113. North Sea Horror: Terrifying Creatures, Lost Cities, and Submersible Disasters
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Last year, I came across a TikTok of a big cargo ship lumbering through a treacherous part of the North Sea. It's pitch black all around in the video. Hundreds of miles of ocean sprawling out in either direction. All that's really visible are the large, heavy waves throwing the boat around. And then, just in the distance, comes a wave. Three times the size of anything around it. This is what's known as a rogue wave.

It bashes into the front of the ship, briefly sending part of it underwater. But then it emerges and continues its trek further into the inky blackness.

This is the North Sea, a horrifying 200,000 square miles of frigid water between Norway and Great Britain that have carried tides of death for centuries. Right now, it's a source of horror content on TikTok and YouTube, but did you know that people have been terrified of the North Sea for thousands of years?

This is Heart Starts Pounding, and I'm your host, Kaylin Moore. And today, I wanna take you through a history of horror in the North Sea. I wanna tell you about the creatures the Vikings saw that took down entire ships, the lost city the sea swallowed whole, and a very real and very horrific accident that happened there more recently. In my mind, this episode gets less fantastical as we go, starting with folklore and ending with real-world horror.

Episodes like this make me even more thankful that I get to tell these stories by the fire in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters, because I think I would literally rather be shot into the sun than have to sit on a cargo ship in the North Sea. And actually, speaking of icy remote locations, I just did a bonus episode selected by the High Council tier on Patreon about Antarctica conspiracy theories. Was there a giant door found on Google Maps in the middle of the continent?

What could possibly be hiding down there? You're going to have to listen to the episode to find out. And that is for patrons on any tier and Apple subscribers. And of course, you can binge that and our other bonus episodes with a free trial. Before we jump in, I want to shout out a listener, Shelby. Shelby just picked up some HeartStars Pounding stickers from our store and she said, Thank you. I love listening when I'm cooking dinner and at the gym. And let's be honest, cardio is the worst. This is my motivation.

Thank you, Shelby. And listening to Hearts, Hearts Pounding is kind of like doing cardio if it gets your heart rate up. That's how I think of it anyways. If you want your own Hearts, Hearts Pounding stickers featuring Jinx, our ghostly mascot, just go to the store page on the Hearts, Hearts Pounding website. Patrons at the $5 tier also get a free sticker after their third month of subscriptions. And we do have some very fun new merch on the way this summer. So stay tuned for that. More info coming.

But for now, I want to get back into our stories. First, I want to tell you about one of the scariest creatures in all of North Sea lore: the Seadraug.

Draug legends date back to Norse mythology, arising sometime around 800 years ago. Draugs are the undead that stalk the sea. The word roughly translates to living dead person. And if you ever find yourself out on a cargo ship, you may have an encounter similar to this famous one.

Many centuries ago, a man named Liam set out across the North Sea with a small rowing crew. It was a short journey up the western coast of Norway, three days on the water at most. But on the second morning, a red sunrise warned of a coming storm. And by the afternoon, violent waves forced Liam to land his crew and their small boat on a small island, so insignificant it didn't even have a name. They beached the boat, secured the oars, and made camp to wait out the storm.

It rained all night and into the next day. Liam had no choice but to keep his crew grounded. He went to the boat to fetch more supplies when he noticed that the oars were out of place, but everything else was untouched. He wrote it off as a trick of the wind, reset the oars, and then returned to camp.

But day after day, the pattern repeated. The storm continued trapping them on the island, and each morning, the oars were ever so slightly out of place. He asked his crew who was touching the oars while he slept, but they all looked at each other. No one was. So that night, Liam decided to find out what was really going on. Soaked to the bone, he crouched behind the thorny scrub near the boat and watched in the darkness. Soon,

he saw a figure limp from the sand and approach the boat. The figure settled into one of the rowing seats and tested it out. He grumbled something too quiet for Liam to hear. Then he stood up and moved to another seat. Liam cautiously inched closer for a better look, careful to not draw attention. The man was wearing a Siemens leather coat and hat. Maybe it's a sailor from another crew that's also been stranded on the island, Liam thought.

