For today’s Curse-O-Meter testing we visit the sinister seas of the Bermuda Triangle.

But first, we discuss a Manga artist’s July disaster prophecy for Japan, a woman who woke up in her own coffin, and the evolving dogs of Chernobyl.

THE NEWS:

Manga Artists Japan Earthquake Prediction

The Evolving Dogs of Chernobyl

Woman Wakes Up in Her Own Coffin

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, probably cursed listeners. Welcome to Episode 21. For today’s Curse-O-Meter Testing, we visit the sinister seas of the Bermuda Triangle. But first, we discuss a manga artist, July Disaster Prophecy for Japan, a woman who woke up in her own coffin, and the evolving dogs of Chernobyl. I’m your probably cursed host, Sheryl.

And I’m your probably cursed host, Chris. And also, before we start all of that, I should bring up that our Friday the 13th sale has been a pretty good success. We sold a few of our artifacts on the 13th. So the very cool Key of Heaven prayer book that Charlotte found, that one has gone to some lucky person in Kentucky.

And the other item, the Devil Horn, which was a nice thing to sell on the 13th, it being artifact 13 and all. It is on its way to the United Kingdom as we speak.

I hope it gets there by the time this episode is published.

Hope you enjoy your new horn. If you missed the Friday the 13th sale, you can always keep listening to our podcast to know when we’re going to have our next sale. We haven’t officially decided when the next sale is, but if we do another Friday the 13th sale, it will be in February of 2026. However, we made a choose to do something before then.

We’ll see. We sell all of our artifacts on an Etsy shop, so it helps to have them saved to your favorites. You can go visit our shop at probablycursed.etsy .com and then you’ll have those all preloaded in a list form ready for you to buy. And as we do at the start of every episode, we’re going to input into our Curse-O-Meter three news stories from recent events, and Sheryl has the first news story here for us.

So this article is titled, A Japanese Manga Claims a Natural Disaster is Imminent. Now some tourists are canceling their trips. This is by Mai Takaguchi and Chris Lau on May 19th for CNN. A Japanese comic book warns of real catastrophe. A recent spate of earthquake-related predictions has led to more superstitious travelers, particularly in East Asia, canceling or delaying their holiday. And for many, it’s a comic book that’s scaring them away.

Oh, those comic book readers. Manga artist Rio Tatsuki’s work has a significant following in East Asia, and her fans often believe she can accurately see events in her dreams. She draws a cartoon version of herself in her manga, where she shares visions she gleams from her slumber with other characters.

Some of these dreams turn out to bear close resemblance to real-life events. In 1999, she warned of a major disaster in March 2011, a date that turned out to coincide with the cataclysmic earthquake that struck Japan’s North Tohoku region that month. The prediction made Tatsuki famous not only in Japan, but in other parts of Asia, like Thailand and China.

The comic book has sold over 900,000 copies, according to its publisher, and it has also been published in Chinese. Fans believe she predicted the death of Princess Diana and the death of singer Freddie Mercury, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, critics say her visions are too vague to be taken seriously.

Plus, with her one prediction that people are basically saying is making her legitimate, that’s like a warning 12 years in advance. You’d forget 12 years, unless you’re like a super fan of the comic and everyone’s counting down like Terminator fans with the Judgment Day – Day.

I mean, I do feel if she’s got a reputation for predicting things in the future, people are probably paying attention to her. That’s like most psychics. They have vague visions of the future.

That’s true. Someone’s keeping track. In her latest edition, the future I saw (Complete version), Tatsuki warned that on July 5th this year, a crack would open up under the seabed between Japan and the Philippines, sending waves three times as tall as those from the Tohoku earthquake. At the same time, psychics from Japan and Hong Kong have shared similar warnings, triggering online panic that has led to a flurry of travel plan cancellations.

They’re just riding on the coattails of the manga artist.

Managing director of a travel agency in Hong Kong said bookings to Japan have dropped by half during Easter holiday and are expected to dip further in the coming months. Now’s a good time to go to Japan, I guess.

Well, this episode was released on July 1st, so hopefully you’re so within your cancellation date.

The speculations have scared off mostly travellers from mainland China and Hong Kong, which are Japan’s second and fourth largest sources of tourists. But the fear has also spread to Thailand and Vietnam, where social media platforms are overflowing with posts and videos warning people to think twice before traveling to Japan.

I bet that’s all that’s on the homepage. Just doom, doom, doom.

