One Below
The final trip of the “Draken Salvage Team,” of Nynäshamn, Sweden.
Day 36, Sweeping the Baltic Sea.
June 1, 2012, 3:26 PM.
Libby approaches the object carefully. All of her monitoring equipment has failed for some unknown reason; except for the audio recorder that she rigged to a microphone inside her helmet. “The water down here is murky, I can hardly see a kilometer in front of me,” she says, “but I think I see the object coming into view up ahead.”
Her husband and the rest of the crew are back on their salvage ship, The Draken. When the GPS and pressure gauges started to go they all resurfaced.
“It just looks like a big mass. I’m almost to it,” she says.
Swimming closer, the mysterious object comes into view. Glancing at her temperature gauge, she notices it reads ‘-1 degrees Celsius.’ What the hell? It’s supposed to be 16 degrees down here today.
“My temperature gauge has failed as well,” she says. “I am coming up along side the object now. Damn is it big! It looks like a big dome sitting on a narrower base, like a giant mushroom. Huge square pieces have been taken out of the backside and deep grooves run along the top.”
She tries to recall all of her knowledge of underwater formations, but can’t remember ever hearing of anything like this.
“I have no idea what the hell this thing is.”
At the rear of the object she notices long marks in the muddy seafloor that extend for a few meters like skid marks.
“This thing is huge! I swear it’s at least the size of a jumbo jet.” Excited, she pulls out her camera to take a few pictures. When she reviews the pictures she notices that each photo is distorted and has lines running through it, making it difficult to see the object. Of course this thing isn’t working either.
“Camera’s gone too,” she notes.
She does her best to describe the object, swimming out to examine it more thoroughly.
“I know what this looks like. It’s shaped like the Millennium Falcon from ‘Star Wars’,” she says. “My brother used to make me watch those movies all the time.”
She swims to what she assumes is the back of the object and proceeds up into the largest opening, a rectangular shaped indent.
“Oh my God! I can go inside. I’m going to see if there is anything to salvage.”
As she reaches the hole she grabs onto each edge of the opening. Here goes nothing. She shoots herself in. It’s better to do it quickly so there is no time to think.
All she sees is black. She remembers the tiny flashlight she shoved into her belt and clicks it on. Once her eyes adjust to the new light source she takes in her surroundings.
“Unlike the outside, the inside is teeming with signs of past life. It’s strangely curvy, the walls starting and stopping in unusual places. Rows of some sort of cable run in every direction. There are towering columns all down the center of the corridor and rectangular objects hanging from the ceiling that look like big, old, 90’s computer monitors.”
She proceeds forward, curious about what else she could find.
When the corridor ends she meets what she assumes used to be some sort of door, the first open one she has found. She wiggles her way through and into a large circular room.
Her flashlight flickers, not sure if it wants to be on or off. She hits it against her palm a few times, hoping she won’t be stuck in the darkness. But it decides not to come back on.
Panicked, she tries to backtrack through the opening but only finds wall. She pounds her fists against it, inadvertently triggering some sort of electrical reaction. The wall in front of her springs to life. Light shoots out from her hands in all directions. Slowly, the room illuminates around her. She notices that she is in some sort of control room. There are chairs scattered around the room facing numerous monitors. She swims closer to the chair on her right.
“It’s a skeleton, but its not human.” She continues around the room counting the bodies, “6, 8, 10, 16, holy shit there is a whole crew in here!”
She swims back towards the door, excited to tell her own crew about the mysterious species she has found. The door slams shut just as she reaches it. She scratches at it, trying to pry it open. Turning around hoping for another way out, she sees the skeletons coming to life and rising from their chairs.
“Bradley, I’m so sorry,” she says, hoping her husband will get to hear this, “I should have listened to you. I love—”
On deck, Brad and his crew wait for Libby to resurface. Brad is losing his patience and decides he has to go down to find her.
“I shouldn’t have let her go down alone,” he shouts at his first mate.
As he dons his gear and prepares for his dive, a crew member shouts from the bow, “Sir, it’s Libby’s recorder.”
They fish it out of the water and listen to her findings.
“We need to contact port authorities immediately,” Brad says.
Theresa LaFleur, a young film student, was onboard and recorded the whole occurrence.
The tape was recovered on the vacant salvage ship by port authorities when they arrived at 5:25PM on June 1, 2012. Bradley and Libby Stansa, and the Draken Salvage team haven’t been heard from since.
