"THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE"

THE UNSOLVED MYSTERY… THAT WASN’T

What do we make of people who simply disappear one day and are never seen again? That’s long been of particular interest to me – so interesting that I’ve penned several books on the subject. As I’ve long noted, there are numerous reasons why people vanish – murder, abduction, suicide and voluntary escapes from reality among them. And then there are the more unnerving cases, where no rational explanation seems to exist. How, or why, do such things happen?

Are they incidents linked to the supernatural, or could there be more mundane explanations for many of them? Over the years, I’ve collected dozens of stories of disappearances that seemed the strangest to me, the most inexplicable and in many cases, the most disturbing. I certainly do not claim to have collected every unsolved disappearance in history (far from it, which is disturbing in itself) and some readers will notice the glaring lack of inclusion in any of my writings for what some believe is a prominent paranormal disappearance mystery spot – the Bermuda Triangle.

The fact that the Bermuda Triangle is missing from all of my books was not an accident on my part. While the area of the Triangle is certainly marked by a number of strange occurrences, I don’t believe there is anything paranormal to it at all. In fact, after years of collecting stories of unsolved vanishings, it become readily apparent that Triangle boasts no more disappearances that other parts of the world’s oceans.

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean in which a number of aircraft and surface vessels are alleged to have disappeared in mysterious circumstances which fall beyond the boundaries of human error, piracy, equipment failure, or natural disasters. Popular culture has attributed some of these disappearances to the paranormal, a suspension of the laws of physics, or activity by extraterrestrial beings, but in many cases, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Documentation shows that many of the incidents have been inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors – something that happens far more often than most of us care to admit.

Of course, this is not to say that there have not been strange disappearances in the area, or that unsolved disappearances don’t exist, it’s just that the mythos surrounding the area is much greater than it deserves to be. 

The boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle are allegedly from the Atlantic coast of Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and on to the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda. Most of the alleged disappearances are concentrated along the southern boundary around the Bahamas and the Florida Straits.

But just how dangerous is this area? Apparently, not very…

The area is one of the most heavily-sailed shipping lanes in the world, with ships crossing through it daily for ports in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. Cruise ships are also plentiful, and pleasure craft regularly go back and forth between Florida and the islands. It is also a heavily flown route for commercial and private aircraft heading towards Florida, the Caribbean, and South America from points north. If this was some sort of paranormal “wormhole,” wouldn’t disappearances occur much more often?

That would certainly seem to be the case, so how did such stories get started in the first place? The seeds of the Bermuda Triangle legend were first planted by an Associated Press dispatch on September 16, 1950, in which reporter E.V. Jones took note of what he characterized as “mysterious disappearances” of ships and planes between the Florida coast and Bermuda. Two years later, in a FATE magazine article by George X. Sand recounted “a series of strange marine disappearances, each leaving no trace whatever, that have taken place in the last few years” in a “watery triangle bounded roughly by Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico.”

M.K. Jessup picked up some of the stories for his 1955 book, The Case for the UFO, which suggested that aliens were responsible for the disappearances, an idea that was echoed by other authors. It was Vincent H. Gaddis who actually coined the catchphrase that entered popular culture when he wrote an article for the February 1964 issue of Argosy called “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle.” Soon, nearly every new book on true mysteries included chapters on the Bermuda Triangle and claims began to be made that the area was populated by an intelligent, underwater civilization, which was stealing ships, plans and people from our world.

The first book to be written about the Triangle was a self-published work called Limbo of the Lost by John Wallace Spencer. It was re-published as a Bantam paperback in 1973 and attracted a huge audience, as did the 1970 documentary, The Devil’s Triangle. Bermuda Triangle fever peaked in 1974 with the publication of The Bermuda Triangle, a major bestseller by Charles Berlitz and J. Manson Valentine. Two other paperbacks, The Devil’s Triangle, by Richard Winer, and No Earthly Explanation, by John Wallace Spencer, also racked up impressive sales.