There’s like, Canada’s got their travel advisories. I bet you a bunch of those countries also have that as a travel advisory.

Psychic predicts. All the psychics are predicting bad earthquake conditions in Japan. Please plan your trip accordingly.

The author was recently asked what she thought about the cancellation trips as a result of her readers’ interpretation of her book. She said she viewed it very positively, that interest in her work made people more prepared for disasters. She urged them not to be overly swayed by her dreams and act appropriately based on an expert opinion.

Not my fault.

To be fair, I don’t think we can predict earthquakes that far in advance. That’s true.

So like, I don’t think they get more than like, I don’t know, an hour’s warning.

Yeah, so maybe…

Unless you’re a manga artist who dreams them.

That’s right. So maybe it is worth just like, heating somebody else’s warning that I think they can predict the future.

Well, we’ll put it in our calendars and we will see what occurs from that. The predictions from the last episode, I don’t think any of them have come true yet. No giant whale scene. No space aliens. I can’t remember what the other ones were.

Yeah, no, I can’t remember off the top of my head either.

Alright, Sheryl has put in story one. I will put in story number two titled, Dead Woman Wakes Up Inside Coffin After Coroner’s Mistake. This is from the mirror on June 3rd of 2025. An 88 year old woman narrowly escaped being buried alive after regaining consciousness right before funeral workers began preparing her body. The disturbing incident occurred in Pilsen, Czechia, also known as the Czech Republic. After the woman was found unresponsive one morning by her partner who had attempted to wake her. When she didn’t respond and he assumed she had passed away, he immediately called emergency services.

I mean, good call on his part. That being said, I don’t know. Would you, do you think you’d be able to tell if I had passed away?

Pretty sure. I’ve seen you when you’re alive and I know what that looks like. Quote, she wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing, he told one of the local news outlets. Emergency responders quickly arrived and based on the initial assessment, a coroner was dispatched. Funeral workers were also called in to begin preparing her body for burial. But in a shocking turn of events, the woman suddenly woke up during the process. Accounts vary across Czech media, but she either opened her eyes or was found still breathing.

The woman was immediately transported to the hospital where she is currently receiving treatment. Local authorities have opened an investigation into possible misconduct by the coroner. The coroner’s office has since issued a public apology for the mistake revealing that this is not the first time such an error has occurred. Maybe not something you want to bring up. No. When the error has reoccurred. According to their statement, they have previously been alerted to three other cases where individuals thought to be deceased were later found alive.

Hopefully found alive before they were buried.

The firm that employed the coroner has confirmed there will be repercussions. Although the exact nature of the coroner’s punishment is unknown. Perhaps time out. An essay writing about what they think they did.

Maybe they lose their coroner’s license.

No more coroning for you. Is that technically malpractice when you’re the coroner and your patient comes back to life?

I don’t know. I’m slightly confused as to why when she was found dead they didn’t do an investigation before. Like an autopsy? Yeah, or something. I don’t know. But maybe the coroner. It’s like the funeral people just showed up on site right away to start preparing the body. And I’m like, that is a little bizarre.

Maybe you’re just feeling lazy and it’s like, ah, she’s 88 year old. What are the odds she’s even still alive?

That’s right. How could she have even ever been murdered? She’s clearly too old.

Alright, as the second story into the Curse-O-Meter, Sheryl will feed it the third.

This news article is called Dogs of Chernobyl, Maybe Evolving Rapidly. This is from Popular Mechanics on June 8th, 2025.

Can we put our dog in Chernobyl to evolve him a little bit?

I mean, evolve doesn’t necessarily mean good behavior. So, yeah.

Evolution is a fickle master.

On June 26th, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor in northern Ukraine, which at this point was part of the Soviet Union, exploded, releasing a vast plume of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Good job at the sound FX, Chris.

I watched Chernobyl. That was all. That’s what it exactly sounded like. I don’t think we finished it. Not the last episode.

For a later date. Nearly 40 years later, the Chernobyl Power Plant and much of the surrounding exclusion zone remains off limits to humans. But wildlife, it seems, have reclaimed the place, space.

They don’t follow man’s rules.

I mean, if you’re going to abandon your dog when you leave the city, you better hope it’s going to take over, or at least guard your house.

It’s true. They want their dogs to evolve over in Europe. Mm-hmm. Into what? TBD.

