SECRET HAVING PLACES-WONDERFULNESS
Everyone has heard of the Bermuda Triangle and the mysteries
that surround it. Theories about this area range from reasonable to just plain
ridiculous, but whether you believe it’s the site of time warps, alien
abductions, or just plain paranoia, it certainly abounds with strangeness. It’s
not the only place you can find creepy things happening, however—here are 10
other places on Earth with their fair share of mysteries:
1. Superstition
Mountains-Superstition-Mountains 3614 990X742
The Superstition Mountains are a mountain range located east
of Phoenix, Arizona. Already it’s off to a great start with the name.
According to legend, sometime in the 1800s a man named Jacob
Waltz discovered a huge goldmine within the mountains that has since been
dubbed the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine (because Waltz was German, and eh, close
enough). He kept the location a secret until his deathbed, upon which he may or
may not (depending on which version of the story you’re reading) have told a
single person the secret. Regardless, the mine has never been found, in spite
of many expeditions. Some say the spirits of people who’ve lost their lives in
search of the gold still haunt the mountains.
One reportedly Native American legend goes that the
treasures of the mountains are guarded by creatures called Tuar-Tums (“Little
People”) that live below the mountains in caves and tunnels. Some Apaches
believe that the entrance to hell is located in the mountains. This is, of
course, ridiculous, as we all know the entrance to hell is in Sunnydale.
2. South Atlantic
Anomaly-200710 Saa
Did you ever wonder if there was a Bermuda Triangle in
Space? No? Well you’re probably wondering it now, and you’re in luck! Because
there totally is, and it’s called the South Atlantic Anomaly. The SAA is the
area where the band of radiation known as Earth’s inner Van Allen belt comes
closest to the Earth’s surface.
It’s an area centered just a bit off the coast of Brazil,
and it’s responsible for numerous problems with satellites and spacecraft, from
messing up their programs to actually shutting down their function. The Hubble
Telescope is actually turned off from taking observations when passing through
the Anomaly, and the International Space Station avoids scheduling spacewalks when
passing through it (which happens up to 5 times a day). It’s not just technical
problems, either—some astronauts report seeing “shooting stars” in their visual
field as they pass through.
The cause of all these problems isn’t fully understood. The
main suspect is the high levels of radiation that accumulate at the anomaly,
but scientists aren’t sure exactly how or why the effects occur. So let’s just
pin this one on aliens.
3. Lake Anjikuni-Colville-River-Alaska-1901-Usgs
Not content with just a few individuals disappearing, Lake
Anjikuni decided to take things to the next level and provide the locale for
the disappearance of an entire village. It all happened in November 1930, when
a trapper named Joe Labelle was looking for shelter for the night. Labelle was
familiar with the Inuit village, whose population ranges from 30-2000,
depending on who you believe. He made his way there and found quite an eerie
scene—the villagers were nowhere to be found. Everything else, including food
and rifles, had been left behind.
Labelle telegraphed the RCMP and an investigation began. In
the Village Burial Ground it was discovered that at least one (sources vary)
grave had been opened, clearly not by animals, and emptied. Furthermore, about
300 feet from the village, the bodies of around 7 sled dogs were found, having
starved to death despite open stores of food at the village. Some versions of
the story even report strange lights being seen above the lake around the time
of the disappearance.
So what really happened? There have been all sorts of claims
about the cause for the disappearance, including aliens (of course), ghosts,
and even vampires. The RCMP’s own website disregards the story as an urban
legend, but with so many versions of it floating around from so many years ago,
it’s hard to be certain. Except about the vampires, I think we can be certain
it wasn’t vampires.
4.The Devil’s Sea-U6Xde8Yhxv
The Devil’s Sea (or Dragon’s Triangle, take your pick of
which sounds more ominous) is an area of the Pacific Ocean as riddled with
strange happenings as its Atlantic counterpart near Bermuda. Located off the
coast of Japan, it’s been the site of countless claims of unexplained phenomena
including magnetic anomalies, inexplicable lights and objects, and of course,
mysterious disappearances. The area is even considered a danger by Japanese
fishing authorities.
