Today, I'm going to tell you a story that at first feels like a typical survival story, but it takes a turn and becomes something else, something spooky. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to mow the like buttons grass, but do it in a totally disorganized fashion, leaving huge chunks of uncut grass. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's story. In the early morning hours before sunrise, on April 12th, 1990, a 31-year-old man named Nathan Neesmith pushed down on the gas throttle of the fishing boat that he was steering just off the Coast of Georgia. And as he did this, he expected the boat to naturally kick into a higher gear and go faster. But as he pushed that throttle down, nothing really happened. And the boat just sputter along, going about half the speed that he expected it to go.

Confused, Nathan stepped away and began making his way out towards the deck where his younger brother, Billy Joe, who was actually the captain of this fishing boat, was out there taking a nap. Nathan figured, if there was any issue with the the boat, Billy Joe was the guy to talk to. He would know how to fix it. Now, for context, the two brothers were on the first day of a seven-day fishing trip that actually Nathan was not supposed to be a part of. The crew was originally going to be Billy Joe, the captain, and the one who actually rented the boat, along with Billy Joe's nephew and also two other commercial fishermen. But at the last second, those two other commercial fishermen had bowed out, and Nathan and a friend had volunteered to go to round out the crew. Now, Nathan and Billy Joe, they came from a fishing family, but it was really only Billy Joe who had pursued the family business. Nathan was perfectly handy out on the water and did know how to fish and knew his way around a fishing boat. But compared to Billy Joe, there was a massive gap in experience.

Billy Joe was the fisherman, and Nathan really was not. But Nathan and Billy Joe were very close. As soon as Nathan heard Billy Joe was in trouble and needed some more fishermen, Nathan didn't hesitate to say he would do it. Because really, for their entire lives, that was their dynamic. Even though Nathan was the older brother, it was Nathan who looked up to Billy Joe, and any chance he got, he would do anything to help Billy Joe. Billy Joe really respected that and loved that about Nathan. But now, as Nathan made his way out to the deck to wake his brother up to tell him on the first day of the trip up, right as Nathan's taking the wheel that something's wrong with the boat and I can't fix it. Also, Nathan was enormous, like 250 pounds, well over 6 feet tall. He was huge, this big physical presence, but he really was not mechanically savvy at Again, Nathan is feeling like, sorry, and also maybe even second guessing whether or not it was even a good idea for him to have come along. If he can't even fix a minor issue with the throttle or the engine, what's he doing here?

But when Nathan woke up his younger brother and explained the issue, Billy Joe was not upset. He was like, Okay, we'll go down below and we'll take a look at the engine and make sure everything is okay. However, when they went down and Billy Joe opened up this hatch to look at the engine, smoke immediately came out, and it was very clear to Billy Joe anyways that this was not a minor issue. Something seriously was wrong with the engine. This was a big problem. Billy Joe began cussing. He's totally frustrated, and he just told Nathan to go down below and tell the other two to wake up and come help. So huge Nathan turned around and went down into the bunker room down below. The second he got down to that level of the fishing boat, he just stopped because there was at least a foot of water in the hallway and in the bunker when he went inside. Nathan screamed at the other two fishermen to get up. They got up and they're looking down. They're seeing all this water. They're starting to panic. Nathan, he goes back upstairs and he yells to Billy Joe, who's dealing with this engine issue, that in addition to that, it appears the boat is also sinking.

Billy Joe is like, Get buckets, go down there and start bailing out the water. I'm going to call Mayday. Billy Joe runs back up to the steering wheel. He grabs the radio, and Nathan and the others can hear him yelling over and over again, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. As that was happening, Nathan and the other two fishermen put on their life vests, grabbed buckets, and went down below to begin manually bailing out the water. But the second they got down there, it was very obvious the water wherever it was leaking into this ship was coming in way faster than they could potentially bail out. But they kept doing it, getting the water out as fast as they could, trying to stay calm. They can hear Billy getting more and more frantic, yelling mayday over and over again. Then all the lights inside of the ship began to flicker, and then they went out, and they were cast into total darkness. The engine basically had stopped, and it was just silence, just the sound of water rushing into this boat. Also, Billy Joe had stopped yelling, Mayday, because clearly, the boat had lost power and the radio didn't work.