Among the many creatures now thriving in the absence of people are thousands of feral dogs, most of whom are descended from the pets that were abandoned during the area’s evacuation. As the disaster approaches its 40th anniversary, scientists are taking a fresh look at the animals living within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. They’re particularly interested in how decades of radiation exposure may have altered the genomes of the zone’s animal inhabitants and whether these changes hint at accelerated evolution. Researchers from the University of South Carolina and the National Human Genome Research Institute have begun studying the DNA of 302 feral dogs found in the zone around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Their findings published in Science Advances show how radiation may have shaped the dog’s genetic makeup.

So one dog can shoot lasers out of their eyes. Mm-hmm. One can teleport. One has metal claws. I hope so. This is how radiation works, right?

Yeah. That’s what comic books have taught me. Yeah. Either that or it’s the Simpsons, in which case some of the dogs have three eyes. Mm-hmm. A couple of them have a foot growing out of their back. Yep. The idea that radiation can accelerate evolution isn’t new. Scientists have long experimented with irradiating seeds in space to promote useful mutations. They’re trying to create a triphid. This is all those genetically modified plants people are afraid of, they’re alien plants.

Beware the space GMOs. That’s right.

An approach now used to develop crops better suited to coping with climate change. Researchers have previously studied radiation’s effect on smaller animals in the Chernobyl Zone, such as birds, rodents, and even bacteria. Those are hard to catch.

Mm-hmm. In 2016, a study on Eastern tree frogs, Hila orientalis, found that frogs inside the exclusion zone were black instead of their typical green. Scientists suspect that a mutation affecting melanin, which is the pigment that gives skin its colour, might help the frogs neutralize radiation more effectively.

Once you go black, you don’t irradiate.

Uh-huh. This raises a provocative question. Could similar mutations be at work in the Zone’s feral dog population? My brain is kind of thinking that they’re looking to train dogs to help the evacuation of nuclear disasters, maybe. If they’re evolved, what if they use them to retrieve people who are sick if they can, I don’t know, if they’re immune to radiation? Mm-hmm.

Or if they can control metal and then help you out of a building collapse by a nuclear bomb.

Mm-hmm. Early results suggest that dogs living closest to the Chernobyl reactor have developed distinct genetic traits compared to those just 10 miles away in Chernobyl City. While this may hint at radiation-induced genetic adaptation, researchers caution it’s too early to draw firm conclusions. Differentiating between mutations caused by radiation and those resulting from inbreeding or environmental pressures is notoriously difficult. Wow.

So inbreeding is just as changeable as radiation?

Yes. Inbreeding is terrible. That’s why you get the dogs with breathing problems and… Oh, yeah. Yeah. Don’t do it. Flippers. Mm-hmm. Still, the study lays important groundwork by comparing the genomes of dogs living within the Chernobyl exclusion zone to those from non-irradiated areas. Scientists hope to gain a clearer understanding of how radiation affects larger mammals. Even without clear definitive answers, one thing is clear. Chernobyl, which was once seen as a radioactive wasteland, is now becoming a unique and valuable natural laboratory offering insights into evolution, survival, and resilience of life in extreme conditions.

And the home of Dog Zilla, which is just a humongous Sharpei poodle.

Mm-hmm. I would like to point out to our listeners that, like, in the previous reading of the thing, Chris will edit it. You won’t hear me stumbling over words. But I read that Latin name first try. Well done. But all the other names, like in the Japanese article, and I struggled. So apparently I know Latin better than Japanese.

It’s all the Exorcist movies we watch. We are very well versed in demonic Latin. Uh-huh. And I feel like animals are just an extension of demons.

I mean, Freddie definitely has demons.

That’s true. All right. Well, we have all three news stories loaded into our Curse-O-Meter for calibration for the main topic. I will get it to spit out the results now. Please stand by.

The results for the first news story about the manga artist who is predicted in earthquake in Japan. The Curse-O-Meter says, probably blessed.

Yeah, I think it’s really cool that she’s able to predict these natural disasters, even though she seems a little hesitant to confirm or deny whether or not she can actually predict anything. Yeah.

And you know what? It’s also handy to get those visions so far in advance that you have the time to draw them to let people know. That’s right. The second story about the church woman who was buried, or almost buried alive, but then came back to life at the very last moment. Curse-O-Meter says, probably benign.

I mean, you don’t want to be buried alive, let’s be honest. However, it’s good that they discovered it beforehand, and it also is good that they’re looking into why it keeps happening.

