Quiet Clues

Category: Filed Fiction

Stories from the edge of imagination—haunting, speculative, and never confirmed.

  • The Wreck That Shouldn’t Be There

    The Wreck That Shouldn’t Be There

    They found it by accident.

    A research vessel, Aegir’s Reach, was surveying deep-water coral beds 130 miles off the Azores when sonar pinged something solid. Too smooth to be rock. Too still to be alive.

    At 2,700 meters down, cameras revealed a shipwreck resting perfectly upright. No coral growth. No collapse. Hull intact. The nameplate read Felicity Dawn—a merchant vessel supposedly decommissioned and dismantled in 1972… in New Jersey.

    There are no records of it leaving port. No logs. No crew manifest. Maritime authorities insist it never sailed again. Insurance paid. Parts sold. Scrapped clean.

    And yet here it is. At the bottom of an ocean it never crossed.

    Divers who reviewed the footage noted something else: the propellers had never turned. The paint hadn’t even chipped. It looked… preserved. Waiting.

    One expert called it a “logistical ghost.”

    Another pointed out the oddity in the timestamp.

    Footage from the submersible shows the wreck’s internal clock, still mounted above the bridge.

    It reads:

    03:12 AM

    And it’s still ticking.

  • The Lighthouse That Blinks Too Slowly

    The Lighthouse That Blinks Too Slowly

    Off the southern tip of Sakonnet Point, Rhode Island, stands a lighthouse long since automated. It flashes every six seconds, as it should—except when it doesn’t.

    Fishermen have reported irregular blinks: seven seconds… nine… then three in a row, far too fast. Local Coast Guard insists the timing circuit is flawless.

    But here’s the thing:

    Every time the rhythm falters, a boat is lost nearby.

    Not wrecked. Lost. As if it never existed.

    The blinks don’t warn.

    They count.

    What happens when the lighthouse stops blinking altogether?

  • The Message in the Whale

    The Message in the Whale

    In 2018, a juvenile humpback beached itself near Prince Rupert, British Columbia. It died before rescue crews could help.

    During necropsy, they found something strange:

    A series of etched lines carved deep into its rib bones. Too uniform for natural damage. Too deliberate for coincidence.

    Some said it resembled a waveform.

    Others thought it was a map.

    But before researchers could finish analysis, the remains were lost in a lab fire.

    Officially: electrical fault.

    Unofficially: only the whale’s skeleton burned.

    What did it carry, and who needed it erased?

  • The Drowned Clock

    The Drowned Clock

    Divers exploring the wreck of the SS Vensholm off the coast of Norway found a ship’s clock still attached to a wall, hands frozen at 3:12 AM.

    Strange, but not unheard of.

    Until they checked the other clocks on board.

    All of them—cabin, mess hall, engine room—stopped at the exact same time. Not due to flooding. Not due to pressure. Mechanically, they should have run for hours after the ship sank.

    The Vensholm’s distress call was logged at 3:14 AM.

    It lasted nine seconds.

    No words. Just… ticking.

    What started two minutes early?