It came as no surprise, then, that a quick Google search this morning for "Air France 447 Bermuda Triangle" turned up a number of hits, including some from reputable news sources.

Of course, many of these posts and articles are simply drawing a comparison between the mystery of Air France 447’s crash and other famous aircraft losses, including those that happened within the region of the Atlantic Ocean known to us today as the Bermuda Triangle [1].

But there are other sites drawing more than a casual connection between the tragedy of Air France 447 and the shadowy forces some believe to be behind the Triangle’s history of loss and disaster.

Which left me wondering — is there anything really to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle?

Sunny Days, Calm Seas, Storms From Nowhere

I didn’t really give it any thought at the time, but I actually lived within the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle for a few months not too many years ago. I spent most of that time on various islands within the Bahamas, and my experience of the region was one of long sunny days, crystal blue waters, and sudden tropical storms that made me fear for my life.

During my time in the Bermuda Triangle I caught flights on large and small planes, and took trips on boats. I never felt at any risk, nor did I feel that the people who lived on these island paradises or who flocked to them for holidays were at all concerned about a mysterious and perhaps sinister threat to their safety.

Perhaps this was simply a matter of ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ but the life I lived and observed within the Bermuda Triangle was much the same as any other part of the world in which I have lived or visited.

Let’s Call It The Bermuda Polygon. No, Wait…

Most people probably don’t realise that the concept of something out of the ordinary taking place in an area of the Atlantic Ocean — defined by connecting Miami, Florida with the islands of Bermuda and Puerto Rico — is only a little more than 50 years old.

In fact, it wasn’t until 1964 that the name of "The Bermuda Triangle" was first attached to this region, and it wouldn’t be until the 1970s — the decade in which an interest in the paranormal became truly fashionable — that it gained real popularity as a topic for authors focussing on the supernatural and the bizarre.

Since then, an amazing number of theories have been spawned to explain historical disappearances and tragedies in the region. Official accounts have been fictionalised, transcripts have been modified, and in many cases the fictional accounts have themselves come to be considered the authentic versions through repetition in many different sources.

The most popular ‘The Truth Is Out There’ explanation for tragedies within the Bermuda Triangle is, of course, that it is the site of hostile UFO activity. Others have suggested instead that the ‘lost’ civilisation of Atlantis [2] can be found beneath the waves of the Caribbean, or that remnants of their advanced technology, protecting a race that died thousands of years ago, is to blame.

Others of a more skeptical bent have attempted to explain Triangle phenomena through combinations of rare natural events or as a result of pure human error, or both.

Here There Be Dragons. Also, Occasionally Mermaids.

Despite it’s reputation, The Bermuda Triangle is by no means exclusive in being the site of maritime and aviation mysteries.

From the mysterious fate of Amelia Earhart in 1937, to the wildly fictionalised account of the abandoned Mary Celeste in 1872 [3], history brims with strange and unexplained incidents in the air and on the sea.

One chilling example, which matches anything reported out of the Bermuda Triangle, was the mysterious disappearance of Frederick Valentich while piloting a Cessna 182 on a routine flight across Australia’s Bass Straight on October 21, 1978.

According to transcripts from Valentich’s communications with air traffic control in Melbourne, he encountered a strange aircraft at approximately 7:06pm that evening. From his questions to traffic control, it’s obvious that Valentich initially thought he had experienced a close call with another, larger passenger aircraft. Melbourne Air Traffic Control, however, was unaware of any other aircraft in his immediate vicinity. A few minutes later, Valentich speculated about whether the craft was of military origin. And what followed was a conversation in which Valentich described the aircraft playing a cat-and-mouse game with him, buzzing his plane, hovering above, accelerating away at incredible speeds, until at approximately 7:12pm, 6 minutes after Valentich first reported his concern, all communication ceased.

Frederick Valentich was never seen again, and no wreckage from his plane was ever discovered.

The Truth Is In These Files?