Yep. And good that she woke up just in time. Yeah. Like, alluding to what you were saying earlier. If you would wait longer and you’re buried under the ground, chances are people won’t hear you. Or they’ll be too afraid to speak up and say anything once they hear you, they’ll be like, I am going crazy. I swear someone’s alive in that coffin.

I haven’t looked up how popular cremation is in the Czech Republic, but I feel like it’ll be less popular after that.

That’s true. Yeah. Be like, cremate me once I start to smell bad.

They’re probably going to start putting those bells on the coffins so that people can be alerted to them being alive still underground. Yep. The third article, the story of the evolving dogs inter-noble, the Curse-O-Meter says, probably benign. Yeah.

They, so far, they’re not hurting anyone. I assume they’re just doing what dogs normally do, just running around digging holes, chewing on small furry animals.

If you want to go look it up, there’s actually a fantastic documentary called The Dogs of Chernobyl. And they’re super friendly. Like, you can go in there and give them belly rubs. I wouldn’t recommend that necessarily because radiation, but they’re super adorable and super friendly and they have no issues coming up to people for snacks and cuddles and…

Plus if one bites you, you could get powers.

That’s true. You could hurt into the dogman.

I’ve learned much from comic books. Dogman. What would the powers be? You would have very large ears.

Uh, an increased sense of smell.

The inability to sweat. Yep. You just cool off by panting.

The ability to walk barefoot everywhere.

Eat things off the ground and almost never have to pay for it. Yep.

And his weaknesses would be garlic, grapes, and onion, and chocolate.

It’s going to be a mixed bag of powers. Yes. I’m undecided on if they’re Team X-Men or the Brotherhood of Evil dog mutants. I guess it just depends on the dog. Yep.

With great power comes great dog responsibilities. All right. Well, the Curse-O-Meter is nice and calibrated. Before we go into the main topic, we are going to head over to the Probably Cursed Museum and Gift Shop to learn about today’s artifact.

So today’s artifact didn’t bring to the table with me because he’s a bit delicate. But you can go take a look at our Etsy shop for photographs. He is a 1940s drummer monkey. So originally he was made in Japan. And at the time it would have been considered occupied Japan. So this is the time after World War II. This is American Japan. This is American Japan. So from 1945 to 1952. So apparently drummer monkeys were a popular export from Japan at the time. So if you go look online, you can find a whole bunch of different styles and creations and etc.

A whole barrel of monkeys.

Yes, that’s great. This particular monkey is in a well-loved state. So he’s missing his drumsticks. He’s split up one side so his fur is coming off. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t move anymore. But originally he would have swayed back and forth beating on the drum with his drumsticks. I’m a bit afraid to like wind him up and see if he still moves mostly because he does seem a little bit delicate.

Yeah, well all the pieces start falling off as he plays.

That would suck. Yeah, also keep in mind at this point, if he was made near the end of that time period, he’d be 73 years old. Oh wow. Yeah, so he’s old.

We should state that none of our artifacts come with any sort of warranty. They are usually old and pretty fragile.

And part of the cursiveness or the charm of these artifacts is that they are well-loved.

And they’re one of a kind. Yep. If they break, they’re gone forever.

That’s right. The monkey itself is made from tin and it’s got a cloth fur on its body. And in front of him is a red and yellow drum and it’s got a red star on the face of the drum. We found him at an antique market that was being hosted at the largest antique shop we have in Edmonton. So can’t really say much about his history, but I can say he is unique at this point.

Very unique. I’m gonna throw myself under the West a little bit. I am terrible at haggling when we go to these markets, and I know some people are probably mazing at it, not me. The guy quoted me at price and I just agreed to pay the amount. No questions asked.

And now he can be yours. So I head on down to probably cursed Etsy shop for the opportunity to purchase this drummer monkey or any other wonderful artifacts. Repurposed figurines, buttons, or stickers. As Chris mentioned earlier, our web address for the Etsy shop is probablycursed.etsy.com. Support the podcast and get us one step closer to our goal of setting up our own haunted museum. And again, another quick thank you for everyone who ordered an artifact from our shop. We’ve had five sales so far. Each item comes with a certificate that’s signed by both Chris and I so you can own part of our podcast.

I’m going to add on another addendum. Seeing as how you and I recently watched The Monkey, the recent Stephen King movie, we can’t promise someone will die when you wind up The Monkey and it starts playing the drums. And we also relieve ourselves of any liability if it’s one of the death monkeys.

