Ghostly Encounter On The Sea

I must have been around 15 when my grandfather took me out in his small boat to go fishing at night. It was in 1959 in Mauritius.

Life was hard but we were happy and the sea was full of resources. Fishes, lobsters, crayfish, etc... And I enjoyed fishing (I still enjoy it). However, even though I shared the same passion as my grandpa, we were not the best friends. He was very harsh sometimes abusive, mainly when he would drink but I could make it with him. It was another story with my dad.

Anyway, we took the sea in his small boat of 24 feet with a heavy and noisy fuel engine at around 5pm and had hope of bringing as much fish as possible by the end of the night. We left from a place called Albion, which is on the west coast of Mauritius. My grandpa used to work as a postman but left his job to become a fisherman by passion. My dad took over his former job.

The sea was calm and the air was slightly warm. Usually it means that it would rain but the sky was fair almost clear. We could see the stars and the moon came up after the sunset.

We reached the place my grandpa knew was fishy and we started. We did not talk much only when we needed something. We were not too far from the coast, maybe 3 or 4 kms away. We were in the open sea above what we call in french a "haut fond". It's a part of the sea floor bed which raises close to the sea surface and where fishes come to feed. It's very fishy.

We had been fishing for a good 4 hours and had caught a fair amount of fish. We did not realize but the current had made us drift away and we discovered that we had been pulled quite far from the coast. Grandpa tried to start the engine but it did not trigger. He tried again and again and again but nothing happened. Fortunately, the sea had remain calm. But the swells were much bigger and quite scary. In those days, we were not equipped for security as we are today. No radio, cells or life jackets. You had to fight for your life. The boat drifted another hour. We had stop fishing and were trying to figure out what to do and what would happen. All kind of dark thoughts got hold of me and I imagined myself dying of thirst on the boat in the middle of the sea or stumble out of the boat, rocked by a big wave and drowning in these dark waters full of scary creatures.

Suddenly, we started to hear music. It sounded like music from the 40's. We looked around and there was no boat or whatsoever. The coast was now quite far, maybe 7 to 8 kms and it was impossible that music from the coast would be heard by us. The atmosphere was eerie. Then the sound of music became louder with sound of people talking, exactly like it would during a cocktail. We tried to look for a ship but there was none around. There was no mist and the sky was fair. We were even under the first or last quarter moon light which was now high in the sky. We started to panic.

Now, try to imagine what it is like to feel lost on the sea at night plus starting to face spooky things. The "cocktail sound" became closer and there was still nothing around. Grandpa was fighting now against the engine to start it. The party sound stopped and we could now hear whispers all around us. We hardly talked to each other, just looked at each other to understand that we were experiencing the same things.

I could not understand what was being said but there were male and female voices in the whispers. My stomach was so tight with fear that it was sore and my neck was hard like a stick. I felt like becoming feverish from fear. I got hold of the cable of the engine and pulled as hard as I could to start it. The whispers were becoming very scary and we had to leave that place. Suddenly the engine started and grandpa pushed me back and grabbed the throttle. We shot straight to the coast surfing on the waves. I wonder if grandpa checked for reefs when coming back so much we wanted to flee this place.

We eventually made it after almost an hour. The whispers had stayed behind. We were so scared when we reached the beach that we forgot all our fish in the boat. We came back in the morning and the fish had started to rotten. We lost about 75kgs of fish that day and never got to know what we encountered.

The strangest thing is that there are not known shipped which wrecked

In that area and no other fishermen experienced what we lived. Some have encountered weird animals and others think they saw ghosts floating above the water, but not in the same area and nothing of the same nature.