Perhaps the most famous or infamous of all the world's mysterious places is the Bermuda Triangle. For decades, this stretch of ocean, covering over 500,000 square miles, located between Miami, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda, has baffled scientists, experienced sailors, and even military investigators. Planes disappearing, various kinds of strange lights being seen, a whole bunch of weirdness, all conglomerating into this very tight corner of the Atlantic.
Ships that have shown up absolutely empty. No sign of any struggle, yet the crew has just vanished. GIAN QUASAR: This is something that's very real.
They exist in records. And now that they're all gone, in fair weather, that is not supernatural phenomenon to me. That is something unexplained.
NARRATOR: What caused ships and planes to disappear without a trace? Why has aeronautical and navigational equipment stopped working or changed course by itself? Historical shipping records show that the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle are much older than many people realize.
Ever since the earliest days of oceanic exploration, sailors have witnessed strange sights. JASON MARTELL: Really, the awareness of the Bermuda Triangle started with Christopher Columbus being such an esoteric navigator and a well-respected sailor. His log traversing to the New World is very accurate.
And it turns out, just as Columbus got into the area known as the Bermuda Triangle, he recorded having compass malfunctions. The following night, he saw a large fireball hit the ocean. He saw strange lights.
He saw strange wet phenomena happening there. So it's definitely a case that the story of the Bermuda Triangle is not just some modern awesome urban myth at the threshold of the 21st century. It is as old as there are accounts of people going into that area.
NARRATOR: About 450 years after Columbus, on December 5, 1945, the US military experienced the Bermuda Triangle's most perplexing mystery. At 2 o'clock in the afternoon, five US Navy torpedo bombers flew from a Naval base in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on a routine training exercise. But not long into the two-hour mission, all five planes were suddenly gone.
The mystery was compounded when the navy sent out a rescue plane, and it too disappeared. Six planes, all flown by skilled pilots, had vanished into oblivion. That struck everybody as very odd.
This was now the modern era. We have radar. We have radio.
Still, five aircraft vanished. Now, the question is where have all of them gone. It really is as if they have been snapped out of our reality into something else.
And of course what that something else is, that's the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. NARRATOR: Over the years, few have lived to tell of any strange anomalies that have occurred to them in the Bermuda Triangle. But American pilot Bruce Gernon is an exception.
In 1970, Gernon, his father, and a business associate were flying from the Bahamas to Florida when Gernon reported seeing a strange cloud directly out in front of their plane. Then, as he approached, Gernon claims the cloud formed a donut-shaped hole or vortex. BRUCE GERNON: That tunnel was huge at first, but then it started getting smaller, rapidly.
But when I penetrated into the tunnel, an incredible thing happened. These lines instantly formed. It was like looking down a rifle barrel, because the lines were swirling, slowly, counterclockwise.
I had encountered some intense electricity. There were, like, flashes going on and off. And all I could see was this strange, grayish-yellowish fog.
I call it electronic fog. I noticed that my instruments were malfunctioning. And at the same time, I'm feeling this unbelievable sensation.
NARRATOR: Gernon says when he finally exited the tunnel, he radioed Miami Air traffic control, but they couldn't find his plane on their radar screen. BRUCE GERNON: And then about three minutes later, the radar controller came back on the radio. And he's all excited.
He had identified me over Miami. And I couldn't believe it, because I had only been flying for 33 minutes. It should have been more like an hour and three minutes.
NARRATOR: Could such a discrepancy in time and location really happen? And could extraterrestrials be using this kind of gateway to travel to Earth? According to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, it is possible.
JASON MARTELL: Through Einstein's principles of being able to bend space using a gravitational pull, it's very possible that extraterrestrial craft could somehow get a higher charge of energy from these locations like the Bermuda Triangle, which allow them to do a burst of energy, if you will, a warp speed, and harness some type of extra particles or energies from these locations to get them where they're trying to go. On December 4, 1970, almost 25 years to the day after the disappearance of Flight 19. .
. . .
. a pilot by the name of Bruce Gernon was in an aircraft flying between Andros Island and the island of Bimini, when he had an absolute incredible experience. The controls on his plane also went crazy.
He felt, in the end, that somehow he had been in the Bermuda Triangle when it was activated. Since that time, researchers have been trying to find out exactly what happened during that flight. NARRATOR: In March 2018, ancient astronaut theorist and author David Childress traveled to an airfield in West Palm Beach, Florida.
. . -Hi.
-Hi. -. .
. to meet face-to face with one of the very few men who experienced the strange power of the Bermuda Triangle, and survived. So what is our plan today?
Well, we're gonna recreate our flight that I had in, uh, 1970. And I can show you on the chart here. We're gonna go direct from Palm Beach right to this curved area of Andros Island on the western shore.
And we're gonna go down to a thousand feet at this point. And that's where my experience in 1970 began. I am the only living person that has flown through the heart of it, and then exited what I call a time-tunnel vortex and survived.
