Far out in the North Atlantic – somewhere between Bermuda, Miami, and San Juan, Puerto Rico – lies the Bermuda Triangle; a stretch of open ocean which has held mystery since the 15th century.

Ships have sunk with no explanation, airplanes have disappeared off radar without warning, and navigators have reported strange lights in the sky. Compasses spin with no change in direction, and violent weather shifts cause catastrophe.

It’s a place which has defied explanation for centuries, although as science progresses, new theories claim to shed fresh light on the mysteries at play.

Confusion and Intrigue Since Records Began

Christopher Columbus’ transatlantic voyage log from October 11, 1492, details a strange illumination in the night sky. According to the records, he momentarily took the light as a sign of land, before realizing that it couldn’t yet be. From then on, the intrigue surrounding this beguiling stretch of water has grown and grown.

Paranormal Activity or Natural Phenomena?

Since those distant days, there have been over 70 instances of ships and planes disappearing within the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle. Some observers see this as evidence – or even proof – of supernatural activity, while for others, the answers can be found within the laws of nature. Electromagnetic interference causing compass malfunctions, undersea fields of methane, and the gulf stream have all been tabled as possible explanations.

But whether the Bermuda Triangle’s mysteries are caused by paranormal activity or natural phenomena, the list of disappearances makes for stirring reading...

Notable Disappearances from the Sea and Air

The HMS Atalanta

In January 1880, the training ship HMS Atalanta set sail from the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda – bound for Falmouth on the south coast of England. The vessel and her entire crew sank without trace, presumably the victims of a powerful storm, but the fruitless search for evidence of her fate was enough to stir worldwide interest in supernatural explanations.

41 years later, in 1921, a 5-masted schooner named the Carroll A. Deering was discovered run aground near Cape Hatteras, off North Carolina. Many explanations were considered and ruled out by the FBI, and theories as to the cause of the sinking included piracy, Communist sabotage, and illegal activity from rum-runners. But from this point on, the Bermuda Triangle was becoming more and more closely associated with paranormal forces which defy analysis and explanation.

TBM Avengers as flown in Flight 19 (Photo courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command)

On December 5, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers on Flight 19 – a training flight – disappeared over the Atlantic. The planned circular flight path would have taken the squadron east from Fort Lauderdale before looping north and back to base. But when the aircraft left the ground and flew out of view, they – and their pilots and crew – were never seen or heard of again. Events took a turn for the worse when the search and rescue aircraft sent to seek out the Flight 19 aircraft - a PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew - also disappeared. The Naval Air Station Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida has a remembrance service for Flight 19 every year on December 5th.

The USS Cyclops in 1910

Other mysteries to emerge from this seemingly doomed stretch of sea include the disappearance of USS Cyclops. She left harbor in Barbados in 1918, bound for Baltimore, Maryland – but she sank without trace, taking with her all 309 crew and passengers. To this day, it’s the largest loss of life outside the field of warfare in US Navy history.

The latest disappearance within the Bermuda Triangle took place as recently as October 2015. The cargo ship SS El Faro sank off the coast of the Bahamas with a crew of 33 on board. With modern technologies at hand, search crews found the ship resting 15,000 feet below the waves – though the cause of the sinking was never established.

Could the Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle Finally be Solved?

There is one theory to have emerged in recent years, which could go some way to explaining the Bermuda Triangle’s mysteries. Meteorologists analyzing imagery from a NASA satellite in the skies over the Bermuda Triangle have observed unusual patterns of hexagonal cloud cover, some up to 55 miles across. It’s claimed that these abnormal clouds create blasts of air, or air bombs, which can reach up to 170mph – easily enough to topple a ship or drag a plane from the sky.

In some quarters, these abnormal but naturally occurring pockets of air are believed to be the cause of the Bermuda Triangle’s disastrous reputation.  But, of course, not everybody is on board with the theory, and there are experts who point out that these hexagonal-shaped clouds appear in other parts of the world, too, with none of the mystery that the Bermuda Triangle holds.

Paranormal activity in this part of the world extends past the Bermuda Triangle to the shores of Puerto Rico. Here, our San Juan ghost walk covers the haunted UNESCO World Heritage site of Castillo San Felipe del Morro, the Devil’s Sentry Box of Castillo de San Cristóbal, and local stories of cursed stones, ghostly nurses, and the Fountain of Youth. Along the way, you can walk the path of the southern point of the Bermuda Triangle where these ships disappeared.