One of the most interesting developments in recent years to those who follow UFO sightings and conspiracy theories was the decision by the UK Ministry Of Defence (MoD) to release its so-called ‘X-Files’ in a series of batches.

Last year, in 2008, the MoD released two batches of files, containing reports of, and investigations into, UFO sightings and experiences across the United Kingdom.

While these don’t appear to contain content relating to the Bermuda Triangle, they do represent an insider look at a government’s approach and response to the unexplained.

An accompanying article by Nick Pope on the X-Journals web site, explains what it was like to work on these files.

For 3 years Nick Pope headed up the MoD’s department charged with investigating UFOs, and he describes a day-to-day reality far removed from the glamorous dangers and intrigue of Fox Mulder and Dana Sculley.

In fact, it’s obvious in Pope’s article that the expense and manpower required to serve the general public’s interest in UFOs far outweighed the budget available to investigate the vast majority of sightings. You can sense his frustration that many reported sightings were dealt with by form letters, since the department simply couldn’t afford to open investigative cases on them. This is not to say that major events were overlooked, but in this case it does appear that fiction was far stranger than reality, rather than the other way around.

Having said which, I personally found it fascinating to realise that regardless of the explanation (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) of these phenomena, there were and perhaps still are people in positions of responsibility for investigating UFO sightings who consider them a potential face-value threat to public safety…

Everything Looks Strange, Even The Ocean

Of all the mysteries attributed to the Bermuda Triangle, the story of Flight 19 — and the lesser known story of PBM-5 BuNo 59225, which disappeared the same day while searching for the stricken pilots of Flight 19 — still makes my skin prickle with disquiet.

I’m a skeptic, and I have had a lifelong interest in the normal explanations of seemingly extraordinary things. My belief is that we may never know what truly happened with many unexplained events, but that often we believe things because we never truly choose to go looking for real explanations. It’s often easier, more interesting, and more self-validating to simply believe the strange and bizarre.

Despite this, I can’t help wondering what really happened to Flight 19 that day in December, 1945. Combined with the crew of 13 on PBM-5 BuNo 59225, which was part of the search for the Flight, 27 people disappeared without a trace that day.

27 people who left behind friends, colleagues, loved ones and a mystery that will probably never be solved.

Still, it’s worth remembering that while the known events of December 5, 1945, are strange enough, this hasn’t stopped authors from peppering official accounts of Flight 19’s disappearance with alarming details of their own, as with the claim that Flight Leader Taylor’s final communication was: "We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don’t know where we are, the water is green, no white."

Back On Dry Land

Despite the mystery of Flight 19, and other disappearances within the area of The Bermuda Triangle, there’s a piece of ordinary, everyday information that tells a different story about that infamous stretch of ocean.

You might not expect to turn to an insurance company to debunk a persistent story of frequent alien abductions or ancient underwater technology, but in the case of The Bermuda Triangle, this is perhaps the best place to look for a rational point of view.

Quoted in an Independent article from 21 December, 1997, Norman Hooke — a spokesperson for Lloyd’s Maritime Insurance company — explained that Lloyd’s charges no more for maritime vessels charting through The Bermuda Triangle than through other stretches of ocean.

Statistically speaking, vessels passing through the Bermuda Triangle are at no greater risk of mishap than when sailing elsewhere.

Does this close the case on The Bermuda Triangle as a place of undying mystery?

For me, despite the strange tale of Flight 19, I think it does. At least, I believe it puts the stories of the strange and unexpected from that region into a broader perspective: mysteries happen everywhere, and sometimes explanations will never be known. The Bermuda Triangle has been a lucrative industry for authors who write about tales of mystery and imagination, but real-world evidence suggests that it’s just a stretch of ocean, much like any other; albeit one that has definitely had it’s fair share of unexplained tragedies.

