Sightings - Inside The Bermuda Triangle

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

Florida, 1945: When five Navy planes vanish during a routine mission, the search effort uncovers strange signals, conflicting reports, and a silence that still haunts the most mysterious waters on earth: THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE. Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram @sightingspod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients

designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every 24 seconds, the results speak for themselves. A survey found 86% of women lost weight, 77% saw an improved mood, and 100% felt like themselves again. Start your next chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happymammoth.com with code

NEXTCHAPTER at checkout. Visit happymammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Some regions of the world defy explanation, and in one stretch of ocean, planes vanish, compasses spin, and radios crackle with voices that should be long gone. Again and again, those who enter this elusive zone find that the rules of reality don't always apply. And those who vanish leave behind only questions and legends, all of which point to the same infamous place. The Bermuda Triangle. Welcome to Sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural

events. Each episode brings you a thrilling story that puts you at the center's most mysterious supernatural events. Each episode brings you a thrilling story that puts you at the center of the action, followed by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired the story and our takes on them. I'm McCloud. And I'm Brian, and welcome back after another week's break. Though for those of you who are QCo plus subscribers, we hope you enjoyed our bonus listener story episode just for you. That's right. If you want to get sightings ad free and get cool bonus content, like a new listener stories episode coming at the end of this August, subscribe to Q Code Plus

right now on Apple podcasts. Because last week's bonus story, it's making me rethink ever wanting to send my kids to summer camp. Well, then you're're gonna love this episode. I think it's also a summer-inspired story, McCloud. This time to the mysterious place called the Bermuda Triangle. Yes, where everybody wants to vacation. So grab some sunscreen and venture with us into the heart of the Atlantic, where one group of pilots is about to find themselves very, very lost. Will they make it home in one

piece? Find out on this episode of Sightings. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Hey, Skeptical Geckos. I know the world out there can be a daunting place. Maybe you've got monsters in your closet or ghosts in your basement, or maybe you just have a lot going on in your life. I know I do. And I have to be honest, it has been hard finding good information on the internet about mental health and wellness. But that's where BetterHelp comes in. They use trusted resources and live therapists to get you personalized recommendations and help you break through

the noise. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp has served over 5 million people globally. And it's convenient. You can join a session with the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus, you can switch therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. So talk it out with BetterHelp. And right now, sightings listeners get 10% off

their first month at betterhelp.com slash sightings. That's better, H-E-L-P, dot com slash sightings. Thanks BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. And now onto the story. My name is Arthur Curtis. Right now, it's three in the morning on December 11th, 1945. And five days ago, I sent the 14 men of Flight 19 to their deaths. The search operation officially ended yesterday. 930 sorties, over 100,000 square miles of ocean, searched for what? It was the biggest rescue effort in naval history, and we found nothing. Not one piece of debris, not a life vest, not even an oil slick. It's like Flight 19 simply ceased to exist.

And now that I need to write my report, I'm stuck with the same question running over and over again in my head. How do you explain the impossible? I've been the aviation training officer at Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale for three years now. In that time I saw over 400 pilots earn their wings, and the boys in my program, they were prepared for anything. Combat, emergencies, bad weather. I drilled them on

every scenario, every contingency, every possible disaster they might face in the cockpit. That is, except what happened to Flight 19. The morning they left started normal enough. The weather was decent, 67 degrees with good visibility, and we had multiple training missions scheduled for the day. Flight 19, the 19th of those missions, was supposed to be routine, just another navigation exercise for 14 of our most advanced students. Five TBM Avengers would fly a triangular pattern over the Atlantic. East to Hen and Chicken Shoals for torpedo practice, then north to Great Sturrup Key, then home. Total flight time? Three hours.

But even before wheels up, something felt off about 19. Lieutenant Charles Taylor, who was supposed to lead the mission, ran late. All the students were in the ready room by 1300 hours, and when Taylor walked into my office at 1310, he was still in his service dress uniform instead of flight gear. And the moment I saw his face, I knew something was wrong. He looked like he'd spent the night wrestling demons. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands shook as he asked me to relieve him from leading Flight 19.

