Also known as The Devil’s Triangle, refers to the
tragedy-prone area of fifty miles of ocean, located between Florida
and the Bahamas, where more than 200 people have been lost without
a trace. The official explanation given by authorities blames freak
storms, which seems plausible, but doesn’t explain why ships and
airplanes seem to be swallowed up whole, vanishing from the earth.
The earliest recorded ship to suffer such a fate was
the vessel, the Rosalie in 1840, and the last known ship was a yacht
by the name of Connemara IV in 1956.
The first reported airplane disappearance was an eerie
occurance that happened on December 5, 1945. On a routine, 2 hour
patrol off Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 5 avenger fighters disappeared
completely, after reporting to the control tower that their instruments
were going crazy, and that everything is wrong, strange…even the
ocean looked strange. The tower was puzzled… the planes should be
able to see the sun now set low in the sky. Radio contact became
more and more difficult. Finally, a Martin Mariner plane with a
crew of 13 headed out to the planes’ last known position.. About
20 minutes later, there was a bright, orange flash in the sky, and
no trace was ever found of the 5 avenger planes or the Martin Mariner
plane.
In April of 1952, One man, Gerald Hawkes, had a strange
experience in his plane while flying from Idlewild (now Kennedy)
Airport to Bermuda, and lived to tell about it. During a clear-skied,
windless late afternoon, Hawkes began his trip. Suddenly, his plane
dropped 200 ft, like he fell down a lift-shaft in the air. His plane
then shot up again. This pattern began again, like a giant hand
was moving his plane up and down, his wings flapping like a bird.
To make matters worse, they couldn’t make radio contact with either
Florida or Bermuda, and had no idea where they were, because of
instrumentation problems. Luckily for Hawkes, they finally made
contact with a radio ship, and were able to get their bearings.
Hawkes thought that perhaps he was "caught in an area where time
and space seem to disappear."
A journalist, Vincent Gaddis wrote a book about mysterious
occurrences that have happened at sea, called "Invisible Horizons."
In the last chapter, Gaddis speculates that there may be "a space-time
continua that may exist around us on the earth, interpenetrating
our known world."
Some believe that on the surface of the earth, their
are whirlpools "where gravity and terrestrial magnetism are weaker
for some unknown reason. Aliens from outer space may know of these
whirlpools and pick up humans from them for further study.
Ivan Sanderson made an interesting discovery. While
looking on a map of the world, he discovered that all the areas
where strange disappearances at sea had occurred were all shaped
like "lozenges," and surrounded the globe in two rings, each located
between 30 degrees C and 40 degrees C, both North and South of the
equator. These 10 funny places were 72 degrees C apart. Interestingly,
earthquake specialist discovered that Sanderson’s "lozenges" matched
his map of seismic disturbance areas, that are located in kind of
a trough that encircles the core of the earth, which "determined
the direction of seismic activity."
Their conclusion that if the weird occurrences were
caused by whirlpools, they were perfectly normal whirlpools caused
by the earth’s tendency to "burp" on occasion.
Charles Berlitz came out with a book on the Bermuda
Triangle, speculating creatively about the possible explanations
of the disappearances involving UFO’s, space-time warps caused by
magnetic vortex (a la the Philadelphia Project), intelligent aliens,
etc. While low on scientific precision, it became a huge hit with
the public masses.
Some important clues to this mystery can be gleaned
from the experiences of those who have escaped the clutches of the
Bermuda Triangle. In 1964, on a return trip from Nassau, on his
way to Miami, Florida charter pilot, Chuck Wakely all of a sudden
noticed a faint glow around the wing tips of his plane, at 8,000
feet. As the glow increased in brightness to a blinding level, his
electronic control instruments went haywire, causing him to fly
the plane manually. As the glow decreased he was able to gain control
of his instruments.
In 1966, a tugboat captain, Don Henry was on his way
from Puerto Rico to Fort Lauderdale on a clear afternoon. Suddenly
the compasses on his tug began to spin wildly as a strange darkness
descended on them and the horizon couldn’t be seen. Water was coming
in all directions, and their electrical power failed completely.
A dense fog covered their tug. Luckily, their engine kept going
and they moved out of the fog. Looking back, the fog was densely
concentrated in a solid block, "a bank." Inside this area, the sea
was boiling. Outside this area, the sea was calm.
The fact is that our earth’s magnetic field isn’t
"symmetrical and precise," but has many pitfalls and abnormalities,
tied to perhaps the movement of the earth’s molten core, acting
much like sun spots. Such earth quakes in our magnetic field would
cause symptoms experienced by the tug boat captain and the charter
airplane pilot.
This theory deserves further investigation. With Satellites
spinning 150 miles above the earth, scientists could observe these
outbursts of magnetic activity, and could learn to predict when
they would happen, which would prevent any more tragic incidents,
or scary experiences that cause nightmares in these "funny places."
Data Sources include: The Mammoth
Encyclopedia of the Unsolved by Colin
Wilson & Damon Wilson
and Mysteries of the Unexplained from Reader's Digest.