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We may never know what happened to Air France 447 to cause it to crash. Perhaps it will join the ranks of mysteries that will haunt and challenge professional and amateur investigators and theorists for years to come. While some people are suggesting bizarre and paranormal explanations for its loss, air crash investigators being reported in the press are almost universally talking in terms of the plane and / or crew experiencing a series of contributing events, currently unknown but not theoretically unexplainable, that led to this tragic disaster.

If anything, the loss of Air France 447 should serve as a reminder that for all the technology we have available, there are still large holes in what we can know and learn when disaster strikes.

Footnotes:

1.	Or, even more chillingly, as the Devil’s Triangle!
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2.	I say ‘lost’, because of course no-one has established to date that Atlantis in any form ever truly existed.
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3.	Here’s a piece of trivia for you — the legend of the Mary Celeste and the mystery surrounding the disappearance of its crew owes a huge debt to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, best known for his many stories featuring the private detective, Sherlock Holmes. In 1884, Conan Doyle published a story called "J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement", in which he drew heavily from the known accounts of the Mary Celeste, but in which he also added many of the details — including the warm, uneaten meals, the freshly brewed coffee, the unruffled cat etc — that most people now accept as being part of the true, known facts of the state in which the vessel was discovered when found floating abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean.
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Slate.com has an interesting article examining the way internet chain emails  and web content work.

Writer Chris Wilson focuses particularly on the ‘25 Things About Me’ meme in Charles Darwin Tagged You in a Note on Facebook, providing some in-depth analysis of the way chain content spreads across the Facebook network, and likening its progression to the same way a disease operates when infecting new hosts.

While this may seem a little dramatic, Wilson is by no means the first to draw a comparison between chain emails and other web content to the way viruses work in evolutionary biology.

In fact, the field of Memetics is devoted to exploring the way informal information spreads among groups of people, modelling this spread along evolutionary lines.

Much as Chris Wilson writes, in Memetics a new idea, custom or belief  — a meme — must be transmissible to a large group of people or it will be unlikely to survive. The implication isn’t that the meme itself wants to survive, but that the people who accept or participate in it want it to survive to varying degrees. In this way a meme can be thought of to work exactly in the way a virus might – to survive, the meme must spread, often mutating [1] in the process to become more adaptable to other hosts.

Some memes are much more efficient at ‘infecting’ new hosts than others. For example, chain content that is both alarming and at least a little believable [2] can often spread across huge groups of people, working on the ‘just in case’ principle. Other memes might work simply by being appealing in some way to a wide number of hosts, while still others operate on an implied obligation and reward basis.

Why this is interesting in the study of Urban Legends and folklore is that it helps us understand the very human process of wanting or feeling obligated to be ‘involved’. The motivations of each individual who forwards or changes a chain email might be different from person to person, but across groups of people we can begin to see that memes communicate because they are suitable in some way to each individual who participates.

To read the original article, visit: Charles Darwin Tagged You in a Note on Facebook

Footnotes:

1.	I.E. developing new details or attributes, as a virus might, as people refine the meme before sharing it on with others.
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2.	Though often not true!
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Paul J Zak, the hapless victim of a con known as “The Pigeon Drop”, explains what was at work in his mind when he fell for the confidence trick.

From the article:

The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of THOMAS [1], the human brain makes us feel good when we help others–this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. "I need your help" is a potent stimulus for action.

Hopefully you won’t use this information to run your own cons, but it’s always helpful to know how and why you might be more vulnerable than you realise when someone isn’t telling you the truth.

To read the post, visit: How to run a con.

Photo courtesy of daveblume

Footnotes:

1.	The Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System – this is explained in greater depth in the article.
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His take on whether or not it has ever happened in real life is that he hasn’t been able to find a credible reference for any historical examples, and he puts this down to a belief that gangland assassins simply don’t want to mess around with complexities of convincing someone to hold still while you pour cement over their feet. So much simpler to kill them in a more direct way, and dispose of the body [1] when convenient, right?

