Eleesium

On December 4, 1872, a British ship called the Dei Gratia encountered a vessel drifting across the Atlantic Ocean. It was the Mary Celeste, an American merchant ship that had left New York weeks earlier, bound for Genoa, Italy. Something about the vessel was immediately unsettling. The ship was still afloat. Some of its sails were set, and it appeared capable of continuing its journey. There was water in the hold, but the ship wasn't sinking. When members of the Dei Gratia boarded her, they discovered that every single person on board was gone. The missing people included Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife, Sarah, their two-year-old daughter, Sophia, and seven crew members. There was no one at the helm. No captain giving orders. No crew working the sails. The ship had effectively become a ghost vessel. Even stranger, the cargo remained aboard, and there was food and water available. There was no obvious evidence of a violent struggle that could explain why an entire group of people would abandon a seaworthy ship in the middle of the ocean. So what could have frightened them badly enough to leave?