One story has it that in 1952 the Japanese government sent
out a research vessel, the Kaio Maru No. 5, to investigate the mysteries of the
Devil’s Sea. Naturally, of course, the Kaio Maru No. 5 and its crew of 31
people were never seen again. Another story tells of Kublai Khan’s disastrous
attempts to invade Japan by crossing the Devil’s Sea, losing at least 40 000
men in the process.
The usual theories abound for what’s really going on: from
aliens, to gates to parallel universes, even to Atlantis (because why not).
Some suggest that high volcanic activity in the region is responsible for some
of the disappearances (the Kaio Maru No. 5 may have been caught in an
eruption). Our advice? Just stay out of the ocean, period.
5. Bigelow Ranch-Ftduchesne2002-1A
Bigelow Ranch (formerly known as Skinwalker Ranch and
Sherman Ranch) is a 480-acre property in northwest Utah that is home to countless
UFO sightings, animal mutilations, and other strange occurrences. Though
mysterious happenings have been documented since the 50’s, some of the most
bizarre stories happened to a pair of ranchers named Terry and Gwen Sherman
after they bought it in 1994.
The first day they moved on to the property, they saw a
large wolf out in the pasture. They even went to pet the wolf as it seemed tame
(to the curious reader, yes, this is always a good idea). It was docile with
the Shermans, but ended up grabbing a calf by the snout through the bars of its
enclosure. When Terry shot at the wolf with a pistol, the bullets had no
effect. It finally left after Terry brought out the shotgun, though even that
didn’t do any actual damage. The Shermans tried tracking the wolf, but it’s
tracks stopped abruptly as if it had vanished.
And that wasn’t the end of things. The Shermans were
constantly plagued by such events as UFO sightings, intelligent floating orbs
(reputed to have incinerated three of their dogs), inexplicable cryptids, and
gruesome cattle mutilations. It got so bad that the Shermans actually sold
their ranch to Robert Bigelow in 1996, the founder of the National Institute
for Discovery Science, who wanted to study the mysteries surrounding the ranch.
Bigelow owns the ranch to this day and NIDS keeps a tight lid on their findings.
6.Point Pleasant-Silver
Point Pleasant was probably aptly named at one point, but it
is now so shrouded in tales of mysterious and creepy events as to be nothing
but an ironic alliteration. The most famous of these events involves a creature
known as Mothman, who reputedly terrorized the small West Virginia community
from November 1966 to December 1967. Over a hundred different citizens of Point
Pleasant are eyewitnesses to this creature, a 7-foot tall broad chested man
with hypnotic, glowing red eyes, and wings that stretch 10 feet long and drag
behind him on the ground.
The Mothman, who’s been the subject of both a book and a
movie (and who has his own statue in Point Pleasant), has many possible
explanations. Some believe him to be an extraterrestrial, others a mutant or a
cryptid, and some suggest the people of Point Pleasant were actually being
scared by owls or a Sandhill Crane. Whatever the case, reports of Mothman
stopped after the Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15, 1967, killing 46
people and leading many to believe that the two events were somehow connected.
In addition to Mothman, several other paranormal tales from
Point Pleasant include UFO sightings and reports of so-called “Men In
Black”—human looking creatures who unnerve others by the sheer abundance of
peculiarities in their speech, appearance, and mannerisms. These “men”
supposedly appear looking for information about the paranormal (or rather,
people who have this information).
7.Michigan Triangle-4561213366 402X233
The Michigan Triangle is another geographical triangle,
located in the middle of Lake Michigan. It, too, is the site of mysterious
disappearances of both land and sea craft. Some of the more famous ones
include:
Captain Donner: On April 28, 1937, Captain George R. Donner
of the O.M. McFarland was on his way from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Port
Washington, Wisconsin, and had to pass through the triangle. As the story goes,
he was exhausted and retired to his cabin, leaving the second mate to wake him
when they neared their destination. About three hours later, when the second
mate went to do so, Donner was not in his cabin. Nor was he in the galley. An
exhaustive search of the ship was conducted, but he was never found.
