The Bermuda Triangle Mystery | Paranormal Science

What Is Known (and Not Known) About the Bermuda Triangle

People have been trying to solve the “mystery” of the Bermuda Triangle for years. Here’s what we know (and don’t know) about the Bermuda Triangle.

What is known about the Bermuda Triangle:

The Bermuda Triangle is a region of the North Atlantic Ocean (roughly) bounded by the southeastern coast of the U.S., Bermuda, and the islands of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico).
The exact boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle are not universally agreed upon. Approximations of the total area range between 500,000 and 1,510,000 square miles (1,300,000 and 3,900,000 square kilometers). By all approximations, the region has a vaguely triangular shape.
The Bermuda Triangle does not appear on any world maps, and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an official region of the Atlantic Ocean.
Although reports of unexplained occurrences in the region date to the mid-19th century, the phrase “Bermuda Triangle” didn’t come into use until 1964. The phrase first appeared in print in a pulp magazine article by Vincent Gaddis, who used the phrase to describe a triangular region “that has destroyed hundreds of ships and planes without a trace.”
Despite its reputation, the Bermuda Triangle does not have a high incidence of disappearances. Disappearances do not occur with greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other comparable region of the Atlantic Ocean.
At least two incidents in the region involved U.S. military craft. In March 1918 the collier USS Cyclops, en route to Baltimore, Maryland, from Brazil, disappeared inside the Bermuda Triangle. No explanation was given for its disappearance, and no wreckage was found.

Some 27 years later, a squadron of bombers (collectively known as Flight 19) under American Lieut. Charles Carroll Taylor disappeared in the airspace above the Bermuda Triangle. As in the Cyclops incident, no explanation was given and no wreckage was found.
Charles Berlitz popularized the legend of the Bermuda Triangle in his best-selling book The Bermuda Triangle (1974). In the book, Berlitz claimed that the fabled lost island of Atlantis was involved in the disappearances.
In 2013 the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) conducted an exhaustive study of maritime shipping lanes and determined that the Bermuda Triangle is not one of the world’s 10 most dangerous bodies of water for shipping.
The Bermuda Triangle sustains heavy daily traffic, both by sea and by air.
The Bermuda Triangle is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world.
The agonic line sometimes passes through the Bermuda Triangle, including a period in the early 20th century. The agonic line is a place on Earth’s surface where true north and magnetic north align, and there is no need to account for magnetic declination on a compass.

Bermuda Triangle Mystery: What Happened to the USS Cyclops?

One of the largest ships in the U.S. Navy disappeared without a trace. More than 100 years later, its fate remains unknown.

How could the biggest ship in the U.S. Navy vanish without trace? This was the question on many people’s minds in March 1918, when an enormous collier, the USS Cyclops, disappeared on a voyage between the West Indies to Baltimore. A century on, it’s no closer to being answered.

The Cyclops was nearly 550 feet long, with a crew of 306 people and around 11,000 tons of manganese aboard. She had been sailing successfully since 1910, traveling between the Baltic Sea, the Caribbean and Mexico and assisting with moving coal around the world and helping refugees. But in 1917, when America entered World War I, Cyclops became a key naval asset, transporting troops and coal to fuel other ships all over the world.

In March 1918, the ship was given a new cargo: tons and tons of dense manganese ore, used in steelmaking. She left Brazil loaded up with the brittle metal, then voyaged to Barbados to resupply for the long journey home to Baltimore. The last known message from the ship said simply: “Weather Fair, All Well.” But on the nine-day journey, something went awry, and no one from the ship was ever seen or heard again—vanishing without even an SOS.

In a feature published a couple of years after the ship’s disappearance, Santa Fe magazine described the strangeness of the disappearance: “Usually a wooden bucket or a cork life preserver identified as belonging to a lost ship is picked up after a wreck, but not so with the Cyclops,” they reported. “She just disappeared as though some gigantic monster of the sea had grabbed her, men and all, and sent her into the depths of the ocean, and the suddenness of her destruction is amplified by the absence of any wireless calls for help being picked up by any ship along the route.”

Throughout the decades, there have been a flurry of sometimes sensational theories about the ship’s disappearance, as one among more than 100 ships and planes to have mysteriously disappeared in the so-called Bermuda Triangle—the region roughly bounded by Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico. Was the ship eaten by some beast of the deep, carried off as evidence by UFOs, or simply scuppered by a storm?

At the time, people wondered whether the ship and crew had been the victim of a German submarine or raider. It was barely a year into the war, and the Cyclops would have made a strategic target. Yet nothing materialized, and as time went on, it has become less and less likely that German crafts had been in the area at all.

Others have pointed fingers at the captain, George W. Worley. Months earlier, some members of the crew claimed Worley was a drunk, unsuitable to steer a ship. There were even reports of a minor mutiny staged on board the ship. The Navy defended Worley of these charges, and he returned to his command with apparently little fanfare.

The U.S. Navy says in its official statement about the Cyclops, “The disappearance of this ship has been one of the most baffling mysteries in the annals of the Navy, all attempts to locate her having proved unsuccessful.”

What Is the Scientific Mystery Behind the Bermuda Triangle?

The Bermuda Triangle has supposedly swallowed ships whole, and it has fascinated us for decades. But where is the Bermuda Triangle and is there any truth to the tales?

(Credit: PHOTO JUNCTION/Shutterstock)

Just off the southeast coast of the United States, there lies a span of ocean that’s long held a fearsome reputation. Ships traversing its choppy breadth disappear without a trace. Flights routed above the waters blink from radar screens, never to be seen again.

The mysterious happenings have conjured stories of supernatural interference, alien kidnappings, and an area somehow outside the normal bounds of physical reality. The Bermuda Triangle, it’s said, is a haunted place. That’s just one version of the story, of course.

What Is the Bermuda Triangle?

The Bermuda Triangle has been the site of a number of high-profile and still-mysterious naval and aviation disappearances. But that those disasters are the result of anything sinister, as opposed to the logical conjunction of environment and statistics, is extremely doubtful.

Still, a number of people have proposed scientifically valid explanations for the disappearances of ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle over the years. The ocean is a dangerous place, after all, and it’s not uncommon even today for things to go wrong. In the storm-tossed waters of the North Atlantic, safety is never a guarantee.

Where Is the Bermuda Triangle?

The Bermuda Triangle, as it’s most commonly defined, stretches between Miami, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the island of Bermuda. In all, it encompasses hundreds of thousands of square miles in the North Atlantic Ocean, a huge area. The region also sees heavy traffic from ships coming and going from the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico.

Why Is It Called the Bermuda Triangle?

The Bermuda Triangle got its name from a 1964 article in the pulp magazine Argosy, which linked together a few disappearances in the region. “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle” didn’t offer up any explanations for the occurrences, though it did heavily emphasize the mysterious nature of the area. The article features the disappearance of the U.S.S Cyclops, a Navy supply ship, in 1918, and the loss of a flight of bombers during a practice run in 1945, as well as one of the search and rescue planes sent out after them.

Is the Bermuda Triangle Real?

Yes, the Bermuda Triangle is a real geographic area, but the mysteries associated with it are often considered to be the result of sensationalized storytelling. These incidents, and others, have today become part of the lore of the Bermuda Triangle. These stories are often stitched together to hint at something untoward lurking beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. In addition to the supernatural explanations, a number of more realistic explanations for the phenomenon have been put forward throughout the years, ranging from wayward magnetism to dangerous bubbles.