Yeah, we’ll have to get… It’s all in you. We’re gonna have to write up a waiver if anyone orders him and just put the waiver in there. Yep. Just to be safe.

We are not to blame for the monkey murders.

And before we go on to our main topic, I have our haunted house update. So a few weeks ago or it might have been… It’s probably closer to a month ago and by the time this comes out, it’s probably like a month ago. Who knows if we’re still alive.

That’s right. I went to check on the pets. So Chris and I have some cameras in our house and I just wanted to see what the pets are up to. And the app for our security cameras, they will tell you like person detected. So I saw a person detected alert and it was kind of at an odd time of day because Chris shouldn’t be home and I was on the bus.

So I was definitely not home. In the video, Freddy is sleeping on his footstool near the window and he gets up like he normally would if as if somebody had come to the door. He stretches, he walks towards the camera and yawns into the camera. So good job, Freddy.

Such camera trained. He’s ready for stardom.

That’s right. And then he turns towards the direction of our front door. And it almost sounds like there’s a voice, some sort of words are spoken. And then Freddy whines and moves off camera.

And then we hear a sound of what’s kind of like a person coughing. And then I of course, I saw this and I merely messaged Chris because I was like, well, what the hell? I was like, hey, you at home?

And he was like, no, I just left work. I was like, okay, well, you need to watch this video. It sounds like someone is in our house. And legitimately I was worried when you were coming home that you were going to come home to find somebody in the house.

I did check the other footage just to see like, is there anyone walking around the front or back of the house or coming in through the door?

Yeah. Nothing. Nothing. So I’m coming to realize that if we do have an intruder in our house, it’s probably one we’ve brought into the house on attached to one of the objects that we have.

Spectral intruders. Yeah. Which is the preferable kind in my mind.

Like between the shadow figure running up the stairs of the basement last year or, I guess that was two years ago, or the noises in our spare room that had Chris and I convinced somebody was actually hiding in our house. There’s definitely something we were going on here.

So far I haven’t noticed any other evidence of someone living in the house. So it’s probably a ghost.

We have downloaded the video. So it depends on whether or not we feel like posting the video of Freddy, but… I’ll post it.

Everybody loves dog footage, even if there is no visible ghosts.

Yes. If you see the video, please post in the comments what you think the voice is saying, if you can make it out, because like, I can’t tell.

We’d like to know what they said to our dog. Yes. Was it inappropriate and we’ll need to reprimand the ghost?

Did they promise him snacks that we haven’t been delivering and that’s why he’s so sad all the time?

Let us know, please. Comment on our videos, on our social medias. We release on all the big ones, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Blue Sky, YouTube as well. We’ve got some YouTube shorts going up and the audio version of this podcast also gets posted on YouTube, so subscribe to us anywhere and you will see our dog in a video at some point.

You’ll finally get to see the infamous Freddy. Infamy. Oh, actually I guess people have seen him before. He used to detect curses on our objects.

That’s true. But… That concludes the haunting updates of our episode. We will head over to our main topic now. So, people have long since colonized all the lands of the earth, but there are still frontiers that await us. Not only in space, but also the seas. Oceans cover 71% of the world and just like the land, there are parts of it that have seen sites of strange misfortune. Where mysteries accumulate, of which whispered tales are told. One such place I will speak about today is the Bermuda Triangle. The Bermuda Triangle is an area of open water in the Atlantic. The triangular parts are most commonly stated to be Miami, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and of course Bermuda, UK.

I would like to preface, we should do an episode on the Canadian Triangle. What’s the Canadian Triangle? One second here, I have to pull it up. Fun fact that when I’m putting in Canadian Triangle, it’s coming up the Mastercard for Canadian Tire, but…

That’s the other Canadian Triangle. It just helps you collect points towards future purchases. Less spooky, but helpful.

It’s technically the Kamloops Triangle, my bad. It’s the area near in British Columbia where there’s a whole bunch of murders and disappearances. Oh, cool. Um, so like Vancouver, Darcy, Cameloups, it’s kind of like the parts of it?

Well, there are no murders, but there are disappearances. And that’s what makes the Bermuda Triangle so peculiar. It’s the history of lost ships and vanished aircraft. And my sources for this episode were a lot of articles, an old episode of In Search Of. Nice. And one of the most definitive books on the topic, Charles’ Burlitz’ The Bermuda Triangle.

For those of you who have never seen In Search Of, Leonard Nimoy is an expert on alien’s Bermuda Triangle.

