The Legends Behind 6 Haunted Shipwrecks

Among the vessels claimed by Davy Jones’s locker, some have particularly fascinating—and chilling—tales of demise. Here are six of the spookiest shipwreck stories.

RMS Titanic 

Perhaps the world’s most famous shipwreck, the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912 after striking an iceberg barely four days into its maiden voyage. Approximately 2200 people were on board the luxury passenger liner, and about 1500 perished. The ship’s final resting place is roughly 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland and 2.5 miles below sea level. 

The captain, Edward Smith, hoped in vain for a timely rescue, and there are several apocryphal accounts about precisely how he spent his final hours. Some suggest that he tried to end his own life with a pistol, while others claim he was swept off his sinking ship by a wave and swam back to it. His body was never recovered, but according to one legend, his wife Sarah Eleanor Smith saw the ghost of the captain before the news of the ship’s demise had even reached her. Paranormal speculation surrounds the wreck site itself, too, with some passing ships reporting orbs of light near where the Titanic went down. Even visitors to Titanic artifact exhibits, like the Titanic museums in Las Vegas and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, say they have experienced ghostly encounters with members of the crew.

RMS Rhone 

The RMS Rhone was a UK Royal Mail ship that had been recently transferred to a Caribbean route when it met its demise near the British Virgin Islands. The steamship was state-of-the-art in its time, but the sea is unpredictable—and on a stormy October morning in 1867, the decision by the captain to brave the elements proved disastrous. The battered vessel split into two parts and sank fast, and 123 people died. Only 25 on the ship survived. 

The wreck of the Rhone is a popular diving spot, where divers can experience both halves of the ship, which lie around 100 feet apart. But beware: Some visitors have chilling stories from their descent to its depths. Divers have claimed that they have heard groans, screams, and other noises coming from the hull. 

The Mary Celeste

In December 1872, a ship called the Dei Gratia, sailing east of the Azores, recognized and intercepted the brigantine Mary Celeste. It appeared to be abandoned and drifting without a trace of the people—including the captain, his wife and daughter, and small crew—who were supposed to be aboard. The Dei Gratia’s sailors boarded the Mary Celeste and discovered it was still seaworthy, though it was missing its lifeboat. The crew’s belongings and six months’ worth of food and water were still onboard. Despite formal inquiries, the reasons behind its desertion, and the whereabouts of the captain and crew, remain unknown. 

Some theories suggest that the Mary Celeste was taking on water and the captain may have ordered everyone into the lifeboat, which was then lost with all hands, or some kind of treachery may have been involved. Thanks to a lack of concrete answers about its fate, the Mary Celeste remains one of the most hauntingly unsettling shipwrecks ever found.

SS Ourang Medan 

Though historians are still debating whether this ship truly sailed the seas, the tale is a chilling one. According to newspaper stories, at some time in the 1940s, nearby vessels received some incoherent Morse Code messages from the SS Ourang Medan’s radio operator when the ship was supposedly traveling from either China or Indonesia towards Costa Rica. Then, the final message from the radio operator announced his own death. The legend goes that a crew from an American ship in the vicinity attended to the SS Ourang Medan and found corpses bearing fearful expressions and baring their teeth. The strangest part? Their bodies didn’t appear to have come to physical harm. With different versions of the story circulating—and doubts about whether the ship existed at all—it’s hard to be sure whether the tale is fully fact or fiction.

The Flying Dutchman 

Film fans know this famous ghost ship, supposedly doomed to sail the seas forever, thanks to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. According to 17th-century folklore, captain Henrick van der Decken and his crew were returning home from the Spice Islands aboard the Dutch East India Company vessel when they passed the Cape of Good Hope on the southern coast of South Africa. Unfortunately for the crew, a storm was brewing, and the captain made a deal with the devil to preserve the ship. Various reports of sightings of a ghost ship in stormy weather have emerged over the years. Even Britain’s King George V is reported to have had an encounter with the Flying Dutchman: A log entry states that 13 people saw the vessel when aboard the HMS Inconstant off the coast of Australia in July 1881. There could be a scientific explanation for the ghostly emergence, though: The witnesses could have seen a fata morgana, is a type of mirage caused by atmospheric refraction that makes objects appear to be floating above the sea. 

Le Griffon

Inland seas also have some eerie shipwreck stories. This ghost ship has reportedly haunted the north shore of Lake Michigan since disappearing in 1679. The ship was owned by a fur trader named René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and was en route to Niagara Falls with a valuable cargo of goods at the time of its disappearance. So what exactly happened to the ship, and why didn’t it reach its intended destination?

As is typical with these spooky shipwreck tales, the details are inconclusive. Theories include mutiny and sinking due to a storm. While salty ocean waters can be unkind to the remains of some shipwrecks, the cold, fresh waters of Lake Michigan tend to slow decay and have given hope to shipwreck hunters that the Griffon may be mostly intact. And in recent years, some shipwreck-obsessed investigators claimed to have located a shipwreck that seems to be a good match for the Griffon.

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