Flight 2501: On June 23, 1950, Northwest Airlines Flight
2501 was on its way from New York to Minneapolis at the hands of experienced
pilot Robert C. Lind, and was carrying 58 passengers. Due to bad weather, when
the flight was near Chicago it changed course and turned over Lake Michigan.
Around midnight, Lind requested permission to drop altitude from 3500 ft to
2500 ft, without ever specifying a reason. His request was denied, and that was
the last communication Flight 2501 ever had. It’s last known position was
supposedly within the Michigan Triangle.
While sources vary as to what amount of wreckage of Flight
2501 has been found (some say nothing, whereas others specify assorted floating
debris such as seat cushions and the like), it seems clear that the plane
crashed into the water. Mysterious, however, is that the plane was in perfectly
good condition and in capable hands at the time of the disappearance. What’s
more, despite searches still being conducted annually, neither the body of the
plane nor complete human remains have ever been recovered.
8. San Luis Valley-San
Luis Valley Original
San Luis Valley, in southern Colorado, is an area high in
inexplicable phenomena including UFO sightings and hundreds of unexplained farm
animal mutilations. UFO sightings are so common that a woman named Judy
Messoline has even set up a UFO watchtower on her property, which has witnessed
over 50 UFO sightings since 2000 alone. Some of these are observed by dozens of
people at a time.
For the UFO skeptics out there, far more chilling are the
tales of animal mutilations from the region. They began in 1967, with a horse
named Snippy. Snippy was found one morning with her brain missing, and her neck
bones completely cleaned. Since then, hundreds if not thousands of inexplicable
animal mutilations have occurred in the region, sharing several things in
common—firstly, there is never a trace of blood around the animals, and
secondly, the animals are all damaged with precise cuts, distinctly not the
work of predators. Finally, all of the mutilations happen overnight to
otherwise healthy creatures.
Investigations into the incidents haven’t wielded any
results, yet they continue to this day. Some farmers report seeing strange
lights in the sky the nights before finding a carcass, leading some to believe
that extraterrestrials are involved. Though it’s hard to imagine aliens caring
so much about farm animals in Colorado, the alternative isn’t much more
appealing—that humans are the so-called “Phantom Surgeons of the Plains”.
Personally, I’d rather it was aliens.
9. Bennington
Triangle-33-Geo11
Oh look, another triangle. This one is found in southwestern
Vermont, and is the site of a string of 5 mysterious disappearances between
1945-1950, related in no way but geographic location. These include:
Middie Rivers, 75 years old, was out leading a group of
hunters on November 12, 1945. On their way back, he got ahead of his group and
was never seen again. Only a single rifle shell found in a stream was recovered
as evidence.
Paula Welden was an 18 year old sophomore of Bennington
College who was out hiking on December 1, 1946. She never returned and no trace
of her was ever found.
Exactly 3 years later, on December 1, 1949, a veteran named
James E. Tetford was taking a bus back to his home at the Bennington Soldier’s
Home, returning from a visit with relatives. Witnesses saw him on the bus the
stop before this, but when the bus arrived at his destination he was nowhere to
be seen. His luggage was still on the bus.
Eight year old Paul Jepson disappeared on October 12, 1950,
while his mother was busy feeding the pigs. Despite having a highly visible red
jacket, none of the search parties formed were able to find the boy.
The last disappearance was a woman named Frieda Langer. On
October 28, 1950, she was hiking with her cousin on Glastenbury Mountain when
she slipped in a stream. She decided to go back quickly and change her clothes,
and, if you’ve been paying attention so far, you’ll surmise that she was never
seen again. Well, not exactly—she’s the only victim whose body was ever
recovered, though it was only found on May 12, 1951 (about 6 months later), in
an area that had been thoroughly searched after her disappearance. The body was
in such a mangled shape that no cause of death could be determined.