He grumbled again. And Liam heard what he said this time. Doesn't suit me. But when the man stood up, Liam realized it wasn't a man at all. At his full height, he towered over the boat, his legs and arms spindled out past any normal proportions. And under the hat, where his face should be, a writhing clot of glistening seaweed. A sea draugr.

The vengeful race that marked sailors for death. Liam watched in horror as the draug moved from seat to seat, saying out loud as if deciding the fate of the crew. Doesn't suit me. Then the draug took Liam's place at the front of the boat, shifting and settling in. It rasped. This one suits me.

Liam turned to run, but he must have made too much noise because when he turned back, he saw the undead creature staring right at him. In a flash, the draug leapt from the boat and dove back into the sea. Liam reset the oars and ran all the way back to camp. By the time he reached his crew, it seemed like the rain was finally clearing up.

They could sail again tomorrow. The men opened an extra bottle to celebrate, singing and drinking into the small hours, and Liam started to doze off in front of the fire.

It was an hour before dawn when he jerked awake to a shadow of boots, barely outlined by the dying embers. The long, stretched legs took a squelching step towards him. Before he could even make a sound, he felt a cold metal spike plunge into his chest. He tilted his head back to see the draug stripping face, a sly smirk outlined by decaying seaweed. "'This one suits me,' the creature said."

According to Nordic mythologies, draugs were one of the worst creatures you could encounter out on the sea. They came in multiple shapes and sizes. Some had supernatural powers, could shape-shift, or dispensed prophecy. Most draugs were malevolent, exacting vengeance on the living. Some believed the legends were a way to personify the all-too-present specter of death for seafaring Vikings.

Shipwrecks were incredibly common throughout most of history. In fact, in the 1860s, Norwegian scholars recorded an average of 100 shipwrecks per year. But having these legends made it easier for sailors to get back on their boats. Maybe it was a creature that could be defeated that was killing the men, rather than the unjust and unpredictable North Sea.

So maybe the draugs were just legends, but what do we always say here at Heart Starts Pounding? Sometimes the legends are true. Well, we're gonna take a quick break. And when we get back, I wanna tell you a medieval legend about the Atlantis of the North Sea and how it was solved two years ago.

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Terrifying creatures were not the only legends being spread about the North Sea. No, the sea has its own version of Atlantis, a once wealthy city that now sits at the bottom of the ocean, waiting for explorers to find its treasure. And of course, in classic "Hearts Are Pounding" fashion, there's a lot more truth to that legend than anyone was expecting.

For over 600 years, there's been a legend about a city called Rungholt that used to sit off the northern coast of Germany. A city once as wealthy as the entire Roman Empire. Parents would take their children to the water, point out into the distance, and tell them about the treasure that was lost with the city at the bottom of the ocean. This was the story they would tell.

One night, hundreds of years ago, a Catholic priest named Father Charles was alone in his stone church. The last prayer had been whispered over an hour ago, leaving only the sputters of dying candles and his desperate ruminations. He was praying for the city that he no longer recognized.

He had come to Rungholtz with so much purpose. When he first arrived, the city was being built on top of a bog, rising from the area out of nothing. He watched with pride as the city grew into a thriving epicenter, fueled by trade and commerce, making the people richer and richer every year. But over time, he noticed Rungholtz had been overtaken by greed, pride, and folly.

His own church seemed to just be a token of vanity. It was massive. There was room for a thousand people easily, but would the pews at Christmas mass even be half full? He had lost his congregation to the altar of wealth. As he prayed silently, he heard the front door bang open and there in the doorway was a young boy. The boy ducked his head stammering, "Please, you have to come quick.

There was a man at the inn down the road and he didn't have much time. He needed the blessing of a priest. "Of course," Father Charles said, "lead the way." The man was at a dockside inn catering to a revolving door of merchant crews. Father Charles pushed through the barroom crowd to one of the back rooms. He knocked softly and then opened the door.

