The Bermuda Triangle

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE
THE BERMUDA, Or Devil’s, Triangle is an
area of ocean found off the southeastern
tip of the United States. It is a
region of water indelibly connected with
mysterious vessel disappearances; the
popular perception is that countless boats
and planes have been inexplicably lost there.
The triangle extends from Bermuda to Miami
and then to the Puerto Rico, and is said to
contain a supernatural secret. Some high
profile disappearances have occurred there,
and the notion of its existence has been
turned into a modern myth in the media.
Even the term ‘Bermuda Triangle’ was
coined in a fictional publication. But does
the sea here really house some unknown
power that pulls sea and airmen to their
doom, or is this mystery based mainly on
imagination?
The most famous loss in the triangle is
known as the mystery of Flight 19, and
happened on 5th December 1945. A
squadron of five US Navy Avenger torpedo
bombers set off from their base in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida to conduct a practice
mission over the island of Bimini. The flight
contained 14 men, all of them students apart
from the commander, Lt Charles Taylor.
About an hour and a half after the mission
began, radio operators received a signal from
Taylor saying his compasses were not
working, but he believed he was over the
Florida Keys. He was advised to fly north
which would bring him back to the
mainland. In fact, he was over the Bahamas,
and his attempts to head north and northeast
merely took him further away from solid
ground. A terrible storm that day hampered
communications and it seems Taylor rejected
a suggestion to pass control of the squadron
to one of the other pilots.
Radio contact was entirely lost and search
craft were dispatched to try and find the
flight to guide them back in. Of the three
planes used to rescue Flight 19, one lost
communications itself because of an iced
over aerial, one was just unsuccessful whilst
another seemed to explode shortly after takeoff.
Flight 19 itself has never been found, but
it is assumed that they ditched into the
raging sea when their fuel ran out, with the
heavy planes rapidly sinking to the ocean
floor. The US Navy recorded that the disaster
was caused by Taylor’s confusion, but an
appeal by his family had this overturned,
and a verdict of ‘causes or reasons unknown’
was given. However, Flight 19 is not the only
high profile official loss in the area, and the
USS Cyclops and Marine Sulphur Queen
have also disappeared without trace.
The legend of Flight 19 was cemented by its
inclusion in Steven Spielberg’s Close
Encounters of the Third Kind movie. Indeed,
some theories state that visiting UFO craft
enter an underwater base in the Bermuda
area, and they have been the cause of the
disappearances. Other fantastical ideas such
as technologies from Atlantis or evil marine
creatures have also been considered. Some
people even suggest the triangle is the site of
a gateway into another dimension. Strange
oceanographic features such as huge clouds of

methane gas escaping from the seabed have
also been blamed for the disappearances.
In reality, the triangle does have one
natural quality which may contribute to the
losses. Unlike everywhere else in the world –
apart from the Dragon’s Triangle near Japan –
compasses point to true north rather than
magnetic north. This may be a contributing
factor to the triangle’s legend, but the US
Coastguard officially believes the losses are
caused by a mixture of environmental and
man-made mistakes. This region is used by a
large amount of ocean and air traffic, much
of which is navigated by inexperienced
pleasure-seekers. A strong Gulf Stream and
unpredictable weather conditions not only
cause vessels to run into trouble, but also
remove many traces of them once they have
been wrecked.
It is interesting also to note that the
coastguard does not view the area as having
a particularly high incidence of accidents.
One researcher examined many historic
losses in the triangle. He came to the
conclusion that rumours and elaboration had
clouded the real, understandable, causes
behind the events. Similarly, the international
insurers, Lloyd’s of London, have
records that demonstrate that this region
near Bermuda is no more treacherous than
any other waterway. However, the myth of
the Bermuda Triangle is so strong it will live
on as long as fictional writers use it as a site
of mysterious happenings.

Roswell

THROUGH THE HAZY black and white
footage, the relaxed shape of a
bloated, swollen-headed, six-fingered
humanoid figure can just be viewed. The
grainy scene is a bizarre image of death as the
pathologist cuts into the alien skin. Could
this be the most incredible evidence ever
uncovered to prove that something out of
this world really did land at Roswell over
fifty years ago?
On 7th July 1947 the wreckage of a strange
vehicle and some non-human bodies was
found on the Foster ranch just outside
Roswell. The next day, a press officer from
the Roswell Army Air Fields was happy to
announce to the Roswell Daily Record that
the 509th Bomb Group, an elite section of the
Air Force, had salvaged an alien vessel.
Immediately his words were refuted. The US
8th Air Force’s commanding officer, General
Roger Ramey, said they had actually
recovered an experimental balloon. Ramey’s
explanation was quickly adopted as the

official line throughout the following years,
and this technique of outright denial would
continue to be championed by governments
questioned about flying saucer stories.
Although the public initially accepted the
official version of events, this episode
sparked a consistent stream of UFO
sightings, particularly around remote US Air
Force bases. Sites such as Area 51 in Nevada,
and the government’s denial of its existence,
led to suspicion and conspiracy theories.
The 1947 ‘Roswell Incident’ itself has also
never quite left the public consciousness. In
1994 a New Mexico congressman instigated
an inquiry into the affair. The investigative
department of the US Congress, known as
the General Accounting Office, discovered
that many relevant US Air Force documents
had gone missing or had been destroyed.
However, the GAO also came to the
conclusion that it was, indeed, a weather
balloon that had been recovered from the
Foster ranch, and the bodies there were in

fact anthropomorphic dummies. Case closed.
Little did US officials realise that the
‘Roswell Incident’ was about to dramatically
appear on television screens across the
globe. In 1992, a British media businessman,
Ray Santilli was in Cleveland, Ohio to meet
a retired cameraman. Santilli wanted to buy
some vintage 1955 Elvis footage from the
man, who revealed he also had some
interesting alien autopsy film from his time
in the military. Santilli purchased the film in
November 1994 and agreed to show it at the
British UFO Research Association annual
conference on 19th August 1995. However,
by March 1995 news of the film had been
released to the media, and a serious world
premier of the footage was needed. It took
place in front of invited guests at the
Museum of London on 5th May. By the end
of August 1995, millions of people around
the world had seen moving pictures from a
supposed alien autopsy.
Although this was compelling evidence,
doubters immediately began voicing their
theories about the film. The most obvious
suspicion was that the autopsy had been
created by movie special effects processes.
Many experts believe the film is fake, but
they also believe it is very high quality. The
Hollywood effects industry is a closed shop,
with insiders having friends and contacts
across the range of companies, but so far noone
has an inkling as to who created the
Roswell film. Other experts in the field of
biology are less convinced that the body is
entirely man-made, and some suspect that it
may be a human being adapted to look otherworldly.
There is a whole host of further questions
about the Roswell autopsy. Whoever
captured the footage has never been
revealed, although a bizarre film was
released where someone purporting to be the
cameraman attempted to explain his
involvement. Santilli has never uncovered
the footage he has of another alien autopsy
and has never really allowed any of his films
to be subjected to proper scrutiny. Most
importantly, the aliens in the footage look
nothing like the bodies witnesses saw
recovered from the New Mexico desert floor.
All experts who view the autopsy film agree
that it is a fake. Santilli has made a great deal
of money from the Roswell autopsy footage,
and he still maintains that it is genuine. The
rest of us will probably never know. The
public’s natural instinct is to question
governmental denials, but the other options
here are also so unreliable that it is very hard
to determine the truth