The Devil's Triangle: My Experience
Florida is a state full of legends and mysteries, but no Florida mystery has attracted more attention over the years then The Bermuda Triangle. Do I believe? Well, my own experience makes me wonder.
Florida is a state full of legends and mysteries. The Fountain of Youth was sought after by Pounce de Leon when he arrived there, in what today is Saint Augustine, on April 2,1513. The Satan Tree which was said to drip sap that could kill a man was supposed to exist somewhere deep in Central Florida (its probably in Disney World and theres a long line to see it!). The Skunk Ape, named for its obnoxious odor, is Floridas version of the Yeti or Sasquatch and has been sited throughout the State. But no Florida mystery has attracted more attention over the years then The Bermuda Triangle.
Known better to locals as The Devils Triangle, its a supposed triangular area covering thousands of miles where ships, planes and people simply vanish. Although researchers disagree about the actual dimensions of the area, most will say that the Triangle stretches from the east coast of Florida over to Bermuda, down to Puerto Rico and back up to Florida again.
In all fairness, anyone that has ever taken in the sun on the Miami or Fort Lauderdale beaches knows how strange the weather in that area is. One minute its sunny and warm, the next minute the wind kicks up and your being pelted with hard rain. It can be cloudy with rain pouring down on one side of a street, while the other is sunny and pleasant. Its possible and even likely that the odd weather conditions and sudden changes in temperature or conditions has contributed to more then a few ship and aircraft disasters. But theres more to the story then weird weather.
Missing ships, planes and people are a part of life and the price some have to pay for travel, but the Triangle has had more then its share. No one thinks much about the numbers until some major disaster or odd disappearance happens. In all, over 1000 people have vanished without a trace during the last thirty years in the Triangle. Statistics vary on the numbers of ships and planes missing and never found, but its easily in the hundreds.
The area came to the Governments attention in 1945. Flight 19 departed the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station on December 5, 1945. Fourteen men in five Avenger torpedo bombers were scheduled to practice daylight bombing in the Hen and Chicken Shoals, but appeared to have navigation problems. Radio transmissions intercepted by Lt. Robert Cox, a flight instructor, indicated the planes may have been headed in the wrong direction. Cox may have made things worse by giving one of the Flight 19 pilots directions based on where he thought they were, instead of their actual position.
By nightfall, the flight was out of communication with the Naval Air Station. Several rescue aircraft were sent out in response to the emergency. One was a Martin Mariner flying boat. With several redundant hulls designed for survival in the water, it was largely considered unsinkable. Despite this, the Mariner and its crew vanished. Some believe it may have caught fire and ditched into the ocean. A ships crew reported seeing an explosion or fire in the night sky near where the Mariner was to rendezvous with other rescue aircraft, but no trace of the Mariner or its crew was ever found. Others say that what the ship hands probably saw were flares associated with the rescue effort.
Several ships also vanished while searching for Flight 19, but thats not the strangest part of the story. For days after the Avengers disappeared, Marines were dispatched in small groups to search Floridas east coast beaches for any debris or bodies from the missing flight or rescue crafts that were also presumed lost. A classified military report on the entire episode was leaked to the press years later and indicated that during the third day of the search, a group of ten marines combing the beach near Miami just vanished!
The Marines were never seen again. If a few had gone missing, one might attribute it to drowning or desertion, but it seems unlikely that all ten would just not be there anymore. And this isnt uncommon. More then a few people on pleasure boats have reported having a conversation with someone on the craft, turning away, then turning back to find them gone. As in the case of the famed Marty Celeste, a ship which vanished in 1872, both large vessels and pleasure boats have been found floating adrift in various parts of the Triangle with no crew on board.
Without signs of fire, disaster or mishap, passengers and crews just disappeared from sea worthy ships. It seems ludicrous that anyone would abandon a ship for no good reason in the middle of an ocean? Some attribute this to attempts at piracy, but the vessels were never found looted. Some carried expensive cargo, others were found with peoples purses or wallets on board containing large amounts of cash. Salvage rights has been another proposed theory to explain the abandoned ships, but in many cases no one directly benefited from the discovery of these abandoned vessels.
