Authorities in Canada were left scratching their heads after a rescue mission in search of a person crying out for help yielded no one in distress.
The weird occurrence unfolded on Sunday afternoon when several people at a ferry terminal in New Brunswick heard the voice of man yelling for help.
Authorities quickly put together a search and rescue team in an attempt to find this individual and even employed a drone over the coastline in the hopes of spotting something amiss.
The case seemingly came to a close when rescue workers braved a seawall which connects to nearby Partridge Island and discovered eight people there.
However, they told police that no one had been calling out for help and a subsequent search of the island failed to find anyone else there.
The group's story sounds plausible since Partridge Island is a historic site that is off-limits to unauthorized visitors and, as such, the people found there may face charges for their misadventure.
With that in mind, it's unlikely that they were looking to draw attention to themselves during their illegal visit.
Although police say that it's possible that noise from the group was misconstrued as someone in distress, they concede that that is merely a theory for what might have happened and they really have no answers.
"We can't explain what the cries for help were about," conceded one official to the CBC.
Should they discover an unsettling SOS sign in the sand a few years from now, perhaps then we'll know who was behind the chilling distress call.
Source: CBC