I'm a search and rescue diver for missing people. You don't want to know what I've seen.

I’ve been a search and rescue diver for over 10 years, and I’ve seen things I can't even explain.<br><br>When people hear my job title, their initial reaction tends to be on the more positive end of the spectrum. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, folks. I’ve seen things in the water that I can’t even begin to explain. <br><br>I'm not talking about the recovery of a corpse. <br><br>Unfortunately, that’s just part of the job. You get desensitized to death after a while. It’s not fun, but it’s part of our job as divers.<br><br>I’m talking about other things. Other unexplainable things that I’ve seen in the water.<br><br>Everyone thinks the ocean is beautiful, and why wouldn’t they? It is. There’s nothing quite like being out in the open waters, the sun beating down on your skin, the waves lapping against your vessel. <br><br>But where there’s beauty, there’s also horror. And I personally believe that the ocean is where that beauty and horror collide.<br><br>Like I said, I’m a search and rescue diver. That’s what I do. And I’ve seen things that I can’t even begin to describe.<br><br>I remember my first experience like it was yesterday. It was the first time I was out on a search and rescue mission. I was 23 years old at the time, and I had been training for almost 5 years to become a search and rescue diver. I was excited. I was nervous. But most of all, I was ready.<br><br>My team and I were hired by a very wealthy couple in the southern United States to find their 24 year old daughter. She was out swimming in the ocean with her boyfriend. They were both good swimmers, they’d been swimming their entire lives, so they decided to swim out quite a bit from the shore. <br><br>The woman apparently got a cramp in her leg, and she struggled to stay above the water. Her boyfriend said he tried his best to help her stay above the water and get back to shore. But unfortunately, she was too weak and her boyfriend wasn’t strong enough to hold her up and swim back. He said he watched in horror as she sunk beneath the waves and never resurfaced. He said he searched for her for hours, but could never find her. That’s when he gave up and swam back to shore for help.<br><br>The parents were very generous and paid us a substantial amount of money to find their daughter. <br><br>Of course, we took the job. A job’s a job, and it was the least that we could do. The poor couple were in a ton of pain, and they just wanted to find out what happened to their daughter.<br><br>We arrived at the location where the parents said their daughters boyfriend was swimming. We met with him, and he told us that he was confident that the area where he lost her was quite small. <br><br>Our job was made easy from the jump.<br><br>We immediately got to work, setting up equipment and suiting up to go and search. <br><br>My colleague, Richard, went out first. He was in the water for about forty-five minutes. When he came back, he said he didn’t see any sign of the woman.<br><br>It was my turn next. I got ready and dove into the water. As soon as I got in the water, I felt a cold chill run through my body. The ocean was freezing, and I could feel goosebumps shooting through my entire body. But I had a job to do, and I knew I had to do it.<br><br>I swam down to the ocean floor. The water was extremely clear, so I could see a decent distance in front of me. That’s when I saw it.<br><br>Somebody… or something… was standing in front of me. It was about thirty feet away, it looked like a person, but it was wearing what appeared to be a raincoat. <br><br>And it was standing on the ocean floor. <br><br>I don’t know how. <br><br>I was absolutely shocked. I didn’t know what to do. I had never seen anything like this before. <br><br>I swam away from it as fast as I could. When I got back to the surface and got out of the water, I explained to my team what I had seen. <br><br>They looked at each other and back at me before telling me it was probably just a diver. I was confused and said I didn’t see a scuba tank, and the figure I saw wasn’t wearing a diving suit.<br><br>I was met with more blank stares, and that’s when one of my co-workers asked me if I was okay.<br><br>I said of course I was okay, why wouldn’t I be? <br><br>Then I got another blank stare, and they told me to take the rest of the day off.<br><br>I was confused, but I didn’t fight it. When we got back to our station, my co-workers asked me if I had ever heard of the figure I described before. <br><br>I said no. They looked at each other again before one of them told me about something called “The raincoat figure.” <br><br>They said that a lot of divers have reported seeing a figure wearing a raincoat standing on the ocean floor, just standing there. <br><br>Doing nothing. <br><br>Most of the divers who reported seeing it were in warmer waters, but some have reported seeing it in colder waters like the one I was just in.<br><br>I was shocked. I had never heard of this figure. But part of me was relieved. At least I wasn’t going absolutely insane.<br><br>That was my first experience with something I couldn’t explain in the water. It wasn’t my last. <br><br>I have so many more stories like this that I just can’t explain. And I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I’ll try to give a brief description of each one. <br><br>Once, I was on another search and rescue mission. A 35 year old man was out snorkeling and never came back to shore. His girlfriend waited for him for hours, and eventually called for help. <br><br>We searched the waters and found nothing but his snorkeling equipment. We gave up and called it a day after 6 hours of searching, but one of my co-workers decided to stay out an extra hour and search more of the waters. He said that all of a sudden, while he was swimming, he felt something wrap around his ankles. He said he tried to shake it off and swim away, but it only got tighter. He said he was being tugged downwards, into the depths of the ocean. He tried his best to wrestle whatever had him until he was able to break free. When he got to the surface, he didn’t stop swimming until he was back to shore. He refused to go back out to sea after that. <br><br>He ended up leaving our agency and moving out to the mountains. I wonder what would have happened had he not escaped from whatever had him. <br><br>I wonder that a lot.<br><br>And then there are the sounds. Oh, the sounds. I’ve heard so many sounds that I can’t explain. <br><br>Screaming. Whistling. Crying. Even what sounded like a baby laughing. <br><br>I’ve heard so many terrifying noises deep in the ocean. <br><br>I used to love being in the water. I don’t anymore. <br><br>I don’t know what’s down there. <br><br>I just know that it’s not of this world.