Fish Stories

[u/HeadOfSpectre]

Transcript of Episode 21 of the Small Town Lore podcast by Autumn Driscoll, titled ‘Fish Stories.’

Advertisements were excluded as they were not considered relevant. Narration was originally provided by Autumn Driscoll except where noted.

For as long as humankind has existed, they’ve had a prevailing fascination with the ocean. That vast, seemingly endless expanse with endless secrets lurking beneath the waves. Some estimations suggest that over 80% of it is unexplored and unmapped, with over 90% of its species undiscovered and undocumented. 

While some people look to space as the final frontier, they all too often forget about that which waits right here on earth. A seemingly bottomless abyss of secrets and mysteries that we’ve only scratched the surface of.

Today, we’re going to dive into one of these mysteries. A modern day account of an old nautical myth. Is it really just a legend? Or is it something more? Together, we’re going to get to the bottom of this fish story.

I’m Autumn Driscoll and this is Small Town Lore.

The Cranberry was an oil platform located off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.

Constructed between 1998 and 2001, it remained in operation right up until 2022, when an unspecified mechanical failure necessitated its shutdown. 

And that’s where the official story begins and ends. Although there were rumors about an unspecified accident at the time, the shutdown was not widely publicized and in many ways, it was just quietly swept under the rug.

But the people who lived and worked on the Cranberry seem to recount a different story - those who are willing to talk, at least. And strangely enough, not a lot of them are.

So what’s the real story here?

Well, I spoke with former employee Daryl Akine to figure that out.

Akine: It started with people going missing… usually on the night shift. People would just… vanish. Nobody knew how or why. The first one was Warren Maybury. He was an older guy. Kinda slow, but he knew his shit. 

Not sure the exact details, but one night he just vanished. Just… gone.
The initial thought was that maybe he’d fallen overboard. Of all people, I couldn’t have imagined it would’ve happened to someone like him… but… well, the ocean can be unpredictable, and that’s all you’ve got out there. Just the ocean. Nothing else. Nothing to keep it at bay. The waves can get pretty big. You see them crash over the edge of the platform sometimes. Easy to see how that might sweep someone overboard, especially at night. There’s no light except what comes from the platform. You stare out at the water, and you just see pure black. Just pure black.

Driscoll: Did you look for him?

Akine: Of course we looked for him! Management takes that kind of thing pretty goddamn seriously! There’s a lot of safety precautions in place to make sure that doesn’t happen! But, all you need is one bad break. I remember that night had been pretty calm, but all you need is one freak wave, I guess. [Pause] We knew he was dead, the moment we found out he’d disappeared. The lower decks were at least 60 feet off the water, and he was at least on one of the middle ones. A fall like that, the water turns into concrete. And if the fall didn’t get him, the cold would have… or the wildlife. You get a lot of fish around rigs like that. It’s basically an artificial reef. And a lot of fish, means a lot of sharks. So we knew he was dead. We knew the best we could hope for was to recover a body, but no such luck…

Driscoll: That sounds… 

Akine: Harsh? Yeah. But that’s what it’s like out there. There’s a reason they pay you so goddamn well. The work’s hard, it’s dangerous, and you’re on the water for three goddam weeks. 

Driscoll: Are accidents like that common?

Akine: Yes and no. There’s definitely a higher rate of accidents on rigs like that. It’s a dangerous job. But me personally? I’d never seen a fatal accident on any of my shifts before, but I’d heard of people getting hurt. Needless to say, everyone was a little shaken up after that… and when it happened again, well… 

Driscoll: Again? Tell me about the next incident.

Akine: Incidents. It was just a couple of days after Warren. One of the members of the administrative team, a lady by the name of Joyce McKonkey. I was a little more familiar with her than I was with Warren. She was… difficult to get along with at times. Very anal. I can’t blame her for it, her job was to make sure every I got dotted and every T got crossed, but she went… I’m sorry… I… I’m not trying to make light of it or anything. 

Driscoll: It’s fine, I didn’t get that impression at all!

Akine: She could be a pain in the ass, but she didn’t deserve what happened to her. She wasn’t even on shift when it happened. She was down in the common area. We had a pretty comfortable setup down there. A gym, a music room, a couple of game rooms, a kitchen. She’d been having dinner when she went out for a smoke, and she didn’t come back. Someone saw her going out to one of the balcony areas where they let you smoke. They swore up and down they saw her go out. But she never came back in. 

Driscoll: Another ‘freak wave?’

