Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs The Worlds Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved Read online

  During the 1973 investigation, metal found on the farm was analyzed at a laboratory, its name never disclosed, and found to be of a unique composition that could only have been produced by a very sophisticated refining process far in advance of what was possible in the 1970s, let alone the 1890s. This was held up as hard evidence of spaceship material, and the UFO community howled for the government to reveal any information they had. In response the government ridiculed the amateur investigation, describing the Aurora spaceship story as a hoax. But of course they would say that, eh, UFO fans?

  Today, amid renewed calls for a full inquiry and a thorough search of Aurora using the latest technology, some town elders now claim that the U.S. military returned many years ago, back in the 1940s, and removed all trace of the spacecraft and its pilot. Others enigmatically refuse to talk about the incident at all. One elderly resident was interviewed for the television documentary in 1973 and clearly stated on camera that the whole affair had been true. (I saw it myself, and she said it all right— there's no doubt about that, at least.) Her parents, she insisted, went to check the wreckage of the spacecraft and then told her all about it. But later, her great-granddaughter revealed she had been told the whole thing was a hoax and was puzzled why her great-grandmother would appear on camera to claim the accident had really taken place. The lure of the dollar, possibly?

  But if it was all a hoax, why play such an elaborate prank in the first place, let alone keep it up for over a century? There is one very good reason—to do with the town of Aurora itself. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Aurora had been a busy, bustling trade center with a growing population and two schools. During the early 1890s, the Burlington Northern Railroad had been planning to build a route through Aurora to join the Western Railroad, when disaster struck the town in the shape of spotted fever (a form of meningitis). As the new cemetery began to take in more and more residents, the town was sealed off and people were confined to their homes.

  As a consequence, the railway abruptly stopped twenty-seven miles short of the town, construction never to be resumed, and Aurora's business was devastated. Things became even worse when its major crop, cotton, was ruined by boll weevil infestation. Its fate was finally sealed by a fire that destroyed a major part of the town. All this, within the space of a few short years, left Aurora facing ruin—that is, of course, until the spaceship conveniently flew into town. The resulting (albeit somewhat delayed) publicity led to Aurora, eighty years on, being declared a place of special interest and becoming one of the most famous towns in Texas, with legendary status among the worldwide UFO community. Even today it is rumored that any unusual pieces of metal found locally are quickly confiscated by the authorities and mysteriously lost or accidentally destroyed.

  One of the things that have always struck me about UFO sightings is how they always reflect the era they are reported in. For example, today we have gray aliens with oversize heads who communicate telepathically, like the alien constructed for the Roswell hoax. During the 1970s all spacemen looked like the cast of Star Trek, and prior to that they dressed like Buck Rogers, complete with laser guns, and got in and out of their flying saucers by ladder.

  So call me cynical, but when we hear of an interred alien whose cigar-shaped spacecraft crashed into a windmill in 1897, we don't need to look too far to find out that cigar-shaped airships were first conceived in the 1890s and by 1897 were flying all over America, to the astonishment of country folk, some of whom hadn't even seen a train before.

  And Aurora was far from the only location for such sightings, as soon afterward alien encounters were reported all over the U.S. Some people even ludicrously claimed they had been paid by aliens, in dollars, for spare parts for their space machines.

  So imagine the scene with me. In 1897, old Farmer Gilly is standing out in his field raking the soil when a being from outer space strolls up. “Greetings, Earthling,” he intones in that robotic style favored by aliens the universe over. “The satellite navigation control system on my intergalactic hyperspace craft is up the spout. Do you have anything to repair it?” Farmer Gilly looks him up and down, takes off his hat and wipes the sweat from his forehead with a shirtsleeve. “Sure thing, buddy,” he replies. “Cosmic navigation broken down, has it? Probably explains why you're in Arkansas, son. Can't think of no darned good reason why else you'd be all the way out here. Let's go and see what we've got for you in that chicken shed over there.” Presumably the alien pays in dollars for a roll of rusty hog wire and is on his way back to Mars by sundown. Perhaps he even takes an old hoe with him too—as a souvenir. Now, you can believe that if you want to …

  But why jump to the conclusion that it was a spaceship that had crashed? Even back in 1897, before planes were invented (or at least ones that could fly very far), there could have been an alternative, rather more plausible explanation. Flying over Texas, an early airship, not unlike a zeppelin—or, for younger readers, the Good year blimp—might have sprung a leak and lost altitude. It might then have crashed into Judge Proctor's windmill and destroyed his flower bed. The resulting explosion would have melted the metal framework, which would then have re-formed into new and unrecognizable shapes when it cooled. The poor pilot might have lost his limbs in the explosion and ended up burned to a crisp, so that he didn't look human anymore. But no one in the UFO community would have bought this rather more down-to-earth explanation. Hayden Hewes can still now be seen on several television documentaries standing wistfully outside the cemetery or pictured pointing forlornly at the well, no doubt wondering how he is going to remove the six tons of concrete slab that stands between himself and his place in history.