He tells you all about it.

Also because he is secretly an alien. Yep.

Well, my work here is done. You didn’t do anything. Yep. Didn’t I? Records of ship disappearances started in 1800 with the USS Pickering, a US Navy ship that vanished with all 91 souls aboard. A common theory is that it was taken out by a gale, but that was never proven and no remains of the ship or crew have ever been discovered.

Many more Navy ships were lost to the Bermuda Triangle. The USS Wasp vanished with all 140 souls in 1814. In 1824, the USS Wildcat was also lost. 1918, the USS Cyclops. And then in 1941, the Cyclops’ sister ship, the USS Proteus, was also lost on the Bermuda Triangle.

And with the exception of the Wasp, not a speck of debris or any of the hundreds of sailors were ever seen again. It’s the Meg. The Meg? It’s Megalodon?

Yeah. He eats the ships. He is pretty big. Yeah.

And hungry. Also lost have been a myriad of other vessels, cargo ships, passenger ships, and civilian watercraft, which included one of our fellow Albertans, Albert Snyder, a famous horse jockey. Ah, good job. In March 16th of 1948, our homeboy Snyder and two friends set out on a clear evening to go fishing off the eastern coast of Florida. The last person to witness them alive saw them sailing into the red setting sun in perfect weather. Despite no wind and no rain and their skiff being an excellent working condition, carrying plenty of reserve fuel and fresh water, the three men and their boat were never seen again. In what started with sea craft, once aircraft became common to the area, they too started randomly disappearing. Military aircraft, commercial passenger flights, private aircraft, the airspace above the Bermuda Triangle seems to be just as dangerous as the water.

It’s just a giant pillar of light that we can’t see. It’s only visible to birds, aliens, and who knows, bees.

We’ll get to the aliens. No word on the birds though. There’s no missing posters for birds in the Bermuda Triangle.

They just, I know they can see more colours than us, them and bees. So I’m like, if anyone’s going to see some mysterious column of light that none of the rest of us can, it’s them. Yep.

And then they just turn away. Yep. And they don’t bother to tell the people. That’s right. And there’s one story in particular that has captured imaginations and cemented the Bermuda Triangle’s legacy of strange disappearances. And that is the story of Flight 19.

I got goosebumps. So Flight 19 was a routine Air Force training run consisting of five bomber airplanes that took off in the afternoon of December 5th, 1945. Each plane had a few crewmen aboard, accompanying the pilots, the total making 14 airmen in all. The five planes took off with little to no problem.

They did their run. But when they were due to return and radio the flight tower for landing instructions, the tower instead got a very different call. As he radioed in, fear was evident in the flight leader’s voice. Quote, calling tower, this is an emergency tower.

This is an emergency. A long pause followed. And then he said, we cannot see land. Repeat, we can see no sign of land. The control tower tried to get Flight 19 to detail their position. But they replied, we are not sure of our position. We can’t be sure where we are.

We don’t know, which was strange. These are trained pilots with years of experience flying a routine flight on a clear, calm day. Surely at least one of the 14 crew members in the flight should be able to deduce their location.

That or they just wanted to go on vacation and figured it was a sneaky way to hide.

Oh yeah. This is around the tail end of World War II. They’re probably just like, mmm, well they miss five airplanes.

Just for a few months no one will know.

The tower then directed the pilots to fly west until they spot land. There’s a whole chain of islands they should be able to tell where they are. But the flight leader had an unthinkable response. We cannot be sure which way is west. We cannot be sure of any direction. Everything is wrong. Strange. The ocean doesn’t look as it should.

It was probably magenta. I did have one thought that Canada geese birds migrate south in the winter.

That’s true. This is early December. Yep. They could have made it thereby then. Yep. So now this is extremely bizarre. The sun is out and it’s the afternoon. They should be able to find west. Over the next 40 minutes the control tower and the five planes in Flight 19 struggle to gauge their position and fear and incredulity are creeping into the pilot’s voices over the radio. At one point the flight leader makes a desperate decision to turn over flight command to one of the other planes.

But it was of no use. The last thing heard from Flight 19 was, it is 1625 hours. We are not certain where we are. Must be about 225 miles northeast of base.

Looks like we are. The message breaks off. Immediately a rescue team was dispatched. A Martin flying boat loaded with rescue equipment took off to the general area they believe Flight 19 to likely be at. And if you remember the old Disney tailspin cartoon, a Martin airboat looks just like the plain balloon flu.