Interestingly enough, Mark ‘Chopper’ Read [2] – a self-proclaimed ex-gangland enforcer in Melbourne, Australia – once appeared on Australian television making the claim that he had, in fact, murdered a man using pretty much this method.

His quote (you can see it extracted here), was:

‘It took us hours to get him in [3], the bastard. He kept climbing out.’

Of course, Chopper Read has been accused more than once of embellishing his gangland experiences, and since no-one (at least publicly) followed up on this claim it’s anybody’s guess whether or not it truly happened.

To read Arthur Black’s article, visit: Two feet equals six feet under, and other urban legends

Photo courtesy of julianrod

Footnotes:

1.	Perhaps by weighing the body down with cement weights.
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2.	Sometimes credited as ‘Reid’ instead of ‘Read’.
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3.	…to the cement mixer.
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Do I like the show? Do I respect the things Adam, Jamie and the rest of the crew are attempting to achieve with it? Do I secretly envy them for all the things they get to blow up? For that matter, do I secretly envy Jamie (that’s him on the right in the picture) for his silly moustache and his even more silly hat?

The answer to at least some of these questions is yes…

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When I first began writing about urban legends, MythBusters was probably little more than an idea bouncing around in the head of television producer, Peter Rees. We were partying like it was 1999 back then [1], and urban legends were fresh and new and interesting; and a guy with an unhealthy interest in contemporary folklore and something of an analytical mind could put up a reasonably popular website devoted to helping people learn more about urban legends.

We didn’t have blogs back then. We didn’t have citizen journalism. We didn’t all have Twitter accounts and MySpace accounts and Facebook accounts and a zillion logins and passwords for a zillion pages we never looked at again. We just had a few key websites with a lot of people working behind the scenes to shed some much-needed light on the whackier things people claim to believe.

Then MythBusters arrived on the scene, bringing with it a change in the way people thought about Urban Legends.

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In the hands of Adam and Jamie and their very clever crew, Urban Legends [2] have become focused around things you can test. Things you can put your hands on, things you can put in a wind tunnel, things you can blow up or drown or shoot or, did I mention, blow up.

As much as anyone else, I’m always fascinated to see the way the MythBuster team goes about testing the latest crop of claims; and, like many other people, I can’t help enjoying it when clever people blow things up in interesting ways. Put the two ideas together, and that’s a half hour of television I’m definitely going to enjoy!

And yet, I do have a couple of reservations about the show.

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Like some others, I’m occasionally dismayed at the conclusions the MythBusters team is willing to draw from once-off testing. Of course, I understand that they don’t have an unlimited budget and that within a half-hour entertainment show they use clever and often ingenious methods for testing a particular Legend. Having said that, the purist in me wishes that the testing could be as rigourous as possible, and / or that the show was upfront in each episode that in many cases their testing can only really be considered indicative rather than conclusive.

In defence of the MythBusters team, you often see them talking about this in a casual way during their segment wrapups, but the show still carries this idea that ‘We know this claim is absolutely true or untrue because MythBusters tested it.’

Interestingly enough, the producers of the show are obviously aware of this concern out there in viewership land [3], so they occasionally have episodes in which they go back to retest their conclusions.

Personally, I’m glad they do this, but I still have a niggling feeling about the results they sometimes achieve that go unchallenged, or which haven’t caused enough concern in the viewership to warrant testing again.

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But my bigger concern is also probably a much less specific one.

While MythBusters has proven to be a great format for presenting entertaining tests and results of different beliefs and Legends, I can’t help feeling that no effort whatsoever is going into another important aspect of how Urban Legends work – why do people believe these things?

Back in the earlier episodes of the show, MythBusters featured a woman who would talk about these things [4], and I respected the show more at that point for treating Urban Legends as holistic entities, not just as the physical manifestations of their details.

I guess this didn’t prove as popular with the general viewership, and let’s face it – it’s a show that has to be concerned with appealing to the greatest number of people who might watch it.