So have you ever retraced your flight? I've never been on the exact flight path that I was when I had this event. And that's what I'd like to take you through today, the exact flight path.
Into the Bermuda Triangle. And this isn't a one-way flight, is it? No sir.
We'll be back. CHILDRESS: Okay. I'm ready.
CHILDRESS (over radio): So, Bruce, uh, it was, it was 1970, and you were flying out of Andros. Who-Who was with you on this flight? Uh, my dad and our business partner was with us, and it was a routine flight, but, uh, this is the area where I, uh, took off and started my ascent.
I was at a thousand feet just like we are right now. And I started climbing straight out over that bank right there. -There it is.
-CHILDRESS: Is that it? Okay. I don't know, it looks kinda eerie here.
There's nothing much around, is there? Very remote area of the Bahama bank. Wow, what was that?
Did you feel that? -Uh. .
. -GERNON: There it is. Ah, that was the weirdest.
. . Can you catch that?
CHILDRESS: Something we should maybe-- Okay. It's out of control? NORWITCH: It's okay, guys, we just hit a rough spot.
-We've just got a little turbulence here. -(laughs) It's turbulence. CHILDRESS: How about that?
Yeah. Wow. I have to admit, I'm actually glad that-that we didn't vanish.
It's right in this exact area here. . .
where it did that. -Wow. Uh, a premonition, maybe.
-Kind of, yeah. All right, so you-- did you think that anything strange -was gonna happen to you that day? -No, no.
I had no premonitions, but this strange cloud formed right in front of us, and it was like a lenticular-shaped cloud. But it was just sort of hovering there. And it did look a little strange.
As soon as I got over it, it started expanding. And then before you know it, I-I'm inside the cloud. And so now I can't see anything.
Visibility was near zero. There was lightning in there. It was flashes of lightning.
These flashes got more and more intense the deeper we went in it. It got darker, too. It was almost like night and day.
My co-pilot, my dad, he said, uh, maybe we ought to turn around and go back to Andros. I didn't want to turn around and go back through this cloud that was freaking me out, you know? It would've been worse.
There was no turning back, you felt. I said to my dad, "well, hold on, not yet. " NARRATOR: Rather than turning back for land, Bruce decided to pull out of the cloud that the plane had become immersed in, and continued on his flight path.
But when he came out of the cloud, he realized that the situation was even more incredible than he first thought. His plane was surrounded on all sides by a giant storm. And there appeared to be no way out.
I felt like we were trapped inside this strange storm. And then I noticed a big tunnel about a mile wide and ten miles long. So I said, "oh, well, we'll go through that.
" My dad agreed. When we entered the tunnel, an incredible thing happened. A series of clouds formed a swirling line that was slowly rotating counterclockwise.
It felt like we were hydroplaning. Somehow we were at zero gravity. We were floating and going forward somehow.
And I came out of the tunnel, I looked back behind and I watched the tunnel collapse. The radar controller comes back on the microphone, and he's-he's yelling really loud. He's all excited.
He says, "I got an airplane directly over Miami Beach. " So I look at my watch. "No, I got another 30 minutes to go here.
"Uh, I'm, uh, at least 80 miles east of you guys," I tell him. But then I look down, and there's Miami Beach right below me. I traveled 100 miles in only three minutes.
NARRATOR: 100 miles? In three minutes? Bruce's plane would have to have been traveling 2,000 miles per hour to cross that distance in such a short amount of time, a speed that his small plane was not even remotely capable of.
But the people on the plane, they're. . .
except for a little bit of mist and fog around them, they're. . .
they don't really notice anything strange is happening. No, they didn't notice anything strange. But, uh, all their watches were set back 20 minutes.
I believe now that what was happening was I-I was seeing the fabric of time. And I believe that is what creates the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. Fort Lauderdale, Florida, December 5, 1945-- five Navy Avenger bombers flying due East on a routine training mission encounter something strange over the Bermuda islands.
About an hour and a half into the flight, squadron leader Lieutenant Charles Taylor sends a radio transmission that his two onboard campuses have become inoperable. Everybody got totally confused as to where they were. They Were.
Totally lost in an area where they should not have been lost. The whole squadron of US Navy aircraft just vanished. The fact, it was in this particular area obviously has given rise to the theory, could they have been abducted?
Three hours later, a rescue aircraft, a TBY Mariner with a crew of 11 aboard disappeared with no trace. And what that caused is one of the most extensive search and rescue operations in the annals of the United States Navy. And they never found a life preserver, a piece of a wing, or anything from those aircraft-- nothing.
And to this day, we have no clue as to what happened. NARRATOR: But Flight 19 is only one incident in allegedly hundreds that have claimed victims in what is commonly referred to as the Bermuda Triangle. And according to ancient astronaut theorists, this site, which spans a 500,000 square mile area between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, plays host to numerous unexplained physical and metaphysical phenomena, strange energies that may help to explain why pilots, sailors, and ship captains enter the area and are never seen or heard from again.