The heart of the Bermuda Triangle mystery seemed to revolve around the alleged “scores” of vessels that had vanished in the region. Among the most notable were:

Flight 19

United States Navy Flight 19 was a training flight of TBM Avenger bombers that went missing on December 5, 1945 while over the Atlantic. The squadron's flight path was scheduled to take them due east for one hundred and twenty miles, north for seventy-three miles, and then back over a final one hundred and twenty-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. The flight, however, never returned. The impression is given that the planes encountered unusual phenomena and anomalous compass readings, and that the flight took place on a calm day under the supervision of an experienced pilot, Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor. Adding to the intrigue is that the Navy's report of the accident was ascribed to "causes or reasons unknown." Adding to the mystery, a search and rescue Mariner aircraft with a thirteen-man crew was dispatched to aid the missing squadron, but the Mariner itself was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion at about the time the Mariner would have been on patrol. While the basic facts of this version of the story are essentially accurate, some important details are missing. The weather was becoming stormy by the end of the incident, and naval reports and written recordings of the conversations between Taylor and the other pilots of Flight 19 do not indicate magnetic problems.

Mary Celeste

The mysterious 1872 abandonment of the brigantine Mary Celeste is often but inaccurately connected to the Triangle (perhaps in an effort to give credibility to the Triangle by placing a real-life mystery there), the ship having been abandoned off the coast of Portugal. The event is possibly confused with the loss of a ship with a similar name, the Mari Celeste, a paddle steamer that hit a reef and quickly sank off the coast of Bermuda on September 13, 1864.

Ellen Austin

A ship called the Ellen Austin supposedly came across an abandoned vessel and attempted to salvage it in 1881. A crew was placed on board and the derelict was sailed for New York. According to the stories, the derelict disappeared while en route. A check of Lloyd's of London records proved the existence of a ship called the Meta, built in 1854. In 1880, the Meta was renamed Ellen Austin. There are no casualty listings for this vessel, or any vessel at that time, that would suggest a large number of missing men placed on board a ship that later disappeared.

USS Cyclops

The incident resulting in the single largest loss of life in the history of the United States Navy, not related to combat, occurred when USS Cyclops, under the command of Lt Cdr G. W. Worley, went missing without a trace with a crew of three hundred and nine men, sometime after March 4, 1918, after departing the island of Barbados. Although there is no strong evidence for any single theory, many independent theories exist, some blaming storms, some capsizing, and some suggesting that wartime enemy activity was to blame for the loss.

Theodosia Burr Alston

Theodosia Burr Alston was the daughter of former United States Vice President Aaron Burr. Her disappearance has been cited at least once in relation to the Triangle. She was a passenger on board the Patriot, which sailed from Charleston, South Carolina, to New York City on December 30, 1812, and was never heard from again. Both piracy and the War of 1812 have been offered as explanations and her ship was well outside the Triangle when it vanished. Once again, a prominent personality was included in the stories of the Triangle in order to give the location more credibility.

Joshua Slocum

The same thing was done with Joshua Slocum and his famous ship, the Spray. The once-derelict fishing boat was refitted as an ocean cruiser by Joshua Slocum and used by him to complete the first ever single-handed circumnavigation of the world, between 1895 and 1898. In 1909, Slocum set sail from Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, bound for Venezuela. Neither he nor the Spray were ever seen again. There is no evidence they were in the Bermuda Triangle when they disappeared, nor is there any evidence of paranormal activity.

Carroll A. Deering

A five-masted schooner built in 1919, the Carroll A. Deering was found hard aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on January 31, 1921. Rumors at the time indicated the Deering was a victim of piracy, possibly connected with the illegal rum-running trade during Prohibition.

Douglas DC-3

On December 28, 1948, a Douglas DC-3 aircraft, number NC16002, disappeared while on a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami. No trace of the aircraft or the thirty-two people onboard was ever found. From the documentation compiled by the Civil Aeronautics Board investigation, a possible key to the plane's disappearance was found, but barely touched upon by the Triangle writers: the plane's batteries were inspected and found to be low on charge, but ordered back into the plane without a recharge by the pilot while in San Juan. Whether or not this led to complete electrical failure will never be known.

