Alien frequency
© Planet Weird
There's something innately terrifying about the open water. Even now, centuries after man created maps showing monsters at the edge of the world, much of the planet's oceans continue to remain unexplored, holding secrets that can often frighten even the most seasoned sailors.

Such is the case with a story shared this morning by a man with a decade of service in the United States Navy, and the "horrific" encounter with what he believes was an inhuman intelligence that cut his ship's power and took over the high frequency airwaves, spreading communications that "crawled under his skin".

In ten years of service, he says he's never heard anything like it... and never wants to again.

"I've been in the US Navy for almost a decade and I am currently on my third deployment to the western pacific," user drizzt9889 told reddit. "I work on communications equipment and spend a fair amount of time just scanning different frequencies to see what I come across."

"A couple years back we were 30-40 NM off the coast of the Philippines, it was just over the horizon, and the ship lost power. Lights, engines, everything just went silent; I don't want to say this is regular, but it's happened enough throughout my career that it doesn't bother me half as much as it should. So, power is out, emergency lights are on, and the UPS are keeping comms up until the engineers can get the power back up."

Military ship at night open sea
© US Navy
"I am doing my usual, scanning HF freqs for anything coming out of the PI when my receiver starts picking up... the most awful, interesting, horrific sounds I have ever heard in my life. I've heard all types of interference, it wasn't that...I've heard people trying to go over an encrypted circuit without crypto, and it wasn't that. It raised the hair on my neck and arms, and made me feel very, very small. It felt like I was sitting there for hours while these sounds crawled under my skin, like I was traveling through the warp without a Gellar field."

"After about 5 minutes it's suddenly stopped and the power came back on. I will never forget the sounds I heard."

Spooky as hell. When a few readers asked for a better description of the sounds, Dr. Z was quick to respond, but felt uncomfortable just doing so:
Sorry I didn't give a better description of the sounds before...even after all this time it's uncomfortable to think about.. The sounds were primal...not human. Like something very large was expressing itself, but I couldn't comprehend it. I wasn't really afraid of it, I suppose in the same way a single celled organism wouldn't really be afraid of a human. I can't really explain it because I have never heard anything that came close to sounding like it. Maybe someone was transmitting weird sounds to fuck with anyone that might have been listening...and maybe it was made creepier by the timing of losing/gaining power. I'm not sure, and sorry I can't explain it better.
So what you think about the sailor's tale? Did his ship make content with some vast intelligence drifting in the ocean? Or have drizzt9889's creative writing exercises been paying off?