Legends 84: Dead in the Water

The vast oceans of our planet are more mysterious to us than the surface of Mars. And because of that, they have become the place where dark legends dwell beneath the surface. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Molly Quinlan Artwick, and research by Samuel Alberty. ————————— PRE-ORDER EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed https://www.aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources: Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support https://www.lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music https://www.lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources https://www.lorepodcast.com/sources Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop https://www.lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE http://www.betterhelp.com/lore, and get on your way to being your best self. Taskrabbit: Get ahead of your todo list right now and get $15 off your first task at Taskrabbit.com https://www.taskrabbit.com/, or on the Taskrabbit app, using promo code LORE. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore http://squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [email protected]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode is sponsored by XYZ Films and the acclaimed new documentary Capturing Bigfoot. On October 20th of 1967, Roger Patterson captured 59 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the northern California woods. Footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. Fifty-nine years later, a reel of 16-millimeter film discovered in a safe changes everything. Capturing Bigfoot reveals the untold story behind the world's greatest mystery, told for the first time by Patterson's own son and the people who were there. This is a story about family legacy, broken friendships, and how far people will go to protect a secret.

• 0:42Aaron Mahnke?

  Featuring a brand-new 4K scan of the original film taken from the Patterson family archives that some historians have called "the best rendering of the footage ever seen," as well as never-before-seen footage shot by Roger Patterson that will change the discourse around the Patterson-Ginlin film and the legacy of Bigfoot forever. Now available to rent or own on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more about Capturing Bigfoot at capturingbigfoot.com. This episode is sponsored by Bram Stoker's Dracula from Audible. A new full-cast audio thriller starring Ella Purnell from Fallout as Mina Harker, Jonathan Bailey from Wicked as Dracula, and an A-list cast including Maggie Gyllenhaal from The

• 1:25Aaron Mahnke?

  Dark Knight as Van Helsing, Amy Lou Wood from The White Lotus as Lucy, David Johnson from Industry as Dr. Seward, and many more. Mina and a small, fearless band race against time to stop this ancient terror. Using her intellect, her resolve, and a gift for drawing the unseen lines between clues, Mina just may hold the key to bring down the Count if he hasn't already found his way inside her mind. Featuring a haunting original score by Lilaan Ashkari from Audible's 1984 and spatial Dolby Atmos sound design, Audible's Dracula invites you to welcome literature's most shadowy figure into your home. Feel the terror of being hunted and the thrill of the hunt. Don't miss this year's best new audio thriller.

• 2:10Aaron Mahnke?

  Bram Stoker's Dracula, Audible's new full-cast original adaptation. Written by Robin Ahearn and directed by Mary Lambert. Now on Audible, listen to The Darkness. Go to audible.com/listen to Dracula.

• 2:32Aaron Mahnke?

  As long as humans have been sailing, we've had a challenging relationship with the sea. On the one hand, the currents of the ocean have been the lifeblood of human connection, the highway for trade, for travel, and in some cases, for takeover. On the other, riding the wrong waves can quickly land you in a watery grave. And while we've gotten better at predicting marine disasters, ships still suffer at the hands of storms, icebergs, tsunamis, and rogue waves. The sea is an unstoppable force, after all, and a ship? Not exactly an immovable object. And so it's only natural that, historically, those who sailed the seas were a superstitious lot.

• 3:15Aaron Mahnke?

  To avoid misfortune, there were rules to follow. You must never launch a journey on a Friday. You should avoid carrying passengers that are clergy, redheads, or women. And unless you want a storm to start brewing, you must never whistle on a ship. Some of these rules might sound a little ridiculous to us today. Others are undoubtedly a product of their time, but many sailors treated them as law. As odd as they seem, though, it's only human to want to control things in the face of danger. But when you're at the mercy of the sea, the only thing you can really control is yourself. In seeking to make sense of the sea, people the world over have come up with a shockingly similar hypothesis.

• 3:59Aaron Mahnke?

  Boats didn't just disappear because of weather, or wind, or bad timing. These weren't tragic accidents or terrible mistakes. Instead, something stalked these ships with a deadly purpose. They weren't simply lost at sea. They were hunted. And their hunter? A monster from the deep. I'm Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore Legends.

• 4:32Aaron Mahnke?

