I'm a search and rescue diver and I've seen some weird things in the water

We recover bodies, and we recover the living. The latter are usually traumatized, sometimes they even get PTSD. My team once found a survivor who insisted he was with his wife and child. No one found the wife, but the kid was rescued. He was too young to talk, but my colleague swore he heard the kid murmur “mommy” when he swam away in the direction of the current. I didn’t hear it, but it still creeped me out.<br><br>I thought that was the worst of it, but it got worse. It got a *lot* worse. Even now, I can’t think of it without getting the chills.<br><br>This was a particularly bad rainy season. Our team was working overtime to keep up with the drownings. And then the real horror came. <br><br>It was a recovery dive for a rich businessman who went fishing in the middle of a thunderstorm because he was an idiot. He had lots of rich friends and family who wanted him back, and they were willing to pay top dollar. The coordinates were far out to sea but the paycheck was too tempting to resist. <br><br>My team and I spent hours searching. The rain was bad and the current was worse. When I finally saw his orange line sticking out of a rock, I was relieved. <br><br>At least, I thought it was his line. What really confused me was the hook was empty. No bait, no fish, no sign of what had been on the hook in the first place.<br><br>I followed the line, thinking it led to the guy, but all I found was his fishing rod, stuck between two rocks with the reel missing. <br><br>The reel was further away. After another ten minutes of crawling, I found it in a tiny cave. The cave’s entrance was too narrow for me to fit, so I tossed the reel back to my rope and began to move it back to where the hook was, so I could drag it all back to my team.<br><br>Then I heard noise. <br><br>It sounded like bubbles, but I couldn’t see any. It didn’t sound like bubbles, either. It sounded like someone was *humming*. A low, monotonic hum, like a refrigerator. Someone was humming a monotone note inside the cave. <br><br>I didn’t have time to be afraid. My first thought was we’d found the guy, and he was alive. <br><br>He wasn’t. <br><br>His reel had somehow gotten into the cave, so I assumed he did as well. Maybe he’d gotten claustrophobic. But that didn’t explain why he was humming. <br><br>I called my team over the comms device and asked them to help me. There was a delay before they replied, asking me if I was okay. <br><br>I said I wasn’t. I said I’d found signs of the guy but no actual guy, and some weird noises were coming from the cave. <br><br>And then they told me they hadn’t heard me for almost thirty minutes. <br><br>It takes two hours to get to where we were, two hours to get back, and thirty minutes had passed in the space of what felt to me like ten minutes. <br><br>That was the first bad thing. It got worse when they told me the currents were too strong for me to stay where I was. <br><br>I swam, against the current, and it took a lot out of me. The whole time the humming noise followed me. Eventually I had to stop and rest, and that’s when I heard the words. <br><br>At first it sounded like more humming. But then I realized the pitch was changing. The person was *singing*. It was a monotonic pitch with no recognizable melody, but there was a rhythm. <br><br>I’ve been trying to forget it ever since, but I can still remember it. Da-da-da-DUM. Da-da-da-DUM. Da-da-da-DUM. Da-da-da-DUM. <br><br>And then it changed. Da-DUM. Da-DUM. Da-DUM. Da-da-da-DUM. <br><br>Then the words came. “Mommy, mommy, mommy, Mommy. Daddy, daddy, daddy, Daddy. Mommy, mommy, mommy, Mommy. Daddy, daddy, daddy, Daddy.”<br><br>I recognized those words. It was the same thing the kid said when he was rescued. <br><br>I was terrified. The humming, the singing, the guy who we still hadn’t found. It was too much. <br><br>I swam. I forgot I was tired. I swam until the noise was gone and all I could hear was my own breathing. I didn’t stop until I got to the surface.<br><br>I didn’t tell my team what I’d heard. Two of them were related to the kid we rescued. I didn’t want to give them nightmares.<br><br>We didn’t find the businessman. We called off the search after a few days and left his family with nothing but a rod and reel to remember him by. <br><br>I don’t go diving close to that area anymore. If I never hear that song again, I’ll be happy. Da-DUM. Da-DUM. Da-DUM. Da-da-da-DUM.