The Bermuda Triangle: Shrouded in Mystery

What began as a regular training session on the afternoon of the 5th of December, 1945, would soon become one of the greatest mysteries of the human world. Flight 19, a group of five US Navy torpedo bombers set out from their base off the coast of Florida on a routine training mission. 

With clear winter skies up above, and all the necessary precautions taken from down below, Flight 19 and its 14 crew members took to the air to fly across one of the most treacherous bodies of water known to man, the Bermuda Triangle. 

Within a few hours, all 5 planes, together with their 14 crew members vanished. A few hours later, when afternoon became evening and the skies became gray, the US Navy realized that something must have gone wrong with Flight 19. And so they sent out another aircraft to find the men, or at the very least, signs of their crashed planes. 

Sadly, the very same fate was to befall the rescue aircraft. Upon entering into the airspace above the Bermuda Triangle, the rescue plane with 13 men onboard disappeared into thin air. It’s been over 75 years since the incident, and no one has been able to find the remains of any of the 27 crew members that were lost, or the six aircrafts that disappeared. 

At the tail end of the first world war, in March 1918, the USS Cyclops was on its way back from a voyage to Brazil. The USS Cyclops was the biggest US Navy Ship at the time. It was nearly 550 feet in length and on this trip, it was carrying around 11,000 tons of manganese and a crew of 306 people. 

This ship had been voyaging for 8 years at the time without any issues. However on that fateful day, as the ship was sailing back to Barbados to resupply before going home to Baltimore, it entered into the Bermuda Triangle. 

In what is now one of the strangest occurrences of modern history, the USS Cyclops disappeared completely, leaving behind no trace of its wreckage or the bodies of any of the 306 crew members that were on board. 

This was after the ship sent a message to the Naval Base that read, “Weather Fair, All Well.” There was no mention of anything out of the ordinary, no time for the crew members to send out an SOS message, nothing. 

Just like that, the entire ship, the 11,000 tons of Manganese, and all the crew members completely vanished. 

Numerous ships were sent out to locate Cyclops, but all returned negative. They couldn’t even find the remains of the ship or any of the officers on board. It’s been more than a century since the USS Cyclops went missing, and to date, its remains are still missing, and the cause of the disappearance is still a mystery. 

How does the biggest ship in the US Navy’s arsenal just disappear without any trace? A ship that was 550 feet long and carried 11,000 tons of manganese and a crew of 306 people. How do 306 men die without anyone leaving behind an SOS message? How do 306 bodies disappear into the sea, never to be seen again? No trace of blood, no bones, nothing. 

How can a hundred years pass and nothing has resurfaced? Nothing has washed ashore? Nothing has been discovered? 

This is the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, humanity’s most treacherous sea. Or is it?

The Bermuda Triangle is a section of the Atlantic Ocean that is bordered by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. This patch of sea is considered by many to be a mysterious place where ships, planes, and people disappear without any trace. And in reality, many have. Tens of planes, dozens of ships, and hundreds of people have all mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again. 

But what exactly is going on in the Bermuda Triangle? Is it really something mysterious? Or is there a scientific explanation for everything that happens there? To find out, we have to go back to the earliest record of strange sightings in the area. 

The first record we have of any seemingly supernatural thing happening in the Bermuda Triangle is from Christopher Columbus. 

While sailing through this patch of the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, Columbus wrote in his log that his compass began malfunctioning and that he saw, in a distance, light like a fireball rising and crashing into the sea. 

Although there have been lots of explanations that help demystify what Columbus might have been seeing, most people simply choose to believe that what he saw and experienced must have been supernatural. And you might think, “oh how would you believe him? He didn’t have access to the scientific methods we do now.”

And while you might be right, to an extent, the truth is that if you look for “facts” to back up this line of thinking, even with all our knowledge about the world and our advancements in science and technology, you will find them. 

From thousands of ghost ships sailing across the sea without any crew member on board, to mystery cases of time traveling while passing through the Bermuda Triangle, this place is one that dances majestically on the line between what is real and what is not. 

There are many theories that people have used to try and explain what exactly is going on in the Bermuda Triangle. From aliens, to a wormhole, to the lost city of Atlantis sucking people from underneath, everything from evidence-based scientific hypotheses to religion, lore, and mysticism have been postulated. 

The most popular scientific explanation, however, is the theory that it’s electromagnetic interference that causes issues with compasses when in and around this area. 