Star Tiger and Star Ariel

G-AHNP Star Tiger disappeared on January 30, 1948 on a flight from the Azores to Bermuda and G-AGRE Star Ariel disappeared on January 17, 1949, on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. Both were Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways.

SS Marine Sulphur Queen

The Marine Sulphur Queen, a T2 tanker converted from oil to sulfur carrier, was last heard from on February 4, 1963 with a crew of thirty-nine near the Florida Keys. The Marine Sulphur Queen was the first vessel mentioned in Vincent Gaddis' 1964 Argosy Magazine article, but he left it as having "sailed into the unknown," despite the Coast Guard report that not only documented the ship's badly-maintained history, but declared that it was an unseaworthy vessel that should never have left port. Other authors embellished the story even further, making it a part of Triangle lore.

Raifuku Maru

One of the more famous incidents that allegedly occurred in the Triangle took place in 1921, when the Japanese vessel Raifuku Maru went down with all hands after sending a distress signal which allegedly said, "Danger like dagger now. Come quick!" or "It's like a dagger, come quick!" This has led writers to speculate on what the "dagger" was, with a waterspout being the likely candidate. In reality, the ship was nowhere near the Triangle, nor was the word "dagger" a part of the ship's distress call, which was actually “Now very danger. Come quick.” The ship actually left Boston for Hamburg, Germany, on April 21, 1925 and got caught in a severe storm and sank in the North Atlantic with all hands.

Connemara IV

This vessel was a pleasure yacht that was found adrift in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on September 26, 1955. It is usually stated in the stories that the crew vanished while the yacht survived being at sea during three hurricanes. The 1955 Atlantic hurricane season lists only one storm coming near Bermuda towards the end of August, hurricane "Edith;" of the others, "Flora" was too far to the east, and "Katie" arrived after the yacht was recovered. It was confirmed that the Connemara IV was empty and in port when "Edith" may have caused the yacht to slip her moorings and drift out to sea.

Unfortunately, the articles and books on the subject showed little evidence of original research and it was obvious that each of the chroniclers were merely re-writing each other’s work. In 1975, Lawrence David Kusche, a research librarian from Arizona State University, published a devastating debunking of the Triangle with a book called The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved! He called it a manufactured mystery and did the archival digging that many other writers had neglected. Weather records, reports of official investigators, newspaper accounts and other sources showed that Triangle literature had played very loose with the evidence. 

In the book, he concluded that the number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the ocean. Also, in an area often hit by tropical storms, the number of disappearances that did occur was not disproportionate, unlikely or mysterious. Oddly, though, most of the Triangle writers failed to mention such storms.  He also found that the number of disappearances had been exaggerated by sloppy research. A boat listed as missing would be reported, but its eventual (if belated) return to port may not have been mentioned. Other disappearances that were cited never occurred at all. For example, one plane crash was said to have taken place in 1937 off Daytona Beach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses but a check of the local papers revealed nothing.

Other, official sources supported Kusche’s findings. In April 1975, Lloyd’s of London noted that, according to their records, four hundred and twenty eight vessels had been reported missing throughout the world since 1955. “Our intelligence service,” officials at the legendary insurance company wrote, “can find no evidence to support the claim that the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ has more losses than elsewhere. This finding is upheld by the United States Coast Guard whose computer-based records of casualties in the Atlantic go back to 1958.”

In the wake of these statements, only silence was heard from the proponents of the Bermuda Triangle mystery. They were unable to mount a credible defense and because of this, the claims that the area was an authentic anomaly began to suffer. Despite occasional reappearances in supermarket tabloids and the long memories of paranormal buffs who read about the region when they were first getting interested in the unexplained as children, the Bermuda Triangle survives as only a footnote in the history of passing sensations.