Unfortunately, before the power cut out, nobody had heard any of Billy Joe's mayday calls. Nobody knew where they were, nobody knew they were sinking, and without power, they had no way to communicate to anybody. They were totally alone. Nathan, Billy Joe, and the others did the only thing they could They went up to the main deck. They grabbed their inflatable life raft, they blew it up, chucked it over the side, they grabbed as many supplies as they could, put it in the raft, they all made sure they had all their flotation on, and then they jumped into the life raft, abandoning the sinking fishing boat. Now, once all four men were safely inside of this life raft, they were not as panicked as you might think they would be because they had put enough food and water in this raft to last them at least several days. They all again had their life fests on, so proper flotation. Even though nobody responded to those mayday calls, it wasn't impossible to think that maybe somebody had heard the mayday calls and they just had not called back. Maybe there was a rescue operation coming to their location right now.

They didn't know, but it felt plausible that they could be rescued. They would just need to ration out their supplies and stay optimistic. However, their optimism quickly fated when after only being in this life raft for 30 minutes, right as the sun was starting to come up, Nathan began to hear a strange sound. It was coming from somewhere in the life raft, he couldn't quite place the sound. At first, he tried to ignore it, but then he noticed the life raft was becoming softer. Then he realized the sound he heard was a small hiss. The raft had a leak. Even though the four men were able to trace the sound of this leak to the actual puncture, they didn't have a patch kit or any meaningful way to patch up this hole. And so all they could do was just put their hands over this leak and do their best to seal it. But it didn't stop the air from coming out. It just delayed it. And so over the next hour, again, as the sun is just coming up on the second day of their big fishing trip, the raft finally completely deflated, and all four men were suddenly bobbing in the freezing cold ocean, surrounded by the wreckage of their sinking fishing boat.

And so eventually, the men grabbed the biggest piece of wood from the wreckage that came floating by, and it was voyant enough that it served as a makeshift raft, but it wasn't voyant enough to hold all four of them at once, which meant they had to take turns, rest resting on this raft, and then they'd have to get back in the ocean and wait their turn again. I mean, totally miserable. And as this was happening, they just stared at the haul of their sinking fishing boat that was still poking up out of the ocean, just drift farther and farther away from them because the current was pretty strong. And as they watched their ship just disappear into the distance, and they're just drifting out into the middle of the ocean, they were all just stunned into silence. They could not believe how this had happened and so quickly. And also, what were they going to I mean, they're in the worst possible situation here. It just didn't seem possible that they could actually survive this. Now, for reference, even though the men had salvaged a lot of their food and water from the sinking life raft, and they had their flotation devices on, that didn't protect them from hypothermia.

It wouldn't matter if it was super warm outside. What mattered is the ocean was really cold, and because they couldn't stay on that raft, they had to keep cycling through, going back in the ocean over and over again. It was just a matter of time before they would get hypothermia. Sometimes hypothermia can kick in in just a couple of hours. We're not talking days here. This is going to be quick. All these guys knew that. As these men were forced to have these really morbid discussions around who's going to stay in the water and who's going to stay on the raft, Nathan made a drastic decision. Nathan, being by far the biggest physically out of the four men, he knew that if he wasn't there right now, the other three could easily fit on their makeshift raft and stay out of the water, delaying hypothermia, thereby increasing the odds that they got rescued. Nathan did what he always did, and he turned to his younger brother who he looked up to so much, who he just wanted to help all the time. Nathan told him, I'm going to swim to the wreckage. I'm going to swim back to the hull of our sinking ship, and I'm going to fashion my own makeshift raft.

