers from the nineteen fifties onward. Now, one of the theories as to why there's no mention of this ship in any registry is because it's a ship that was registered as belonging to the island of Sumatra, which is an island of western Indonesia. The reason people believe this as being a possibility is because Urang Madan

9:57 translates to Man from Midan, and Midan is the capital of North Sumatra. According to that article on Ripley's, a German researcher, professor Theodore Syersdwarfer, discovered a German publication from nineteen fifty three called Dos Tautenschiff in der Sudsey or the Death Ship in the South Seas. This was written by a man named Automilka, and it is believed to contain evidence the ship and what happened to it was a real event. Now. Allegedly, this claims that the ship's cargo holt contained potassium cyanide, and nitroglycerine. If it did, this could explain a possible explosion if the containers were compromised or mishandled in some way, and it could explain why the ship's legitimacy is so iffy, because a ship would never have legally been able to transport something like that.

11:03 This was because tensions during World War Two when this incident was supposed to have occurred, was of course incredibly high, and sensitive materials being transported and used inappropriately or maliciously would have of course caused an incredible amount of problems, which again is a possible reason why the ship's records are so hard to find or have never been found at all. And for those that are curious, mixing potassium cyanide and nitric lycern is highly dangerous and could potentially cause temporary incapacitation or residual injury. It can ignite under almost any ambient temperature, and according to CAMEO Chemicals via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, it is readily capable of detonation or explosive decomposition or explosive reaction at normal temperatures and pressure. In fact, the NOAA states that this can explode and throw fragments sixteen hundred meters or more if while on a ship or train, these chemicals react and create a fire in or near the cargo hold. Now, according to that article by Alison Trautner, Michael East, a history and true crime writer, said, quote, nobody came forward

12:35 to say they knew the ship or had served on her. Equally, the inconsistent dates constantly stand out, as does the changing location as evidence for this ship not being real at all. Mentions of the fate of the Urragmudan have been found in publications scattered from nineteen thirty to nineteen forty, and every one of them have details changed. Locations vary from the Solomon Islands to the Marshall Islands, and even the ship that tried to rescue them varies. Researcher Estelle Hargraves found quotes from the nineteen forties in British national newspapers from British marine officers describing a distress call requesting a medic and warship. These newspaper articles also claimed that it was a British ship that attempted a rescue mission, not the Silver Star. According to an article for the Ghosts in Mymachine dot com. Articles found by Estelle Hargraves in the Yorkshire Evening Post, the Daily Mirror and the Hampshire Telegraph claim this accident occurred in November of nineteen forty and they place it occurring in the Solomon Islands in the Melanesian region of the Pacific Ocean. In the Yorkshire Evening Post, their information is supposedly from an officer for from an on name ship that tried to come to the urang Madan's aid. This I actually referenced in the

14:06 quotes from the Daily Mirror as mentioned earlier. Now allegedly according to the book The Urang Madan Conjuring a Ghost Ship, he found an article from a French magazine from September seventh, nineteen forty one that claims this incident occurred in nineteen thirty nine and it places the location as being around Fiji and the ship was supposedly in australianship that had been sold to a smuggler and was smuggling a legal cargo. Now going back to Michael East, he blames the changing details on a reporter named Silvio Scaly. Now Silvio is a name heavily attached to the Urang story. Allegedly, Sylvia wrote and published his own version of the Urang Madan story after he allegedly came across a survivor that washed up on the shores of Tanji Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

15:12 In nineteen forty eight. A Dutch Indonesia newspaper De Lakomotif published this story, where Silvio claimed he was told the ship was traveling to Costa Rica from a Chinese port because of the illegal cargo they were carrying, which was sulfuric acid. This survivor's name was supposedly Cherry Rabbit. According to Cherry, he washed up on the shore of the Marshall Islands ten days after the Urangbdan sank in a lifeboat with six other crew members, but he was the only survivor. Rabbit made it to a missionary and reportedly told them that he joined the Urang Bdan's crew in Shanghai and the crew was loading fifteen thousand creates of mysterious cargo into the bowels of the ship. He claimed that after they set sail to Costa Rica, he realized that this was a smuggling operation, and according to this report, Rabbit said that after men on the crew started growing sick, he investigated what the ship was carrying and found out via a log book that the crates they were transporting contained sulfuric acid, potassium cyanide, and nitroglycerine. After men started dying, Rabbit escaped on the lifeboat and he allegedly died himself soon after telling this story. Of course, this is a

16:43 really tragic story, right. The problem is there's no mention of Jerry Rabbit existing at all outside of this article. Now, this article also claimed that the cargo was mishandled or not stored properly, and the escaping fumes caused the crew's death and caused the explosion. I will say that toxic fumes killing the crew is the most common theory, with minor differences. Some claimed the fumes alone killed them, and some claimed the fumes caused horrific hallucinations that literally scared these crew members to death. Another theory points to a pirate attack, which, given the time this would have occurred, could have been a possibility except for the fact that the bodies on board reportedly showed no injuries. According to a different article, by Les Hewett for Historic Mysteries dot Com.