But, like the episodes in which they go back to placate their disgruntled viewers, I’d love to see occasional episodes that feature experts in the way the belief side of Urban Legends works, and the communal and viral ways in which they spread.

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So yes, I enjoy MythBusters, and watch it with much happiness whenever I’m near a television and it’s on. I don’t think of it as required viewing, and it rankles me under the skin occasionally, but in the big scheme of things, I’d rather the show existed in a slightly flawed format (well, to me), than not at all.

In a way, I sometimes wonder whether or not the show has been ultimately good for the ‘Urban Legends Industry’ [5], or if it has had the effect of pushing these people and resources into the shadows, but I guess in the end, to the vast majority of people, it doesn’t really matter. The show must go on, and Adam and Jamie are there to tell us that you can’t kill someone by dropping a penny off the Empire State Building.

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All that’s left is to answer the questions from the opening paragraphs.

Do I like the show?

Yes, though I wish it was a little different.

Do I respect the things Adam, Jamie and the rest of the crew are attempting to achieve with it?

Absolutely, though see above for my few reservations about the way they go about testing their Legends.

Do I secretly envy them for all the things they get to blow up?

I’d probably just kill myself if I tried to blow something up, so not really. But it’s fun to watch someone else do it!

For that matter, do I secretly envy Jamie (that’s him on the right in the picture) for his silly moustache and his even more silly hat?

I have my own moustache, thank you very much, and I look silly in hats.

But then, aha ahahahaha, so does Jamie.

Footnotes:

1.	Largely because it was 1999 back then.
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2.	I’m not going to be obsessive-compulsive about it, but I wish they’d named the show ‘LegendBusters’, since there is a very real difference between Legends and Myths. Maybe ‘LegendBusters’ wouldn’t have been as catchy as a title, but it would have been more accurate in the pursuit of understanding contemporary folklore. Okay, it appears I am going to be obsessive-compulsive about it…
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3.	Particularly because a lot of viewers are only too happy to write in to call the team out on a particular conclusion.
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4.	Was she a psychologist? A folklorist? Sadly, it’s been so long since I’ve seen these episodes that I can’t remember.
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5.	By which I mean the sites and people who have worked hard on analysing and investigating Urban Legends.
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I recently discovered a wonderful retelling of the tale over on AmericanFolklore.net, and I’d love to encourage you to go over and read the story, if for no better reason than it might remind you (as it did me) of some great times you spent at a younger age being scared out of your wits by a good tale.

Interestingly, I’ve encountered two different main retellings of this tale in my life. The first is very much like the version over on American Folklore, where the young couple discover the psychopath’s bloodied hook attached to the car door handle, indicating a very narrow escape.

The second, which may well have been borrowed from some other tale of a terrible encounter with a maniac, is even grislier still!

In this version the boyfriend leaves the young woman to go for help. A few minutes later she hears a sound on the top of the car, and moments after that a police loud hailer instructs her to run from the car for her life, and that whatever she does, she’s not to look back. Of course, she does risk a glance back at the car as she flees, and the story ends with her screams as she sees the The Man With The Hook standing on the roof of the car, holding the severed head of her unfortunate boyfriend [2].

Hope you enjoy the read, and I’d love to hear about your own encounters with the story of ‘The Man With The Hook’ in the comments below.

[div dl]PS: Fans of scary movies will probably recognise the way the cult horror classic, Candyman, combined the story of ‘The Man With The Hook’ with the equally scary story of Bloody Mary, to create a single very scary character![/div]

Photo courtesy of TJ Scott.

Footnotes:

1.	For example, I first heard it when I was about 12, at a Christmas Camp I attended just south of Brisbane, here in Australia.
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2.	Seriously, when I look back on stories like these, is it any wonder we all had nightmares as children?
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It’s called Where the pelican builds its nest, by Mary Hannay Foott.