So you have to wonder what's happening to these people? Is there something about the Bermuda Triangle? It's some kind of portal that aliens are using to come and go through hyperspace, and suddenly you and your yacht, or you and your plane are sucked into some other dimension?
And you're not coming back. The Bermuda Triangle is interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, it's not just one plane which goes missing somewhere.
This is several planes, which all disappear. And the question is, where have all of them gone? It's not just a case that on occasion one of them is found.
Really an awful lot of what has gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle has never been seen, has never been heard of. If an aircraft is flying over or ships sailing the ocean at the wrong time, could it pull them down underneath the water? So you know, we're looking at possibly not abductions into the sky, but actually below the ocean.
NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists say the legend of the lost city of Atlantis may be connected to the possible abductions in the Bermuda Triangle. According to legends, the island of Atlantis was an enormous ancient power that thrived as far back as 9,600 BC. The story of Atlantis, which is one of the most famous mysteries from antiquity, the earliest sources we have on it is Plato.
And the city was known for being a sort of a technological marvel in its own right. And at some point, for reasons that are not entirely clear, there was an eruption of some sort, and the city disappeared. We have no archaeological artifacts from Atlantis, and we don't know if it's just mythology.
So is it possible, either through evil intentions or by accident, they sunk to the bottom of the ocean in the Bermuda area, and that's why we're experiencing, or pilots experience all kinds of electrical interference when they fly over the Bermuda Triangle? NARRATOR: In this small town outside of Paris, numerous eyewitnesses report several mysterious oval-shaped craft above the Seine River, traveling at great speeds before suddenly vanishing into thin air. It is the first of more than 300 UFO incidents that would take place in France during the year.
Journalist Aimé Michel begins studying the reported flight paths of many of these accounts, and makes an astonishing observation. NEWMAN: All these UFO sightings appeared to move in dead straight lines, often crisscrossing. And as he kept getting reports coming in, and he kept plotting them, he kept finding the same system happening, the same lines, the same movements of these UFOs.
NARRATOR: In 1958, Michel published his research in a book called<i> Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery. </i> In the book, he introduced a principle he called orthoteny, which held that clusters of UFO activity over a short period of time usually occur along straight lines that often intersect. COLLINS: What Aimé Michel started to realize was that there seemed to be a pattern in where these objects were appearing, and also their flight paths.
He saw that they actually use specific lanes, which he felt were connected with the magnetic forces of the Earth. HENRY: He's noticing that these UFOs are traveling in straight lines, using latitudes, and that, in fact, this can be extrapolated into an entire grid that encapsulates the entire planet. NARRATOR: Is it possible that Aimé Michel successfully identified a grid pattern across the Earth of highly magnetized regions that have come to be known as UFO hot spots?
Ancient astronaut theorists believe that further clues can be found by examining an area that has become notorious for mysterious phenomena and strange disappearances. . .
The Bermuda Triangle. TSOUKALOS: With the Bermuda Triangle, it is an irrefutable fact that planes and ships of various sizes have disappeared without a trace. You also have UFO and UAP stories.
NARRATOR: In the last century, roughly 50 ships and 20 airplanes have vanished without a trace within this infamous 500,000-square-mile stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. According to Scottish biologist and paranormal researcher Ivan T. Sanderson, the Bermuda Triangle is just one of a strange and disturbing kind of UFO hot spot that he described as the world's 12 "vile vortices.
" He was able to identify, he believed, certain spots like the Bermuda Triangle, the Drgon's Triangle, places like the Great Pyramid, and other huge monument areas, and there was activity going on at these places, disappearing ships and airplanes, UFO activity, lights and unusual phenomenon that were occurring constantly. NARRATOR: In his 1972 article entitled "The 12 Devil's Graveyards Around The World," Sanderson mapped these sites at equidistant points above and below the equator, and discovered they formed a mysterious geometrical pattern on the Earth's surface. RICKSECKER: There are 12 of these across the globe.
Now, five of them are within the Tropic of Cancer, five of them within the Tropic of Capricorn, the other two, the North Pole and the South Pole. What's interesting is if you connect all of these through the sphere of our globe, they make an icosagon, or a 20-sided polygon. So, this is showing us how all of these type of hot spots are connected to each other.
NARRATOR: The hot spot sites Sanderson identified share more than just a unique history and geometry. Many of these so-called vile vortices have strong magnetic anomalies caused by variations or disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field. If you take a look at the Earth, the Earth has a magnetic field like a bar magnet.
The field of the magnetism comes out from the North Pole and goes into the South Pole. It comes from the fact that inside the Earth, there is churning electricity. And we now know that there are anomalies there.
It's as if our entire Earth is one gigantic battery. And if one were to argue that the entire planet is a battery, well, what's it used for? I think our planet could serve to power whatever exotic device extraterrestrials use to get here and leave.
