Okay, I Exaggerate
Nine miles deep. Get a drink and a pack of crystallised ginger to munch on, this will take a while. You ought to remember that Your Humble Scribe was banging on about Benjamin Bathurst, a British diplomat who vanished in 1809 whilst on a mission in Prussia, an event which sparked countless fanciful tales speculating wildly about what befell him. Robbery and murder, actually, not kidnap by Wonder Weasels From Erewhon. Art!
Regardless of how many eyes they possess
In other words, a completely manufactured mystery. Naturally, Conrad's thoughts wandered, as they are wont to do, and he remembered that excellent skeptical resource "Bermuda Triangle: Mystery Solved" by Larry Kusche. This is a case-by-case dismantling of the myth that there is anything unusual occurring within the Bermuda Triangle. You know, a deliberately manufactured conspiracy. I fancied re-reading it - but where could it be?
Aha! It was literally the first book that came to light when I emptied my giant (now im-)mobile book case, so I put it aside and have been re-reading it. Very interesting stuff. Ol' Laz decided to go back to sources, checking newspaper reports of the day, as well as checking meteorological records, and cross-checking between the two. Art!
My edition, from Dillons
(When they were still a thing)
I am currently on the entry for the Carroll A. Deering, a five-masted schooner discovered to be run aground on the Diamond Shoals in 1921. Despite heavy sees a search party got aboard and found her abandoned with her lifeboats gone. Art!
The Deering, doing some steering
Here an aside. The Diamond Shoals are very dangerous rocks off the coast of Cape Hatteras, South Canada, long recognised as a navigation hazard. They were marked by lightships until 1966, as the first attempt to build a lighthouse there failed miserably, when a form of lighthouse known as a 'Texas Tower' was erected on the shoals. Art!
It was decommissioned in 2001, then put up for auction in 2012 and purchased by a chap who said he'd renovate it. We may come back to check on him.
ANYWAY, back to the Deering. None of the crew were ever found again. The most likely explanation, backed up by documents and baggage removed from the ship, is that the crew abandoned her in the midst of a severe storm, took to the lifeboats and were then lost at sea. It is also possible that another vessel which sank in the severe storms wracking the area at that time, the Hewitt, had seen the Deering's distress beacons and had recovered the lifeboat evacuees. O unfunny irony. Art!
Not looking so hot
Of course - obviously! - when there was a perfectly rational explanation, people made a real effort to come up with ridiculous ones, because human nature. Such as: mutiny, hijacking, piracy, rum-runners, Communist conspiracy to hijack, one-eyed wonder weasels or other paranormal explanations. No evidence to back up any of them, mind you, apart from various swivel-eyed loons listening to the voices in their head.
Motley! We're going to replicate the CAD by towing you on a rope across the pool and onto a large, strategically-placed rock.
Let's Continue With Spooky Themes
No, not time for "Tormentor" yet, I refer to another 'Brocken Spectre" image on the BBC's page about such phenomena. It's rare and they like to publish when they can, if you the public manage to snap a shot of them. Art!
Courtesy Steve Churchill
This shot is from Lord's Seat in the Hope Valley, in the Peak District, so a different location from yesteryon's shot. One can imagine getting quite a start if you witnessed such a phenomenon without understanding what it is.
Conrad vaguely remembers reading an article in the children's magazine "Tell Me Why" about this effect, with a horribly creepy picture that completely mis-represented the actual effect - a ghastly caricature of a person floating a few feet in front of a pair of mountain climbers. Brrrr!
Now "Tormentor"
The practical difficulties of communicating with a spirit invisible and inaudible to everyone else.
Louis wandered off to the staffroom, picking up mail
from the Bursar’s office in his pigeonhole.
‘You’re a rare bird here on a Monday. What happened – wet the bed?’ asked a tutor
he barely knew.
‘Just stay there till I come back with a gun,’ he
replied, flipping through other mail and concentrating on it, rather than the
other tutor. ‘Dum-dum bullets. It’ll hurt a lot.’
The tutor had gone when he looked up, maybe out of
fear, maybe out of need to get to lecture room.
‘Another job well done,’ he remarked to himself, and
the pensive stares of other staff.
The bus back home got stuck in traffic, so he had time
to ponder – or would have done, if the spirit hadn’t turned up and sat next to
him.
‘Hello!’ said Jennifer, brightly, making him turn
sharply in surprise.
‘What if someone sits there?’ he whispered, trying not
to look like a typical loony-on-the-bus.
‘Aha, keep watching.’
When the bus got busy, a middle-aged man with no hair
and thick glasses did indeed sit down next to Louis. From Louis’s perspective, the man’s body
intersected with that of Jen. Within
seconds, the interloper was twitching and fretting, until he jumped out of the
seat and made his way off the bus at the next stop.
Impressive, Louis had to admit.
‘Well done,’ he mouthed almost-silently.
‘Thanks!’ beamed Jennifer, well-pleased at whatever
mischief she’d managed.
So if you ever get an hideously uncomfortable feeling when taking up a seat on the 409, now you know why.
Going Back 79 Years ...
Yes, another photo-essay based on the pages within "The War Illustrated", which is actually after the fact, the edition I'm working from was dated 25/12/1942, which is when things really started to look bad for the Axis. Art!
 |
| Russians fighting Prussians |
You see, whiney Sinister ingrates? Front page news*. Let us have a look at the situation in North Africa. Art!
The Axis had been confined to Tunisia, effectively a bridgehead with no strategic depth, and Herr Schickelgruber, as he was wont to do, immediately begins to reinforce failure, shipping in Panzer and infantry divisions that would have been better-used on the Eastern Front, in addition to fleets of aircraft. Art!
This photograph illustrates two points. The first is that logistics was one of the most important aspects of war in a region that had absolutely nothing, and here we see over fifty trucks (I counted) as part of a supply column. Secondly, they're all bunched up together, on a road in a single line, which intimates that they have no fear of Axis air attack. Perfectly reasonable, since the Axis were
A little background here. Benghazi had been an Italian town and harbour, until the British (and Commonwealth) bombed it and occupied it in early 1941. Subsequently it was bombed and occupied by the Axis later in 1941. In early 1942 it was occupied by the British, after - you may be ahead of me here - being bombed. By mid-1942 the Axis had re-taken it, with a bit of bombing on the side. By then the harbour was choked with sunken ships, which the Axis didn't have time to clear, causing supply chain problems. Then, as you see here, the British finally occupied it for the third time, and began to clear the harbour.
Bottom picture is of South African armoured car crews having a brew-up and Christmas dinner, with their ugly but reliable and almost indestructible Marmon-Harrington a/cs in the background.
Finally -
I know it's childish and spiteful but I am a terrible person and I can't resist. Hey, Dimya, the Sinister Union was a big pile of <swearing redacted>!
* Dimya gets very sulky and petty if the Sinisters aren't praised to high heaven
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