A Tow Truck Tried to Pull a Sunken Car Out of a Maine Harbor. Something Underneath Pulled Back Harder
A tow driver in Portland, Maine tried to winch a sunken car up a boat ramp. The truck was dragged toward the water, the cable snapped, and something surfaced.
Mike is in his fifties and has been driving a tow truck around Portland, Maine for most of his life. Reflective jacket, wool beanie, hands that know every lever on his rig. Pulling cars out of the harbor is not common work, but it happens a few times a year: a driver misjudges the boat ramp, forgets the parking brake, or slides on ice. Mike has done it so often he jokes that he could do it in his sleep.
On a foggy morning, with the water flat and gray and his amber lights flashing in the mist, a bystander on the ramp started filming because a small crowd had gathered. A police officer in his thirties stood nearby with his arms crossed, waiting for the job to be done.
The Cable Goes Straight
Mike had hooked the submerged car and started the winch. The first few seconds look routine. Then the winch cable goes ruler-straight, humming with tension, and the entire tow truck lurches backward three feet down the wet ramp. The tires screech on the concrete.
Tow trucks are heavy. They are designed to stay put while they pull. Mike’s truck was not staying put.
The Roof
Mike shouts, “It’s snagged on something!” and works the winch lever.
For a moment it looks like he is winning. The sunken car rises halfway out of the water, and the crowd can see its roof. It is dented inward in a smooth, curved shape, like a giant thumb had been pressed into it. Water pours off the sides.
Then the car is yanked back under, hard enough that the whole truck jolts again.
Sliding
The truck slides further. Its rear wheels touch the water. Mike is still at the lever, refusing to let go, and the officer finally steps in and grabs his arm to pull him back from the edge.
Out in the harbor, the water’s surface is rippling outward in slow, wide rings, the way a pond ripples when something big moves underneath it. The rings are centered on the spot where the car went down, and they keep coming.
The Snap
With a crack like a gunshot, the cable snaps. The loose end whips through the air. The truck, suddenly free, rocks forward onto its front wheels.
And then it is quiet. Somewhere far off in the fog, a foghorn sounds. Mike stands at the edge of the ramp breathing hard.
Right beside the ramp, a few feet from his boots, a second shape begins to rise. It is about the size of a car. It surfaces silently, water pouring off its dark, rounded top, and stops, inches from where Mike is standing.
The video ends there.
What Happened Next
Mike told a local reporter that he backed away slowly and did not take his eyes off it. The shape stayed at the surface for about ten seconds, he said. It was not a car. It did not have windows or wheels. It was smooth and dark and slick, and it seemed to be breathing, rising and falling very slightly with a slow rhythm that did not match the water.
Then it sank back down without a ripple.
The officer closed the ramp. Divers from the harbor patrol went down later that afternoon to look for the car. They found it in about twenty feet of water, but nowhere near where it had gone in. It had been moved more than a hundred yards, out past the end of the pier, and it was resting upside down. The roof was crushed almost flat. The tow hook was still attached, with a few feet of snapped cable trailing from it.
When the divers tried to swim closer, the lead diver signaled to abort. He said afterward that the water around the car was “too warm,” noticeably warmer than the harbor around it, and that he had a feeling he could not explain that they were being watched.
The bystander’s video spread quickly through Portland. Within a day, two lobstermen had come forward to say they had seen a long dark shape under their boats near the same pier earlier that month, and one of them had lost four traps on a single line, the ropes pulled straight down and never recovered.
Maine’s Cold Waters
The Gulf of Maine is deep, cold and full of life. Fishermen there have their own stories, passed down for generations: nets torn from the inside, lobster traps hauled up crushed, buoys dragged under against the tide. Most of those stories never get filmed.
This one did. Mike’s company eventually pulled the car out with a crane barge, a week later, in calm weather. Mike was not on that job. He has gone back to towing cars on dry land, and when someone calls about a vehicle in the harbor now, he gives them another company’s number and wishes them luck.