  The final word on the Aurora spaceship crash should go to the man who had the very first word, journalist S. E. Haydon. Years later Haydon, a notorious practical joker, admitted he had simply made up the story in an attempt to draw attention to the plight of his hometown and to help the dying community. He certainly did that—even if publicity took some decades to arrive—as Aurora, the town we would otherwise never have heard of, is still talked about throughout the UFO-hunting community as one of the most famous sightings of all time. They should put up a statue of him in the town square in Aurora, if there is a town square, that is.

  Most UFO encounters can be explained as optical illusions, natural phenomena, meteors, or hoaxes, but a good many remain unexplained. In cases of alien abduction, it is interesting to read reports of victims who have been hypnotized and who describe their ordeals in great detail while under hypnosis. Yet when we compare these reports with those of volunteers who do not claim alien abduction, but instead are asked simply to imagine it, their recollections under hypnosis are almost exactly the same. I think this says more for the power of the imagination than it does for the likelihood of alien encounters, but then again, ours is a big universe. Infinite, in fact. Only a fool would completely rule out the idea of life on other planets in other solar systems, the closest of which are so far away they would take us seventy-five thousand years to get to in the fastest craft we currently have, which means unless aliens visit us (and possibly they do—see “Beware of USOs,” page 221), then you and I will never know if there is life out there. Maybe, just maybe, we are not alone after all …

  What is it about this infamous stretch of ocean

  (and sky) that causes ships and planes

  to vanish without a trace?

  At ten past two in the afternoon of December 5, 1945, five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers took off from the naval air station at Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The commander of Flight 19, Lieutenant Charles Taylor, had been assigned a routine two-hour training flight of fifteen men on a course that would take them out to sea sixty-six miles due east of the airbase, to the Hen and Chickens Shoals.

  There the squadron would carry out practice bombing runs, then fly due north for seventy miles before turning for a second time and heading back to base, 120 miles away. Their plotted flight plan formed a simple triangle, straight forward
to execute, and Lieutenant Taylor and his four trainee pilots headed out into the clear blue sky over a calm Sargasso Sea. Even though everything seemed set fair, some of the crew were showing signs of anxiety. This was not unusual during a training flight over open water. Less usual was the fact that one of the fifteen crewmen had failed to show up for duty, claiming he had had a premonition that something strange would happen on that day and that he was too scared to fly.

  And, within a few minutes after takeoff, something strange did happen. First, Lieutenant Taylor reported that the sea appeared white and “not looking as it should.” Then, shortly afterward, his compasses began spinning out of control, as did those of the other four pilots, and at 3:45 p.m., about ninety minutes after takeoff, the normally cool and collected Taylor contacted Lieutenant Robert Cox at flight control with the worried message: “Flight Control, this is an emergency. We seem to be off course. We can't make out where we are.”

  Cox instructed the pilot to head due west, but Taylor reported that none of the crew knew which way west actually was. And that too was highly unusual, as even without compasses and other navigational equipment, at that time of day and with the sun only a few hours from setting, any one of them could have used the tried-and-tested method of looking out of the window and following the setting sun, which will always lie to the west of wherever you find yourself.

  Just over half an hour later, Taylor radioed flight control again, this time informing them he thought they were 225 miles northeast of base. His agitated radio message ended with him saying, “It looks like we are … ” and then the radio cut out. By then they would have been desperately low on fuel, but the five Avengers had been designed to make emergency sea landings and remain afloat for long enough to give the crew the chance to evacuate into life rafts and await rescue.

  A Martin Mariner boat plane was immediately sent out to assist Flight 19 and bring the men back; but as it approached the area in which the stricken crew were thought to have been lost, it too broke contact with flight control. None of the aircraft and none of the crew were ever found, and the official navy report apparently concluded that the men had simply vanished, “as if they had flown off to planet Mars.” To this day, the American military has a standing order to keep a watch for Flight 19, as if they believe it was caught up in some bizarre time warp and might return at any time.

  At least, that is how the story goes. And it would have had a familiar ring for some, as it wasn't the first time a mysterious disappearance had been reported in the area. On March 9, 1918, the USS Cyclops left Barbados with a cargo of 10,800 tons of manganese (a hard metal essential for iron and steel production) bound for Baltimore. The following day, Lieutenant Commander G. W. Worley, a man with a habit of walking around the quarterdeck clad in nothing but his underwear and a hat and carrying a cane, reported that an attempted mutiny by a small number of the 306-man crew had been suppressed and that the offenders were below decks in irons. And that was the last anybody ever heard from Worley or any of his crew. The twenty-thousand-ton Cyclops simply vanished from the surface of the sea, into thin air.