  As long as we've been crossing oceans, we've been worried about what lurks underneath the waves. For example, Inuit people along the Bering Sea have long told tales of the Aklut, a ferocious creature the same size and shape as a killer whale. A fisherman being chased by one of these predators might think reaching shore would keep them safe. But sometimes, as they pull their boat up onto the ice, they'll discover that this is no normal orca. The killer whale's limbs would grow long and dark fur would sprout from its skin. And then finally, a wolf would emerge from the surf, and the hunt would be on again. In Japan, people feared the Akugyo, a mermaid-like creature with the head and arms of a woman,

• 5:15Aaron Mahnke?

  the body of a fish, and twin white horns. The Akugyo was an opportunity killer. It laid in wait just under the surface, waiting for a boat to sail too close. Hidden in the water, its back would act like a sandbar, causing the boat to get stuck. And then, with a flick of its tail, the Akugyo would capsize the boat and eat everyone on board. But I'm guessing that there was a particular image that appeared in your mind when I first said the word "sea monster." A giant gelatinous head, long tentacles covered in suckers, and of course, a wicked, sharp beak. I'm speaking, of course, of the kraken. Now, the idea of a giant squid-like creature can be traced all the way back to ancient

• 5:58Aaron Mahnke?

  Greece, where Aristotle wrote of a beast he called Thuthos back in 350 B.C. But the classic version that we picture today, and the word "kraken" itself, both come from medieval Scandinavia. Around the 1200s, Scandinavian sailors returned to shore with fantastical tales. They claim they saw a creature with long, muscular tentacles, strong enough to completely destroy a ship. Around the same time, a Norwegian manuscript called "The King's Mirror" told of an indescribably large fish in the sea near Iceland. The beast was the size of an island, and its mouth was as large as a fjord. It wasn't until the modern ...era that scientists discovered the legends of the kraken may not have been legends at all.

• 6:43Aaron Mahnke?

  They might have been sightings of an incredibly rare, but very real creature: the giant squid. These squids can stretch up to forty-three feet in length and make their homes in the deep ocean, where light and warmth never penetrate. Even now, little is known about them. In fact, the earliest footage we have of a living one comes from just twenty years ago. Whether or not a giant squid ever attacked a ship, we don't know. But perhaps one day we may learn that part of the kraken myth is true as well. The kraken, though, wasn't the only supernatural sea monster with a real-life counterpart. In New Zealand, the indigenous Maori told tales of the tanifa, a race of divine water spirits.

• 7:24Aaron Mahnke?

  Individual tanifa claimed water spirit streams, or particular bays, or sometimes even took over caves. And according to different tribes, they appeared in different disguises, as reptiles, sharks, octopi, or even unassuming logs. And while some spent their time kidnapping and eating humans, others delighted in helping them, and none more so than Polaris Jack. In 1888, a steamship was heading from Wellington, on New Zealand's North Island, to Nelson, on the South. This region of New Zealand is a maze of inlets and winding bays, all difficult to navigate. But the ship encountered a surprising guide: a species called Rizzo's Dolphin.

• 8:06Aaron Mahnke?

  The dolphin swam with the ship through the passage before finally leaving it at a strait called French Pass. And for the next twenty-four years, it proceeded to do exactly the same thing. Polaris Jack, named after Polaris Sound where it seemed to live, would meet ships at either end of the maze and guide them through. And because of this, it was widely accepted that Jack was a tanifa. And while he seemingly wanted to help humans, he also had no problem leaving them to their fates. In one famous incident, a sailor aboard the SS Penguin took a shot at Polaris Jack in the early 1900s. And although Jack survived, he seemingly remembered the attack and refused to guide the Penguin ever again, which wasn't a

• 8:48Aaron Mahnke?

  In 1909, the Penguin was shipwrecked on its way to Wellington, killing seventy-five people. It was probably an accident, or perhaps Polaris Jack took his revenge. All that said, whether Jack was truly a tenefa or just a particularly clever dolphin is difficult to say. He wouldn't be the first whale spirit to help a human, though, and he certainly wouldn't be the first to hunt one.

• 9:23Aaron Mahnke?

  Stop me if you've heard this one before. A ship full of explorers are sailing across the seas when they happen upon a small, strange island. It's low and sandy, not rising far out of the water. To the sailors, it seems like a promising place to stop. Perhaps they're hoping to find treasure or in need of a resupply. Maybe they just want to rest on land for the night. Whatever the reason, they drop anchor and come ashore. Before long, the explorers grow hungry. One decides to light a fire and cooks them all something to eat. It's pleasant there on the island. The breeze is soft, the fire is warm, and the ale is flowing. But as the flames grow higher, something happens. Perhaps the ground shakes or the waves rise.

• 10:07Aaron Mahnke?

