The Strangest Disappearances In The Bermuda Triangle

**"The Strangest Disappearances In The Bermuda Triangle"** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded onto YouTube on May 5, 2017. It is the fifth episode of the second season of *BuzzFeed Unsolved: Supernatural*, and the twenty-fourth episode overall. You can watch it here.

## Description

What’s really going on in the Bermuda Triangle?

## Background

The Bermuda Triangle is an area of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. Though the actual range is debated, some estimated coverage between 500,000 to a million square miles. The term "Bermuda Triangle" actually didn't come into use until 1964, when it was coined by Vincent Gatos for a cover story for Argosy Magazine. It was used to describe an area where there seemed to be an uncommon amount of disappearances of ships and planes. According to Time magazine, between 1946
and 1991 alone there were over 100 disappearances of ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle.

Allegedly, the first recorded account was made by none other than Christopher Columbus, during his famous journey to "discover" America. While in the Bermuda Triangle, Columbus, along with crew noted a variety of odd occurrences. The ship's compass began malfunctioning. There were mysterious lights over the water. The sea was rougher than it had been the entire voyage. And at one
point, he may have even seen a fireball fly through the sky and crash into the sea.

All of the events were followed by failed rescue attempts.

### Disappearances

On March 4, 1918, the USS Cyclops, one of the Navy's largest fuel ships at the time, disappeared somewhere north of Barbados. One of the more chilling details is the fact that the captain never sent out a distress signal and nobody aboard answered any of the calls from the hundreds of ships that were reportedly in the vicinity, as the USS Cyclops seemingly drifted out of existence.

On December 28, 1948, a Douglas Dakota DC-3 airplane carrying 26 people disappeared 50 miles from its destination in Florida. After the flight sent out its final radio call to indicate its nearby position, it was never heard from again.

In October 1951, a ship called the Southern Districts disappeared after being seen near the Bermuda Triangle. Four years later, in 1955, the only piece of evidence in regards to the ship's whereabouts was discovered on the Florida coast. A life preserver, eerily bearing the missing ships name.

On December 22, 1967, a 23 foot cabin cruiser called the Witchcraft, which was built to be virtually unsinkable, disappeared along with its two passengers, one of whom was an experienced sailor named Dan Burack. The boat sported a flotation device in the hull that should have allowed part of the witchcraft to remain afloat, even if the boat was filled with water. About a mile lab for Miami Beach, Burack called the Coast Guard after hitting something in the water and requested a tow back to shore. Burack was reportedly calm in the call, nor did he say his boat was sinking. However, when the Coast Guard arrived Burack, his passenger, and the Witchcraft were nowhere to be found and never seen again. Many wonder how two men aboard an unsinkable ship, equipped with lifejackets, floatable seat cushions, and flares could go missing, let alone the ship itself.

### Flight 19

On December 5, 1945, five military TBM Avenger torpedo bombers departed Fort Lauderdale, Florida at roughly 2:10 p.m. on a routine training mission. Supports say that the planes had been checked before the mission, and the weather was supposed to be favorable. Also significant is the durability of the TBM Avengers they were piloting, which were nicknamed "Iron Birds". On account of their rugged design and the propensity for holding up in battle, known as Flight 19, the five TBM Avenger airplanes carried 14 men led by instructor lieutenant Charles Taylor. Shortly after completing their training mission lieutenant, Taylor became lost in the area now known as the Bermuda Triangle. Since this was an era before GPS Taylor and his pilot's relied heavily on compasses, both of which were malfunctioning. An emergency transmission sent by one of the pilots was picked up by a control tower.

About 20 minutes later, the pilot sent Flight 19's last transmission. His voice allegedly distressed: "We can't make out anything. We think we may be about 225 miles northeast of base... It looks like we are entering white water. We're completely lost." Several minutes after the last transmission, a PBM Mariner flying boat took off on a rescue mission. That boat would radio the control tower once before also vanishing. After a widespread search attempt failed, the Navy's final report of the incident
allegedly concludes "we are not even able to make a good guess as to what happened."

## Theories

* **The Bermuda Triangle is not an area of the supernatural, but rather a naturally dangerous place for sailing.** Most hurricanes and other tropical storms in the Atlantic pass through the Bermuda Triangle.
	+ Storms and unpredictable atmospheric conditions can cause phenomenon such as water spots, which look like water tornadoes. The Bermuda Triangle also has some of the deepest underwater trenches within it, so wreckage could have potentially fallen far beneath the ocean surface. Finally, scientific research shows that there is no evidence that disappear happen more frequently in the Bermuda Triangle than any other part of the ocean.
* **The Bermuda Triangle is home to a magnetic phenomenon.** It's been proven to be a place where true north and magnetic north line up.
	+ Some research indicates that this may affect compass readings. Some science also indicates that the Lightning during storms may further effect or intensify the magnetic fields, which could account for compass and electrical machinery failures and radio interference. In fact, the rare phenomenon of ball lightning may also form such electrical storms, accounting for the strange lights seen by Columbus and an other Bermuda Triangle accounts.
* **Those lost in the Bermuda Triangle are actually now residents of the legendary lost civilization of Atlantis.** Atlantis was written about by Plato. It was supposedly an ancient naval power, but according to legend, the entire kingdom disappeared into the sea in just one day.
	+ In the 1970s, a writer named Charles Berlitz hypothesized that the entire city of Atlantis was actually a victim of the Bermuda Triangle and now resides and thrives under the sea within the triangles bounds. Berlitz theorized that the technology and weaponry of Atlantis was so advanced that it continues to contribute to the mysterious sinking of ships and planes. Some believe that which is lost in the Bermuda Triangle continues to exist in Atlantis beneath the sea.
* **The Bermuda Triangle is actually a gateway to another universe, or in scientific terms a black hole of sorts.** Some say this would account for the fact that travel times through the region are unpredictable, with some flights getting to their destination faster than usual.
	+ In the 1970s, pilot Bruce Gernon testified that he had escaped an incident in the Bermuda Triangle, which he described as an electronic fog. His plane was submerged in a grey haze and his compasses failed. He flew blindly for three minutes before his radio informed him he was flying over Miami. When he looked down at his watch, 40 minutes had passed, but he had traveled a distance comparable to 90 minutes of flight.
	+ Also in the 1970s, an unconventional Canadian scientist John Hutchison found in his work that electromagnetic fields can interfere with each other and when such a phenomenon occurred, astonishing things could happen, including making metals glow, change form, or become disfigured. Some theorized that this effect, appropriately named the Hutchison effect, could conceivably create a wormhole.
* **The disappearances within the Bermuda Triangle are the result of extraterrestrials.** Abduction by aliens would certainly explain sudden and absolute disappearances.
	+ Some claim there is a secret US Navy base in the Bahamas linked an aquatic alien activity, referred to as underwater Area 51. In 2014, at least two passengers on a carnival cruise within the Bermuda Triangle said they saw a UFO fly over them in the middle of the day.