This theory claims that the Bermuda Triangle has a very high pull of the earth’s natural magnet which causes issues with compasses and other sophisticated equipment on planes and ships. This could explain what went wrong with Christopher Columbus’ equipment while sailing through the area. 

It could also explain the conversations recorded by the pilots of Flight 19 who could not come to an agreement on which way it was they were flying minutes before radio silence. 

But what about the people who claimed they time traveled while passing through an electromagnetic fog? The most popular of these testimonies is the one made by Mr. Bruce Gernon, who has written a book detailing his account. 

In his book, Gernon said that while flying a light aircraft through the region, he was faced with a cylindrical-shaped cloud that sucked him in. In an instant, he saw himself on Miami Beach, around 100 miles from where he started. Gernon claimed that this 100-mile journey took mere seconds, and that he didn’t notice any atmospheric or landscape changes throughout. 

When you hear this story, you might instantly think, “he’s just cooking up a fairytale so he can sell some books.” But that skepticism begins to turn into plausibility when you realize that the people at the base station corroborated his story. According to them, the plane went off the radar and re-emerged in Miami within seconds, just like Gernon described. 

Did he time-travel? Teleport? No one knows. Scientists have since debunked the existence of a wormhole and have said that there is no way he could have traveled through time. However, no one has been able to provide a definite explanation as to what exactly happened that day.

It is for this reason that a lot of people still cling on to the idea that there is something truly mysterious going on in the Bermuda Triangle. You see, there have been explanations to debunk theories, but there hasn’t been any conclusive evidence to explain what is really going on. 

So people are left thinking, well if they aren’t sure it’s that, then how can we be sure it’s not this? After all, the absence of evidence, is not the evidence of absence. 

Most of the world’s oceans are still a mystery to us. Although the Ocean has been mapped by things like satellite and Sonar, humans have only physically explored around 5% of our waters. The rest is still a mystery to us. Maybe not a mythical mystery, but a mystery nonetheless. 

And that’s why people are quick to believe that things like Mermaids and Krakens exist. The Ocean in its vast emptiness echoes things that are difficult for the human mind to comprehend. And as humans, once things are difficult for us to understand, we come up with stories to try and make sense of these things. Once these stories are formed in our minds, it’s difficult to get rid of them, especially when there’s no evidence beyond reasonable doubt to convince you otherwise. 

The Bermuda Triangle is one of these stories that we’ve told ourselves. There is no evidence that suggests that shipwrecks and plane crashes occur more frequently in this body of water than in any other well-traveled part of the Ocean. 

Now you might say, “well it’s not just the accidents, it’s the fact that these vehicles just disappear, leaving no trace behind.” But the truth is, even that is not unique to the Bermuda Triangle. There are currently over three million shipwrecks in the world, and only 1% of these wrecks have ever been found. 

In fact, the term Bermuda Triangle was not coined by researchers or scientists or even seafarers, it was coined by the writer, Vincent Gaddis, who first used the phrase in 1964. 

Vincent Gaddis was a paranormal writer who made a career out of ignoring natural explanations and inventing mysteries where none exist. 

The US Board of Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an official name and it does not have any official file on that area. There isn’t even a map that helps to point out the boundaries of this place. 

When I was younger, I was obsessed with the idea of the Bermuda Triangle. After going through the rabbit hole of threads and Youtube videos at 3am, I decided that one day I would take my bags and travel out to the sea, into the heart of the Triangle, where no other person is brave enough to go. 

Then I got older and found out that the Bermuda Triangle is not some sacred place where no one dares to enter. It’s actually a very normal part of the sea that people travel through everyday. 

Dozens of ships and airplanes pass through the Bermuda Triangle every single day. Vessels heading to America, Europe, and the Caribbean ply this route often and most of them go through unscathed. 

Yet, because of the small percentage of accidents that occur in this region, which is no more than anywhere else in the Ocean, we believe that there must be something bigger going on. Something we’re just not aware of. 

The reason many people still believe in the lore of the Bermuda Triangle and in other mythical tales is one of the most fundamental human conditions, the need to feel like a part of something bigger, something greater, something more than human. 

Deep down in all of us, there is a feeling that the world is more than what we can see and experience. It’s the same feeling that makes people believe in the existence of Alien Life and religious deities, even when there is no physical evidence to support that belief. 

And really, can you blame us? When you’re blessed with the ability to think logically about why things are the way they are, you are also cursed with the disability of trying to make sense of everything, and not accepting that sometimes, we just don’t know.

- EE, MM