Transcribe your podcast
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The Nuestra Senora de Atocha was filled with copper, silver gems and gold when it sank off the coast of Florida in the 17th century. Anyone who found that treasure filled sunken ship would undoubtedly become extremely wealthy and famous.

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Perhaps that's why 300 years later, a man named Mel Fisher grew obsessed with the missing ship. He left behind his life as a chicken farmer in Indiana and moved to the Keys in the 1960s to search for the vessel full time.

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Fisher assembled a large crew to help him in the treasure hunt, but the expenses racked up quickly. More than 1000 investors backed his quest to uncover a ship that didn't want to be found. But he motivated himself to keep going with his famous catch phrase. Today's the day.

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The day finally did come. In 1985, Fisher uncovered 40 tons of gold and silver and 70 pounds of emeralds resting beneath the Florida Keys. The media descended upon the islands in droves. Musician Jimmy Buffett even played a seaside concert atop the historic treasure.

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But that wasn't Fischer's most astonishing find. Two years later, while diving in the Gulf of Mexico, Fisher and his son spotted something in the mud. It was a Grumman Avenger plane that had gone missing in the 1940s.

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There was an open parachute in the aircraft, but no other clues as to what had happened. The jet was perfectly intact, almost peaceful.

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Looking as one of the Atlantic's biggest experts, Fisher had always thought that the Avenger was hit by a bomb during World War Two. Now he was standing before evidence that disprove that theory.

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Well, this discovery didn't get nearly as much media attention as the treasure trove conspiracy theories took note. How does a plane reappear decades later, hundreds of miles from where it went missing? It was as if the plane had gone through some sort of a time warp after it had gotten lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify original from cast every Monday and Wednesday, we dig into the complicated stories behind the world's most controversial events and search for the truth.

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I'm Carter Roy. And I'm Ali Brandenberg.

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And neither of us are conspiracy theorists, but we are open minded, skeptical and curious. Don't get us wrong. Sometimes the official version is the truth, but sometimes it's not.

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You can find episodes of conspiracy theories and all others. Spotify originals from Park asked for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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This is our second episode on the Bermuda Triangle, the area between Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda that has been the site of numerous disappearances since ancient times.

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Explorers, pilots and captains have noted that something seemed off about this stretch of ocean last time we explored some of the most famous stories behind the Bermuda Triangle, like the disappearance of Flight nineteen and the ghost ship known as the Mary Celeste. We also investigated other places like it around the world, including the so-called Devil's Sea near Japan.

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This week, we'll discuss a few of the leading theories surrounding the Bermuda Triangle. We'll cover whether electromagnetic fields known as viall vortices are to blame. Then we'll check if the secret might also be tied to the lost city of Atlantis. And finally, we'll examine some new scientific studies that could explain the area's mysterious phenomenon. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. Long before it was known as the Bermuda Triangle, ancient explorers were aware that this part of the ocean was treacherous, maybe even a bit spooky.

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A navigator named Hamako described a sea monsters there. In the 5th century BCE, Christopher Columbus recorded strange lights in the area on his journey to the New World in fourteen ninety two.

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But it took the modern disappearances of the USS Cyclops and Flight 19 to cement the Bermuda Triangle legendary legacy.

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Ever since the location hit, mainstream media, treasure hunters, paranormal investigators and crypto zoologists have been obsessed with its mysteries. Everyone wants to know what lurks below and above the Bermuda Triangle.

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Having made a career out of navigating the seas, coastguards often dismissed disappearances around the Bermuda Triangle as a case of human error. They've said that many boats headed to the Caribbean are kept by those with insufficient nautical knowledge.

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Athlete Gambir, the former president of Red Aircraft in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, agreed. She said, I am more convinced than ever that human nature cannot cope with the elements. And that's despite the fact that her own husband died in the Bermuda Triangle.

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But claims of human error and incompetence failed to explain the well-trained military personnel and advanced seafarers who have met their watery graves in the Bermuda Triangle.

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This leads us to our first conspiracy theory.

