Mysterious places
. Bermuda Triangle
Bermuda Triangle, region of the western Atlantic Ocean that has become associated in the popular imagination with mysterious maritime disasters. Also known as the Devil 's Triangle, the triangle-shaped area covers about 1,140,000 sq km (about 440,000 sq mi) between the island of Bermuda, the coast of southern Florida, and Puerto Rico.
The sinister reputation of the Bermuda Triangle may be traceable to reports made in the late 15th century by navigator Christopher Columbus concerning the Sargasso Sea, in which floating masses of gulfweed were regarded as uncanny and perilous by early sailors; others date the notoriety of the area to the mid-19th century, when a number of reports were made of unexplained disappearances and mysteriously abandoned ships. The earliest recorded disappearance of a United States vessel in the area occurred in March 1918, when the USS Cyclops vanished.
The incident that consolidated the reputation of the Bermuda Triangle was the disappearance in December 1945 of Flight 19, a training squadron of five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers. The squadron left Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with 14 crewmen and disappeared after radioing a series of distress messages; a seaplane sent in search of the squadron also disappeared. Aircraft that have disappeared in the area since this incident include a DC-3 carrying 27 passengers in 1948 and a C-124 Globemaster with 53 passengers in 1951. Among the ships that have disappeared was the tankership Marine Sulphur Queen, which vanished with 39 men aboard in 1963.
Books, articles, and television broadcasts investigating the Bermuda Triangle emphasize that, in the case of most of the disappearances, the weather was favorable, the disappearances occurred in daylight after a sudden break in radio contact, and the vessels vanished without a trace. However, skeptics point out that many supposed mysteries result from careless or biased consideration of data. For example, some losses attributed to the Bermuda Triangle actually occurred outside the area of the triangle in inclement weather conditions or in darkness, and some can be traced to known mechanical problems or inadequate equipment. In the case of Flight 19, for example, the squadron commander was relatively inexperienced, a compass was faulty, the squadron failed to follow instructions, and the aircraft were operating under conditions of deteriorating weather and visibility and with a low fuel supply. Other proposed explanations for disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle include the action of physical forces unknown to science, a "hole in the sky," an unusual chemical component in the region 's seawater, and abduction by extraterrestrial beings.
Scientific evaluations of the Bermuda Triangle have concluded that the number of disappearances in the region is not abnormal and that most of the disappearances have logical explanations. Paranormal associations with the Bermuda Triangle persist in the public mind, however.
. Gateway to Hell
Because of the paranormal phenomenon's, a cemetery from Kansas is named The Gateway to Hell.
A small town in Kansas called Stull. A quiet town, with just a few dozen houses and two stores. But this place, apparently peaceful, has some scary secrets. The local cemetery is considered one of the few places on Earth where we can meet all the negative paranormal phenomenons. The locals are convinced that this is the place from which Satan comes to our world.
The name of the town was given after the first man who was in charge of the local mail, Silvester Stull, who died in 1862. The cemetery is located at the end of the town, the cause of the town's problems. Less than 100 toms and one burned down church are the only clues which tells us that the place is a cemetery.
Their problems start from the town's postal code. Stull is the only town in the U.S.A. with the code 666. A decision was taken to forbid anyone to come any closer than 50 meters to the cemetery fence. Anyone who doesn't respect the decision risks even jail. This decision was taken to keep away the ghost hunters and the curious ones ho want to see with their own eyes if the legends are true.
The "Time" magazine asked the Pop John Paul II which was the reason for asking that the plane he was travelling in, to Colorado, to not pass over the little town in Kansas. The Pop answered that he didn't wanted to get near the "Cursed Ground" the name that he gived to the local cemetery.