While its true that the story of Flight 19 has become serious convoluted and exaggerated over the years, we still have the missing aircraft, ships and people that had been a part of that training flight and the subsequent rescue effort. Every few years someone tries to find one or more of the missing ships or planes and claims a fantastic discovery.
In the early 1990s, UNSOLVED MYSTERIES made a big deal of someone finding one of the torpedo bombers on the ocean floor. The number painted on the body of the bomber even seemed to match that of one of the missing planes. But on closer examination, and much to their dismay, the serial number on the engine did not match any of those from Flight 19 and the supposed matching number of the plane was actually from another flight.
Torpedo Bombers werent just used for training missions. By the end of World War II, they were obsolete aircraft and became targets themselves. There could be literally hundreds of torpedo bombers lying fairly intact on the bottom of the ocean in the Bermuda Triangle. Some were slightly damaged during shooting or bombing practices, while others were just allowed to sink if missed during training sessions, but none so far found have proven to be from Flight 19. It took a disaster of equal or greater magnitude to prove how strange the Triangle really is.
Despite warnings not to launch because of chilly conditions, the Space Shuttle Challenger took off from Kennedy Space Center on January 28, 1986 and exploded over the ocean. In an effort to find out what went wrong, a search for pieces of the shuttle was launched that may well have been the greatest military and government search effort ever conducted. After searching what amounted to ten thousand square miles of ocean bottom, they found all the bodies of the astronauts and most of the shuttle. In all this searching, not one aircraft or ship that had ever vanished mysteriously in the Triangle was located. Many known wrecks and a few unknown ones were found, but nothing else.
What is the Triangle? A giant sea sink hole? Time Warp? UFO base? Energy vortex? I dont have the answer to that question. Rather then speculate on theories or use any more space re-telling Triangle stories youve probably already read or heard about, Ill share my own Triangle experience with you in the hope that it may add to the truth, and not distract from it.
My first visit to Florida was in the Spring of 1966 when I was just ten years old. Talk of the Triangle was at a lull in those days. Although I had already been reading non-fiction books about the paranormal for about a year by that time, the topics were usually ghost or UFO related. None, that I can recall, had specifically mentioned Triangle events or disappearances. When I arrived in Fort Lauderdale with my parents for a two week vacation, I did so without any knowledge of the strangeness associated with the region.
We stayed in a Fort Lauderdale hotel, just across the street from the beach. The only strange thing that happened to me during the first few days of our vacation was waking up in the morning to find Spring Break college students passed out everywhere just outside of our efficiency suite. I mean they were just lying on the ground, sleeping in chairs and under the stairs. It was upsetting and a bit scary, but nothing compared to what I was about to deal with.
Near the end of our first week, my parents got a call from the front desk. The hotel was offering free Bahamas weekend trips to guests. The trip included two days and one night free at a hotel, plus a luxurious charter flight to and from the Islands. The object was to get people there for gambling. Although my folks werent big on gambling, they thought the trip might be fun and made reservations for the last weekend of our vacation.
Too busy having fun in the hotel pool and at the beach, I didnt give the trip much thought until about a few days before the flight. I had always had a sort of sixth sense when it came to certain things. I would hear a song playing in my head before turning on the radio, then the song would be on the radio. The same with television. I would start thinking about a certain movie or a favorite episode of some TV series and it would be on when I started watching. It would be easy to through all that up to revolving music and TV schedules and even chance, but sometimes its scary how right I could be about things.
The view from the balcony of the hotel was spectacular! It afforded a wide panorama of the Atlantic Ocean. Large and small ships could be seen traveling back and forth all day, while surfers gave it their best on small waves headed in towards the beach. But the early evening was my favorite time to look out over the water. Things quieted down and I found the sound of waves crashing against the shore to be soothing. But two days before the Bahamas weekend trip, I looked out at the ocean that evening and felt very troubled. The feeling grew stronger the next morning. Not wanting to upset my folks, I said nothing as they headed out to the beach. I stayed inside having had just a bit too much sun over the past week and a half.
I watched TV and enjoyed the air conditioning, while occasionally peeking out the front window to laugh at the college guys who were making complete fools of themselves down in the pool in an effort to pick up girls. I didnt look out toward the ocean. Despite these diversions, my thoughts always returned to the upcoming weekend trip. When I began to think about not going, I felt some peace. Chalk it up to the built in protective instinct that all children have, but there was no way I was going to take that trip.