Oh cool. I would like to point out military should have done it in the 25 minutes where they were still in contact with the crew. You think? After a certain point of them not being able to like figure out where they are, you would think you would want to send a rescue mission instead of waiting until there’s no longer any messages.

That’s true. Yeah. Or some sort of like, yeah just a plane and shoot some flares out the window. Be like over this way guys. Yep.

Organize some fireworks. Just be like, hey we are setting off some fireworks from the base. Do you see fireworks?

I guess this was four in the afternoon. They might not see the fireworks. But you should see a flare. Maybe one of those gender reveal party smoke bombs.

They didn’t have those back then though.

The past. This is why we live in the future.

If cartoons have taught me anything, they could just write a message in the sky with the exhaust from an airplane.

Oh that’s right. You just fly around, let there contrails. Spell out over here. Yep. So the Martin airboat takes off to look for them. But after it arrived at the area to search and returned several radio reports, suddenly just like Flight 19, their broadcasts cut off. The rescue flight and all 13 aboard have vanished as well.

You shouldn’t let ship monks fly an airplane.

It’s true. Later dozens of Navy and Coast Guard vessels join in the search. Over 300 planes assist in a detailed search pattern. Land parties were organized to search the shorelines for wreckage. But not a shred has ever been found of any of the aircraft. And all 27 people who were aboard the six missing aircraft, even with all their training and supplies, were never seen again.

After the search was abandoned, the Naval Board of Inquiry summed up their investigation with, we are not able to even make a good guess as to what happened. And these were not the last aircraft to disappear into the Bermuda Triangle. Just two years later, a passenger airliner, the Star Tiger, vanished without a trace with its six crew and 34 passengers, despite excellent weather that day. A year later, another commercial passenger flight disappeared. And disappearances have still been occurring occasionally, even as recently as 2017. But none has been quite as mysterious as Flight 19, which seems the most inexplicable, although some have tried to make explanations. Some point to a late night radio call-in show on April 13, 1975, where the radio host opened a hotline for people to discuss the Bermuda Triangle, which was becoming a big topic at the time.

Pretty scary thinking there’s a mysterious triangle out there that you could just walk into by accident and disappear.

Yep. It haunted my thoughts as a kid. I bet. It’s not like you can do the right thing and not disappear. It just happens. It just takes people. Partway through the radio show, the host tried to connect the next caller, but the line had dead air. And the next. And the next. And the next.

Until he hit the sixth line, where a voice immediately spoke, quote, There’s one of you on the program who will understand what I’m going to say. Every living thing on this planet has an aura. The area that you are discussing now is the aura of this planet. It is a communicative channel through which the millionth council governs this planet. Anyone going into this area when the communication channel is open, do not disappear, but they are in the timeless void. They are all alive and well. It is the only area through which the council can communicate with this planet. The caller having delivered his message promptly ended the call. This was in the 70s? Yep.

Yeah, the guy was a high on drugs. Let’s be honest. He’s high on drugs. Colin.

Colin or radio show. Just dialing numbers on the radio. Sorry. The best part about that is he probably doesn’t remember doing it. So if anyone asks him, just keep denying.

Was that you on the radio, Jeremy? I don’t know, man. Maybe a somewhat more rational explanation is that the Bermuda Triangle has a scientifically observable anomaly called the Puerto Rico Trench. According to NASA, beneath the trench is a mass so dense it deflects gravitational pull on the surface of the ocean, causing it to dip somewhat. It also has a negative effect on the accuracy of navigational instruments. This hasn’t been positively linked to the disappearances of ships and airplanes, but I thought it was interesting. But if you ask the pilots to fly through this area, they have had some feelings about the whole matter.

And I’ll end the segment with this pilot’s quote taken from the April 1962 American Legion magazine. There are great many things about this old world we don’t know yet. Sometimes when you’re way up there alone, you get to thinking about it, and you almost feel you don’t have a right to be up there, knowing as little as you do about things. A lot of pilots have seen a lot of strange things they can’t explain.

If they attempt to talk about them or report them, it damages their reputations. More than one pilot has wished he kept quiet about what he saw. It’s a sad state of affairs when you have to pretend you’ve seen nothing unusual, when you’ve actually seen things that have raised your hair.