The bad name of the place comes from all the stories and legends about the old cemetery. Strange satanic rituals, spells and ghosts where reported in the last 150 years in that area. About the burned down church it is said that no drop of rain drops inside the church although the building's rough was destroyed completely. Near the place there are a few stairs, and the locals says that people who went down on them, came back after a few weeks, although they thought that they were missing just for a few seconds. From one of the trees, inside the cemetery, used to be hanged witches who were caught doing rituals of calling the Satan. A legend says that inside the cemetery is one of the seven gates which will open once the Devil comes back on Earth.
Dozens of scientists came over the last 25 years in the town to find out the truth about "The Gateway to Hell".
"It is truth, there were registered a series of strange phenomenon's, like vanishing of things, seeing of some ghostly shapes, cold winds only over the cemetery. I don't know if this things are caused by supernatural phenomenonts or it's just an active magnetic anomaly", said Andrew Lawrence, one of the scientists who studies the phenomenonts in Stull.
Unsolved mysteries
. The purpose of Stonehenge
Why Stonehenge was constructed remains unknown. Most scholars agree that it must have been a sacred and special place of religious rituals or ceremonies. Many have speculated that Stonehenge was built by Sun worshipers. The axis of Stonehenge, which divides the sarsen horseshoe and aligns with the monument's entrance, is oriented broadly toward the direction of the midsummer sunrise. In nearby Ireland the celebrated megalithic monument Newgrange, built approximately at the same time as Stonehenge, was oriented toward the midwinter sunrise.
In the early 1960s American astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins theorized that Stonehenge was an astronomical observatory and calendar of surprising complexity. Hawkins suggested that ancient peoples used the monument to anticipate a wide range of astronomical phenomena, including the summer and winter solstices and eclipses of both the Sun and the Moon. The astronomical interpretation of Stonehenge remains popular today, despite many uncertainties. Some scholars are doubtful that the peoples who constructed Stonehenge and other sites of the era possessed the mathematical sophistication necessary to predict many of the events that Hawkins theorized. They note that Stonehenge's architects may have been aware of the subtle movements of the Sun, Moon, and other heavenly bodies without having an analytically advanced understanding of astronomy.
The true purpose of Stonehenge is an enduring mystery. Modern observers can only speculate about what it meant to its builders and what compelling impulse drove them to invest so much labor and care in creating it.
. Loch Ness monster?
Sightings of large underwater animals in Loch Ness, a 24-mile-long lake in Scotland, have often been reported but never confirmed. As early as 565 ad, Saint Columba, a Christian missionary, is said to have seen a monster in the lake. Modern interest was evoked in 1933 when a British couple reported viewing a creature with a long neck and body, and in the next several decades various expeditions attempted to find such a creature.
A major expedition was initiated this June, under the joint sponsorship of the Academy of Applied Sciences in Boston and the New York Times. The head of the investigatory team, Robert Rines, president of the AAS, led several earlier expeditions. In 1972, using underwater photography, sonar equipment, and other electronic devices, he obtained photographs that spurred scientific interest. One of the pictures, which were made clearer by the use of a computer, showed a diamond-shaped object thought by Rines and Sir Peter Scott, the British naturalist and artist, to be the 4-6 foot long flipper of an animal about 45-60 ft. in length. The size was consistent with indications obtained from sonar apparatus, and the monster was provisionally named Nessiteras rhombopteryx, which means Ness mammal with a diamond-shaped fin.
The photographs were made public late in 1975, to allow the monster to be placed on the British list of protected species. Although the 700 ft. deep loch supports numerous fish, the projected monster population is not large - perhaps ten to 20 animals.
A number of scientists expressed doubts about the evidence presented by Rines, criticizing the use of computer enhancement of his 1972 pictures and the lack of solid facts for the animal 's size. Others suggested that the creature shown in the Scott-Rines reconstruction resembled a plesiosaur, a reptile group that flourished some 70 million years ago but has been considered extinct since then. Some doubters expressed the view that the object sighted was not an animal at all, but the remains of a Viking ship.
Despite the criticism, the AAS-Times investigators continued to conduct photographic probes, and planned to send in divers equipped with television cameras.