That way you guys can have this one, and I'll have my own, and we can all get out of here in one piece. Now, keep in mind, it was fairly obvious that the hull of the sinking ship, which was barely visible people near the horizon, was at least three miles away just from their own rough calculations. So this is a monster swim to get to that. And so immediately Billy Joe and the other three were like, No, that is a suicide mission. You cannot do that. Do not swim to the Hull. You're not going to make it. Now, just to give some additional context here, if you're not familiar with just how challenging swimming in the open ocean is, I'm going to give you my limited experience. So when I was in the military, we had to do one five and a half mile open ocean swim, and then also We did a whole bunch of two mile ocean swims. Even though we were allowed to use amazing wetsuits and fins, we had a swim partner with us, we had the land nearby to use as a reference to make sure we're going the right direction.

We had food, we had water, we were in great shape. Even with all of that, open ocean swims are miserable. You get all this salt in your mouth and your nose, you start cramping and chafing. I mean, it takes hours and hours and hours to swim some of these distances, and you're constantly fighting against the waves. I mean, it is an absolute chore swimming in the open ocean, again, even with all the right stuff in place. You got to remember, Nathan is this big guy. He's got this big, bulky life vest on that's going to make it hard to swim. He doesn't have fins, he doesn't have a wetsuit, and he's got no landmarks around him to make sure he's going in a straight line. Typically, when you're swimming in the ocean, you're constantly looking at the land or some other landmark to make sure you're going in the right direction. He wouldn't have had that. Also, it's this unknown distance he's covering, and there could be predators in the water. I mean, there's so many barriers here that basically there was a zero % chance this swim would be successful. But Nathan totally understood what he was really doing here.

He didn't really know if he was actually going to make it to that boat. Frankly, that was not really the point. What he was really doing was choosing to sacrifice himself to potentially save his brother and the other two. And so even though they were telling him, Do not go. Do not swim in that direction. You're not going to make it. Nathan just turned to his brother Billy Joe and said, I love you. And then he turned and began swimming. And by some miracle, 11 hours later, right as the sun was setting, Nathan was still alive and still swimming, and he did reach the sinking boat that still had its haul poking out of the water. Now, when Nathan got to the sinking ship, he was almost dead. From dehydration, from hypothermia. I mean, he's miserable, but he's made it to his destination completely against all odds. And he climbed up onto this haul and he found a spot on the haul of the ship that supported his weight. And he managed to tie himself using some rope or maybe his life to the haul. So he was anchored in place. And then he didn't get to sleep because the whole time he's thinking, this thing could sink under the water at any point and it will drag me with it because I'm tied to it.

Or he could just drift off of it if his rigging came undone, if he was asleep. And so all night, beyond exhausted, he's just holding onto this haul. Not really sure what's going to happen, but here he is, just waiting it out. And then finally, when the sun came up that next morning, as Nathan looked around him, he's in the middle of the ocean, he sees he's in the direction he had come from, this pillar of smoke coming up over the horizon. Nathan, he rubs his eyes. He can't believe it. He's thinking, There's no way. There's already a ship out here. We're in the middle of nowhere. But sure enough, slowly but surely, this massive The freighter's ship came into view that was very far away. It's not near Nathan, but he can see it clear as day. Where the ship was basically circling was roughly where he believed his brother and the other two fishermen were still floating. He's thinking, Oh, my goodness, the freighter is going to save them, and then it's going to come save me. Nathan just clung onto the hall and watched as this freighter made these big slow loops right around that same area.

Then the freighter came to a full stop, and it appeared to lower something down into the water. It seemed very much like a full-blown rescue operation. Then about three hours after he first spotted this freighter, the freighter began to move again, and this time directly towards Nathan. Nathan was so relieved he could practically cry. But instead, what he did is thought, They're going to be here in a minute. I'm finally just going to close my eyes and go to sleep. So he put his head down on the hall, looked one more time at the freighter, and then closed his eyes. Now, Nathan would be rescued, but it would not be by that huge freighter ship. Nathan eventually had opened his eyes after closing them for a second, and he saw this freighter that had been coming straight for him, at some point had deviated and gone in the wrong direction and then vanished over the horizon, never to be seen again. It would take three more days before a separate ship happened to find Nathan. They scooped him up and they rescued him. But even though Nathan had been really crushed when that freighter had gone the wrong way, he held on to this idea that that freighter had clearly rescued his brother and the other two fishermen.

