Man of Medan Gets a Very Proper Introduction

Ah, I do love the smell of being right in the morning. Disregard my writing this well under the cover of night; I fully intend to revel in the latest Man of Medan reveal in the morning over a steaming cup of coffee. You see, I am thrilled to be correct in my assumption that the Curator would be a common character among the different entries in The Dark Pictures Anthology, in which Man of Medan serves as the first chapter. Much like the somewhat beloved, somewhat maligned Crypt Keeper, the Curator serves as our host and narrative lead. He chooses the stories from the shelf, he reads us the pages within, and he doesn’t much care if we make it through them alive.

I am certain of this after viewing the newest trailer for The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan. The Curator is our guide through this short jaunt, as well, giving Man of Medan a proper introduction. He has chosen the story of a ship that disappeared in 1947, only to resurface in 2019 with deadly consequences, from his tome of myths and legends. He, too, has scary stories to be told in the dark, though you are encouraged to bring a friend along for moral support as you hear the stories he will tell.

Man of Medan does, in fact, follow a real myth. In 1947 or 1948, a ship carrying military nerve agents or some other surplus of military chemicals experienced a critical event off the coast of the Marshall Islands. Several nearby ships heard its final distress cry, a Morse code message that all others on board were dead, and that the radio operator was also dying. One account tells of an attempt to pull the ship named Ourang Medan- Malay for ‘Man from Medan’- to port after the distress call revealed a ship littered with unharmed, but really rather dead, crew. As the ship was pulled along, it burst into flames and then exploded, sinking before it reached port. Another says that there was a lone survivor found on a nearby atoll, but he perished before his rescuers could bring him aboard. In his final moments, he recounted the corpses scattered around the ship, faces pulled into caricatures of the human form. Declassified documents from the CIA even reference the event, though there is no hard evidence that the ship, crew, or story ever truly existed at all. What happened on the Ourang Medan? We can never know the truth, but we can enjoy this latest retelling of its story.