  Whatever the sign, one sailor finally realizes what's going on. The island is alive. The sailors, of course, flee for their ship and cast off just in time, because as they retreat, they finally see that the mysterious island is not an island at all. It's the body of a great whale, and it's now thrashing in pain at the fire on its back. Had they stayed one moment longer, they would have been dragged to the bottom of the sea. Now, this whale of a tale, with all its variations, appears across cultures and centuries. A letter from 300 A.D. refers to Alexander the Great encountering a whale disguised as an island and nearly losing his crew.

• 10:49Aaron Mahnke?

  Two hundred years later, the Talmud told the same story, but this time the captain was a hero named Raba. In the sixth century, the Irish explorer Saint Brennan Took a band of monks to an island somewhere in the northern Atlantic. When they lit a fire upon it, they only had moments to flee as the island came alive. They spent hours watching a gargantuan whale, illuminated by their fire, swimming off into the distance. And a few hundred years later, another mysterious whale story appeared, this time in A Thousand and One Nights. Like Saint Brennan, Raba, and Alexander before him, Sinbad the Sailor also mistook a whale for an island, with disastrous results. Over the years, this folkloric tradition came to be called the Devil Whale.

• 11:34Aaron Mahnke?

  With its immense size and volatile nature, the Devil Whale seems to be part of a metaphor for the sea itself. It's too vast to be known, and too unpredictable to control. Or perhaps, like the kraken, the Devil Whale could come from something more real. Even without supernatural powers, whales are colossal creatures, and being in their enormous presence can remind us just how insignificant we are. Especially if, like the Devil Whale, they decide to attack. In 1911, Captain Robert Falcon Scott was leading an expedition to the South Pole. The team had prepared for a hard winter, cold winds, and limited food, but they were surprised when a new threat appeared from beneath their feet.

• 12:19Aaron Mahnke?

  When crossing a field of floating ice, Scott and the others noticed a group of orca whales surfacing near the edges of the ice floe they were standing on. That fascination turned to terror, though, when one whale erupted through the middle of the sheet of ice, violently breaking the ice up around it. The orcas weren't just friendly observers, they were actively trying to break the ice beneath the expedition's feet. Scott and his expedition managed to get away safely. He later wrote that the whales were simply after their sled dogs, but it's easy to believe that the orcas may have wanted something more. Because whales are intelligent creatures, they can reason things out, they can build a plan, and, in at least one case it seems, they can even plot their revenge.

• 13:16Aaron Mahnke?

  It was the whaling capital of the world. Now, that might not sound like a big deal by today's standards, but you have to remember, in the 19th century whales were like the one-stop-shop of the post-revolutionary war economy. Whalebone and baleen was used in everything from corsets to carriage springs. Spermiceti, the white waxy substance that came from sperm whales, was used for candles and lotions. And in the era of oil lamps, bright-burning, smokeless whale oil was a hot commodity. No pun intended, I swear. Catching whales was big business, and in Nantucket, business was booming. But as we all know, the markets can behave a lot like the sea. Sometimes you're riding high, and sometimes it can all come crashing down.

• 14:01Aaron Mahnke?

  By November 20th of 1820, the 20 sailors of the Nantucket-based whale ship the Essex had been at sea for 15 months. They'd already bagged a few thousand gallons of whale oil on their way around Cape Horn to the Pacific, and now they were following a pod of sperm whales in the open ocean. According to first mate Owen Chase, things started pretty normal that day. Most of the crew had left the Essex in three small whaling boats. Their plan was to harpoon a whale, tire it out, and then drag it back to the main ship. But not long after their launch, Chase's boat got damaged. He returned to the Essex to make some hasty repairs. And while onboard the ship, he suddenly noticed a huge, 85-foot male sperm whale acting oddly in the water.

• 14:44Aaron Mahnke?

  While the rest of the pod were busy trying to flee the small whale boats, this one seemed to be focusing on the Essex. Chase would soon realize the whale wasn't actually observing the Essex quietly. He was making a plan. By the time Chase figured it out, though, it was too late. The whale dove under the surface to gather speed, then swam straight at the Essex, ramming it hard enough to make the whole ship shudder. The impact punctured a hole in the hull, and water began to pour in. As Chase watched in horror, the whale repeated its attack, this time making for the bow. It crushed the front of the ship, and the Essex began to sink below the waves. Chase and the others still aboard quickly grabbed some supplies and sea charts.

• 15:27Aaron Mahnke?