Now, I've had pilots request relief for anything from family emergencies to mechanical concerns, but never because of what Taylor told me next. He said he had a bad feeling about flying that day. Not about the weather or the aircraft, just a feeling that something terrible would happen if he took those boys up. I explained to Taylor that a bad feeling wasn't good enough to ground him, and then I made the decision that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I denied his request. I watched the briefing through my office window. Taylor went through the flight plan methodically with his request. I watched the briefing through my office window. Taylor went through the flight plan methodically with his students. He covered headings, timing, navigation checkpoints, emergency procedures, but I could see the tension in his posture, the way he kept checking his watch. I made a mental note to have a serious conversation with him about pre-mission nerves after he returned. At 1410 hours, 25 minutes behind schedule, Flight 19 rolled down the runway and lifted into the overcast sky.

I watched the five aircraft form up and head east over the Atlantic, their engine noise fading until all I could hear was the chatter of ground crews. For the next hour and a half, everything proceeded exactly according to plan. We picked up radio transmissions confirming they'd reached the bombing area and were conducting their torpedo exercises. One pilot reported dropping his final bomb, and another acknowledged the order to proceed to the next checkpoint. The timeline matched perfectly with their flight plan, and soon they should have been turning north towards Great Sturrup Key. Then, at 1540 hours, Lieutenant Robert Cox, who was flying a separate training mission in the same area, intercepted an unusual transmission.

Someone from Flight 19 was asking for a position check, but when Cox listened more carefully, he realized that all of the pilots and the crew seemed genuinely confused about their location. Cox radioed Flight 19 directly, asking what their trouble was. And that's when we heard Taylor's voice for the first time since takeoff, and what he said made no sense at all. He told Cox that both his compasses were malfunctioning, that he was trying to find Fort Lauderdale, and that he was over land but couldn't determine his position. Then he said something that stopped everyone in the tower cold.

He said he was sure they were over the Florida Keys. And if that were true, they'd somehow flown in the wrong direction for over an hour without realizing it. According to their flight plan and timeline, Flight 19 should have been over the Bahamas, somewhere between Henin-Chicken-Scholes and Great Sturrup-Key. For them to be over the Florida Keys would have required simultaneous compass failure on all five aircraft, plus complete spatial disorientation on the part of fourteen experienced aviators. Cox tried to help, telling Taylor to put the sun on his port wing and fly north up the coast. It was simple, foolproof navigation that

should have gotten them home within an hour. But Taylor's response was even more disturbing. He couldn't find the sun, and none of his instruments were giving reliable readings. Worse, he said his backup compass was also malfunctioning due to rough air. That's when I took over radio communications myself. I'd been training pilots for years, and I'd dealt with disoriented students before. Usually you could talk them through it, check your headings, trust your instruments, follow standard procedures. But as I listened to the chatter back from Flight 19, I realized this wasn't a case of student pilot nerves. These men were genuinely lost. Taylor kept asking his other pilots what their

compasses read and none of their readings matched and soon panic began washing across the entire team. They all sounded confused, disoriented, like they'd never seen this part of the ocean before. I coordinated with bases throughout South Florida trying to get radar fixes on Flight 19's position, but our radar coverage over the Atlantic was limited, and their signal kept fading in and out. And by 1630 hours the weather began to deteriorate, and I realized we were running out of options. And right then, that's when Taylor made a decision that defied all logic and training. He told his flight they were going

to turn east. Cox and I tried to talk him out of it. If he really was over the Keys, then east would take them out over the Atlantic with no hope of reaching land before their fuel ran out. Standard emergency procedure was crystal clear. If you're lost over the Atlantic, turn west until you hit the Florida coast. It's basic survival." But Taylor was now convinced they were somewhere west of Florida, possibly over the Gulf of Mexico. He thought turning east would bring them home. I listened helplessly as Flight 19 executed that fatal turn, their radio signals growing weaker as they flew further from shore. And by 1700 hours, we could barely hear them at all.