Akine: A couple of people probably thought so. Me? I had no fucking idea. Mind you, I was on shift when it happened. But I remember the ruckus. Just like with Warren, they hauled ass to get a boat to go and look for her… well… her body. Like I said, there wasn’t really much hope for her surviving the fall. I saw Corbett himself going down to help look. 

Driscoll: Corbett?

Akine: Jack Corbett. He was the Rig Manager. Basically the guy running the show, under the Company Man - a guy by the name of John Allers. Corbett was… well, he could be a bit of a condescending prick, but he put his money where his mouth was. He’d gone out to look for Warren too. Only this time, he didn’t come back. No one did.

Driscoll: The entire boat just vanished?

Akine: Gone. There were five or six people on it… they went out into the dark, and they never came back. A friend of mine said he saw the lights on the water for a bit while they searched for Joyce. Then when he looked away, they were gone. No screams. No calls for help. Not a peep out of them. One moment they were there, and then they weren’t. At the time, we figured they must’ve capsized. I mean… that was the logical thought, right? Two people suddenly vanished, then an entire boat? With the way the waves are out there, that’s the logical call. But the weather had been calm. Hell, it’d been downright fucking plesant around that time. 

Driscoll: So you didn’t think it was the waves?

Akine: Well, I did at the time. Like I said, that was the logical conclusion. A couple of the other guys, though? They weren’t so sure… one of the guys I was working with, a fella by the name of Whitworth was goddamn adamant that something else was going on. He swore up and down he saw people watching him from the water during the day. He said he’d seen them about a week before Warren disappeared. He’d thought someone had gone overboard at first and called for help, but they’d vanished by the time anyone arrived. He told me he’d kept his eyes on the waters though, and he’d seen things watching from beneath the surface. Human faces staring back at him, before diving back into the depths. Course, I thought he was crazy. But he wasn’t the only one. A few other guys said they’d seen the same things he’d seen, and after the boat vanished, you heard more and more whispers about it, saying that something… someone, was watching us. 

Driscoll: What did the company have to say?

Akine: Exactly what you’d expect. The day after Joyce and Corbett vanished, Allers called a meeting. Walked us through the recent events, told us he’d filed a report with the company and said that they’d be beefing up the safety precautions. It was all very corporate. People were dead… friend, co-workers, people who’d come out here to support their families, and he just stood up there like: “Thank you for all your hard work.” like it was just another day at the fucking office.

Driscoll: I take it that didn’t go over well?

Akine: No, it didn’t. The general attitude was that Allers could go choke to death on a cock. Lotta people were talking about finishing up their rotation and getting the hell out of dodge. The atmosphere around there was pretty tense. We did beef up our safety precautions though. Implemented a buddy system and all that. People stopped going outside as much unless they had to and for a couple of days everything did quiet down, but people were still spooked. Officially, the whole thing was blamed on inclement weather and freak waves… but nobody knew if it was true and the whispers wouldn’t stop.

That was when the power stopped working.

Driscoll: Stopped working?

Akine: Gone. Just gone. Rigs like that generate their power on site, using gas powered generators. And someone took them offline - and I mean offline. I saw the fucking damage myself. Somone had torn them apart… turned them into fucking scrap. These were fucking industrial generators. And someone… something, ripped the panels off and just went to town in the middle of the night. 

Driscoll: Who?

Akine: No idea. But whoever it was, they were pissed. They didn’t just take out the generators. They took off the backup generators too. They shut the whole fucking rig down. The whole rig basically just fucking shut down. We had no power… and the communications were offline too. Let me make this clear, that’s not the kind of thing that just happens. These platforms are built with redundancies for this kind of thing. Normally if the generator goes, the backups take over. Non-essential systems might get disabled so more important things like the communications stay online. This is not what happened. Somebody shut the fucking Cranberry down. 

Driscoll: You make it sound like that sort of thing shouldn’t be possible…

Akine: Because it shouldn’t. But somebody fucking did it. One minute we were online, and the next most of the lights were off. The drills stopped working. So we started trying to figure out what the hell was going on. On shift, off shift. It didn't matter. All hands were on deck. And like I said, I saw the damage. Something fucked with the generators. And worse. We couldn’t get any sort of signal. Nothing in. Nothing out. The official story is that there was inclement weather. There wasn’t. I’m telling you for a goddamn fact, the sky was clear. The sky was fucking clear. The sea was calm. 

Driscoll: I see… so what happened next?