Certainly, even if they couldn't find him, they would go back and they would tell the authorities that Nathan is out there. We swam back to the haul of the ship. We got to go find him. Certainly, a rescue effort would be on the way. It was true. A rescue boat had come out and found Nathan, so everything seemed to be tracking. When Nathan woke woke up inside of his hospital room back on land. His friends and family were all by his bedside, and he's looking around. He can't believe he survived. The first thing he asks is, How's my brother? How are the other two fishermen? Why didn't that freighter pick me up, too? If With this, all the people in the room just looked at Nathan with a very confused look on their face. Eventually, they asked him a question that made Nathan burst out in tears. They said, What freighter? It would turn out Billy Joe and the other two fishermen were still missing at this point, and nobody Nobody had heard a thing about some big freighter in the area. As far as anybody knew, at least in Nathan's family, that freighter ship did not exist.

The search for Billy Joe and the remaining two crew members went on for weeks and weeks. While the active search out in the ocean was going on, the Coast Guard and police were searching through every record they could possibly find of basically any ship that was even roughly in the area where Nathan and the others had been. But despite looking everywhere, there was basically no sign that any ship of any kind had been there beyond the rescue operation that eventually scooped up Nathan. Again, it seemed very likely that that freighter ship didn't exist. It was possible that Nathan, in his very deteriorated state, had maybe hallucinated it. Although Nathan was adamant, he definitely saw that ship. It did not feel like a multi-hour long hallucination. It felt like he was watching a ship. He was sure of it. But again, there was just no proof, and so nobody knew what to think of that. Then eventually, even though there was this huge search going on, there was just no sign of Billy Joe or the others. And so eventually the search was called off. And unfortunately, the presumption was Billy Joe and the other two were now dead.

Five months later, on the afternoon of October fifth, 1990, The phone rang inside of Nathan's sister's home. Now, by this point, the victim's families had all tried to restart their lives following this tragedy. But deep down, none of them could truly accept that Billy Joe and the other two fishermen were just gone. They just couldn't It was too soon. It felt like any moment, they were going to get news that they had been rescued by some freighter ship or something. And so any time a phone rang in any of these families' homes, it's like they would rush to the phone with a sense of hope that this time it's going to be different. Their loved ones are going to be okay, only to obviously be crushed when that was not the case. But on this day, on October fifth, that phone call that came through in Nathan's sister's home, that one was different. When Nathan's mother picked up this phone call in Nathan's sister's home, she answered it and said hello, and right away she thought, Oh, this has to be a wrong number, because the person who was calling was speaking in rapid Spanish, and she didn't understand what they were saying.

But as she was about to hang up, the collar, intermittently throughout their rapid Spanish, began saying something in English that Nathan's mother could understand, and it totally shocked her. The caller kept saying Nathan's sister's name over and over again, followed by Nathan's sister's phone number, on repeat, the name, the phone number in English over and over and over again. Nathan's mom is so caught off guard by this that she just listened, not even sure what to do. Then before she could ask any follow-up questions, the caller cut the line, and the phone call was over. Then a few minutes later, another phone rang in a home that was not far away from Nathan's sister's home. This other home belonged to the boat owner who Billy Joe had rented the fishing boat from that unfortunately sank and caused this whole tragedy. So this boat owner, he picks up the phone, he answers it. Just like the call that had come through in Nathan's sister's house, this call was the same. It was somebody calling, speaking rapid Spanish, and the boat owner was about to hang up when he heard something that he understood because it was in English.