After we lost radio contact with Flight 19, the Gulf and Eastern Sea Frontier Station managed to get a radar fix on their position. They were 120 miles east of Daytona Beach, flying out into the open Atlantic. They weren't over the Keys, nor over the Bahamas. They were over empty ocean with storm clouds building and fuel running critically low. I coordinated with radio stations throughout Florida to try and establish contact through different frequencies and relay stations. I had operators at every major airfield attempting to reach Flight 19, but it was like shouting into a hurricane. The scattered signals we did pick up suggested the young students were questioning their leaders' decisions and

panic was consuming the entire mission. Taylor's voice was growing more confused and desperate with each transmission and we gathered that his gyro compass had failed, his magnetic compass was spinning wildly, and he'd lost all confidence in his instruments. I hoped he'd come to his senses and turn west towards the coast, but at 1720 hours we caught fragments of him ordering his crew to continue east. He told them that if they were near land they should be able to see lights, and since they couldn't see lights they must still be over the Gulf of Mexico. It was madness.

Taylor was ignoring every principle of navigation, every emergency procedure, and everything I'd taught him over the years. And the students were following him deeper into the storm, deeper into darkness, because that's what they did. They followed orders, even when they made no sense. Then things got even stranger. We picked up a fragment from one of the student pilots. I think it was Bozie.

And his voice was shaking as he said the ocean looked wrong. Not just rough from the approaching storm, but wrong somehow. Like the water was moving in patterns that didn't make sense. Ben Peterson reported that his altimeter was giving impossible readings. One moment it showed 2,000 feet, the next 4,500, then down to 300. It was as if they were flying through invisible mountains, climbing and diving without moving the stick. But the thing that left us speechless in the tower was a report from Kosner that he could see islands below them, small green islands arranged in a perfect circle. Given their position,

we knew there wasn't land for over a hundred miles in any direction. But Bozey added that he saw them too, except it was one huge circle. And Peterson? He said he saw nothing at all. By 1750 hours, Taylor's voice cut through the static, and he sounded like a man losing his mind. He said his compass was spinning non-stop, and that even though they were flying straight, the sun appeared to be moving strangely on the horizon, cutting across the sky far faster than it should have been. Bozey disagreed. He said the sun was directly overhead. Then Lightfoot said he couldn't see the Sun at all. I looked out the tower windows myself and saw the Sun settling in the western sky exactly where it should be. So what in the world were these men seeing out there? At 1800 hours, fragments of the most disturbing transmission yet came in.

One of the pilots, his voice so distorted by static I couldn't identify him, said there was something else in the sky with them, something large, keeping pace with their formation but staying just out of sight. He asked if anyone else had seen it and from the fragments we picked up it seemed like no one could agree on what was happening. One said something was above them, another claimed it was surrounding them, but that made no sense at all. The last transmission came in at 1804 hours. Taylor's voice, barely audible through the static, told his crew that he was nearly out

of fuel, but he thought if they just pressed a bit further, they'd reach the coastline. So he ordered his pilots to tighten their formation. They needed to stay together, he said, because whatever was out there was waiting for them to separate. And that's when the entire flight went silent. No May Day. No final transmission. No final garble as the radio fell out of range.

The signal just stopped, like someone had thrown a switch and erased those five planes from the face of the earth. I immediately ordered the launch of rescue aircraft. Training 49, a Martin Mariner with a crew of 13, took off at 1800 30 hours to search for survivors. They headed southeast towards Flight 19's last known position, and for the first hour everything seemed routine. But by 1900 30 hours, Training 49 reported something unusual. The radio operators said they were getting strange readings on their direction finder. Signals that seemed to be coming from Flight 19, but from multiple directions at once.

And when they tried to vector toward the strongest signal, their own instruments began malfunctioning. It's... It's... It's difficult to describe the feeling of helplessness that swept through the tower at that point. Clearly something was happening out there. Problem was no one had the faintest idea what. We tried to stay in contact with Training 49, but their communications soon became just as garbled as 19's were.

But through the static we heard reports of compasses spinning, a failed gyroscope, and a complete inability to determine their position. Then Training 49 vanished too. Thirteen men vanished into the same mystery that had swallowed Flight 19. For the last five days I've coordinated the largest search and rescue operation in naval history. Cutters, destroyers, patrol boats, civilian vessels, everything that could float or fly was looking for some trace of our missing aircraft, and all that time, manpower, and effort has yielded nothing. No debris, no oil slicks, no life rafts. It's as if those

six planes simply vanished without a trace. These were men I knew, men I mentored, and what happened to them was downright impossible. So what can I possibly say in my report to explain what happened? I was there, in that tower, listening to those final transmissions. I felt the terror in those voices as reality itself seemed to unravel around them. I heard them describe impossible things, the sun moving erratically, islands that weren't there, and something in the skies around them. And I was powerless to help as their instruments began failing one by one. Except equipment doesn't fail in perfect synchronization across multiple aircraft.