17:44 The incident occurred in either June nineteen forty seven or February nineteen forty eight, which is a huge window, but none of these dates are consistent. According to this article, two ships picked up the dist us called from the urang Madan, the Silver Star, and the SS City of Baltimore. With the help of a Dutch ship and a British listening post, they were able to figure out the coordinates of the urang Madan and the Silver Star set out on the rescue mission. The urang Madan was supposedly found around one hundred and fifty miles from the broadcast coordinates, and according to this article, the rescue crew noticed a few other things besides the deceased crew. One of the lightboats attached to the side of the ship was missing, which obviously means, or at least implies, that some of the crew managed to get off the ship. The temperature of the ship itself was somewhere between one hundred and one hundred and ten degrees, but the rescue crew felt this unnatural chill, seemingly coming from nowhere. The bodies of the crew were unwounded, but they seemed to be decaying faster than they should be, although if the ship was that hot, it would definitely accelerate decomposition, so I don't know how relevant that claim really is. However, there are some serious issues with these dates. For the articles claiming

19:16 the Silver Star was the ship to come to the rescue, It's not possible because the ship that was named the Silver Star was not called that until after this incident supposedly happened. The ship was registered under the name Santa Juana and the name wasn't changed until the Graceline Shipping Company bought the rights to the ship's registry and changed the name. And in fact, the ship was called the Silver Star for only one year before the name changed again. The ship was also completely undamaged, so allegedly they were trying to toe it back to Port to salvage it when they noticed smoke coming from cargo Hold four. Also, according to this article, the first official mention of this incident is from the US Coast Guard in May of nineteen fifty two. Now, another theory has to do with chemical warfare. According to this theory, the Japanese might have smuggled experimental biological weaponry that they created onto the ship for transport for the purpose of testing it at Unit seven thirty one. This theory goes on to say that the Japanese aimed to create the most dangerous weapon in order to achieve Japanese supremacy, and Unit seven thirty one was developed in nineteen thirty two by a Japanese bacteriologist named shiro Ishi, who conducted horrific experiments during World War Two,

20:48 though he was not the only one, and honestly, I could do an entire episode just on this, but I'll give you a rundown of some of the things that were going on there during this time. That lends some weight to the theory of Unit seven thirty one being interwoven with the legend of the Uramidan. So there was an alarming number of horrific experiments being conducted during this time, one of which was frostbit testing. According to Pacific Atrocities dot Org, Yoshimura Hasado had a particular interest in hypothermia and its effects on the human body after long term exposure to freezing temperatures. He would regularly submerge prisoners into buckets of ice water until their limbs were frozen solid.

21:38 And a coat of ice had formed over the skin. He would then monitor the prisoner to see how long it took for signs of frostbite to develop, and after this he would conduct tests to determine the most efficient way to thaw a frozen appendage, including leaving the prisoner entreated overnight, setting them on fire, and dousing them with hot water. Interestingly enough, it was these experiments that scientifically proved that the treatment for frostbite was to immerse the limb or appendage in warm water not exceeding one hundred and twenty two degrees. Vivisection was also performed on prisoners to determine what the effects of various diseases like the plague and cholera had on the body. For those that don't know, vivisection is the practice of performing surgical procedures on a living being, specifically for the purpose of experimentation or scientific research. And again according to Pacific atrocities, prisoners were infected with various diseases and then without anesthesia, they were operated on, having organs removed so that they could be observed without decomposition compromising the results. Such experiments were conducted primarily on Chinese prisoners, including the elderly and children.

23:00 A similar process was used to study the effects of ganggreen on the body, and those afflicted with it had infected limbs amputated and then reattached to the other side. Some head limbs crushed or frozen, and some had circulation cut off from the affected limbs. So scientists and I use that term loosely, could observe what happened after the ones conducting these experiments felt that their subject had sturved their purpose, they were killed, usually via gunshot or lethal injection. The effectiveness of various weapons were also studied on prisoners, and this included the use of swords, knives, and bayonets against their prisoners, as well as the effects of flamethrowers.

23:43 Unexposed and covered skin. Gas chambers were built to observe exposure to blister agents and nerve gas, and they even tested what happened when exposed to radiation for a prolonged period of time. Now, while official documents regarding Units seven thirty one never mention them actually creating chemical or biological weapons, as Unit seven thirty one was created to prepare for the possibility of this kind of warfare, even though it had been banned at the nineteen twenty five Geneva Accord. Many of the records that were kept there were destroyed ahead of the dismantling of this unit. So this has actually fueled the rumors that the urang Madan being allegedly commissioned to transport these hypothetical weapons. Now, the final mention of the ss iurang Madan to get off the subject of human experimentation comes from a letter written by a man named C. H. Mark in December of nineteen fifty nine.

24:43 And this letter was written to Alan Dooles, the assistant director of the CIA. Now, this letter and the response were released to the public in two thousand and three, and I'm going to read it to you, so H. Mark writes in his letter, Dear redacted, on May twenty ninth, nineteen fifty eight, I sent you a letter concerning crews disappearing from ships on the high seas, or ships which have disappeared without trace. Well, I have just read a weird story concerning the Dutch vessel ss Uran Madan. I will be indeed grateful for your opinion of this story. Also, do you think quote something from the unknown is involved?

