I’m not sure why this wasn’t part of the previous dev diary, but we have a part 2 from Shawn Ashmore, the voice actor behind Conrad. The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan was inspired by several genres of horror. It has the supernatural element with ghosts in a creepy ghost ship. It also borrows from the ever popular (or completely played out) zombie horror. The fears of these unfortunate explorers will drawn to life by the dead in different ways.
Shawn experienced his own supernatural event. While staying in a Romanian hotel, he heard footsteps of something walking around his bed at night. He heard glasses clinking too. He never saw anything, but he heard and felt plenty during his 40 day stay. When he asked the hotel staff about the strange noises, they said they weren’t allowed to talk about it. He’s a true believer in bumps in the night.
He also revealed the story in the game is based on a real myth. I pulled up my trusty source, Wikipedia, for details. I’ll paraphrase, but you can read the details and look at the sources here. In the 40s, a ship named the Silver Star received a weird distress message in Morse code from the Ourang Medan (roughly translated Man of Medan). The person sending the message said they were afloat, and everyone else was likely dead. Some garbled Morse beeps later, the last transmission sent was, “I die”.
The crew of the Silver Star went to the boat and found no survivors. The boat was filled with corpses with mouths and eyes wide open. There was no sign of injuries on these sailors. The crew was working on getting the Ourang Medan ready to tow back to shore when a strange and sudden fire forced them to leave the ship. The boat later exploded taking its secrets and crew to the bottom to the ocean.
The records about the existence of the ship are inconclusive. The dates for the event are not specific, and the explanation could be as simple as their cargo killed them. The speculation is anything from sulfuric acid fumes or even Japanese chemical weapon smuggling. It could also explain the fire. No matter the actual truth, it’s murky enough to be the foundation for an exciting legend and the spooky things that live in the dark shadows of that boat.
If you can’t wait to get out to sea, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan will take it’s horror-filled voyage on August 30th.