What he heard was his own name, followed by his phone number over and over and over again. Basically, the same type of call that Nathan's mom had just heard. Then before the boat owner could ask any questions, the line went dead. Now, one phone call like this, you could chalk up to maybe a prank or a wrong number or just a really weird coincidence. But to have those the two calls happen within minutes of each other and basically take on the exact same form, but different names and different phone numbers, it just seemed way too coincidental to not be somehow connected to the missing fishermen because the link between these two households where these calls came in was the doomed fishing trip, and these calls did not stop. Every few weeks after this first time these calls came through, the phone would ring in Nathan's sister's house or in the boat owner's house, and it would be the same thing all over again. Rapid Spanish, followed by either Nathan's sister's name and then her phone number or the boat owner's name and his phone number, just like that for weeks and weeks and weeks. As soon as this started happening, Nathan's family and the boat owner, they figured out they were both getting these weird calls, and they contacted authorities, which restarted the search for Billy Joe and the Missing Fishermen because now it seemed very plausible that maybe Nathan really had seen a freighter and that freighter really had picked up Billy Joe and the others.

Maybe they had been taken to another country, a Spanish-speaking country, and maybe people were trying to get in touch with the families now to get them back home. Or, of course, there could be a negative side to this that maybe they were captured by some rogue vessel and were being held by these people who were calling. I mean, there's any number of theories, but it made authorities wonder, Hey, what's going on here? And so authorities got in touch with Mexican authorities and other Spanish-speaking country authorities and tried to figure out if there was any chance that there was a vessel out there around the time that Billy Joe and the others were missing that in theory could have maybe He illegally been in that area or something. But despite this exhaustive effort to look again to see if maybe there was a freighter in that area, there was just no evidence that there was. It made no sense. But the authorities said, Look, we have no idea what these calls are about. We still do not think that freighter or any ship that even resembled a freighter was out there. We still believe that Billy Joe and the others are dead.

But as for the victim's families, they just didn't buy that. They really believed that these strange phone calls were somehow connected to Billy Joe and the Missing Fishermen. Specifically, these calls must signal that Billy Joe and the others were still alive. They just had no evidence to support that. That is, until March 6, 1991, so almost a year after the doomed fishing vessel sank and Billy Joe and the Others went missing, on that day, the phone rang inside of Nathan's sister's home, and she answered it, and it was the voice who spoke in rapid Spanish, but this time they spoke in perfect English, and all they said was, I'm bringing him home. Then Then the line went dead. Nathan's sister screamed and she yelled for her husband to call police. They contacted the authorities. Again, it brought back to life the search for Billy Joe and the missing fishermen. Then after this call, there was a near constant presence of authorities on the Georgia Coast Line, basically looking out to the water, waiting, hoping for Billy Joe and the others to return. But unfortunately, they never did. Following that last phone call where the collar spoke in perfect English and said, I'm bringing him home, after that, the call stopped.

To this day, no one has ever been able to actually figure out what happened to Billy Joe and the other two fishermen. They are presumed dead at this point. But there's this one nagging question that surrounds the whole story, and that is, what did Nathan see? Was that actually a freighter picking up Billy Joe and the others? If so, what did they do with them? Or was Nathan just hallucinating? It's entirely possible, but Nathan has always said he knows what he saw, and that was not a hallucination. As for the families of the victims, they still firmly believe that their loved ones are still out there, and someday they will come back home, and the families just hope they're alive long enough to be there for the reunion. So that's going to do it. If you enjoyed today's story and you want more strange, dark, and mysterious content, keep in mind we have a whole slew of podcasts under the Balin Studios umbrella. All you have to do is go to any podcast platform that you like, search for Balin Studios, and you can find Mr. Balin podcast, you can find Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries, Run Full, Bedtime Stories.

All of these are available right now. I mean, you got hundreds of hours of strange, dark, and mysterious content to go bitch. So again, look up Balin Studios on any podcast platform, and boom, you're in. Thank you so much for the support. Until next time. See you. Wait, don't go anywhere. If you're looking for more strange, dark, and mysterious videos, click here.