GADDIS’S SOURCES
“A writer’s job is to tell the truth.” Andy Rooney
Although Vincent Gaddis is known for naming and jumpstarting the Bermuda Triangle mystery/bubble/delusion in his February 1964 article in Argosy Magazine, a men’s adventure and occasional girlie photo magazine, many other writers contributed to the concept of strange, unexplained happenings “somewhere out there” before Gaddis cobbled together their stories to win his spark of fame by giving the name to the area that would soon be known all around the world. In what is rare in the publications about the “paranormal,” Gaddis listed his sources of information in his 1965 book, Invisible Horizons. However, many of his sources were informational dead-ends -- they did not disclose their sources.
Gaddis’s sources of information:
Press services such as UPI, AP, INS, and New York Times for several of the more famous cases that received wide-spread coverage.
Charles Fort’s book Lo!, 1931, which was also included in The Books of Charles Fort, 1974.
Alan J. Villiers, Posted Missing (1956, 1974) and Sea Dogs of Today, (1931). Captain Villiers (1903-1982) was a Master Mariner who sailed all the world’s oceans on board traditionally rigged vessels. He also found time to write 25 books that were well-researched and not at all in the Bermuda Triangle/paranormal vein.
Rupert Gould, The Stargazer Talks, 1944. Gould did not list the source of his information for one of the more famous Bermuda Triangle stories, Ellen Austin and the derelict.
E.V.W. Jones, Associated Press, September 16, 1950. This article was the first to proclaim that the area, which he called the “misty limbo of the lost,” was the scene of unexplained disappearances. John Wallace Spencer named his 1968 book Limbo of the Lost. See Jones’s article and map are in this website.
George X. Sand, “Sea Mystery at Our Back Door,” Fate (magazine) October 1952, expanded on the Jones article.
Harold T. Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Attack, 1954.
Morris K. Jessup, The Case for the UFO, 1955.
Donald E. Keyhoe, The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, 1957.
Frank Edwards, Stranger Than Science, 1959.
Harold T. Wilkins, Strange Mysteries of Time and Space, 1959
Allan W. Eckert. “The Mystery of the Lost Patrol” in The American Legion Magazine, April 1962.
Reprinted in Grit.
Wilbur B. Smith, Article on “reduced bindings,” Journal of the Ottawa UFO Club,” Spring 1963.
C. V. Tench, “Ships That Pass Out in the Night,” Tomorrow, Winter 1963.
Gaddis mentioned most of the currently known Bermuda Triangle mysteries in Chapter 13 (The Triangle of Death) in his book, Invisible Horizons; True Mysteries of the Sea. Two incidents in Chapter 9 (The Wanderers and the Homers) that he did not include as Bermuda Triangle mysteries, the Carroll A. Deering (1921) and the very popular and intriguing Ellen Austin (1881), were included as Triangle mysteries anyway by later writers (the Mysteryans).
Gaddis’s Argosy article and book started the Bermuda Triangle delusion, and his material was soon copycatted by many Mysteryans who joined the Bermuda Triangle mystery parade with other magazine articles and books where they added additional “mysteries,” and additional “facts” of their own to Gaddis’s stories.
One of the more recent Mysteryans claims that Dale Titler, author of Wings of Mystery, rather than Gaddis, “set the tone” for the Bermuda Triangle mystery. That error is discussed in Gaddis/Titler in the DETAILS section of this website.
In the early days of Triangle-mania (1971 to 1973), in an attempt to help the increasing number of people (many grade school, high school, and college students who were writing papers) who were seeking information on the Triangle, the National Geographic Society, the Navy’s Office of Public Information, and many college and university libraries issued lists of the rapidly growing number of magazine and newspaper articles (without researching the accuracy of the items listed) that gave whatever information was then being disseminated, copied, and repeated -- it was all about the mystery.
That was when I decided it looked like a good topic to write a book -- something I had always wanted to do but had never found a topic interesting enough to do the research and writing and typing and mailing while working full time at a new career and having two young children just starting elementary school. At the time, like everyone else, I saw that the Bermuda Triangle was quite an intriguing mystery.
The more I researched the various mysteries, the more intriguing the Bermuda Triangle became. But not for the reason I expected.
7/15/14 Larry Kusche (Kusche rhymes with bush)