Or at least that’s how it should be…

The "Disappearance" of Sister Aimee

The “Disappearance” of Sister Aimee

Trouble in L.A.’s Jesus Racket

During the early days of Hollywood, when most American preachers were shouting from their pulpits about the sin and depravity to be found in Tinseltown, another evangelist was presenting a kinder, gentler message. She did so with flamboyant presentations that were right out of a Hollywood musical and, in fact, the regular appearance of movie stars at her services was one of her claims to fame. The evangelist’s name was Aimee Semple McPherson and the Pentecostal church that she founded, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, still exists today.

“Sister Aimee” as she was known to her legion of followers attracted scores of people to her flock with her extravagant services, radio show and personal appearances. But then on May 18, 1926, Aimee mysteriously vanished while visiting a beach in Santa Monica. The press and the public were shocked by her disappearance, which lasted more than a month. When she reappeared, she claimed that she had been kidnapped and held for ransom – but had she really?

Sister Aimee was born Aimee Kennedy and was raised on a farm in Ontario, Canada. Growing up, she was introduced to an inclusive, positive theology, which as practiced by her grandfather, a Salvation Army captain. After a crisis of faith, she was converted to Pentecostalism by evangelist Robert Semple, whom she joined in preaching revivals and married in 1908. Two years later, while they were awaiting their papers to travel into China as missionaries, Semple died in Hong Kong. Aimee, now with an infant daughter, returned to the U.S. and began working for the Salvation Army in New York. She married a second time, in 1912, to a grocery salesman named Harold McPherson, and gave birth to a son. Aimee tried to settle down to the quiet life of a housewife, but she was unable to do it. She felt that she was destined for bigger things and was in her heart, an evangelist.

Sister Aimee Semple McPherson at the height of her popularity.

She divorced McPherson in 1918 and she, her children, and her mother, Minnie, with nothing more than $100 and a tambourine, drove to Los Angeles. It was a trip that Aimee later referred to as a spiritual quest that ended in a revelation. She believed that the “City of Angels” was the doorway to heaven and, for a time, it certainly seemed to be.

She began spreading her message in every way possible, even throwing tracts from an airplane as it flew over neighborhoods populated by recent arrivals to the area. She was soon packing standing-room-only crowds into the Philharmonic Auditorium, the largest venue in L.A. By 1923, she had her own Angelus Temple, which seated 5,300 people and cost more than $1.5 million to build. At her services, she entertained the curious and the faithful alike with bizarre stage sketches that featured a USC football player making a touchdown for Jesus and a LAPD motorcycle cop riding in to arrest sin. Everyone loved the show and soon her popularity would rival that accorded to some movie stars. To thousands, she was “God’s Little Child.” 

Besides entertaining and preaching, Aimee was also an avid organizer. She added some 250 affiliated churches, a rescue mission, a publications division, an orchestra, and a radio station, creating a massive organization that is only rivaled by today’s mega-churches. She also composed 180 hymns and several musical pageants, all of which were very upbeat and offered redemption. In keeping with her Salvation Army background, she also designed uniforms for herself and her female bodyguards.

Not surprisingly, Aimee had a talent for raising money, which supported the church, her mansion near MGM Studios in Culver City, her expensive clothes, and fine automobile. At collection time, she would often tell her supporters from the stage, “Sister has a headache tonight. Only quiet money, please.”

As the money rolled in, stories of miraculous cures began to spread. A “miracle room” in the Angelus Temple was filled with discarded crutches, wheelchairs, and even the leg braces of a 10-year-old polio victim. He was so confident when he came to visit Sister Aimee that he brought another pair of shoes with him to wear home. The stories claimed that he walked out of the Temple.

Then, in 1926, Aimee’s glory days came to an end. A scandal captured the imagination of readers across America and titillated them for weeks afterward.