It speaks very much of my Father’s lifelong love of Australian poetry, and also gently tugs at a deep sense of longing and perhaps also of regret.

Where the pelican builds its nest

by Mary Hannay Foott

The horses were ready, the rails were down,
But the riders lingered still —
One had a parting word to say,
And one had his pipe to fill.

Then they mounted, one with a granted prayer,
And one with a grief unguessed.
"We are going," they said, as they rode away —
"Where the pelican builds her nest!"

They had told us of pastures wide and green,
To be sought past the sunset’s glow;
Of rifts in the ranges by opal lit;
And gold ‘neath the river’s flow.

And thirst and hunger were banished words
When they spoke of that unknown West;
No drought they dreaded, no flood they feared,
Where the pelican builds her nest!

The creek at the ford was but fetlock deep
When we watched them crossing there;
The rains have replenished it thrice since then,
And thrice has the rock lain bare.

But the waters of Hope have flowed and fled,
And never from blue hill’s breast
Come back — by the sun and the sands devoured —
Where the pelican builds her nest.

Probably the most striking difference I’ve discovered thus far is that unlike many folk stories I’ve previously read, these folk tales don’t seem to particularly mind what you might think of as an unfair outcome [2].

A wonderful example of this comes from the tale entitled And Seven! [3], which recounts the story of a fat and lazy young woman who is courted by a young man. The young man gives his prospective bride 3 tasks to do, with the promise that he will marry her if she completes all 3 tasks. Being fat and lazy (so the story goes), the young woman doesn’t even attempt any of the tasks, but at the very last moment before each task is due to be completed, a different powerful witch [4] arrives on the scene to save the day. Each of the 3 witches asks only one thing in return — that the young woman remembers the witch’s name, and calls her on the wedding day to join in the feast. They each promise the young woman that they will reveal the secret that she did none of the tasks herself if they are not so summoned.

Of course, when the wedding is due the young woman has completely forgotten the names of the 3 witches and it is only because her groom recounts to her a story of meeting 3 witches, who called each other by name, that she is able to summon the witches to the feast, thus keeping her bargain with them.

The story ends with the fat and lazy woman living happily ever after, without once in the tale behaving in a way in which she might have earned that life.

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There are other tales with surprising outcomes in the collection — a favourite of mine so far is the tale of Dauntless Little John, who, though tiny, is so fearless that he spends the night in a cursed castle in which all others who have braved a stay have been found dead of fright by the next morning.

By living through the frightening experiences of the night, Dauntless Little John inherits the castle and a vast treasure and lives happily, until one day he sees his own shadow and… dies of fright! [5]

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If, like me, you have a love of folk tales from around the world, keep an eye out for Calvino’s collection. It appears to be filled with stories of the charming and unexpected; and, after all, what more could you ask for from a book?

Footnotes:

1.	Though some are quick to point out that it’s difficult to define ‘Italian’ in a folk sense, since historically what we think of as ‘Italy’ was in fact a number of distinct provinces with their own folk traditions and tales.
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2.	Not that there aren’t also plenty of tales in which the hero faces adversity but wins the day!
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3.	The title comes from the fact that the young woman is so gluttonous that when her mother is making soup for her, she eats bowl after bowl, while her mother counts them aloud, reaching a total of 7 bowls at each meal.
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4.	All 3 of whom are sisters.
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5.	Reading this story made me wonder if something frightening had happened to Dauntless Little John’s shadow during his stay in the castle, or if this was just meant to be a surprising and darkly humorous outcome given Dauntless Little John’s fearlessness about everything else. Sadly, the tale itself leaves the story at that point, and doesn’t explain why he died of fright from seeing his own shadow.
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He was my Father, my hero and my friend.

He was the best man I have ever known, and he has left me in a world that is less bright and less beautiful and less full of wonder because he is no longer within it.

Today, for me, was the day the stories died, and I desperately wish tears could bring them back.

I miss you Dad. I love you. I will keep the promises I made to you.