Inside, three men stood in the corner in silence, hardly able to look at the figure lying in the bed, hunched over on his side, his face hidden. Father Charles nodded, arranged the vestment around his shoulders, then knelt beside the dying man. "My son," he asked. "Will you tell me your name?" The man lurched in the bed, grunting in pain. "It's all right," said Father Charles. "I'm here to help." He reached under the sheet to take his hand.

and instead grasped a hoof. Father Charles yelped and leapt backwards. The three men in the corner exploded, laughing themselves breathless. The priest whipped back the sheet, revealing a hog dressed in a man's trousers and shirt. Father Charles turned ready to unleash a tirade, but before he could get more than a few words out, the hog belched, interrupting him. It had gotten into the ale the men had brought.

Disgusted, the father stepped towards the door, but one of the men blocked him, shoving him back towards the bed. You've still got a job to do, he slurred, the smell of ale on his breath. Best get on with it.

The priest snatched his arm away. These men were godless, heathens. He was going straight to the city watch about this. But then came the blinding white ring of a sucker punch. Father Charles crumpled, leaving him defenseless to their boot kicks. A helpless heap in the dirt. The priest could only watch as the men plundered his sacrament box, pouring sacrament wine down their throats.

He gasped, his lungs empty and burning. Stop. They had to stop. They held him for another hour of humiliation, forcing him to drink with them, refilling the sacrament cup with ale, giving mock confessions. Finally, they escorted him back to the church, making sure he didn't stop to talk to the city watch along the way. Father Charles closed the heavy doors behind him.

His body ached. He stank of sweat, alcohol, and blood. His head swam from ale and shame. Earlier that night, Father Charles had been desperate for the key to Rungholt's salvation. Now, as he knelt in front of the altar, he called on God once more. The bile in his stomach curdled into rage. Like a tempest, it grew inside of his chest, rolling and gnashing until the fury seeped out of his pores.

According to the legend, that night God came to the priest in a dream and warned him to leave Runghalt as soon as possible. His judgment was coming. The priest got on a ship the next morning. As the winds continued to pick up over the sea, first came the rain.

For days, the storm unleashed its torrent, battering the coastal town and swelling the waves. The few in Runghalt that still held onto their faith recognized God's wrath and fled from the deadly path of the storm. But most remained, indifferent and proud, unable to part with their gold coins.

And then, in the middle of the night, the North Sea inhaled, drawing up the tide and unleashing a wave twice as high as any house in Rungholt, enveloping the entire city in water and leaving none alive. And that is where the people of Rungholt remained, in a mass, watery grave. No consecration, no last rites.

"See children, that's why you never abandoned your church," the parents would say on the sandy beaches as they finished the legends. And the children would nod, their eyes wide in horror and an image of the people of Runghalt dead at the bottom of the ocean forever burned into their brains.

For centuries, "Rungholt" was dismissed as just a legend, a morality tale. To some though, it seemed like a lost city of gold, a treasure trove of wealth waiting beneath the waves. Either way, it read like fiction.

But in 2023, researchers in Germany were out on the tidal flats of the North Sea in the area they believed Rungholtz used to be. They were using a survey vehicle that did magnetic mapping and allowed them to map what was under the muck when all of a sudden they got a hit, an abnormality beneath the sand. The researchers started digging, careful as to not destroy any ancient artifacts they might find, when they found the foundation of a church.

Out there in what looked like the middle of nowhere, the researchers proceeded to find two kilometers of medieval settlement mounds full of ruins from an ancient city. They found Runghult. It was a real place.

Based on the artifacts discovered in the ruins, Grunghult was a wealthy, prosperous town. One of the biggest indicators of this was the foundation stones left behind by a large church in the middle of the town. A structure this size in the Middle Ages needed significant funding. How did a city of this size just vanish?

The North Sea is bordered by land on three sides, the UK to the west, the Netherlands and Germany to the south, and Denmark and Norway to the east. That means when a storm system gathers overhead, dumping rain, there's not really anywhere for the water to go except upstream.

dramatically increasing the size of the waves, sometimes by 15 feet. And then those supersized waves just come ashore. The North Sea produces several storm tides each year and they can be extremely destructive. There are records of storm floods dating back to 838 that caused thousands of deaths. Some were so large, they reshaped the coastlines. And in more than one case, entire towns were washed away.

In January of 1362, a massive storm tide struck the entire southern coast of the North Sea.