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There is something in the Bermuda Triangle that causes even seafaring experts to make mistakes and disappear an electromagnetic force known as a vile vortex.

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This theory begins with a scientist named Wilbur Smith. In the 1950s, he was one of the first people to study Earth's magnetic field in a meaningful way.

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Smith's interest stemmed from what he believed was his own contact with extraterrestrial beings. According to Smith, these aliens taught him that the speed of light was not constant, that time was not chronological, and that their ships could be powered by Earth's gravitational field at the time.

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Smith was a radio engineer for the Department of Transportation in Canada. After his purported meeting with aliens, he saw a way to merge his interest in UFOs with his profession. His division gave him funding to examine the potential use of Earth's electromagnetic fields to power cars and other vehicles, hoping to get a better sense of how the aliens might be manipulating these forces.

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Smith and a team of researchers went to Lake Ontario near Toronto. The area is known for frequent appearances of anomalies, stick funnels.

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These are huge funnel shaped clouds that sometimes appear over bodies of water. They resemble twisters, except instead of being composed of whirling pieces of debris, they're made up of cumulus clouds.

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Smith and his team believe that these funnels had the ability to change the Earth's gravity and magnetism. In other words, they thought that inside these one thousand foot twisting columns of clouds, gravity and the very magnetic pull of the earth had little to no effect.

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Smith's research didn't revolutionize the automotive industry, but it did cause other theorists to wonder if these bizarre funnels were the reason so many people disappeared in the Atlantic.

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After all, according to Smith's research, if a plane or a ship were to pass through one of these funnels, the Earth's gravitational pull was disrupted. This resulted in the force within the tunnel being so strong it could shatter unwitting ships to pieces.

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After Smith died in 1962, a Scottish biologist named Ivan T. Sanderson took up the mantle of his work. He also gave these funnels a catch your name. He called them vile vortices.

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By his definition, vile vortices were where hot and cold air collided with the seas currents. That's what created these electromagnetic anomalies that weaken the force of gravity.

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In a 1972 article in Saga magazine, Sanderson attempted to locate every place a mysterious disappearance had occurred. He noticed that they frequently overlapped with places prone to these so-called viol vortices.

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But Sallerson took Smith's theory a step further. He believed Viall vortices were capable of creating torsion fields.

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Torsion fields are a natural phenomenon that can occur if viol vortices spin fast enough. As the theory goes, when this happens, it can create a force strong enough to disrupt the very fabric of space and time. This means that anything caught within these torsion fields can potentially be dragged into a different dimension. However, torsion fields exist firmly in the realm of Pseudo-Science, meaning the theory is not backed up by peer reviewed research.

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But that doesn't mean they're impossible. Essentially, these torsion fields move so quickly that they travel faster than the speed of light bending the laws of space and time.

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So if what Sanderson claimed was true, it would explain what happened to some of the ships and planes that we referenced in our last episode.

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It might also explain why treasure hunter Mel Fisher discovered the Grumman Avenger plane decades after it had crashed and hundreds of miles away from the Bermuda Triangle, where it was thought to go down.

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In our last episode, we talked about the disappearance of five ships near the southern coast of Japan in the 1950s. These events led people to believe there was a second Bermuda Triangle.

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One of Sandersons Viall vortices happened to be located directly over what those researchers referred to as the Devil's Sea. In 1979, a scientist by the name of John Hutchison claimed to have proved the effects of these viral vortices further. He filled his small apartment with high voltage equipment that emitted strong electromagnetic waves, things like Tesla coils and signal generators. As soon as he turned them on. Strange things began to happen. Hutchison first noticed the effects when an object floated up and touched his shoulder.

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The concentration of the electromagnetic waves in the tiny space seemingly caused an anti-gravity effect. Hutchison said that he even made a nineteen pound cylinder levitate into the air.

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Hutchison also claimed that objects made out of wood, plastic and rubber seemed to disappear and reappear. Glasses of liquid swirled like little whirlpools in his lab. Strange light, not unlike what Columbus described on his voyage through the Atlantic, were also allegedly seen in Hutchison's home during those studies. In other words, Hutchison claimed he created his own viall vortex.