Experienced pilots don't all become disoriented simultaneously, and storms don't erase every last trace of their aircraft from the ocean. I've replayed that day dozens of times in my mind. If I'd granted Taylor's request to be relieved of duty, would those men still be alive? If I'd insisted on a different radio frequency earlier, could we have guided them home? And if I'd sent a rescue mission sooner, might we have averted even more catastrophe? The families of the airmen have all asked me these questions, and I have to be honest, I have no good answers.

Because the truth is, nothing about December 5th made any logical sense. Had the men been simply swallowed up by the sea or air or both? Every once in a while the radio will flicker to life, catching chatter from some random mission. And I always hope it's those men from Flight 19 calling for help, calling for home. men from Flight 19 calling for help, calling for home. But like everything else about this strange series of events, I know that's utterly, inescapably impossible. Sightings will be back, just after this. Hey Skeptical Geckos and Believer Beavers, I want to recommend one of my favorite paranormal podcasts that I think you're going to love.

Monsters Among Us brings you supernatural stories from real people. Everything from ghostly sightings to eerie encounters with strange creatures. But unlike here on sightings, these stories are told by the witnesses themselves in real audio recordings that get straight to the meat of every terrifying story. You'll hear from witnesses like Julie, who drove past a car accident only to realize a spirit joined her in the passenger seat. Or Mack from Mississippi, who broke his back when he fell out of a tree stand only to be nursed back to health by a sympathetic Sasquatch. I know, I want to hear that story right now. But in all seriousness, I think you'll love the spooky and nostalgic vibe that host Derek Hayes has curated with Monsters

Among Us. And if you want more shivers down your spine, listen to Monsters Among Us podcasts now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to solid ground, everybody, hopefully, here on Sightings. The Bermuda Triangle, obviously all of us, I think, have heard about the Bermuda Triangle broadly obviously, all of us, I think, have heard about the Bermuda Triangle broadly. I don't think I've ever heard of this particular story. Now that I think about it, I don't know if I have in my brain any one specific story.

Interesting. Yeah, it's just kind of this cloud of terror and confusion and mystery. There's so many cool things to wonder about in the Bermuda Triangle. So what drew you to this story, Brian? Well, this is kind of the most famous of the stories, I think.

It actually, I don't know if you remember this, but at the beginning of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the movie, there's these airplanes that appear out of nowhere and land in like 1970, and they're all 1945 aviators and things like that. Those were pilots from Flight 19. Oh, cool. Who apparently went in the Bermuda Triangle,

went through a time warp and showed up in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But yeah, this is kind of the big story that kind of conceptualized and cemented in people's minds like, oh, the Bermuda Triangle is a thing. So before we talk about the Bermuda Triangle and some other cool stories that happened there, let's kind of dive into Flight 19

because there's a little bit to unpack here, I feel like. I should say that everything that happened in the story until the end basically happened. You know, these pilots, these five planes did go out into the ocean. All their instruments started failing. They got completely lost. No one knew what was going on or why these people could not find their way home. These pilots, these five planes did go out into the ocean. All their instruments started failing. They got completely lost.

No one knew what was going on or why these people could not find their way home. They disappeared. The rescue plane went out. That disappeared as well. I did take some dramatic liberties at the end though, where, you know, like, oh, is something in the skies with us? Oh, I'm seeing this weird circular island.

That kind of stuff was a little bit embellished. But the fact that these guys who were all trained pilots seemed to have no idea what was actually happening is pretty terrifying. And it certainly laid the foundation for the allure and mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, I feel like, you know? So is this one of the earliest kind of? There were earlier ones, which we'll talk about,

but this one happened in 1945. And when this happened, the Bermuda Triangle as a concept was not a thing. That wasn't introduced until the 60s. Okay, interesting. But in terms of this actual event, it was December 1945. It was five TBM Avengers, these planes. There were 14 men. This happened to be the final mission that these students had to go on and complete before graduating.