It was later referred to as Grote Mandranke, which translates to the Great Drowner of Man. It completely engulfed the city of Rungholt, which was built on an area of the coast super susceptible to this kind of flooding. An estimated 25,000 people died, though some reports claim it was closer to 100,000. Multiple cities were destroyed, but only Rungholt was cemented into legend.

And while it's unlikely that Rungholt was brought down by holy wrath, it does seem like greed did play a part in their fate. The land the town was built on was originally peat bogs and marshes. To make it habitable, they dug up the land and dredged it.

This is what helped them prosper as the nutrient rich soil underneath was perfect for agriculture. They also harvested salts from the marshlands, another profitable commodity, but all of this change was basically rapid terraforming. The city sank below sea level. They built dikes for protection, but it wasn't enough considering how much they had altered the landscape. Eventually the right storm at the wrong time reclaimed the entire island.

And so while Rungholtz might not be a cautionary tale about leaving the church, it is a cautionary tale about building a city on inhospitable land, a mistake we've been making for at least 600 years, it seems. As for the Rungholtz treasure, well, it hasn't been found yet.

And researchers say they aren't convinced they'll find any. But every time someone says that, I wonder if they're just saying it because they know there's treasure out there and they just don't want treasure hunters to flood the area. But for a city known for its obscene wealth and prosperity, surely there's one chest of gold pieces buried somewhere beneath the ruins.

So far, we've spent this episode looking to the past, peeking in the corners of myths and legends, but let's leap forward into the present. What are the modern horrors of the North Sea? There's still plenty of fishing ships and trade vessels out there. Well, today they're called commercial trawlers and container ships. Sure, they still have to navigate the unpredictable patterns of the North Sea, but they've got much better tools today. And let's face it, loads of automation,

But think about the dangers that inspired the sea draug. What is today's version of that?

Given how much time they spend on the water, the closest equivalent might be offshore oil riggers. All of the things that have historically made the North Sea dangerous still apply to modern oil rigs. Unpredictable squalls, high-force winds, rogue waves. Even still, in 2015, there were 173 rigs operating in the region. Oil rigs are expected to run 24-7, 365 days a year.

So crews are often split into two 12-hour shifts, day crews and night crews. Commuting to the middle of the North Sea every day isn't practical, so workers live on the rig for anywhere from two to four weeks at a time. They go home for a few weeks and then rinse, repeat. They have their own bunk space and amenities like gyms, movie theaters, and pools. But still, you can see how it would get claustrophobic.

Really process this for a second. You'd see the same people, the same walls, the same patch of ocean, day after day, cut off from even mundane and everyday tasks like going to the grocery store or walking your dog. It's a bubble within a bubble. And, oh yeah, the rig might still get hit by 40-foot waves. It really makes you think about how the legends first got started. But all of that is not even the worst part about these rigs.

So the main rig structure sits above the surface of the water, but the oil well itself is obviously deep in the seafloor. There's all kinds of pipes and machinery underwater connecting the two. It has to be installed, maintained, and repaired by people, by divers. And their lives on the rig are even more isolated because they don't live up where the gym and movie theater is. No, they

They live on the rig in a small compression chamber. The reason they do this is it allows them to leave the chamber in a pressurized diving bell, go down about a thousand feet below the surface and come back up to the chamber without getting something known as the bends or decompression sickness. In the most basic terms, when divers swim in deep water, nitrogen gas builds up in their bloodstream.

If they come to the surface too quickly, the nitrogen bubbles can form in their blood and tissues, which is not only extremely painful, but can also cause things like aneurysms, stroke, or in extreme cases, death.

But remember what I said about life on the rig. It runs 24/7, 365 days a year. Efficiency is key. So instead of slowly decompressing after every shift, which can take hours, some divers live in these compression chambers for 28-day shifts that are pressurized to be the same as the depths of the ocean. Think of it like a sealed capsule studio apartment. It may or may not have windows,

And the only time divers leave that space is when they're being transported into the pitch black ocean by an equally pressurized diving bell. Clearly, it takes a really specific kind of person to pursue this line of work. Saturation divers in the North Sea are signing up for one of the most dangerous jobs in one of the most hazardous work zones in the world. And as a result, really horrible disasters can happen.