Though many theories abound, including aliens, bigfoot-like
monsters, or some unknown serial killer, there’s one thing we know for sure:
it’s a good idea to stay the hell away from triangles.
10. Bridgewater Triangle-Hili
No, seriously—stay away from triangles. Especially this one.
The Bridgewater Triangle, an area of about 200 square miles in Southeastern
Massachusetts just south of Boston, is like an all you can eat buffet of the
supernatural.
Among other things, the area has been subject to numerous cryptozoological
sightings. Since the 1970’s there have been several reports of tall, hairy,
ape-like creatures roaming the swamp. There have also been numerous sightings
of Thunderbirds, giant Pterodactyl-like creatures that have been seen fighting
in midair. In 1976 there was a report of a man who saw a giant, ghostly,
red-eyed dog rip the throats out of two of his ponies.
Besides these cryptids, there have been numerous reports of
mutilated animals (mainly cows and calves) in the region. Some credit these
mutilations to satanic cults, but no one has come forward and no one even knows
where the animals came from.
As if all this weren’t enough, the Bridgewater Triangle is a
hotbed of UFO sightings, dating all the way back to 1760, when a “sphere of
fire” was reportedly seen hovering over New England. Since then there have been
numerous sightings of unexplained objects in the sky—including mysterious black
helicopters. One from 1976 describes two UFOs landing along Route 44 near the
city of Taunton, and another from 1994 recounts a strange triangular object
with red and white lights seen by a Bridgewater Law Enforcement Officer. In
1908 on Halloween night, two undertakers who were traveling to Bridgewater
noticed in the sky what looked like a “giant lantern”. They watched it for
almost 40 minutes before it disappeared.
Bermuda isn’t looking so bad anymore.
Michael Alba has a skeptical fascination with the
supernatural. Thanks…Twitter @MichaelPaulAlba.
Bermuda Triangle
Researchers attempt to determine
what has caused hundreds of planes to mysteriously disappear in what is known
as the Bermuda Triangle.
The Bermuda Triangle is a
mythical section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and
Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared. Unexplained
circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots
of a squadron of U.S. Navy bombers became disoriented while flying over the
area; the planes were never found. Other boats and planes have seemingly
vanished from the area in good weather without even radioing distress messages.
But although myriad fanciful theories have been proposed regarding the Bermuda
Triangle, none of them prove that mysterious disappearances occur more
frequently there than in other well-traveled sections of the ocean. In fact,
people navigate the area every day without incident.
Legend of the Bermuda Triangle
The area referred to as the
Bermuda Triangle, or Devil’s Triangle, covers about 500,000 square miles of
ocean off the southeastern tip of Florida. When Christopher Columbus sailed
through the area on his first voyage to the New World, he reported that a great
flame of fire (probably a meteor) crashed into the sea one night and that a
strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later. He also wrote about
erratic compass readings, perhaps because at that time a sliver of the Bermuda
Triangle was one of the few places on Earth where true north and magnetic north
lined up.
Did You Know?
After gaining widespread fame as
the first person to sail solo around the globe, Joshua Slocum disappeared on a
1909 voyage from Martha’s Vineyard to South America. Though it’s unclear
exactly what happened, many sources later attributed his death to the Bermuda
Triangle.
William Shakespeare’s play “The
Tempest,” which some scholars claim was based on a real-life Bermuda shipwreck,
may have enhanced the area’s aura of mystery. Nonetheless, reports of
unexplained disappearances did not really capture the public’s attention until
the 20th century. An especially infamous tragedy occurred in March 1918 when
the USS Cyclops, a 542-foot-long Navy cargo ship with over 300 men and 10,000
tons of manganese ore onboard, sank somewhere between Barbados and the
Chesapeake Bay. The Cyclops never sent out an SOS distress call despite being
equipped to do so, and an extensive search found no wreckage. “Only God and the
sea know what happened to the great ship,” U.S. President Woodrow Wilson later
said. In 1941 two of the Cyclops’ sister ships similarly vanished without a
trace along nearly the same route.