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Hutchison witnessed another phenomenon relevant to the Bermuda Triangle mystery. When performing these high voltage experiments, a thick gray mist consumed the space. His description of this vapor is similar to what some captains and pilots reported seeing in the Atlantic.

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Bruce Gernon, a civilian flying his plane near the Bahamas in the 1970s, saw this mist firsthand. It was around three p.m. on December 4th, just after takeoff, Gernon, his father and his business associate noticed an extremely low hanging vapor.

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Within minutes, Gurdon's aircraft was enveloped in this mist. The pilot tried to go around the terrifying apparition, but couldn't. The clouds seemed to be following him.

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Like Columbus, Gernon also reported blinding flashes of white light while inside this fog.

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In addition, while trapped in the fog, Gernon noticed that his compass was spinning out of control. But the pilot claimed he was flying straight ahead when Gernon finally made it out of the cloud.

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He was over Miami Beach, about 250 miles away from where he'd taken off less than 45 minutes ago.

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Later, Gernon said in an interview, I could not logically understand what had happened during the flight, although I went over it in my head several times a day.

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His best guess was that the fog was trapped in was actually some sort of time warp. In other words, he was living proof of Sandersons and Hutchinson's torsion field theory.

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Still, none of those scientists ever had experiences within the Bermuda Triangle directly. And Hutchison later admitted that the videos he took of those objects levitating were fake. To date, no one has proved that time travel or teleportation through these torsion fields is a reality. However, there's a lot left to learn about gravity, space and time and how they interact. So on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the definitive truth, I'm giving this theory a three.

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I agree that the time warp element is a bit of a stretch, but I have a separate related theory. Maybe the Coast Guard's official explanation that people get lost in the Bermuda Triangle because of human error is true. Perhaps there is some sort of electromagnetic aberration that forces people to make mistakes, especially if, like Gernon said, his compass stopped working. And if you remember from last episode, the same thing happened with the pilots and Flight nineteen, which is why I'm giving this theory a five out of ten.

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That's a great point. In fact, electromagnetic forces factor into several theories about the Bermuda Triangle. But according to our next conspiracy, those forces are not naturally occurring.

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Instead, they are emanating from the lost city of Atlantis. Coming up, a psychic offers answers about the Bermuda Triangle high power casters, it's Carter like you. I have an eclectic mix of can't miss podcasts that I listen to each week. And one of my favorites is Supernatural with Ashleigh Flowers. Every Wednesday on Supernatural, host Ashleigh Flowers explains some of the biggest mysteries in the world, taking you on a journey through baffling events and sharing all the possible explanations.

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No matter how strange or surreal they get, whether it's sudden disappearances, alien abductions or even mystifying murders, she presents the facts, we know for sure, and the theories that might be closer to the truth than we think. If you haven't had a chance to catch this Spotify original from podcast yet, you're in for a wild ride. Follow Supernatural with Ashley Flowers free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:16:44]

Hey, it's Carter, and I'm excited to tell you about a phenomenal podcast show I know you'll love that dives deep into some of history's most notorious leaders. It's called Dictators. And every Tuesday, it examines the reign of a real life tyrant, exploring the unique conditions that allowed them to seize control. Dictators have a never ending thirst for power. Some seize this power through force, others through deceit. And all of them won't hesitate to eliminate anybody who stands in their way.

[00:17:20]

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Now back to the story. In the 1960s and 70s, scientists wondered whether Viall vortices were sending ships and planes through space and time. However, no one's ever witnessed one of these vortices, nor has anyone proved these attempts possible. So it's hard to prescribe them as fact.

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But there is another theory regarding electromagnetic energy, and it's tied to an ancient legend, the city of Atlantis. Which brings us to conspiracy theory. Number two, the lost continent held a powerful crystal that brought planes and ships to their watery grave.

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Even today, we know very little about the lost city of Atlantis. The mid-Atlantic colonies supposedly sank more than 11000 years ago.

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The only reason we know about Atlantis is because it played a role in Greek philosophy.