  They loaded into the patched whaling boats and they shoved off. The two other boats in the water soon came to meet them. And while everyone had survived the devil whales attack, they now faced a terrifying new reality. They were just twenty men in three small open boats. They only had food or water for a few weeks, and they were thousands of miles from the nearest shore. The three boats struck out for Chile. But after a month at sea, as food and fresh water started to dwindle, the men were growing desperate. On December 20th, hope arrived in the form of a tiny island. The men landed and found fresh water, seabirds, crabs, and some edible plants. But after just a few days, they had picked the island clean.

• 16:10Aaron Mahnke?

  Three men, too weak to continue, stayed behind, while the other seventeen were forced to move on. And the tragedies soon began to pile up after that. On January 10th of 1821, the first sailor died and was buried at sea. Two days later, a storm appeared on the horizon, sending the boats in different directions and causing Chase's boat to lose the others. By the 15th, Chase's boat was being harassed by a shark who smelled death upon them. Needless to say, things were bad. The food and water had completely run out, and by February 8th, one of Chase's crew members had succumbed to starvation. The three remaining men in the boat were faced with an impossible choice: do the unspeakable or perish?

• 16:55Aaron Mahnke?

  With heavy hearts, they chose to live, and they ate the remains of their fallen comrade. Their sea mates' sacrifice kept them alive for another ten days. When finally, on February 18th of 1821, a whole three months after the whale attack had sunk their ship, the men spotted sails on the horizon. Their salvation came in the form of a British merchant ship, the Indian. Imagine being on the crew of that ship. You happened upon a tiny whale boat in the open ocean, three starving men inside, and scattered around them, clothing, blood, and bones. Clear signs that to survive, these men had done the ultimate taboo.

• 17:35Aaron Mahnke?

  A few days later, another ship happened upon a second of the Essex whaling boats. And months later, the three men who were left on the island were found as well. Ultimately, just eight of the 20 crew members survived their encounter with the whale. Owen Chase eventually returned to sea. He sailed for several more years, making trips to the same whaling grounds where the Essex had met its fate, before retiring in 1840. But although he was back on solid ground, he still felt like he was drowning. And even as an old man, safe on land, he squirreled food away in his attic. He couldn't control the sea, nor the whale. But he would make sure that he would never starve again.

• 18:26Aaron Mahnke?

  For the most part these days, whales have lost their sinister reputation. Perhaps this is a symptom of something bigger. As technology's gotten better and sailing's gotten faster, the world it seems has grown smaller. A voyage that once took ships several months now only takes weeks, sometimes even days. The ocean isn't a new frontier, but a well-mapped thoroughfare. And with satellite phones, GPS tracking, and safety improvements, it's a whole lot harder to get lost at sea. In this shiny new world, the sea beasts of old feel out of place. Strange new creatures of the deep are still being classified and catalogued. And with every new corner of the ocean we explore, we leave less room for monsters to hide.

• 19:09Aaron Mahnke?

  It feels a bit like the Kraken and the White Devil have served their purpose. They were used to make sense of the nonsensical, to explain why storms were whipped up, why rogue waves rolled in, and why even the most skilled captains went down with their ships. The same rings true for real-life whalers. We're years removed from Nantucket's heyday, and most of us are more likely to go whale watching than whale hunting. Still though, whales hold a certain fascination for us. And for one man in particular, they became more than that: an obsession. In 1841, a young sailor had taken work aboard a whale ship in the South Pacific. And one day, the sailor's ship encountered another vessel, and the two crews spent several days together.

• 19:53Aaron Mahnke?

  The sailor quickly found a friend in a guy named William Henry Chase, a crew member from the other ship. And before they parted, William gave the sailor a gift: a copy of his father's book. You see, William's father was Owen Chase. And his book? It was a first-person narrative of his survival after the whale sunk the Essex. As you'd imagine, this young sailor couldn't get the story out of his head. Not while he was harpooning whales, not after jumping ship in the Marquesas Islands, not even after he returned home. There was something in the tale of the Essex that had gotten under his skin: something about man and God and the fury of the sea.

• 20:33Aaron Mahnke?

  So in 1851, he put his thoughts down on paper, and that year, he finally published his epic. Today, it's a book that most of us had to read in school, all because a young sailor couldn't let go of a haunting tale of tragedy at sea. The man, of course, was Herman Melville, author of the classic novel, Moby Dick.

• 21:07Aaron Mahnke?

  For centuries, the ocean has been a source of wonder and of terror. I hope today's deep dive has given you a fascination for the folklore of the sea and a healthy fear of what lurks beneath the waves. But it's not time to jump ship just yet. We've got one more tale left that should give you another chance to plunge back into the abyss. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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• 22:51Aaron Mahnke?

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• 23:35Aaron Mahnke?

