by Diana Jarvis

The phenomenon of the so-called Bermuda Triangle has kept us enthralled for decades.

The Bermuda Triangle is an imaginary triangle that can be drawn in the Atlantic Ocean between Miami/ Fort Lauderdale, Puerto Rico and Bermuda, and it is within these boundaries that strange and inexplicable disappearances have been reported time and time again.

The area is actually less than a thousand miles wide on any one side, so to have so many stories concentrated in one area is notable in itself, but of course, it is often the nature of the disappearances that intrigue us so.

The Triangle was first mentioned by George X Sands, who wrote a small magazine article recounting the mysteries surrounding some ships and also the famed Flight 19. It was originally called ‘The Devil’s Triangle’. It has been described by a number of authors as varying in shape, but nothing has stuck in the mind of the public as much as ‘Bermuda Triangle’.

In 1974 Charles Berlitz published his book The Bermuda Triangle and it was a runaway success, selling approximately 5,000,000 copies in hardback – setting in stone the epithet and at the same time making the Bermuda Triangle a household name. There is even speculation that the ruins of Atlantis lie on the ocean bed of the area which the triangle spans. Could strange energies emanating from that affect the region?

Up, Over and Out!

On Samhain 1991, radar controllers were amazed after a plane disappeared from their screen, moments after the crew requested an ascent. Every other plane on the radar seemed fine and all traffic, bar this one plane, continued their journeys as before.

The plane that went missing was a Grumman Cougar jet, piloted by John Verdi. Both he and his co-pilot were en-route to Tallahassee and had asked for permission to ascend, which had been granted. As they ascended, they suddenly disappeared from the screen. Controllers called them up and got nothing more from them on radio or radar again. There had been no Mayday signal and the radar had not picked up a descent at all (i.e. they had not fallen into the sea). They just vanished.

Tugging out the Barge

Don Henry also had a strange experience whilst travelling to the Miami area with his tug, the Sea Phantom Exploration. In tow they had a barge on a 600ft towline. That afternoon Don heard a ruckus from the bridge and went out to investigate. When he got there, he could see that the compass was spinning clockwise and none of the crew had any idea why. It just kept going round and round. At the same time, communication was lost, lights went out and the generators went down too. They continued to run but produced no energy at all.

Don went to check on the barge and although visibility had been good, they could no longer see a horizon line and noticed that the sea was full of foam, as was the sky – it was hard to tell the difference between the two! He looked for the barge, and was amazed to find that it appeared to have gone. There had been no snap of the line, nothing. The line was still there and it looked like it had something on the end because it was taut, but he couldn’t see the barge, only fog where the barge had been – and a totally localized fog at that!

Don was pretty scared, so he decided to go full throttle to get out of the area. The line held him back. The ship did eventually pull out and the line came out of the fog. The barge was still intact, although he had been unable to see it before.

When he got back to land he found that the barge was very warm, much warmer than normal, which he was unable to logically explain. To this day he’s convinced that he had a run-in with the forces of the Bermuda Triangle.

Theories

Naturally, there are a number of scientific theories for the countless stories of disappearances in the Triangle. Some of the most popular are:

• Subterranean landslides open up beds of methane hydrate, which reduces the density of thee water. This would make ships sink and as the gas is combustible, could easily blow any vessels of aeroplanes to pieces
• A complex theory about Magnetic North that allegedly explains how ships and aeroplanes get lost. It doesn’t, however, explain how they disappear without trace
• A type of ‘wormhole’ on earth, known as a ‘vortex’ that can transport whoever or whatever stumbles into it to somewhere totally different;
• Aliens!

Current Statistics

When I originally wrote this piece, I contacted Gian Quasar, a leading authority on the Bermuda Triangle (www. Bermuda-triangle.org and author of Into the Bermuda Triangle (McGraw-Hill)). He states that no-one knows the exact number of disappearances, but the best guess is around the 8,000 mark. He is keen to emphasise that these are not ‘accident’s but disappearances. He is a thorough researcher and found, for example, that between two coast guard districts (one of which covered the Bermuda Triangle) there were thousands of accidents in the same period of time. However, there were 6 or 7 disappearances in one district and 30 disappearances of planes and possibly twice that number of boats in the Triangle district!

 Recent disappearances include:

·         Piper PA-46-310P N444JH on April 10, 2007, near Berry Islands.(under investigation)

·         Piper PA-23 N6886Y on June 20, 2005, Between Treasure Cay, BI, to Fort Pierce, FL (possible foul weather)

·         Piper PA-32-300 N8224C, November 13, 2003, over the Exumas, Bahamas. (No known cause)