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According to the Athenian philosopher Plato, the legend of Atlantis was passed down orally from the Egyptians. Supposedly, Atlantis was a mountainous continent that rose straight out of the ocean. Its King Atlas conquered other lands around the Mediterranean, forming this enormous empire.

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Atlantis was said to be home to an advanced society. They had irrigation and plumbing. Their gates were covered in bronze.

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The city's lavish temples dedicated to Poseidon, the protector of seafarers, were topped with ivory, the Atlanteans, even domesticated animals, everything from race horses to elephants.

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The city allegedly had more wealth than any other civilization during this time. Regardless, its citizens were constantly striving for more possessions and territory.

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According to legend Zus, the God of Gods decided to punish the Atlanteans for their greed. As a result, he cast them with violent earthquakes and floods.

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The Atlanteans couldn't withstand Xerces assault, so they sank along with their continent.

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The tragic myth of Atlantis has contributed to the Bermuda Triangle is legend mainly with people using the demise of Atlantis as proof that the stretch of ocean the city supposedly rested on is the most treacherous part of the Atlantic, even Plato wrote.

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That is why the ocean in that region has come to be a navigable and unexplored tribal, obstructed as it is by a layer of mud at a shallow depth. The residue of the fallen city as it's settled.

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As a result of these beliefs, Atlantis and the ocean surrounding it has maintained a psychic hold over people well into modernity.

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This is especially clear in the Edgar Casey affair.

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At the turn of the 19th century, a 23 year old insurance salesman named Edgar Casey was stricken with a bad bout of laryngitis. He couldn't speak for more than a year.

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Casey underwent hypnosis as part of his treatment. He believed that this experience bestowed a new gift upon him when he finally got his voice back.

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He was able to make stark predictions by 1933. Casey was one of the most famous psychics in the world. He was known as the sleeping prophet of Virginia Beach because he made his predictions in a trance, although he was a bit shy and had no medical training.

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Casey confidently deployed technical jargon in his deep Southern accent. He shared things with people he couldn't possibly have known.

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His fans, which included Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Edison, claimed that he accurately predicted the stock market crash of 1929 and the occurrence of World War Two.

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But Casey also made predictions about the lost city of Atlantis. He claimed the continent had one thing that Plato didn't mention a crystal capable of generating atomic power, according to Casey's premonition.

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The six sided crystal was kept in an oval shaped building. The structure had a retractable roof that could expose the crystal to the moon stars or sun at favorable times.

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Casey also claimed that the stone was a spiritual tool used to prevent aging. In addition, it was a power source that could transmit pictures and voices like a television. It could direct light from one place to another, like an early form of electricity. But it could also manipulate planes, boats and submarines with invisible rays.

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What's more, Casey said that remnants of the Atlanteans crystal were buried in the ocean or, as he put it, in these sunken portions of Atlantis under the slime of ages of seawater near what is known as Bimini off the coast of Florida. In other words, Casey claimed that the all powerful Atlantean crystal was buried beneath the Bermuda Triangle.

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At the time of these premonitions, Casey wasn't just some charlatan, he was an admired figure. Also, he had performed 14000 psychic readings. He hadn't charged money for a single one of them. So his statements about Atlantis weren't financially motivated. He really believed what he was saying.

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And because Casey was so beloved, people wanted to prove that all of his theories were true. At least that's what motivated a new age enthusiast from Arizona named Ray Brown.

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In 1970, Brown was allegedly scuba diving for treasure near the Bahamas. He was in an area called the Tongue of the Ocean, home to an underwater canyon with a depth of 14000 feet. It was also the home of a rock formation known as the Bimini Road.

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Bimini Road was discovered in 1968, exactly where Casey predicted the lost city would be found. Bermuda Triangle enthusiasts think the submerged road, which is a series of rock slabs ranging from 10 to 15 feet in width, is a made street. In other words, they believe the road once ran down the city of Atlantis.

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During his scuba excursion, Brown got separated from his friends near Bimini Road lost. He somehow found himself swimming near a strange pyramid underwater that was about four hundred feet tall.