Like one that's known as the Byford Dolphin Incident. I recently found out that you can see a personal dietitian covered by insurance. There's this platform called Nourish that will match you with a dietitian based on whatever your concerns are. Whether that's weight loss, eating disorders, autoimmune conditions, or something else. They're actually a network with major insurance providers, so most patients pay $0 out of pocket. 94% of patients pay $0 out of pocket.

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Truls Hellevik was closing out the night shift about 295 feet below the tumultuous surface of the sea. Above him, giant waves churned and bashed into the oil rig. But down where he was, it was quiet and still in the dead of night.

In the midst of the inky darkness, he was swimming outside of a diving bell, and the work light on his helmet surrounded him with a soft glow. He was down there with fellow diver Bjorn Jiver-Bergerson, working on the bottom of the oil rig. It had been a long shift. These divers were expected to work on as little as three hours of sleep, and that night, the two men were tired. Bjorn motioned to his dive watch, tapping its face.

It was past 3 a.m. They were late ascending back to their pressurized chamber. There, two other divers were sleeping, waiting for the men to return and wake them so they could take over maintenance on the bottom of the rig. At a quarter past 3 a.m., Truels and Bjorn entered the diving bell and signaled to the surface team. They were ready to come up. Above the surface, a dive control team operated the crane that would slowly bring the diving bell back up.

For the first hundred feet or so, Trules watched as nothing changed outside of the diving bell's window. It was just pitch black darkness. Finally, the crane arm lifted the diving bell the final few feet out of the water, setting it next to the compression chamber.

Their two dive tenders, men named Bill and Martin, were already there waiting. It was past shift change for them too, and they were pretty tired as well and eager to crawl into their beds on the main part of the rig. But all four men had to be really alert at this part. The transfer from the diving bell to the chamber required precise choreography. There was a specific order of operations when moving from one pressurized space to the other.

First, the trunk, which was a small passageway on the chamber where the diving bell attached, was clamped to the diving bell and pressurized to nine atmospheres, which mimics the pressure of the depths of the ocean where the divers were often working at. Then the divers could open the door on the diving bell into the trunk without losing any pressure because all of the pieces would be at equilibrium. After the divers entered the trunk, they would close the door to the diving bell and reseal it,

And then they would repeat on the other side. Open the door to the chamber, step inside, and then reseal it. And the last step of the process is to slowly depressurize the trunk to one atmosphere, which is the atmospheric pressure of the surface of the ocean, and release the clamp.

This was important because it ensured the men always remained at nine atmospheres of pressure. I'll explain why that's important later, but it was really important that they always remain at nine atmospheres of pressure. So the men started the process. First, there was the clunk and scrape of the metal clamps as Bill and Martin latched the diving bell to the trunk. Then a double thunk of Bill's fist on the bell wall. The trunk was connected and pressurized. All clear.

Bjorn eagerly cranked the wheel, which unlatched the diving bell door. He was halfway out of his wetsuit before Truls finished resealing it. Bjorn then popped the latch handle of the door to the chamber and immediately disappeared for his bunk. And Truls called out after him, "'Don't worry, I'll close it.'"

Trules popped the handle out and yanked, but the hinge jammed. He yanked again, but the door in between the trunk and the chamber was stuck in place, only three quarters of the way closed, and it wouldn't budge in either direction. "'Bjorn!' he shouted. "'Help me!' Outside the chamber, there was the double thunk of Bill's fist."

The signal. It was time to disconnect the bell from the trunk. There was no way for Bill and Martin to know that the door inside was jammed. The chamber was not sealed. If they released the bell now, the rapid change in pressurization would be disastrous. "Bjorn, come back!" Trul shouted. Again, Bill's double thunk. A muffled shout. "Good to release?"

"No, Bill, it's jammed, don't release." Trools pulled on the door as hard as he could, willing the hinge to move. "Wait, don't release it. They didn't know that the door wasn't sealed." Trools never heard the rush of air or the explosion that followed. The Biford Dolphin incident of 1983 was one of the worst commercial diving incidents of the 20th century. In the blink of an eye, five men died and it was completely preventable.