On the afternoon of May 18, 1926, Aimee was spotted swimming off Ocean Park Beach in Santa Monica – and then vanished without a trace. She was presumed to have drowned, but after a massive search effort (during which a church member and a professional diver drowned), no body was recovered. Then, on June 23, three days after an all-day memorial service attended by thousands of weeping, hysterical mourners, she turned up in the Mexican town of Agua Prieta, claiming that she had been kidnapped and held in a shack in the Sonoran desert. On her return to Los Angeles, a carpet of roses was spread when she disembarked from the train and more than 100,000 of her followers lined the streets and cheered as she drove by.

But all was not what it seemed to be. It was soon discovered that, despite Aimee’s angry denials, she had actually spent the month at a cottage in Carmel, shacked up with Kenneth Ormiston, a married engineer on the staff of her radio station. For nearly six months, L.A. District Attorney Asa Keyes gathered evidence (which included a Carmel grocery store shopping list in her handwriting), planning to charge her with conspiracy to produce false testimony. “Fighting Bob” Shuler, a rival evangelist, took the opportunity to enter the fray, denouncing Aimee, her Temple, and her ministry. Since he and Aimee alternated their broadcasts on the same radio wavelength, he had no trouble reaching her followers. Somehow, he tracked down Harold McPherson and had him on the air for four straight broadcasts, airing all of Aimee’s dirty laundry. For her part, Aimee claimed the entire scandal was the “work of the Devil.”

Aimee’s fame saved her from prosecution. Inexplicably, the District Attorney decided that the case that he had built against her was too weak to bring against a person of her tremendous popularity. On the evening that D.A. Keyes made the announcement, the faithful mobbed Aimee and the newspapers spread the news in glaring headlines. But the damage was already done, for most of America, Aimee had become a dirty joke.

Aimee Semple McPherson carried on for 20 more years, preaching and defending herself against the old scandal. It never seemed to go away and in 1930, she suffered a nervous breakdown. She was prescribed Seconal to deal with her anxieties and on September 27, 1944, she died in San Francisco from an accidental overdose. Some of her closest friends attributed the accident to a combination of a broken heart and exhaustion from her endless struggle to restore her name, popularity, and influence. At her funeral, held at the Angelus Temple, more than 40,000 mourners passed by her casket and bid their farewell to “God’s Little Angel.”

Strangely, a weird rumor followed Aimee to the grave. When she was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in a huge tomb with an iron gate, guarded by two kneeling marble angels, it was said that a direct telephone line to the Angelus Temple was buried with her. That way, when she returned (as her followers believed she would), she would be able to alert someone to come to the cemetery and let her out of the tomb.

As author David Wallace said, if the story isn’t true, it should be.

The Cardiff Giant Revealed!

THE PETRIFIED MAN

The Cardiff Giant Hoax

On this date, February 2, 1870, one of the greatest hoaxes in American history was finally revealed to be just what it was --- a colossal practical joke gone awry. The Cardiff Giant, a 10-foot-tall purported “petrified man” was first uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell in Cardiff, New York. The worker’s astounding “discovery” shocked post-Civil War America and made headlines around the world.

What should have been a short-lived “wonder,” created by George Hull, became a national sensation thanks to famous showman P.T. Barnum and the story lives on today.

The Cardiff Giant – One of America’s Most Famous Hoaxes

The Cardiff Giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an atheist, decided to create the giant after an argument at a Methodist revival meeting about the passage in Genesis 6:4 stating that there were giants who once lived on Earth. Thinking that he would teach the Christians a lesson, he devised a plan about a “real” giant that could be discovered, put on display and then revealed to be a hoax. His simple plan soon ran amuck.

Hull hired men to carve out a 10-foot long block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, telling them it was intended for a monument to Abraham Lincoln in New York. He shipped the block to Chicago, where he hired Edward Burghardt, a German stonecutter, to carve it into the likeness of a man and swore him to secrecy. Various stains and acids were used to make the giant appear to be old and weathered, and the giant's surface was beaten with steel knitting needles embedded in a board to simulate pores. In November 1868, Hull transported the giant by rail to the farm of William Newell, his cousin. He buried the giant behind his cousin’s barn and then sat back to wait. By then, he had spent over $2,500 on the hoax and invested countless hours of time.