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• 24:38Aaron Mahnke?

  For a very long time, the sea and the monsters in it have been associated with the divine. In the story of Saint Brendan the Navigator, it is God who reveals to him the true nature of that living island. In Moby Dick, the book inspired by the tragedy of the Essex, the fearsome Captain Ahab seeks revenge against the white whale that took his leg. But his larger battle is actually with God, who Captain Ahab believes is malevolent. It is his cursing of God, not just his quest for vengeance, that ultimately leads to his downfall. In many of these stories, whales and sea monsters are the instruments of the divine. They're often used to punish the disobedience, like the biblical story of Jonah, who at God's command is swallowed by a whale.

• 25:21Aaron Mahnke?

  But in a very different twist, in one tradition, it was a sea monster who brought God to a nation. The Maldives are a small cluster of islands just south of India and Sri Lanka. Because of their location, they've been a crossroads for trade for hundreds of years. While historically the islanders were Buddhists, by the 12th century, the country had completely converted to Islam. This wasn't strange. Arab travelers, many of whom were Muslim, traveled and traded there all the time. But what was strange was how the change happened. There was no war where Muslims conquered Buddhists. There was no influx of Muslim immigrants to the island. Instead, the reason for the whole country's conversion, at least according to legend, was one man and one monster.

• 26:04Aaron Mahnke?

  Sometime in the 12th century, a man named Abdul Barakat came to the Maldives. Now, Abu was a merchant and he was a holy man who had committed the Quran to memory. But most of all Abu was a clever problem solver. And before long, he realized the Maldives needed his help. You see, the Maldives were under attack. Every month, a strange creature would arrive there. It was massive, appearing in the guise of a ship all aglow with candles. It was said to be a djinn, a spiritual entity with supernatural powers. And specifically, they said it was the sea demon Ranamari, and he was hungry. Every month when Ranamari would appear, the Maldives took a young virgin woman, dressed her as a bride, and brought her at nightfall to a temple on the shore.

• 26:49Aaron Mahnke?

  When the locals returned in the morning, the woman would be dead. Abu had been staying with an old woman when he came home one day to find her crying as she dressed her daughter in fine clothes. He learned that the Ranamari had come once more, and that night, his host's only daughter would be sacrificed to appease him. Abu quickly told her to dry her tears, because he had a plan. That night, Ranamari approached the temple on the coast, just like it had every other month. And just like every other month, he went inside looking for his bride. But this time, something was different, because while the figure inside was wearing bridal clothes, it had a low masculine voice. It was chanting something extremely powerful, the words of the Quran.

• 27:33Aaron Mahnke?

  When the old woman arrived the next morning at the temple expecting to find Abu's corpse, she was surprised to find him alive. She was even more surprised when he told her of the previous night's experience and how the words of the Prophet Muhammad sent the Ranamari fleeing into the sea. She took him to meet the king of the archipelago, where Abu made a pact. He would stay one more month and send the evil spirits fleeing into the depths again. And if he once more saved a young woman from the Maldives, the king and the whole island would convert to Islam. And here is where the stories diverge. According to some traditions, a month later, Abu had the same interaction with Ranamari, and his recitation of the Quran was enough to save the island.

• 28:17Aaron Mahnke?

  In other versions of the story, he had a great battle with the monster, finally driving it off for good. But some believe that after the first run-in with Abu, Ranamari slunk off to the deep, never to be seen again. Abu stayed the second month, waited in the temple, but no monster ever came. The power of Abuul's faith saved the island from a terrifying sea monster, and in return, the Maldives converted to Islam. And as a result, the islanders were never again forced to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea.

• 29:03Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Molly Quinlan Artwick and research by Sam Alberti. Just a gentle reminder that my newest creepy history book, Exhumed, comes out on August 4th. It explores the roots of the New England vampire panic and the story of Mercy Brown specifically, through the lens of centuries of folklore, medical advancements, and pseudoscience. It's available for preorder right now, and if you preorder it, it would mean the world to me. If you preorder the hardcover, my publisher has a webpage set up where you can submit your receipt and get a free gorgeous tote bag. Head over to aaronmahnke.com/exhumed to lock in your copy today. And if you don't like hearing ads on lore, don't forget there's a paid version available on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free.

• 29:48Aaron Mahnke?

  Subscribers there also get weekly mini bonus episodes called Lore Bites, and Patreon members get discounts on lore merch and access to my inbox. Learn more about how you can support the show over at lorepodcast.com/support. And follow the show on YouTube Threads, Blue Sky, or Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.

• 30:58Speaker 04

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