There’s two ways to be stupid: so stupid that you don’t know anything; and so stupid that you don’t suspect anything. Now,
that’s really stupid! I think I’ve been cured of both these manifestations during my research into the Bermuda Triangle. Like
everybody else I was casually interested in “
phenomena” or mysteries of the earth. Perhaps my generation is more than others. Growing up in the 1970s, the “Phenomena Decade,” inundated a youth with the unsolved around us. UFOs were always very popular and the abduction angle had just come into vogue. Bermuda Triangle was, of course, very hot, plus several others like Bigfoot, his cousin, Yeti, the Loch Ness monster. Like most everybody else, I watched all the TV documentaries made on the subjects (the best still date to the 1970s). But like everybody else, phenomena remained a spectator’s sport. After all, where do you go to do this kind of research? Where do you start? You believe or you don’t believe, often based merely on popular arguments and pulp renditions. Most take for granted that facts are behind them. I have found this to be a specious deduction. It was a strange set of circumstances that got me more involved. It was the late summer of 1990 that I pulled an old book out of my father’s book shelf. Besides being one of the top 30 GM dealers in the world, he had also been a pilot, ran on behalf of San Martin County the local auxiliary airport, and had several marine dealerships and licenses. It was only natural he would have this book. It was Charles Berlitz’s book on the Bermuda Triangle, published in 1974, and most any aviator or yachter probably had a copy at one point. Some 5 million copies were sold, making it and the Bermuda Triangle a phenomenon. I won’t go into details, but I found it quite piquing, enough so that I finished it the next day when I came home from work. I had never really considered that books might have been written on the subject before. (When the Bermuda Triangle was real hot in the early to mid 1970s I was but a kid and was naturally unaware.) I soon collected every book on the subject. Eventually I amassed quite a library. Some were rare, some were a dime a dozen paperbacks.