Vile Vortices
Encyclopedia
Vile Vortices is a term referring to twelve geographic areas that are alleged by Ivan Sanderson
Ivan T. Sanderson
Ivan Terence Sanderson was a naturalist and writer born in Edinburgh, Scotland, who became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Sanderson is remembered for his nature writing and his interest in cryptozoology and paranormal subjects.-Biography:Born in Scotland, Sanderson traveled widely in...

 to have been the sites of mysterious disappearances. He identified them in a 1972 article "The Twelve Devil's Graveyards Around the World", published in Saga magazine.

The vortices

Sanderson asserts that twelve "vortices" are situated along particular lines of latitude.

The best known of the so-called "vortices" is the Bermuda Triangle
Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels allegedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances....

. Others include Algerian Megaliths to the south of Timbuktu
Timbuktu
Timbuktu , formerly also spelled Timbuctoo, is a town in the West African nation of Mali situated north of the River Niger on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. The town is the capital of the Timbuktu Region, one of the eight administrative regions of Mali...

, the Indus Valley in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

, especially the city of Mohenjo Daro, Hamakulia Volcano in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

, the "Devil's Sea
Devil's Sea
The , also known as the Dragon's Triangle, the Formosa Triangle and the "Pacific Bermuda Triangle", is a region of the Pacific around Miyake Island, about 100 km south of Tokyo...

" near Japan and the South Atlantic Anomaly
South Atlantic Anomaly
The South Atlantic Anomaly is an area where the Earth's inner Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to the Earth's surface. This leads to an increased flux of energetic particles in this region and exposes orbiting satellites to higher than usual levels of radiation...

. Five of the vortices are on the same latitude to the south of the equator; five are on the same latitude to the north. The other two are the north and south poles.

The idea has been taken up by other fringe writers, who have argued that the vortices are linked to "subtle matter energy", "ley lines", or "electro-magnetic aberration"

Paul Begg, in a series of articles for The Unexplained
The Unexplained (magazine)
The Unexplained: Mysteries of Mind, Space, & Time was a popular partwork magazine published in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1983 by Orbis Publishing...

 magazine, criticized the methodology of writers on the subject of unexplained disappearances
Unexplained disappearances
Unexplained disappearance is the physical disappearance of people or other objects without apparent cause or reason.-Notable disappearances:-Benjamin Bathurst:...

. He checked original records of the alleged incidents. Often, he found, the ships which were claimed to have 'mysteriously disappeared' had a mundane reason for their loss (see for instance Raifuku Maru
Raifuku Maru
Raifuku Maru, a Japanese freighter ship that allegedly "vanished" during a voyage from Boston to Hamburg, Germany, with a cargo of wheat and a crew of thirty-eight, in April 1925...

). Some were lost in storms, although the vortex writers would claim that the weather was fine at the time. In other cases, locations of losses were changed to fit the location of the vortex. Sometimes no record of the ship even existing in the first place was found.

Alleged Vile Vortices

  • Bermuda Triangle
    Bermuda Triangle
    The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels allegedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances....

  • Devil's Sea
    Devil's Sea
    The , also known as the Dragon's Triangle, the Formosa Triangle and the "Pacific Bermuda Triangle", is a region of the Pacific around Miyake Island, about 100 km south of Tokyo...

  • Easter Island
    Easter Island
    Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

     (in some versions)

Further reading

  • Berlitz, Charles
    Charles Berlitz
    Charles Frambach Berlitz was an American linguist and language teacher known for his books on anomalous phenomena, as well as his language-learning courses. He is listed in The People's Almanac as one of the fifteen most eminent linguists in the world.-Life:Berlitz was born in New York City...

    . The Bermuda Triangle
    The Bermuda Triangle (book)
    The Bermuda Triangle is a best-selling 1974 book by Charles Berlitz which popularized the belief of the Bermuda Triangle as an area of ocean prone to disappearing ships and airplanes...

    . Doubleday, 1974.
  • Hitching, Francis
    Francis Hitching
    Francis Hitching is a British author, journalist and filmmaker; he is also a parapsychologist and a dowser.-Biography:Hitching has written on earth mysteries, dowsing, paranormal and ley lines...

    . The World Atlas of Mysteries. Pan, 1978, pp 56–7, 243.
  • Kusche, Lawrence David
    Larry Kusche
    Lawrence David Kusche is an American author and pilot. He had been a commercial pilot, flight instructor, instrument-rated pilot, instrument instructor and librarian by the time he wrote The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved and The Disappearance of Flight 19 .Larry Kusche was born in Racine,...

    . The Bermuda Triangle Mystery–Solved. Harper & Row, 1975.
  • Quasar, Gian. Into the Bermuda Triangle. International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press, 2005.

External links

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