Mysterious Triangle Areas of the World

(Article originally published September 2020 on MikeRicksecker.com) 

Triangle areas of the world are vortices of energy which build up from the earth’s core and cause strange phenomenon to happen, such as unusual weather patterns and interdimensional portals. The most famous, of course, is the Bermuda Triangle… we’ll get to that one in a few minutes. Airplanes and ships travelling through these triangle areas report equipment failures and compasses running wild as well as extraterrestrial sightings. Some of the most bizarre disappearances in history happen in these vortex areas… let’s take a brief look at some of the most popular hotspots.

The Alaska Triangle

The Alaska Triangle is an area of Alaska from Juneau to Anchorage to Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow) which is known for strange disappearances, anomalies, and supernatural activity. In any given year, 500-2000 people go missing in Alaska, a total of 16,000 since 1988. Like the Bermuda Triangle, the Alaska Triangle seems to harness the Earth’s energy grid to create a vortex of mystery and a possible portal into another dimension, affecting planes, boats, people and more.

I’ve appeared on a handful of episodes of The Alaska Triangle on the Travel Channel, and the show covered a number of strange occurrences and disappearances, including… missing airplanes and ships, UFO sightings, paranormal activity, and cryptid sightings. (Since the original publication of this article, I've also published the book Alaska's Mysterious Triangle.)

The Missing Douglas story is particularly interesting. This was a Douglas C-54D airplane which took off from Elmendorf Air Force Base in January 1950 and disappeared without a trace. The weather called for mostly clear skies, and there was no reason to suspect anything was wrong with its final radio contact at 1:09 PM. However, at the very edge of the Alaska Triangle, near Snag in Yukon Territory, Canada, it disappeared. No wreckage or survivors were ever found.

During the search operation, cryptic radio messages were received, but it was difficult to discern the message they were trying to convey. Many believed these messages were from the crew of the missing Douglas C-54D. Yet, just as quickly as the transmission started, they stopped. If the plane had slipped into a portal into another dimension could those messages have been transmitting back through the portal since sound travels on a different wavelength and frequency than light?

Even when I lived in Alaska during the early-to-mid 90s, crazy activity happened when an engine fell off a plane taking off from the Anchorage airport. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but local citizens were shocked when the engine crashed into the parking lot of a local supermarket and shrapnel fell into people’s homes.

Of course, the most notorious Alaska Triangle disappearance is that of the plane carrying United States House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, Alaska Congressman Nick Begich, aide Russell Brown, and pilot Don Jonz in 1972. In an effort that spanned an area of 325,000 square miles and more than 3,600 hours of search time, nothing was ever found.  

(Get Alaska's Mysterious Triangle at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735668990)

Bridgewater Triangle

The Bridgewater Triangle lies in Massachusetts and roughly covers the area between Abington, Freetown, and Rehoboth. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman coined the term after his research dating back into the 1970s revealed a concentration of supernatural sightings within this confined area of the state.

The central figure of the Bridgewater Triangle area is the Hockomock Swamp, once known as “Devil’s Swamp” to Colonial settlers. Here, witnesses have spotted vicious dogs with red eyes, a pterodactyl-like flying creature, Native American ghosts traversing the waterways in canoes, and glowing lights throughout the trees. Reports of Bigfoot activity also pocket the swamp.

Throughout the rest of the area which spans some 200-square miles, are other sightings of paranormal and extraterrestrial activity. One gentleman in 1990 encountered an extraterrestrial while walking his dog down a road in Raynham. While leisurely strolling along, the dog started whimpering and quivering as they passed under a street light. Up ahead on the road was a strange bipedal creature, standing about three to four feet tall, hairy with no clothes, large eyes, and it had a pot belly. The creature was uttering some cryptic words and beckoned the man to come, however, he turned and walked away with his dog instead. Later on, he deduced the creature was saying, “We want you. Come here.”

Many local residents are also familiar with the red-headed hitchhiker along Route 44 in Seekonk. In this stretch of haunted road, a man with long red hair and a full matching beard has been spotted several times, but when motorists stop to pick him up he disappears.  

Lake Michigan Triangle

Known as the Bermuda Triangle of the Great Lakes, the Michigan Triangle spans from Ludington, Michigan, to Benton Harbor, up to Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Many believe the strange activity of the lake began with the disappearance of Thomas Hume and his crew of seven in 1891. They set sail in a schooner and were never seen again. If they sank, no wreckage of the boat ever washed up anywhere, nor did any bodies.

In 1921, the Rosa Belle was found overturned in the lake and all eleven of the crew were missing. The ship had observable damage that it had been struck by another ship, but no other ship reported any sort of accident and no other wreck had been found.

In April 1937, Captain George Donner of the O.M. McFarland lied down to rest after navigating his ship through icy water but was never seen again. As the McFarland was nearing port, the crew went to wake Captain Donner as he had requested, but his door was locked. With no answer after they knocked several times, the crew broke open the door, but Captain Donner had disappeared and his whereabouts remain unknown.