A pattern allegedly began forming
in which vessels traversing the Bermuda Triangle would either disappear or be
found abandoned. Then, in December 1945, five Navy bombers carrying 14 men took
off from a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airfield in order to conduct practice
bombing runs over some nearby shoals. But with his compasses apparently
malfunctioning, the leader of the mission, known as Flight 19, got severely
lost. All five planes flew aimlessly until they ran low on fuel and were forced
to ditch at sea. That same day, a rescue plane and its 13-man crew also
disappeared. After a massive weeks-long search failed to turn up any evidence,
the official Navy report declared that it was “as if they had flown to Mars.”
Bermuda Triangle Theories and
Counter-Theories
By the time author Vincent Gaddis
coined the phrase “Bermuda Triangle” in a 1964 magazine article, additional
mysterious accidents had occurred in the area, including three passenger planes
that went down despite having just sent “all’s well” messages. Charles Berlitz,
whose grandfather founded the Berlitz language schools, stoked the legend even
further in 1974 with a sensational bestseller about the legend. Since then,
scores of fellow paranormal writers have blamed the triangle’s supposed
lethalness on everything from aliens, Atlantis and sea monsters to time warps
and reverse gravity fields, whereas more scientifically minded theorists have
pointed to magnetic anomalies, waterspouts or huge eruptions of methane gas
from the ocean floor.
In all probability, however,
there is no single theory that solves the mystery. As one skeptic put it,
trying to find a common cause for every Bermuda Triangle disappearance is no
more logical than trying to find a common cause for every automobile accident
in Arizona. Moreover, although storms, reefs and the Gulf Stream can cause
navigational challenges there, maritime insurance leader Lloyd’s of London does
not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an especially hazardous place. Neither
does the U.S. Coast Guard, which says: “In a review of many aircraft and vessel
losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would
indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical
causes. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified.”
The Bermuda Triangle
Learn more about the Bermuda
Triangle mystery with our interesting facts, secrets, history and theories. Are
the reported ship and aircraft incidents and disappearances related to some
kind of supernatural force or have the mysterious stories been exaggerated?Perhaps
science can offer some answers, maybe the Bermuda Triangle is actually no
different from other parts of the ocean. Enjoy our facts and information and
decide for yourself. Located in the Atlantic Ocean, the Bermuda Triangle falls
between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida.The Bermuda Triangle has long been
believed to be the site where a number of mysterious plane and boat incidents
have occurred. While it has become part of popular culture to link the Bermuda
Triangle to paranormal activity, most investigations indicate bad weather and
human error are the more likely culprits. Research has suggested that many
original reports of strange incidents in the Bermuda Triangle were exaggerated
and that the actual number of incidents in the area is similar to that of other
parts of the ocean. While its reputation may scare some people, the Bermuda
Triangle is actually part of a regularly sailed shipping lane with cruise ships
and other boats also frequently sailing through the area. Aircraft are also
common in the Bermuda Triangle with both private and commercial planes commonly
flying through the air space. Stories of unexplained disappearances in the
Bermuda Triangle started to reach public awareness around 1950 and have been
consistently reported since then.
Unverified supernatural explanations for Bermuda Triangle incidents have
included references to UFO’s and even the mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Other
explanations have included magnetic anomalies, pirates, deliberate sinkings,
hurricanes, gas deposits, rough weather, huge waves and human error. Some
famous reported incidents involving the Bermuda Triangle include:
The USS Cyclops and its crew of
309 that went missing after leaving Barbados in 1918.
The TBM Avenger bombers that went
missing in 1945 during a training flight over the Atlantic. A Douglas DC-3 aircraft containing 32 people
that went missing in 1958, no trace of the aircraft was ever found. A yacht was found in 1955 that had survived
three hurricanes but was missing all its crew.
