Into the Bermuda Triangle This page intentionally left blank. Into the Bermuda Triangle Pursuing the Truth Behind the World’s Greatest Mystery Gian J. Quasar INTERNATIONAL MARINE / MCGRAW-HILL Camden, Maine • New York • Chicago • San Francisco • Lisbon • London • Madrid Mexico City • Milan • New Delhi • San Juan • Seoul • Singapore • Sydney • Toronto Copyright © 2004, 2005 by Gian J. Quasar. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 0-07-146703-3 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-145217-6. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. 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For more information about this title, click here Contents 1 The Bermuda Triangle: A Riddle at a Nearby Shore 1 2 The Riddle of Missing Planes 14 3 The Riddle of Vanished Ships 51 4 Can It Be That Simple? 83 5 Those Who Lived to Tell 97 6 Space-Time Vortices, Zero-Point, and Sunken Worlds 118 7 Clues from a Shifting Paradigm 144 8 Atyantica 168 9 The Warnings of Lunar and Martian Anomalies 189 10 Interest from a Past World? 209 11 Let the Oceans Speak 230 12 A Vast Horizon: An Answer from Without, Within, and All Around Us 249 Notes 262 Bibliography 269 Acknowledgments 283 Index 285 Photos follow pages 82, 143, and 208 This page intentionally left blank. 1 The Bermuda Triangle: A Riddle at a Nearby Shore WITHIN THE WESTERN North Atlantic Ocean there exists what might be called a triangle of sea extending southwest from the island of Bermuda to Miami and through southern Florida to Key West; then, encompassing the Bahamas, it extends southeast through Puerto Rico to as far as 15° North latitude, and then from there northward back to Bermuda. This is the area commonly called the Bermuda Triangle. For all intents and purposes it appears like any other temperate sea. Yet in the annals of sea mysteries there is no other place that challenges mankind with so many extraordi- nary and incredible events, for this is where far more aircraft and ships have disappeared throughout recorded maritime history than in any other re- gion of the world’s oceans. With few exceptions the disappearances have been in fair weather, sending out no distress messages and leaving no wreckage or bodies. In the last twenty-five years alone, some seventy-five aircraft and hundreds of pleasure yachts have inexplicably vanished despite the fact that GPS is now extensively used, that communication systems are powerful and reliable, and that searches are immediately launched. Disturbing as these numbers may seem, the circumstances surround- ing many of the disappearances are what really give rise to the greatest alarm. From the files of several federal investigating bureaus, eye-opening details emerge that continue to present difficult questions that as yet have no answers within the scope of our present knowledge of the sea, aero- nautics, and navigation. One such disappearance illustrates this point. It was Halloween 1991. Radar controllers checked and rechecked what they had just seen. The scope was blank in one spot now. Everywhere else within the scope seemed normal, and routine traffic was proceeding undis- turbed, in their vectors, tracked and uninterrupted. But moments earlier radar had been tracking a Grumman Cougar jet. The pilot was John Verdi. He and trained copilot, Paul Lukaris, were heading toward Tallahassee, 1 Copyright © 2004, 2005 by Gian J. Quasar. Click here for terms of use. 2 ▲ THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE Florida. Just moments before, with a crackle of the mike, Verdi’s voice had come over the receiver at the flight center. He requested a higher altitude. Permission was quickly granted and the turbo jet was observed ascending from 25,000 feet to its new altitude of 29,000 feet. All seemed normal. Some thunderstorms had drifted into the path of the jet, and satellite imagery confirmed the area was overcast. But that was no concern for Verdi. They were above the weather. At their present altitude they were just breaking out of the cloud cover, emerging into the brilliant sunlight. The clouds must have been their typical breathtaking sight, billowing below in glowing white hills and arroyos. They were still ascending. Verdi had not yet “rogered” that he had reached his prescribed flight level. Radar continued to track the Cougar. Until, for some unknown reason, while ascending, it simply faded away. Verdi and Lukaris answered no more calls to respond. Furthermore, they had sent no SOS to indicate they had encountered any hint of a problem. Readouts of the radar ob- servations confirmed the unusual. The Grumman had not been captured on the scope at all as descending or as falling to the sea; there had been no sudden loss of altitude. It just disappeared from the scope while climb- ing. One sweep they were there. The next—raised brows on traffic con- trollers: it was blank. The ocean, sitting under convective thunderstorm activity, was natu- rally not conducive to a search. No trace, if there was any left to find, was ever sifted out of the Gulf. When it was all over, the whole incident was chalked under a familiar and terse assumption: “aircraft damage and injury index presumed.” So far, very few disappearances have ever been reported by the press and, if they are, they’re reported with little attention to detail, or the reports stu- diously avoid any reference to the unusual. In 1978 and 1979 alone, eight- een aircraft mysteriously vanished, yet only two or three rated any space in newspapers. Among these missing planes was a DC-3 airliner; a large twin-engine charter on approach; and several private aircraft in the nar- row corridor between Bimini Island and Miami, which are in view of each other from aircraft altitudes. Yet, nevertheless, all vanished as if surgi- cally extracted by a hand being careful not to affect the surrounding heavy traffic on that route, which reported no signs of wreckage or unusual weather. Even apart from the strangeness of the events preceding and sur- rounding some disappearances, it appears fairly obvious by the number that something is very wrong. THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE ▲ 3 Although it is often publicly recited that the Bermuda Triangle’s repu- tation is based on twenty planes and fifty vessels posted missing over the last hundred years, official records vividly show that such a number can be and has been easily exceeded in any given two-year period.