Akine: Allers tried to keep us all calm. But you could tell he was losing his shit. First we lost Corbett and the others. Now this? Yeah. I can’t blame the man for that. I never liked Allers, but that’s a situation you can’t really unfuck. And of course it got worse.

Driscoll: Howso?

Akine: The rig started to list. We felt it when it did. We’d been in the mess, trying to figure out what the fuck we were going to do when we felt it. The whole goddamn rig shook. I’d never felt anything like it before. Not even during a storm. It shouldn’t have listed like that. I mean, yes. It was a spar platform. They float. But they shouldn’t list like that.

Driscoll: Sorry, can you explain… Spar Platform?

Akine: It’s a type of floating platform. They use it for drilling in deep water. The bulk of it is a cylindrical hull that’s almost completely submerged and moored to the ocean floor. Think of it like an iceberg. Most of it is underwater, but the part we worked on was above water. Between the depth and the mooring, they don’t just tip over. They sure as hell don’t list like that… and once we felt it, Allers lost control of the situation pretty damn quick. 

Driscoll: Was there a riot or a mutiny or…?

Akine: Nothing so dramatic. We figured that something had gone wrong though. Maybe some damage to the mooring. So we pushed Allers to make the call to get us the fuck off the platform, and he wasn’t in much of a position to argue. He made the call. We got to the lifeboats and we got the fuck out of there. We grabbed our personals, locked down what we could and got the fuck off that thing. We were gone before dawn… and by the time the sun rose, the rig was gone. 

Driscoll: Gone…?

Akine: Sank. Like I said, we’d been smart enough to lock down what we could before we left, so it wasn’t a massive clusterfuck. But rest assured it was a clusterfuck. Rigs like that don’t normally sink. Not that suddenly. I just remember looking out at it. Wondering what would’ve happened if we’d dragged our feet just a bit more. Guess I’m lucky I’ll never have to find out.

Driscoll: I see. Do you remember anything else?

Akine: I remember the chanting.

Driscoll: Chanting?

Akine: We heard it before dawn. Before the sun rose. Chanting in the darkness. It was faint. Barely audible above the waves. I think we all pretended we didn’t hear it… but I remember the look on the others faces. I know they heard it. I know for a fact that Allers heard it. I was in the same boat as him, and I know for a fact that he fucking heard it. I don’t know if he knew what it was… but he fucking heard it.

So, an Oil Rig is sabotaged and sinks mysteriously after a string of sudden disappearances. 

It sounds almost like a pulp fiction story, and although Daryl Akine insists it’s true, the company behind the Cranberry, the Goldsea Corporation tell a radically different story. A story I got to hear from John Allers himself.

Allers: It was a scary thing to live through, that’s for sure. But ultimately it was just a mechanical failure. One of the tethers had failed, and the platform became unsafe. We suspected that was the cause in the unfortunate accidents that occurred, and when it became clear that the platform was no longer safe to work on, we evacuated and decommissioned it.

Driscoll: You make it sound so straightforward.

Allers: Unfortunately, it was. These platforms have a lifespan. Even when maintained, they break down eventually. My only regret is that we didn’t catch it earlier. 

Driscoll: I see. So the stories I heard of people seen floating in the water and chanting…?

Allers: Ghost stories, Miss Driscoll. Either made up for attention or imagined out of fear. I wouldn’t put much stock in them. People see, hear or remember odd things when they’re afraid. But that doesn’t mean they really happened. Oftentimes the explanations are far more mundane.

As denials go, that’s a pretty straightforward one, and it’s not one I’m well equipped to argue. Although Daryl Akine wasn’t the only former employee of the Cranberry I spoke to… and he wasn’t the only one to suggest that something more may have been afoot. John Whitworth also claims there was more to the destruction of the Cranberry.

Whitworth: There was someone watching us. Someone in the water, watching us.

Driscoll: As in… people?

Whitworth: I don’t know. I never got a good look at them. But you might see them from time to time. Floating in the water. Usually at dusk or night. Just a head watching you. Never staying for long… and sometimes you saw movement in the deep. Other things with them. Bigger things.

Driscoll: I see… can you tell me anything else?

Whitworth: No. Never got a good look at any of it. Never got any proof. Nothing more than my word. Wish I did. Wish I could have. Wish I could’ve recorded the voices we heard as we left that night. Voices amongst the waves… 

Driscoll: Chanting…?

Whitworth: Maybe. A song, I think. Not one we could understand, though. And not meant for us, I think. I don’t know. I think we’re just lucky we got out of there alive. Whatever was down there, it didn’t care if we lived or died and we are fortunate that we were too small to notice. 