  The conclusion at the time was that the ship had been a victim of German U-boat activity, but when investigations in Germany after the end of the First World War revealed that no U-boats had been located in the area, that theory was ruled out. Instead, speculation ranged from the suggestion—proffered quite seriously—by a popular magazine that a giant sea monster had surfaced, wrapped its tentacles around the entire ship, dragged it to the ocean bed, and eaten it, to the rumor, with UFO hysteria in full swing (see “The Famous Aurora Spaceship Mystery,” page 3), that the vessel had been lifted, via giant intergalactic magnets, into outer space.

  And then, in 1963, eighteen years after the disappearance of Flight 19, it happened again. The SS Marine Sulphur Queen was on a voyage to Norfolk, Virginia, from Beaumont, Texas. On February 3, the ship radioed a routine report to the local coast guard to give her position: she was, at the time, sailing close to Key West in the Straits of Florida. Shortly afterward she vanished. Three days later the coast guard, searching for any sign of the missing vessel, found a single life jacket floating in the sea. Since then, no other evidence of the Marine Sulphur Queen, its cargo, or the thirty-nine-man crew has ever been found.

  Back in 1950, connections had already been made between the disappearance of Flight 19 and of the USS Cyclops: reporter E.V.W. Jones was the first to suggest mysterious happenings in the sea between the Florida coast and Bermuda. Two years later, Fate magazine published an article by George X. Sand in which he suggested that the mysterious events—thousands of them, by his calculation—had taken place within an area that extended down the coast from Florida to Puerto Rico and in a line from each of these to Bermuda, creating what he called a “watery triangle.” His views were shared by one Frank Edwards, who published a book in 1955 called The Flying Saucer Conspiracy in which he claimed that aliens from outer space were also operating in the same area; hence the sky was incorporated into the “watery triangle,” which became known as the “Devil's Triangle.”

  In 1964, following the disappearance of the Marine Sulphur Queen, journalist Vincent Gaddis wrote an article for Argosy magazine in which he drew together the many mysterious events that had taken place within the triangular area of sea and sky. He called it “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle,” thereby coining the famous expression that was to be come synonymous with unexplained disappearances the world over. Ten years later, a book by former army intelligence officer Charles Berlitz, simply titled The Bermuda Triangle, sold more than twenty million copies and was translated into thirty different languages. In 1976, the book won the Dag Hammarskjold International Prize for nonfiction and the world became gripped by Triangle fever—and has been ever since. But it is worth noting that even as recently as 1964 the Bermuda Triangle, as we now know it, simply did not exist.

  Geographically, the Bermuda Triangle covers an area in the western Atlantic marked by, at its three points, Bermuda, San Juan in Puerto Rico, and Miami in Florida—although, on closer study of the locations of some ocean disasters attributed to the myth, it would be easy to extend that area halfway round the world. Even the Mary Celeste, for example (see page 138), has been connected to the Bermuda Triangle, which would extend the Triangle's boundaries closer to Portugal!

  But could there be any truth to the myth—some more prosaic explanation to account for the seemingly paranormal events? Is there anything about the actual geography of the area that might cause so many ships and aircraft to vanish apparently without a trace?

  To start with, the sea currents in the area are heavily affected by the warm Gulf Stream that flows in a northeasterly direction from the tip of Florida to Great Britain and northern Europe. The warm current divides the balmy water of the Sargasso Sea and the colder north Atlantic and is the reason the climate in northern Europe is much more moderate than might be expected, considering that Canada and Moscow are as far north as England. Once leaving the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Stream current reaches five or six knots in speed, and this affects the heavy shipping in the area in many ways, including navigation.

  Inexperienced sailors, particularly in the days before radar and satellite navigation, could very easily find themselves many miles off course after failing to measure the ship's speed with sufficient accuracy, especially when this was calculated by throwing from the bow of the ship a log attached to a rope and timing the appearance of each of a series of knots in the rope as it passed the stern. Failing to do this often enough while sailing in the fast-moving Gulf Stream could quite speedily lead to the crew of a ship becoming hopelessly lost in the vast Atlantic Ocean. Another effect of the fast-moving current would be to scatter the wreckage of lost ships and aircraft over a vast area, many miles from the site of an accident, making it well-nigh impossible for rescue teams to locate survivors.

  Then there is the North American continental shelf, which is responsible for the clear blue water of the Caribbean islands. Afte
r only a few miles, the shelf gives way to the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, an area known as the Puerto Rico Trench. And since it's nearly thirty thousand feet deep, nobody has ever been down there to clear up any mysterious disappearances.

  Furthermore, the continental shelf is home to large areas of methane hydrates (methane gases that bubble up through the water after being emitted from the seabed). Eruptions from any of these in the relatively shallow waters cause the sea to bubble and froth, affecting the density of the water and hence the buoyancy of vessels traveling on the surface. Scientific tests have shown that scale models of ships will sink when the density of the water is sufficiently reduced, which could account for the sudden disappearance of various craft within the area. Added to which, any wreckage might be carried away by the Gulf Stream and scattered across the Atlantic in no time at all.