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Brown swam to the top of the pyramid, which was made of a bright blue capstone. There he found an entranceway into its interior.

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Brown went inside the pyramid, squeezing through a narrow passageway and into a rectangular room. To his amazement, nothing was covered in Alger slime. It was spotless, as if preserved by some unknowable force inside, Brown saw a metallic rod hanging from the ceiling.

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At the end of the pool was a sparkling red jewel.

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Below, it was a four inch wide crystal ensconced by two bronze hands. The sculptures looked like they'd been burned, perhaps by the power of the stone.

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Brown took the rock with him, but didn't tell anyone. For years, he was afraid that the Bahamian government would seize his treasure.

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Then, in 1974, Charles Berlitz released his book on the Bermuda Triangle. Suddenly, Brown changed his mind about sharing the crystal.

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He took his treasure on the road and shared his story about the underwater pyramid. People paid good money to see the artifact he claimed was from Atlantis.

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According to Browne, the pyramid was once in Atlantean powerplant. Its blue capstone accumulated energy that was sent through the metallic rod and then transferred to the crystal ball. He believed the burn marks around the hands prove that it had been activated.

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Brown's prized possession wasn't just a story. Allegedly, the crystal cause strange phenomena to occur.

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At a few of its showings, people reportedly fell into a meditative state while looking at the object. Some witnesses claim that compasses spun wildly when placed next to it. Theorist wondered if there were other crystals like it still hidden beneath the Bermuda Triangle, causing pilots and captains to get lost at sea.

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When Casey first made his predictions about these all powerful crystals, he said that the Stones could retain their power long after Atlantis had sank. But the structures that contained them would have crumbled or eroded over those thousands of years.

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Has the theory goes this means the crystals would have been fully exposed to the open water, triggering all kinds of electronic and magnetic aberrations?

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And if an unfortunate vessel or plane got caught in its wake, it could have caused its demise. But the Stones are located specifically in the Bermuda Triangle, as we've discussed, there are places all over the globe such as the Devil's Sea that are known for their mysterious disappearances as well. This theory offers no explanation as to what's happening in those other bodies of water.

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Even putting that aside, the idea of magic crystals is a little too absurd for me. First off, many scholars think that Plato's dialogues were not referring to an actual place.

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They think he was just using the city as a literary device to illustrate the concept of utopia. As a matter of fact, we still have no proof that Atlantis ever existed.

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Then there's Casey, the psychic who may have had too vivid of an imagination. He made several predictions that have yet to come true, like the return of Jesus Christ and the expansion of the human life span.

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Brown was also an unreliable source. He changed his story often, sometimes saying he found the crystal in 1968.

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Other times it was 1970, not to mention his photographic equipment was allegedly destroyed during his dive, which is why he has no photos of the pyramid. This narrative is a bit too convenient, if you ask me. I've got to give this theory the lowest possible score. A one out of 10. Yes.

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Brown was clearly profiting off the Bermuda Triangle craze in the 1970s. I'll give it a two out of 10 just because there's so much that we don't know about ancient history. I'm OK with leaving some room for doubt.

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That's fair. But there's still one avenue we have yet to explore, and it falls in the realm of Occam's razor, meaning sometimes the simplest explanations are the most likely ones.

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Coming up, perhaps the Bermuda Triangle can be explained by weather and sea conditions. Now back to the story.

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In the 1970s, a treasure diver named Ray Brown claimed to find an ancient crystal inside a sunken pyramid. He believed it was from the lost city of Atlantis and had the power to bring down ships and planes with its electromagnetic properties. It was the height of the New Age movement, and a book about the Bermuda Triangle had just become a bestseller. Brown was one of several hucksters looking to cash in on the public's fascination with the phenomenon.

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But an American author named Lawrence Khush had had enough. He publicized the idea that the Bermuda Triangle craze was a manufactured mystery meant to sell books and pulp magazines.

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That brings us to our third conspiracy theory, which is that science can explain most of the Triangle's disappearances. Couche became a research librarian in 1969 and got a job at Arizona State University as Berlioz's book on the Bermuda Triangle gained popularity, he received multiple inquiries from students who wanted to include the subject in their papers.