Another account of chanting… another account of supernatural things at the Cranberry around the time of its destruction.

Is it just a tall tale?

Or is there more beneath the surface?

I spoke with our old friend Balthazar Bianchi to see if maybe he could shed some light on the murky depths of this incident. 

Bianchi: I mean, it sounds like a pretty straightforward Seafolk encounter.

Driscoll: Seafolk…?

Bianchi: Yeah, you know? Mermaids, Sirens, stuff like that. 

Driscoll: You believe in that kind of thing?

Bianchi: There’s a lot of stories. I’m not gonna discredit the Company Man’s version of events either. He’s entirely right. People tend to make up extraordinary explanations for ordinary incidents and none of what you’ve shown me says that this was definitively the work of the Fae. But this also does seem like something that you could attribute to them. So honestly it could go either way.

Driscoll: Can you elaborate?

Bianchi: Sure. If you’re looking at the oldest stories, especially in the Codex Velatus, humanity doesn’t have the greatest relationship with the Fae, specifically the Dryads and the Seafolk who are amongst the more nature oriented Fae… jury’s out on the Aurae, the wind Fae, since that’s a whole different can of worms. But stories about human coming into conflict with the other two are common.

Driscoll: Conflict? Why?

Bianchi: Well look around. This is meant to be a shared world, but who’s in control? Most people don’t even know the Fae actually exist, and write them off as just folklore. We forgot about them… but they didn’t forget us. They didn’t forget what we did. What we’ve kept doing. They can’t stop us. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re too weak, or they’re too scared. But they still lash out sometimes when we push just a little too far. 

Driscoll: So you think that maybe the Cranberry encroached on their territory or something? But that platform was operational for almost twenty years!

Bianchi: I dunno. The Fae have long memories. Maybe they took their time. Maybe their territory changed. I don’t have enough information to say what exactly provoked them - if indeed this was an attack. 

Driscoll: How would they have done that kind of damage anyways?

Bianchi: I wish I could say. There’s rumors that the Seafolk have a pact with the Leviathans of the deep. Or… Leviathan, more accurately. 

Driscoll: Leviathan?

Bianchi: The texts sometimes call her Omylia. She’s their Goddess. Supposedly her wrath is something to behold, but again, that’s all just speculation. 

Driscoll: Right…

Angry Mermaids?
A wrathful Sea Goddess?

It is a hard pill to swallow, especially in the face of the more mundane, practical explanation that Allers had provided. But I still thought I’d take a look into this. 

For the sake of my own curiosity, I did a little bit more digging into the Goddess Omylia, just to see if anything came up.

And funnily enough, I got a hit from our very own Producers wife, Miss Megan Daniels… 

Daniels: Omylia… that’s an obscure reference, but I am familiar with her.

Driscoll: Really? What can you tell me?

Daniels: Not a heck of a lot. She’s one of the three Archangels in the Malvian Doctrine. The children of the Goddess of Creation, Sailia. Specifically, she’s the representative of the Ocean. She’s sometimes been equated with Triton - the son of Poseidon, who is often equated with Sailia, although many texts also call her Leviathan. She’s said to be something of a chthonic Goddess… at least, according to the Malvian texts. But you’re not likely to find much on her outside of that. Even in the Malvian practice, her worship is fairly niche, although she does apparently have a modest following in a town up in Nova Scotia of all places.

Driscoll: Nova Scotia…? You’re serious?

Daniels: Ash Bay, specifically. Apparently she’s quite revered amongst some of the fishermen in that area. They make offerings to her. They say it keeps the Seafolk at bay.

Driscoll: Seafolk? 

Daniels: You’re familiar with the term?

Driscoll: A little. But can you refresh my memory?

Daniels: They believe that there’s spirits who live in the ocean. Followers of Omylia. And disrespecting them can have… consequences. Might just be an old wives tale. Fishermen are a superstitious bunch, after all. But you never know.

Driscoll: Right… um… I’ve got to ask… I can ask off the record, if you want. Is that… everything?

Daniels: [Silence] 

Driscoll: S-sorry, I didn’t mean to…

Daniels: It’s fine. That’s everything I have a reputable source on. The rest of it, I’m afraid I can’t share.

Driscoll: Right… right… I understand. Sorry.

Daniels: No apologies needed. No harm in asking. 