Like these planes just vanishing, for instance. We know what’s happened. That’s something you can’t ignore, especially us. Then you get into something like this business off the Florida coast, where two damn many planes have disappeared and left no trace at all, and you begin to wonder about it. The more you go over the details, the less plausible it seems. Let me tell you something. There are plenty who don’t believe it, and who can’t understand why it’s considered such a loss of face to admit something that has happened that we can’t comprehend and have no control over. But we just keep on flying and hope we won’t be next for whatever it is.

Very cool story, Chris.

Thank you. That is my segment on the Bermuda Triangle.

I don’t know if you want to talk about it or not, but there are some people that theorize that actually Flight 19 was found. So there was wreckage apparently from Flight 19 found in a Florida swamp.

They discovered a torpedo bomber in Breaux Ward, awesome, Breaux Ward County in 1989, and they believe it may have belonged to the lead pilot of Flight 19. Yeah, just it. And again, I don’t know how accurate it is, or if it’s been proven wrong since. It’s possible it’s been proven wrong since. But I remember watching a documentary series where they went out looking for the bombers and they found the wreckage of one of the planes.

Yeah, I remember watching that with you and I looked it up, but no one’s like… Confirmed it. Yeah, no one’s 100% found their planes. Interesting. So that’s why it kind of left it out.

Because there’s no closure on the issue, I guess you could say. We will enter in the Bermuda Triangle into the Curse-O-Meter to tell us how cursed it is. Please stand by.

And the results from the Curse-O-Meters say definitely cursed.

It’s a big triangle where things go missing.

Yeah, and it seems like even the trained people are going missing. It’s not typically like random rich guy on his boat out for the weekend. It’s like military. So that’s not usually a good sign.

And the random rich guy out for a weekend. That’s true. Yeah, but it’s not all the time. No. And it’s sort of random. It’s not an area avoided by cargo ships or anyone flying or sailing in the ocean. And in fact, Christopher Columbus, his first few trips to the Americas and back, went straight through the heart of the Bermuda Triangle and came back much to the chagrin of the indigenous peoples of South America. I bet they wish his boat disappeared. There’s like no way to avoid it. No one’s come up with theories about where these people ended up. Well, plenty of people have actually come up with theories.

You can’t really predict when it’s going to happen. It’s kind of just random.

Yeah, you go through there and some people don’t come out. It’s probably just the communicative channel for the millionth council. Just they got the line open and if you fly your airplane through their open line, you get lost in the void, according to that caller.

I wonder if commercial planes aren’t allowed to fly through there.

They are. Okay. Yep. A couple of commercial planes did disappear in there. And I guess it’s cheaper still to continue flying through there. So if you have problems with your flight flying through the Bermuda Triangle, blame capitalism. Yep. Actually, I’ve flown through the Bermuda Triangle when I went to Cuba.

You’re still here.

Yeah. Well done. I think at the time there was still the US embargo against Cuba. So leaving from Canada, you kind of had to fly over international waters into Cuba. Oh, right. And you went to the Dominican.

So you probably did the tow. Yeah, I definitely have flown over it. We’ve both been the Bermuda Triangle. Wish I took a picture, but it’s just the ocean. I mean, next time when we fly to Mexico, if we happen to fly over the Bermuda Triangle, we’ll just take a picture and share it to our podcast. Yep.

I’ll draw a triangle on top of the water.

Just so you can see exactly where our plane is.

All right. Well, that brings us to the end of today’s episode. Be sure to listen to us next month where Sheryl brings us the story of the Orang Madan.

We’re doing a seafaring bunch of episodes. We’re going to have to deviate from that pretty soon.

Oh, yeah. I’ve got some. I’ve got a real change in direction for it. Next one for September’s episode. Me too. Excellent. And as always, if you have a cursed object you’re looking to get rid of, you can reach out to us at probablycursepodcast@gmail .com, and we will work something out with you in your horribly haunted doll that you got from an inheritance after your uncle mysteriously died.

We already have ghosts in the house, and we’re kind of getting used to it. So you may as well just send your ghost to us.

It’s true. We’re going to make them fight for dominance. I don’t know about that. We’re going to find out who the alpha ghost is. That’s right. As always, you can follow us on our social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Blue Sky, YouTube. You can also check out our website at probablycurse.net, which has our show notes. And I should just start posting our artifacts on there as well.

Yeah. Right now they’re all in the Etsy shop at probablycursed.etsy.com. But I should share them there too.

All of you can see the ones that have sold and the ones that are so available. And until next month, stay spooky. Or stay cursed. Stay spookily cursed.