25:27 In early February nineteen forty eight and SOS came from the ss Uron Madan. Dutch and British listening posts located the vessel as proceeding through Malacca Strait. The sea was calm, the weather clear. SOS. SOS again came the Frenzi'd call after a short silence quote all officers including captain dead, lying in chart room and on bridge, probably whole crew dead. There followed a series of indecipherable dots and dashes, and then came quite clearly I die. Rescue ships from Dutch, Sumatra and British Malaya rushed to the indicated location of the vessel in distress. They found her only fifty miles from the position given. Boats were put over the sides to investigate. When boarding parties reached the urrag Madan, they found an eerie sight. There was a living creature on the ship. The captain laid dead on the bridge, The bodies of the other officers sprawled in the wheelhouse, chart room and ward room. The faithful Sparks was slumped in a chair in the radio shack, his hands still on the sending key. The bodies of the crew lay everywhere in their rooms, in the passageways, on the deck ends.

26:44 On all the dead faces was a look of convulsive horror. As a report of the Proceedings of the Merchant Marine Council put it, Their frozen faces were upturned to the sun, the mouths were gaping open, and the eyes staring. Every One was dead. Even the ship's dog, a small terrier, was lifeless, its teeth bared in anger or agony, But strangely, there was no sign of wounds or injuries on any of the bodies. After a quick conference, the boarding parties decided to put a toe line onto the vessel and take her into port. But at that very moment, smoke and flames belched forth from number four hold. The fire was immediately so hot and so widespread that it was impossible to subdue. The boarding parties hurriedly abandoned the vessel and returned to safety of their own ships. Moments later, there was a terrible explosion on the urang Madan, and then the vessel sank with all her dead crew. I feel sure that the ESSs urang Madan tragedy holds the answer to many of these airplane accidents and unsolved mysteries of the sea. Also, I have often thought about the many sightings of huge fiery spheres right from the sea or disappearing into the sea by ships, captains and crews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are alarming passages in Old English chronicles written in medieval Lain and in Latin or books printed before the year fifteen hundred eighty

28:16 which suggests that these fiery spears caused destruction and that they come from quote within our planet. For instance, in twenty sixteen BC quote things like ships were seen in the sky over Italy. In Sardinia, a knight was making his rounds inspecting the posts guarding the rampart, when a stick in his hand burst into flames. The same thing happened to Roman soldiers in Sicily, who saw their javelin flame and burn in their hands. At RP a round shield was seen in the sky. Also in eighty ten sixty seven people saw a fire that flamed and burned fiercely in the sky. It came near the earth and for a little time brilliantly lit it up. Afterwards, it revolved, descended on high, then descended into the sea. In several places it burned woods and plains yes, the enchanting Sea, what terrifying secret does it hold? I feel sure that the ss Urungmdan tragedy also holds the answer to the secret. Sincerely, Yours, H.

29:21 Mark Junior, And in fact his response was mister C. H. Mark Junior reacted, Scottsdale, Arizona. Dear mister Mark on behalf of mister Doule's may I acknowledge and thank you for your letter of May twenty ninth. Although we aren't able to answer your questions, your letter is very interesting and we appreciate your concern in these matters. Sincerely, reacted assistant to the Director. So, according to the CIA, thank you very much for your question, we are not answering them. So to conclude, there are countless excuses and reasons and theories as to what happened to the Urang Madan, if it really existed, what happened to its crew, and it involves everything from chemical weaponry to chemical exposure, to pirates to aliens. It really is all encompassing. As for the final resting place of the Urang Madan, no one has ever figured out where it sank, if it existed at all, and there have been no recks found along the streets of Malacca, and no unidentified chips matching its description were ever found. No one knows or may ever know, if the Urang Madan truly existed, but if it did, the ocean took its secrets to the very depths where no

30:53 one may ever find it. I thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have a wonderful week, and I hope you enjoyed this little reprieve from true crime. I have a few cases that I'm working on, and I'm working with a victim's family member and doing a lot of research for that and a lot of inquiries and talking to witnesses. So I'm a little busy, and I'm going to be out of town this weekend, so this was something a little less intense for me to talk about. Plus I missed having it on the feed.

31:34 I think it's an interesting story and everyone likes a good ghost ship as always. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I will see you in the next chapter of the Book of the Dead. Bye, guys. Another page closed, But the story isn't over for the families left behind. The pain doesn't end when the headline's fade and for the victims, we owe them more than silence for our on salvet cases. If you have any information, please reach out to local authorities or visit our show notes for links and resources. Someone out there knows something, Maybe it's you. Thank you for listening to the Book of the Dead. If this story moved or spoke to you in some way, talk about it, share it, keep their names alive. Until next time, I'm Courtney Liso. Stay safe, stay curious, and stay vigilant, and remember the dead may be gone, but their stories will not be forgotten.