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Kuchu, who was hardly a believer in abstract theories, saw an opportunity to tell a more grounded version of the Bermuda Triangle story.

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In 1975, he published his own book titled The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved.

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For his book, Khush collected incident reports about missing planes and boats from agencies like the Air Force and Coast Guard. Then he compared those official accounts with newspaper articles on the disappearances. His goal was to illustrate that the journalists were often inaccurate in their reporting.

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Basically, Khush was calling the legend of the Bermuda Triangle fake news rather than viall vortices or magic crystals. Khush claimed there were a number of logical explanation as to why ships and planes might disappear there.

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One of those explanations lies in something called blue. These are giant sinkholes which open up below the seabed. For example, one of these blue holes lies off the coast of Florida and is titled The Green Banana. It's about 155 feet below sea level and extends another 425 feet deep. That's only 100 feet short of the Washington Monument, depending on the tides.

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These blue holes may suck or blow water with significant force from their entry points. They are often connected to underwater cave systems and act like giant mazes. Even animals find themselves disoriented or trapped inside them.

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Only the most adventurous scuba divers dare to venture inside these blue holes. They contain powerful currents, which can lead to a strong funnel effect ships and people can and do get trapped as well.

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In 2019, an expedition led by explorer Jacques Cousteau's grandson probe the Great Blue Hole in Belize. They traveled 290 feet deep to get there, and it became clear they weren't the first to make the trip.

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Markings on the walls of these underwater caves showed the frantic last efforts of divers trying to escape. And aside from old scientific equipment and cameras, the bodies of two explorers who had gotten trapped there were also discovered.

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There are several well known examples of blue holes all over the world, including in the Great Barrier Reef and the Red Sea. So it's possible that others exist in the middle of the ocean just waiting to be discovered.

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Khush made another logical suggestion that newspapers frequently misreported the weather conditions, specifically on the days people disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.

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While journalists often claim that conditions were clear, meteorological records indicate that wasn't always the case.

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That's what happened with the infamous Flight Nineteen. Berlitz, in his best selling book, said the weather was very calm that day, according to the complete transcript of the Navy's inquiry. The conditions were actually rough.

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Also, there are plenty of weather phenomena that could explain what happened to those Grumman Avenger planes back in the 1940s, like water spouts, rapidly swirling mist that forms over oceans or lakes.

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These tornado like vortices are very common in warm waters, such as those in the Bermuda Triangle.

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Lake Ontario is also known to host a ton of them. It's possible that when Wilbert Smith was studying these so-called anomalies funnels, he was just observing waterspouts. What's more, the National Weather Service claims that severe water spouts are enough to take down a small aircraft such as a helicopter or a Grumman avenger.

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However, water spouts are highly visible, they'd be fairly easy to avoid in the daytime, so they aren't a great explanation for what happened to the planes and boats that disappeared on bright, sunny days.

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Take the USS Cyclops, for example.

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In our last episode, we talked about how the ship's final message said, whether fair all well people speculated that the Cyclops captain had sunk his own ship.

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Many couldn't fathom the idea that a vessel this large could disappear without inclement weather conditions in the modern era. Scientists are coming up with new explanations for the Cyclops demise in 2016.

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A team of researchers discovered a series of craters off the coast of Norway. They were a half a mile wide and 150 feet deep. These pits were the result of methane explosions occurring on the ocean floor. When gas leaks deep below the earth, it accumulates in shallow areas before bursting out in what is essentially giant flatulence.

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Scientists said that a bubble from one of these explosions easily packs enough power to hit a ship and sink it.

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While this is a compelling piece of evidence, scientists still have no idea how common these methane bubbles are. It's also not clear whether they occur in the region of the Bermuda Triangle or Devil's Sea.

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We also aren't sure if their power is large enough to reach an aircraft. But in 2018, researchers at the University of Southampton in England came up with an additional theory, one that may specifically explain what happened to the USS Cyclops.

[00:37:06]

Scientists used a simulator to measure the effects of something called a rogue wave, also known as freak waves.

