Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

Contrary to the usual version of the story, the Avenger is a very unseaworthy craft. It sinks like a “lead banana” (Kusche 1980, p. 28) within thirty seconds to a minute and a half. Nor is it easy to climb out of the aircraft and get out the emergency life raft. The pilot and the two crew members must get out of the plane, stand on the wing (in this case at night in rough seas), pull out and inflate the life raft, and get in it. On top of this, many of the crew were probably stunned and relatively helpless due to the impact of the crash. All this had to be accomplished by frightened men who had never had any such experience before. And it had to be done in the rolling seas in the dark in the ninety seconds before the planes sank.

Tragically, the task was not accomplished. That no bodies and no trace of life rafts or the aircraft themselves were ever found shows that no one was successful in freeing the rafts from the planes. Perhaps a few crew members got out of the planes and in panic jumped into the sea and drowned. In that vast expanse of ocean there would be almost no chance of finding a body. Probably most of the fourteen crew members, stunned by the impact and unsure of what to do, drowned when their planes sank. Their deaths, although tragic and unnecessary, are not mysterious.

The legend of Flight 19 is enhanced by the fact that one of the planes sent to search for the five Avengers also was lost. The plane, a Mariner, took off about 7:30 P.M. and not, as is often claimed, during the late afternoon. Mariners were called “flying gas tanks” by flight crews “because of the fumes that were often present, and a crewman sneaking a cigarette, or a spark from any source could have caused [an] explosion” (Kusche 1980, p. 119). An explosion was seen in the air just where the Mariner would have been about twenty minutes after takeoff. Clearly, the Mariner had blown up. Another tragic, but not mysterious, loss of life.

The loss of Flight 19 turns out to be no less a manufactured mystery than any of the other nonmysteries described by the likes of Berlitz and Gaddis.

It is amusing and instructive to examine the explanations that Berlitz puts forward for the nonevents he has made up for his book. The Bermuda Triangle is a popular topic with UFO proponents, the idea being that the triangle is some type of prime hunting ground for the saucer people. As noted above, Berlitz describes the UFO kidnapping hypothesis as a reasonable one. In fact, over half of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery is devoted to UFOs, ancient astronauts, and even the tale of Atlantis. Berlitz, it turns out, has found out about a well-known structure called the Bimini Road or Wall. Of it he says, “Shape and placement of these monoliths, right-angled corners, and pillars underneath some of the stones are conclusive, although not yet universally accepted, proof that they are man made” (Berlitz 1974, figure caption following p. 134). He goes on to speculate that the builders were the Atlanteans, who had an advanced civilization.

The “columns” Berlitz refers to are actually a mile or so from the “road” and are of recent origin—they are cement that was stored in barrels and tossed into the sea. The barrels rotted away, leaving the “columns.” The actual rocks in the Bimini Road are known to be natural formations. They are just a little over two thousand years old (Shinn 1978). As Randi (1980) has noted, this is a little young for true Atlantean artifacts.

Berlitz claimed in Without a Trace (1977) that he has found a giant pyramid, like the ones in Egypt, in the triangle and that somehow it is responsible for all the disappearances in the triangle. No one else, including the U.S. Navy, has been able to locate this giant object, and the book contains Berlitz’s usual false statements, errors, and deceptions (Kusche 1977–78b; Klass 1977–78).

In 1979, Berlitz (Moore and Berlitz 1979) has turned his attention away from the Bermuda Triangle and toward a most amazing navy experiment. It seems that in the 1950s the navy managed to make an entire battleship invisible and transport it instantly from Newport News, Virginia, to a navy yard on the West Coast. Of course, only Berlitz has managed to ferret out the truth about this. It’s interesting that the navy seems utterly unconcerned about having the most spectacular defense secret of the century revealed.

In the end, the Bermuda Triangle mystery turns out to be one of the longest-running hoaxes of the twentieth century. Yet many people are surprised to hear this. They have “heard so much about it” that they assume “there must be something to it.” There isn’t, but the continued existence of the triangle hoax is another example of the power of irresponsible writers and the media to deceive the public.

The late Immanuel Velikovsky was a psychiatrist who, in the early 1950s, created a huge scientific controversy that continues to some extent today. Velikovsky, who died in 1979, put forth a view of the origin of the solar system radically different from that accepted by astronomers. His goal was to explain several biblical stories, which he believed were literally true, in terms of actual astronomical events. He believed the biblical stories were not reports of supernatural events but instead reflected actual physical happenings. Velikovsky’s several books ( Worlds in Collision , 1950; Earth in Upheaval, 1955; Ages in Chaos , 1952; Oedipus and Akhnaton: Myth and History , 1960; and Peoples of the Sea, 1977) present his ideas in detail. His views will be summarized in the next few pages, followed by a discussion of the difficulties.

According to Velikovsky, in about 1500 B.C.E. a comet was ejected from the planet Jupiter. This comet became the planet Venus. To get from Jupiter to the present orbit of Venus, the comet approached Earth, which passed through the tail of the comet. This caused a range of effects on Earth, including a fall of red meteoric dust. The rivers turned blood red. Petroleum fell from the sky in great quantities, creating the oil fields of the Middle East. Fires raged everywhere, started by meteorites from the comet. As Earth passed deeper and deeper into the comet’s tail, the Sun disappeared and Earth was plunged into a darkness that lasted for days. Due to the gravitational influence of Venus, Earth’s rotation slowed and earthquakes took place. New mountain ranges were born. Hurricane-strength winds and enormous tidal waves left some areas dry. This is the explanation of the Red Sea parting when Moses led the Israelites out of the land of Pharaoh.

So much heat was caused by the change in Earth’s rotation that rocks melted, lava flowed from a host of volcanoes, and the seas boiled. As Earth left the comet’s tail, the heat caused various “vermin” such as rats and frogs to reproduce at a great rate. A plague resulted. Eggs and larvae of extraterrestrial species of insects were in the comet’s tail, and they dropped to Earth and reproduced. That’s where flies come from.

The “manna from heaven” described in the Bible was produced when dust clouds, water vapor, and carbon and hydrogen—the latter two elements being found in the comet’s tail—combined and reacted to form carbohydrates, which promptly fell from the sky to feed the Israelites.

The comet receded from Earth, but about fifty years later it came very close again. This time Earth’s rotation was halted by the comet, and Joshua and the Israelites defeated their enemies while the sun stood still in the sky, as recounted in the Bible. Then Earth began rotating again. Again meteorites fell in great abundance, and Earth was torn by more earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes, and other phenomena. For about six hundred years, from 1400 B.C.E. to 800 B.C.E., all was well. Then Venus and Mars passed near each other, and Mars moved from its old orbit into a new one. Mars came near Earth four times before both planets adopted their present orbits.