After baking in the sun for a few hours in the morning, my parents came in for lunch. I wanted to speak right up, but decided to wait until after the meal. Then I told them. I dont want to go on that trip to the Bahamas. It was simple, direct and honest. My folks were shocked! It was unlike me to be so defiant. Even though they wondered why, I had no answers to offer. At ten years of age, it was tough to put feelings that you didnt understand into words.
Despite attempts to change my mind and an insistence that I was going, I assured my parents that nothing was going to get me on that plane. By the day of the trip, my folks gave up. Maybe they were afraid I would freak out during the flight or were just two exhausted from a vacation filled with activities to be bothered with the trip. Either way, they made me the fall guy claiming that I had ruined the familys one chance to see the Bahamas. Fortunately, my folks went out on Friday evening to a show in the hotel and I didnt have to hear about it all night. I stayed up late Friday watching old movies on TV and felt the best I had in days.
Although I was normally up with the sun, six oclock came and went without me the next morning. My parents hadnt come in until after one thirty, so they wouldnt be getting up early that day either. The phone rang just around eight oclock. I woke up, but couldnt drag myself out of bed fast enough to answer it. My father woke up and took the call. It was the front desk. There was a short conversation that I couldnt hear, then my dad went back to bed.
Once I was awake, it was hard for me to go back to bed. After making a pit stop in the restroom, I headed for the TV. Our efficiency suite was divided enough to allow me to watch TV, close the door to the room where my parents were sleeping and not disturb them. I loved those Saturday morning superhero cartoons! The phone rang again around ten oclock, but my father answered it again before I could. By eleven, both my parents were up. There seemed to be a long discussion going on, but I couldnt tell what was being said and just figured they were making plans for our departure on Monday morning.
Lunch was an unusually muted affair. No one really spoke except to lay out a few plans for the rest of the day. Clouds gathered throughout the afternoon, so we decided to spend it at the movies instead of the beach. Although I wanted to see a monster flick, we ended watching THE SINGING NUN. If there was a hell, I wanted the producer of that film to go there! After the movie, we stopped at a fast food place and brought some back to the efficiency. There still wasnt much conversation.
That evening I went to a small game room just off of the hotel lobby to play pinball and some other games of the period. There was a lot of activity in the lobby. Police came and went, and people were calling to ask about friends and relatives staying at the hotel. After about an hour of listening to the front desk conversations with one ear and hearing the bells and whistles of the pinball game with the other, I figured what had happened.
It seems that the charter plane carrying those who went on the weekend trip to the Bahamas had vanished! It carried passengers who were guests at a number of area hotels, including ours. About eight guests from our hotel had been aboard. I figured out later that the first early morning phone call to our room had been to see if we were in or had taken the flight, while the second was to find out if we knew any others that might have passed on the trip.
My parents were the type of people who were not up to speed with pop culture or anything out of the ordinary. To them, The Beatles were either bugs in our garage or a passing fad. Tom Jones was about as wild as it got for their taste. I had to buy any books about the paranormal with my own allowance money because they thought such material was junk. The first time that ROSEMARYS BABY aired on TV, my folks wouldnt let me watch it and actually confiscated the small TV I had in my bedroom to be sure that I wouldnt. I was thirteen at the time! Given all that, I knew that the incident with the plane would just never get discussed, and it never did.
I still cant explain what happened or why I didnt want to get on that plane. When I think about it, Im reminded of any number of stories Ive heard about people obeying a sense of doom and missing a flight or not keeping an appointment, only to find it saved their lives. But thats the real mystery of The Devils Triangle. Despite our best efforts to explain it all away with science, coincidence or a closer examination of the facts, the place keeps throwing things in our face that are a little stranger then our ability to fully understand them.
About the Author
A native New Yorker now living in Arizona, Bill Knell is a forty-something guy with a wealth of knowledge and experience. He's written hundreds of articles on a wide variety of subjects. A popular Speaker, Bill Knell presents seminars on a number of topics that entertain, train and teach. A popular radio and television show Guest, you've heard Bill on thousands of top-rated shows in all formats and seen him on local, national and international television programs.