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These massive walls of water weren't observed until 1997 when one was finally spotted off the coast of South Africa.

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Rogue waves can grow to 100 feet in height and many only last a couple of minutes. Despite their brief run time, rogue waves can deliver up to 40 pounds of force per square inch, whereas your typical boat can only tolerate around twenty one pounds per square inch, meaning rogue waves are effective at obliterating even the most modern vessels.

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Researchers believe that the Bermuda Triangle is the perfect location for three storms to converge, which could lead to these massive rogue waves. If the Cyclopes happen to be in the area when one formed, it wouldn't have stood a chance.

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Rogue waves may be the most scientifically sound theory for what happens to ships in the Bermuda Triangle and clear air turbulence or CAT could be its aerial counterpart.

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Cat is caused by wind shear, which is the term meteorologists use when air rapidly changes speeds or directions, cat can cause severe turbulence even in cloudless regions. This makes them hard for pilots to avoid or predict. It also explains why they might have flying difficulties on even the clearest of days.

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This turbulence happens when cold air from the Earth's poles collides with warmer air near the equator. If a pilot hits one of these pockets where the cold and warm air masses meet, it would be like plowing into a pile of bricks. It could also send an aircraft plummeting 200 to 300 feet.

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Cat might explain what happened to Dick Stern, the pilot we met last episode, who experienced turbulence in the Bermuda Triangle not once, but two different times. According to scientists, a subtropical jet stream like the ones found in cat flows through the exact area. Stern was said to be traveling.

[00:39:25]

All in all, there are tons of possible and plausible scientific theories that might explain what's happening in the Bermuda Triangle and other places like it. But unfortunately, there isn't one sweeping theory that clarifies every single strange disappearance or crash.

[00:39:43]

While Blowholes might explain why some ships go missing in the Bermuda Triangle. No one has ever recovered the remains of a lost vessel within these depths, although that could be because they are still widely unexplored.

[00:39:58]

Waterspouts bear a striking resemblance to the animalistic funnels that Wilbert Smith studied, but no one's ever witnessed or heard of them pulling planes out of the sky.

[00:40:09]

Methane explosions are an intriguing possibility, but again, that's something they could take down a plane.

[00:40:16]

And scientists still don't know enough about rogue waves or how frequently they occur. If they weren't witnessed until 1997, then they are likely very rare, perhaps even a newer symptom of climate change.

[00:40:30]

Clear air turbulence also doesn't solve what happened to Flight nineteen, especially since the remnants of those aircraft were never found. If a plane was rocked by bad turbulence, then why weren't there bodies or aircraft ever discovered in the Atlantic?

[00:40:48]

And yet a smorgasbord of small, logical scientific theories still feels more sound than Atlantean crystals or time warps. Which is why I'll give this theory a seven out of 10.

[00:41:02]

I agree with that rating, given that some of these studies are so recent, it's possible there are still other scientific breakthroughs yet to be made, no matter how many studies are conducted on the Bermuda Triangle.

[00:41:16]

It's unlikely that the legend will ever disappear entirely.

[00:41:20]

And just because we're confident that nothing supernatural is happening in the Bermuda Triangle doesn't mean more planes and or ships won't vanish and contribute to the mystery in the years to come. Thanks for tuning into conspiracy theories, we'll be back Monday with a new episode you can find all episodes of conspiracy theories and all other Spotify originals from podcast for free on Spotify.

[00:41:56]

Until then, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth.

[00:42:04]

Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify original from podcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, Sound Design by Dick Schroder with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden and Freddie Beckley. This episode of Conspiracy Theories was written by Ali Conti with writing assistants by Lori Gottlieb and Obiageli Idy Megu, fact checking by Cheyenne Lopez and research by Brad Klein and Brian Peatross. Conspiracy Theories Stars Molly Brandenberg and Carter Roy.

[00:42:43]

Remember to check out the dictator's podcast every Tuesday, they go deep into the minds of some of history's most despised despots. You'll get insight into their rise to power and the impact of their downfall. Search for dictators in the Spotify app and listen free today.