In 2005, I co-authored THE FOG, with Bruce Gernon, a book about the Bermuda Triangle. Since then, Bruce has received dozens of e-mails from people who tell their own stories involving strange fog, time travel or teleportation. Some of those stories take place within the so-called boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle and others are well outside of it.
Bruce and I are now working on a follow up book called: Beyond the Bermuda Triangle: Encounters with Electronic Fog, Time Travel, and Teleportation. One story we received is particularly striking. Here’s a summary of it.
In 1964, John Murphy was stationed aboard a US Coast Guard cutter that on Thanksgiving day was docked at Pennos Wharf near St. George. He went ashore in the afternoon after a Thanksgiving dinner with three of his friends and the four men happened to meet four student nurses in the US Navy Nurse Corps. A nice coincidence that would become a very meaningful one for John Murphy. The nursing students had caught a ‘hop’ on an Air Force cargo flight from Wisconsin and were staying in a hotel in St. George.
John had a nearly instantaneous attraction to one of the young women and she seemed equally interested in him. After taking the nurses on a tour of the ship, they debarked as four couples. John and his new friend, Barbara, went off on their own to Fort St. Catherine’s beach where both confessed that they had an overwhelming and uncanny sense that they already knew each other. Yet, both were engaged to someone back in the States and neither were looking to have an affair.
As the sun sank toward the sea, they abandoned the beach and felt drawn toward a narrow lane heading away from the fort. It was barely light when they came upon a small rise in the road and found themselves captured by a sense of eeriness again. They each seemed to know what was on the other side of the hill, even though neither had ever come this way. John said they would see a small 18th century British village with a church dominating the village square. Barbara had a similar reaction and added that they would see a clock on the steeple of the church. It was broken and displayed 12:30.
When they reached the crest of the hill, they were amazed and startled to see everything as they’d envisioned it, including the clock stuck at 12:30. As they walked downhill toward the village, they both felt a sense of familiarity. They didn’t see any people, but most of the structures were illuminated by lanterns visible inside their windows.
As they walked past the church, they felt drawn to large graveyard beside it. Holding each other’s hands with only a flashlight for illumination, they walked through the cemetery and then sat down on a low stone wall separating the two major sections of the graveyard—one side for whites, the other for blacks. They somehow knew the graveyard’s segregated layout.
Nothing about that evening seemed normal. Both of them had the strong sense not only of having been in the village before, but that it had been their home in the past. As they talked, they recalled their lives as a married couple with children, and that they’d somehow met their deaths together very nearby. They felt a chill at the thought of our deaths and knew there had been something unusual about how they had died.
Barbara spread out a blanket she had in her bag from when she and her friends had gone to the beach earlier in the day. They laid down and John felt an overwhelming sense of love and passion. They held each other close and then, rather than engaging in furtive graveyard sex, something unexpected happened. John recalls: “I closed my eyes and leaned forward to kiss her, but before our lips came together, everything around us grew dark and it felt as if we were tumbling together into a bottomless abyss. The sensation of falling finally ended and then, without any warning…both of us passed out.”
They awakened a couple of hours later, feeling confused, and quickly left the village. They returned to the hotel in St. George where Barbara was staying. They said their goodbyes, exchanged addresses, and awkwardly went their separate ways. She would fly back to the States the next day and he would remain in Bermuda for about ten more days.
John had a vivid dream about the village that night and when he woke up, he knew he had to go back and find out more about its history.
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Stay tuned for part 2 of this strange and compelling story.
Excellent – all of it, but especially the tumbling together into a bottomless abyss. I shall read the second part as soon as I can!
Yeah, tumbling into the abyss…I love that, top.
This is incredible!! I cannot wait to read part two!!
Oh c’mon! Can’t wait for part 2!
I’m looking forward to reading part 2. This story feels genuine.