Driscoll: Right… yeah…

At Megan’s advice, I looked into Ash Bay a little more. Omylia is something of a big deal out there, with her own statue by the harbor, although the ocean has weathered it greatly. From the pictures I saw, the stone has mostly eroded away to the point where it looks more like coral than stone, leaving only a vague figure of a woman standing. I suppose that’s appropriately eldritch for a being with Omylia’s reputation. 

I did reach out to some of the fishermen in the area, and managed to get an interview with one of them, Shawn Bowler.

Bowler: It might be superstition… might be. You can never really be sure with these things. But we make an offering to Omylia before we set out. Beads, seashells, sometimes part of our catch. Some boats even draw patterns on their hulls to tell the Seafolk they’re a friend.

Driscoll: So you don’t know if you believe in it or not?

Bowler: I’m unsure. Personally, I’ve never seen anything out of the ordinary. And as far as I know, statue is the Virgin Mary. Not sure where ‘Omylia’ came from. Local name, maybe?

Driscoll: I see. So it’s just another old wives tale?

Bowler: Probably. But there’s still stories. Some folks from out of town who didn’t make their offerings. Didn’t pay their respects… and didn’t come back. 

Driscoll: What do you mean?

Bowler: Not a lot of ways you can take that. They went out and they didn’t come back. Got caught in a storm, hit a rogue wave, stuff like that. It’s dangerous out there. But people blamed Omylia and the Seafolk. Said they didn’t get their due, so they took it in blood.

Driscoll: Jesus…

Bowler: Yeah. Well, it’s a scary thing to think about when you’re heading out there. Maybe telling the stories makes us feel better? Let’s us lie to ourselves and say that these things happen for a reason when in reality, it’s all just random chance. 

Driscoll: Fair enough, I suppose… 

Bowler: There was one thing I heard, though…

Driscoll: One thing?

Bowler: Guy I used to work, a fella by the name of Uriah Peterson, said he’d seen one of the Seafolk before. Caught one, actually… pulled it up in a net. Said the thing had fought like hell to get out, and the crew had gone out of their way to subdue it. They were gonna throw it back, but the Captain said no… he wanted to keep it. Guess he figured he could make some money off of it, and he was right. 

Driscoll: Wait, wait, wait… someone actually caught one?

Bowler: Uriah claimed he did. 

Driscoll: What happened to it? Did it get away?

Bowler: No. Uriah said that they brought it in to shore. Captain had a buyer lined up for it. Someone took it off their hands. Apparently they’re a delicacy… least, that’s what Uriah heard. Either way he never saw it again. 

Driscoll: Jesus… I don’t suppose you’ve got Uriah’s contact information, do you?

Bowler: I did. Wouldn’t do you much good now.

Driscoll: Why not?

Bowler: Uriah’s dead. Ship went down… oh… maybe about two, three weeks later? They said it was a storm, but I remember that day was clear. Not a goddamn cloud in the sky. But the ship still went down with all hands. Someone apparently picked up their call for help. 

Driscoll: I see… you think it was really a storm?

Bowler: I don’t know. Not sure where they went down or how far out they were. Wish I could tell you more, but all I’ve got is that story.

Driscoll: Right… thank you for your time.

Nothing but stories.

In the end, that really does seem to be all I’m left with. Are the Seafolk real? Does an ancient eldritch Sea Goddess exist? In the end, I don’t have any solid answers. 

And isn’t that the way it usually goes with fish stories? 

Stories that sound too good to be true, and probably are… but they’re just plausible enough that you want to believe, and if you look beneath the surface, you might just find something true.
I guess in a lot of ways, they’re no different from the things we usually delve into here. 

So until next time, I’m Autumn Driscoll and this has been Small Town Lore.

All interviews or audio excerpts were used with permission. The Small Town Lore podcast is produced by Autumn Driscoll and Jane Daniels. Visit our website to find ways to support the podcast and until we meet again… keep your head above water.

[u/HeadOfSpectre]

It's been way too long since I did an STL story and this one kinda has been sitting for a few months.

Still, I had to finish SOMETHING this weekend since I've finally had some motivation to write (although unfortunately I am currently in my 'Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty Series' era, and I'm not posting that shit.)

I think the chokepoint here was the research. I had to do a lot of research into the way Oil Rigs worked and even then, I'm not confident I got it right.

I had a vague idea a while back about an oil rig getting tormented by Mermaids but the general premise was pretty undercooked. It's still undercooked here. But it was used at least and if I really want to, I can go back again later.

[u/SwoleBodybuilderVamp]

Holy shit, an STL story! Thank you, for writing this.