Nearly a year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, ostensibly to dig a well, and on October 16, 1869 they found the giant. One of the men reportedly exclaimed, "I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!" The amazing giant was pulled out of the ground and it’s “discovery” made newspaper headlines.

Newell set up a tent over the giant and charged 25 cents for people who wanted to see it. Two days later he increased the price to 50 cents. People came by the wagon load, invading his property, all anxious to see not only a real-life petrified man, but proof that the giants in the Bible actually existed.

In spite of the crowds flocking to see the giant, archaeological scholars pronounced it a fake, and some geologists even noticed that there was no good reason to try to dig a well in the exact spot the giant had been found. Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh called it "a most decided humbug.” But the public didn’t want to hear it. Some Christian fundamentalists and preachers defended its authenticity and crowds continued to flock to the site, often with well-worn Bibles clutched in their hands.

Eventually, Hull sold his part-interest in the giant for $23,000 to a syndicate of five men headed by David Hannum. They moved it to Syracuse, New York, for exhibition. The giant drew such crowds that showman P. T. Barnum offered $50,000 for the giant. When the syndicate turned him down, he hired a man to model the giant's shape covertly in wax and create a plaster replica. He put his giant on display in New York, claiming that his was the real giant, and the Cardiff Giant was a fake.

P.T. Barnum

As the newspapers reported Barnum's version of the story, David Hannum was quoted as saying, "There's a sucker born every minute" in reference to spectators paying to see Barnum's giant. Over time, the quotation has been misattributed to Barnum himself.

Hannum sued Barnum for calling his giant a fake, but the judge told him to get his giant to swear on his own genuineness in court if he wanted a favorable injunction.

By now, things had gone too far for George Hull – and he had his richly deserved revenge on the Methodist minister who told him that the Bible was meant to be taken literally. On December 10, 1869, Hull confessed to the press. On February 2, 1870 both giants were revealed as fakes in court. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling a fake giant what it actually was – a fake.

Believe it or not, even after the Cardiff Giant was soundly revealed as a hoax, a number of other similar hoaxes followed in its wake. In 1876, The Solid Muldoon emerged in Beulah, Colorado, and was exhibited at 50 cents a ticket. There was also a rumor that Barnum had offered to buy it for $20,000. One employer later revealed that this was also a creation of George Hull, aided by Willian Conant. The Solid Muldoon was made of clay, ground bones, meat, rock dust, and plaster.

In 1877, the owner of Taughannock House hotel on Cayuga Lake, New York, hired men to create a fake petrified man and place it where the workers who were expanding the hotel would dig it up. One of the men who had buried the giant later revealed the truth when drunk.

In 1892 Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, de facto ruler of the town of Creede, Colorado, purchased a petrified man for $3,000 and exhibited it for 10 cents a peek. Soapy's profits did not come from displaying "McGinty," as he named it, but rather from distractions, such as the shell game set up to entertain the crowds as they waited in line. He also profited by selling interests in the exhibition. This was a real human body, intentionally injected with chemicals for preservation and petrification. Soapy displayed McGinty from 1892 to 1895 throughout Colorado and the northwest United States.

In 1897, a petrified man found downriver from Fort Benton, Montana, was claimed by promoters to be the remains of former territorial governor and U.S. Civil War General Thomas Francis Meagher. Meagher had drowned in the Missouri River in 1867. The petrified man was displayed across Montana as a novelty and even exhibited in New York and Chicago.

The Cardiff Giant still exists today. It appeared at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, but did not attract much attention. An Iowa publisher bought it later to adorn his basement rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation piece. In 1947, he sold it to the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where it is still on display today. It is a very physical reminder that either P.T. Barnum or David Hannum once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”