Yeah, that's pretty tragic. Yeah. And kind of ironic, on this particular flight, they were testing their dead reckoning skills, which is a navigation technique where if you have no idea where you are. Yeah, that's fascinating though that like that they were testing for the very thing that it was their undoing. Yeah. To clarify, four of the planes were flown by students. The fifth is flown by Taylor,

who was mentioned in the story. He was an experienced World War II pilot. He was like a trainer. And he's the one who had cold feet beforehand. And that's documented that? That happened, absolutely. No one knows quite why, but yeah, there's just too many weird things.

Like, and there are transcripts of a lot of this. And granted, a lot of the radio equipment in the 1940s was not amazing. So they were out of radio contact for a lot of this and we're picking up random signals and like some other planes were picking up signals and, you know, it's kind of just trying to piece together where these guys were was easier said than done. Our radar was also not amazing, so we couldn't track them for most of their flight. So we were kind of just guessing where they were. We did know where they weren't though.

Right, right. Not in the Gulf of Mexico, not over the Bahamas. And truly did they vanish, like in the story? Like no trace? They vanished. No trace of them, like happened in the story. It was the biggest rescue mission in naval history, apparently. One of the Martin Mariner seaplanes that went out had 13 people on it. That plane also vanished. Vanished. Completely, without a trace.

Wow. Um, someone did say they saw an explosion in the sky though, um, that night. So, maybe that plane just blew up, and... Like, you would assume that there'd be, you know, stuff that would float. Like not everything would just sink to the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. So that's kind of the facts that we have to work with here.

But after this happened, it kind of became fodder for like sci-fi novellas and pulp magazines and things like that. Yeah. And I think things started to blow up a little bit and became a little sensationalist, kind of like I took it on the story by the end there. But there was talk of, oh, maybe they actually saw a UFO.

But again, there's no mention of anything, quote unquote, supernatural happening in the transcripts. It's just a lot of our compass is broken. We don't know where we are. We're over land. We don't know what land this is. We have no idea what's happening. Right.

There's something that's been banging around in the back of my head. Like, there's something that's maybe wondering around in the back of my head. Like there's something that's maybe wondering, like maybe Taylor was nervous because of a plan he had or something he wanted to do. And maybe it was something to the effect of I'm gonna abscond with these five other pilots. Oh. That he had brought them in on some sort of conspiracy.

Or maybe like, I don't know, maybe they were gonna go disappear themselves to become CIA pilots or something. Like, listen, you guys are our top recruits and we're gonna go off somewhere. Interesting. If that is the case, and I mean, we're jumping the gun on the theories here,

but this is really cool. If that's the case though, where could they have gone? I mean, this was pre-Red Scare or anything like that. So I was gonna say, could they have gone to Cuba or something? But they flew out into open water. Yeah, these planes could not cross the Atlantic, right? No, no, they did not have that capacity. I think they could go about a thousand miles all in.

And then that obviously that doesn't explain the Martin Mariner search plane disappearing 13 people. Yeah, so that's kind of the story. And what a story it is. an airliner search plane disappearing with 13 people. Yeah. So that's kind of the story. And what a story it is. And I imagine there must be now hundreds of stories about the Bermuda Triangle and planes and ships disappearing. So can we discuss the elephant in the room, the triangle in the corner?

Yeah. Like I said earlier, it wasn't a thing until 1964 when a reporter was writing about Flight 19 in a magazine. And in that article, he coined the term the Bermuda Triangle. So this was our little green man moment, kind of like our Kelly Hopkinsville. Pretty much, yeah.

I mean, there's always been the idea that something weird might be happening there, but it didn't have a name or it wasn't conceptualized fully until 1964 when the Bermuda Triangle was coined. And he defined the points of the triangle as being Miami in the West, Bermuda in the Northeast, which is kind of like up in the middle of the Atlantic a little bit, and then Puerto Rico.

So it's not a perfect equilateral triangle by any means. But it's very large. And there have been more than 50 ships and 20 planes that have vanished in that area. So okay, 50 ships, 20 planes. So aside from flight 19 hours, what else has happened there? Well let's go back in time quite a bit to 1492. Christopher Columbus? Christopher Columbus happened to sail through the Bermuda Tri time quite a bit to 1492. Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus happened to sail through the Bermuda Triangle on his way to the Americas. And while he was in there, apparently, he saw a strange light rising from the sea.