To better explain the mechanics of what happened, I want you to picture a balloon. When you blow into a balloon, you increase the air pressure inside of it. And the force of that extra pressure makes the balloon expand. And as long as you keep the bottom of the balloon pinched, the extra pressure will stay inside. The second you let it go, all of the air flows out and it deflates. Because the air doesn't want to be at a higher pressure. It wants equilibrium. And it will seek that out at any opportunity.

In the case of the Biford Dolphin incident, there were two inflated balloons, the diving bell and the compression chamber. On the morning of November 5th, for whatever reason, one of the dive tenders released the clamp on the trunk before Truls Hellevik had resealed the compression chamber door.

Instantly, all nine atmospheres of pressure inside the chamber escaped through the crack in the door with the force of an explosion. It launched the massive diving bell across the deck of the rig, hitting both dive tenders, killing one and severely injuring the other.

There were four divers inside the compression chamber. Truls Hellevik and Bjorn Bergensen, who had just come off the night shift, and Edwin Coward and Roy Lucas, who were both still asleep ahead of their day shift. Bjorn, Edwin, and Roy died instantly from the decompression. Remember why they were living in the compression chamber in the first place and what causes the bends.

After weeks working at nine atmospheres of pressure, massive amounts of nitrogen gas had built up in their bodies and dissolved into their bloodstream. When the pressure dropped to one atmosphere of pressure, all of the nitrogen gas in their blood was instantly released. To put it in layman's terms, all of the blood inside of them wanted to get out.

Think about it like a sealed bottle of soda. You know that it's carbonated, but until you open it, you can't really see the bubbles because as long as it's sealed, AKA under pressure, the bubbles stay dissolved in the liquid. As soon as you open it and the pressure is gone, all of the bubbles start being released from the liquid. Eventually, the bubbles will dissipate until the soda is flat. A bottle of soda is typically pressurized at two or three atmospheres of pressure,

The divers were at nine. So to really make a point here, think about what happens when the pressure inside of a soda bottle increases, like if you drop it on the ground or shake it up. Try to open it now and the bubbles will explode out of the liquid. Now picture that explosion inside of your body in your bloodstream. That's what happened to the three divers in the chamber.

And unfortunately, what happened to Truls Halavik was even worse. He was standing in front of the partially open compression chamber door when the clamp was released. The immediate rush of the escaping pressure created a massive vacuum, forcing Truls' body through the 24-inch crescent-shaped gap.

This is actually the opposite of what happened to the Titanic submersible in the summer of 2023. Then they were in a submersible that was pressurized to match the surface of the ocean and the pressure of the ocean down there was pushing on the submersible so hard that it cracked. That was the outside of the submersible trying to get in. This was the inside of the submersible trying to get out.

Initially, the accident was attributed to human error, the dive tender who released the clamp on the trunk. It was also suggested that the crew members had been working longer shifts than they were supposed to, and the fatigue also played a role.

But the victims' families challenged this explanation and sued both the Norwegian government and the oil company. The Biford Dolphin was an oil rig built in 1975, and some of the equipment was just outdated. There wasn't a direct line of communication between the divers in the chamber and the dive tenders. They used a megaphone or just shouted through the walls.

More damning, in 1982, a full year before the accident, the Norwegian government mandated new safety fail safes for compression chamber mechanisms. Under the new regulations, the trunk had to be connected with an interlocking mechanism that could not unlatch as long as it was pressurized. But the guidelines only applied to new rigs, not old ones. So the Biford Dolphin didn't have to comply.

After the accident, the rig remained operational. Updating its equipment to meet the new safety standards, it was finally decommissioned in 2016.

I share that with you today because I think stories like this will become our new legends of the North Sea. We don't lose as many sailors as they did in medieval times, but the sea is still violent and powerful, and it doesn't stop for anyone or anything. As humans, we're so used to bending nature around us to fit our will.

But the sea is stronger than all of us. And if you take a boat out in the wrong conditions, build a city in the wrong spot, or fail to check your safety mechanisms far out in the open water, the sea might just take you for itself. That's all I have for you today.

Join me here next week where I turn the microphone outward and share with you your most horrifying stories. That's right. We're doing more listener stories next week and you're not going to want to miss it. Until then, stay curious.

Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Amanda Olson. Additional research and writing by Abigail Cannon. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlop, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart-pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com.