The Bermuda Triangle

Covering some half a million square miles of open ocean, from the southeastern tip of Florida, east to Bermuda and southeast to Puerto Rico, the Bermuda Triangle or Devil’s Triangle has long captured the imagination of paranormal writers, mainly during the 20th century.

Mysterious Sightings

When Christopher Columbus sailed through the region on his first voyage to the New World, he reported erratic compass readings, a great flame of fire crashing into the sea one night, while a few weeks later, a strange light appeared in the distance. During a 1909 voyage from Martha’s Vineyard to South America, Joshua Slocum—the first person to sail solo around the world—disappeared somewhere in the Triangle without a trace.

Vanished Without a Trace

In March of 1918, the 542-foot Navy cargo ship USS Cyclops disappeared with over 300 men aboard, without sending out an SOS distress call despite its capacity to do so. An extensive search failed to turn up a trace of the doomed ship, prompting U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to comment that “Only God and the sea knows what happened to that great ship.” After America’s entry into World War Two, two of the Cyclops’ sister ships vanished along the exact same route.

A One-Way Flight

After war’s end in December of 1945, five Navy bombers with 14 men aboard, took to the skies out of Fort Lauderdale on a practice bombing run over some shoals off the Bahamas. The flight leader became hopelessly lost due to what he called a “compass malfunction,” forcing all five planes to ditch when they ran low on fuel. That same day, a rescue plane with 13 men aboard vanished as well, and after a week-long search failed to locate any of the planes, a Navy report concluded that they disappeared “as if they had flown to Mars.”

Long List of Disappearances

All told, some 21 aviation disappearances have been linked to the Bermuda Triangle, along with 16 naval incidents, inspiring paranormal writers to speculate on a myriad of causes, including alien abductions, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, sea monsters, sub-sea methane explosions, time warps and reverse gravity fields, while more scientifically-minded researchers point to magnetic anomalies, including the filmmaker’s own experience during a 1973 ketch-rig sail from the States to Puerto Rico, supported by the fact that the Bermuda Triangle is one of rare places on Earth were true north and magnetic north line up, making the Bermuda Triangle, a place of lasting intrigue for conspiracy theorists everywhere.