And we know this because he and two other sailors wrote about it in their journals. Wow. They say they thought the light that they were seeing meant that they were close to land, but they kept sailing and then the light disappeared. Some said that I guess it went straight up into the sky and they could never explain what it was or where it came from. So that's kind of an interesting, pretty famous historical context for this. But flash forward, I guess, 300 to 400 years.

In 1918, there was a 550-foot long freighter run by the US military called the USS Cyclops. Oh, wow. What a name. I know. I love it. This thing had 300 crew members apparently, and it was carrying 11,000 tons of manganese ore. Okay.

It was sailing from Brazil to Baltimore, which meant it was carrying 11,000 tons of manganese ore. Okay. It was sailing from Brazil to Baltimore, which meant it was coming up through the Bermuda Triangle, I guess, south to north. And when it was in there, it completely vanished. In fair weather, no distress signal, no nothing, no wreckage was ever found, no evidence of any kind. It just, the ship disappeared. Yeah.

Although, I mean, like, it's funny. Like, I narrated an article about a treasure hunter looking for a famous boat that was carrying, like, tons of gold from basically the West Coast that had come around, and, like, and it sank off the coast of the Atlantic. And, like, they found it. It was just at the bottom of the ocean and just piles of gold lying at the bottom of the ocean

and just piles of gold lying on the sea floor. Which is just to say that yeah, a ship can literally just sink and sink to the bottom. But with 300 sailors on board, you would think at least one of them would have made it off in some capacity with a boat or a life vest or something. But I guess there was a three-month search for that ship. It was the biggest loss in American naval history that didn't involve combat. Wow.

Those are kind of the two most infamous stories along with Flight 19, obviously. There have been a lot of other reports of smaller ships, some weird compass phenomena. These are the infamous ones. These are the infamous ones of those ones that have vanished. Sure. So maybe we should segue into theories a little bit here. Now, I don't want to throw water on the fire here, so to speak. But it is worth noting that, statistically speaking,

the Bermuda Triangle is no more prone to shipwrecks or plane diffence disappearances than any other place on Earth. That was kind of a big question in my mind. It just so happens that it is a heavily trafficked area. So more boats, more shipwrecks. I think what's weird though is that of those shipwrecks, a lot of them seem to have vanished without a trace, which meant either they sunk straight to the bottom or I don't know. I mean, I guess it's worth noting because I think I often have this feeling of like,

we have fancy tools and fancy equipment. You can find anything. People can find it, but no, the ocean is vast and deep. The Bermuda Triangle is a massive space. Massive space and like you have currents. I think it's worth remembering how hard it is to find stuff in the ocean. Agreed. But let's do our due diligence here and look at Flight 19.

So the official report from the Navy placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of Lieutenant Taylor. So that's how they ended up writing this off. But again, no wreckage from these planes has been found. No one has any idea what happened to these guys. In terms of explaining away this plus all the other stuff that's been going on in the Bermuda Triangle theoretically, I think the first place to look is like

navigational equipment, compass related stuff. As was mentioned in the story, it seems like a stretch for all five of these aviators, compasses for them all to fail, basically. And them having no idea what direction they were going seems like a stretch. And a lot of the theories surrounding the Bermuda Triangle are like, oh, this is just a place where there's these weird electromagnetic anomalies. Right. I tried to dig into them and some of them

are just so out there that I don't even think they're worth getting into here. Like there was some weird thing that's like these weird electromagnetic water tornado kind of things that like can basically warp space time. It just seems so fantastical that I'm like, let's set that aside. Another theory and it's less geomagnetic

involves methane gas pockets erupting from the sea floor. Whoa. And this doesn't necessarily apply to the planes, but I guess could explain it. If these planes crashed in the water and were floating on the water, where do they go? Or in the case of a boat that just vanished. So I think the theory behind this,

and again, I am no geologist, is that these gas pockets can erupt from the sea floor. And they're so big that when they hit the surface, if they hit right where a boat is, or a plane is down or something like that, it just engulfs the entire thing and the thing just sinks instantly. Right, it's almost like it aerates the water.