In 1950, Northwest Airlines flight 2501 carrying 58 passengers vanished over Lake Michigan and the plane was never found. Just before it disappeared from radar, the pilot had descended the aircraft to 3,500 feet due to, “a severe electrical storm which was lashing the lake with high velocity winds.” Two hours after the final transmission from Flight 2501, two police officers reported witnessing a strange red light hovering over Lake Michigan for about 10 minutes before disappearing. The red lights have been reported in the area since about 1913.

The possible source of the unusual activity in Lake Michigan could be a ring of stones that was discovered under the lake in 2007. The stones rest under only 40 feet of water, but seem to have a similar alignment to that of Stonehenge. With ancient sites of power known to tap into the earth’s energy grid, is this ring of stones from a lost civilization powering the lake to manifest this unusual activity?  

Nevada Triangle

The Nevada Triangle stretches from Las Vegas to Reno to Fresno, California, and like its counterpart triangles is known for its many strange disappearances. Over the past 60 years over 2,000 planes have been lost in the 25,000 square miles of desert and mountains. This triangle area also includes the notorious Area 51, the military installation long rumored to be a hot spot for UFO sightings, strange phenomena, and conspiracy theories.

Some believe the extensive number of crashes in the area are due to unusual wind conditions and a phenomenon referred to as a “Mountain Wave” which is an internal gravity wave within the mountain range that increases with elevation. Military plane crashes and disappearances in this area date as far back as 1943, with modern pilots still having deadly problems in the area. This includes Steven Fossett, a record-breaking aviator, who disappeared in 2007. Although nearly $1.6 million was spent in search and rescue efforts at the time, it was a random hiker a year later who discovered remnants of Fossett’s plane some 65 miles away from where he’d taken off.  

Dragon Triangle

The Dragon Triangle is also known as The Devil’s Sea or the Pacific Bermuda Triangle and spans from Japan to the Islands of Bonin and then deep into the Philippine Sea. Legends of the Devil’s Sea extend far back into history with the “dragon” moniker dating to Chinese fables from around 1000 BC which speak of dragons living under the water’s surface who attack passing sea vessels.

An early account of trouble in the Dragon Triangle dates to the days of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, who lost some 40,000 crew aboard ships bound for an invasion of Japan in the late Thirteenth Century AD. In the 1800s, a mysterious woman sailing a strange vessel through the waters of the triangle was spotted, and the boat was described as being in the shape of a traditional Japanese censor for burning incense. It’s not known where she was headed and, thought to be ghost-like, she was never seen again. Paranormal stories like this caused the Japanese to name the triangle area “Ma-No Umi,” or “Sea of the Devil.”

In the 1940s and 50s, scores of Japanese fishing boats and military ships disappeared in the Dragon Triangle in the area between Miyake Island and Iwo Jima, so in 1952, the country sent an investigative team aboard Kaio Maru No. 5 into the mysterious waters. Contact was lost, and long after they first set sail, remnants of the ship were discovered in the sea. It’s unknown what happened to the 22 crew members and nine scientists aboard. Following this incident, the Japanese government declared this area of the Dragon Triangle dangerous for marine voyage.

 Bermuda Triangle

Of course, the most famous of all of these triangle areas is the Bermuda Triangle. Covering 500,000 square miles of water, and probably as many stories and legends, the Bermuda Triangle extends from Bermuda to Miami, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. When Christopher Columbus sailed through this area during his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, he reported sighting a great flame of fire crash into the sea. This may have just been a meteor, but he also reported experiencing erratic compass readings while traveling through these waters.

The legends of the Bermuda Triangle really started to take shape in 1918 when the USS Cyclops went missing with its crew of 309 sometime after leaving Barbados. It was carrying manganese ore, and in a strange twist of fate, its two sister ships were both also lost while carrying metallic ore, but years later in the North Atlantic during World War II.

In December 1945, five torpedo bombers known as Flight 19 completely disappeared while on a training run. The Navy stated a navigational error led the aircraft to run out of fuel, but no remains were ever found. One of the search and rescue planes with a 13 man crew also disappeared.

In 1970, pilot Bruce Gernon flew into what he ended up calling an “electonic fog” in the Bermuda Triangle and traveled forward 30 minutes in time. Flying from Andros Island to Ft. Lauderdale, a flight Gernon routinely made, massive dark clouds that formed up ahead of Gernon’s plane morphed into a spiral and swallowed the craft into the vortex. The plane’s instruments began malfunctioning as bright white flashes illuminated the sky. When Gernon came out on the other side unscathed, the city of Miami was below him having traveled 100 miles in three minutes. Bruce Gernon’s experience in Bermuda seems to have similarities to the missing Douglas airplane in the Alaska Triangle, safely traversing a portal while those in the Douglas, unfortunately, did not.

These are just a handful of the plethora of tales from this infamous vortex of strange activity. The Bermuda Triangle also contains the famed Bimini Road under its waters which some speculate may be the ruins of the lost civilization of Atlantis… but that’s a story for another time.