Basically, or just like a giant bubble coming up and just boom, the ship just drops, you know. Oh, wow, okay. Because of that. And this is a thing, apparently. Now, my mind automatically thinks, well, you'd have to have a lot of bad luck to be a giant boat in the middle of the giant ocean. And you hit in the exact spot at the exact time

to one of these things. But then again, it's like one of those giant ocean and you hit in the exact spot at the exact time that one of these things. But then again, it's like one of those like if you have enough traffic, it's logical that it could happen. It's to someone at some point. Yeah. So there's that. And then there's the Atlantis theory. I think I've heard this theory before and obviously I love it because it's so just Atlantis

amazing. So Atlantis, of course, we'll have to do an episode on it at some point. I'll do an accent. Welcome to the planet. So Atlantis started back with Plato in ancient Greece, spoke of an entire civilization out in the water somewhere, reached its pinnacle and then vanished somehow. No one knows where Atlantis could be. Edgar Cayce, who was a famous psychic and clairvoyant in the 1920s, 1930s, well before the Bermuda Triangle became popularly conceptualized, he said that Atlantis was

in the area that is now the Bermuda Triangle. Okay. It is worth noting that there is something in the Bimini Islands called the Bimini Road, which is a series of like rectangular limestone blocks. They're like 20 feet underwater. It looks basically like a man-built road, kind of, or a wall of some kind. But scientists dug in on this and it's likely a natural formation. So... Still very cool. Still very cool, absolutely. But again, no one has found Atlantis, especially in that part of the Atlantic Ocean.

But people say that, well, if maybe it hasn't been found yet, because the ocean is deep and there's a lot of mystery and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but then it's like, okay, so assuming there is Atlantis underneath there, why does that matter? Yeah, I'm thinking back to the Lake Baikal story that we did, where there's maybe some advanced race that's hidden down there and... Right, and so it's like us getting messed up by it

is just a side effect of, they're not like targeting us, they're just like, we're doing our own thing and like, oh, oh. But again, kind of a stretch. Yeah, sure. Which ultimately, I guess, brings me back to, could the Bermuda Triangle itself kind of just been blown out of proportion?

Blown out of the water, if you will. Oh, look at you. That was good. That was good. Because, like I said, there is no higher incidence of maritime disaster there than anywhere else in the world. Right. So this is kind of what this show is about in a weird way, where like you have the kernel of some really compelling mystery. And in this case, you have some really high profile weird things that have happened in the Bermuda Triangle that can probably be explained away. But we are inherently storytellers. Humans are storytellers and pattern seekers.

And so put forward a like tasty kernel of a story and people will glom onto that, I think. Absolutely. So I think once it became named in 1965, it's become a thing in popular culture. There have been movies about it, there have been lots of books, all sorts of stuff. Because who doesn't like a good mystery? Especially one where you've got this vast stretch of ocean and stuff just vanishes. It's like the pyramids. It's like, is it more fun to be like aliens built the pyramids or like, no, they just

had a whole lot of people pulling ropes on like logs. It's like, oh, okay. You make me want to do an ancient aliens and pyramid episode at some point. But that's the Bermuda Triangle though, everyone. But we do want to hear what you think. If you've had a weird incident, experience in the Bermuda Triangle, hit us up, as we mentioned earlier, leave us a review too on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, or hit us up on Instagram at SightingsPod. Yeah, everyone. So, Brian, where are we heading in two weeks?

So we are continuing our kind of summer vacation vibe here. We just hit the Caribbean for a little beach time, I guess, even though it's not very pleasant. I would prefer some calmer beach going. We're going to head to, I guess, a great summer destination, an amusement park next week. I'm not going to say where, though, or what, because there are actually a few amusement parks with some cool supernatural lore associated with them. But get ready to take a little trip. That's awesome! We haven't been to an amusement park on this show yet. It's making me want to just go to an amusement park, although maybe not after

we read whatever the story is going to be. You guess you have to wait to find out. See you in two weeks, everybody. Same time, same place, right here on Sightings. Take care. Sightings. Take care. by Pat Kiklater of Sundial Media. Artwork by Nuno Cernatus. For a list of this episode's sources, check out our website at sightingspodcast.com. Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q-Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform

so you're first to hear new episodes. And if you know other Supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.