One of the greatest mysteries of the 21st century, the Bermuda Triangle, has been solved. Chalked it up to the simple reason of human error.

This half-hearted curtain drop over the exciting theories of time travel, alternate universes, and dimensional warps has left many fanatics stunned, disappointed, and annoyed. In some cases, they have felt all of the above, leaving people grieving the loss of a good story.

For the past two centuries, the Bermuda Triangle has taken over the imaginations of movie directors, authors, and paranormal enthusiasts.

 The phenomenon reached popularity in 1974 when the book, “The Bermuda Triangle” by Charles Berlitz, was published. However, recordings of this strange stretch of ocean had been around for centuries before. As early as 1942, Christopher Columbus documented strange occurrences such as compass malfunctions and strange lights around the area.

Reports in news journals emerged in the 1950s, yet the name “Bermuda Triangle” was not coined until 1964 by American author Vincent Gaddis in a magazine article titled “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle”. A year later, he expanded the theory in his book, “Invisible Horizons”.

The natural phenomenon did not come within public radar until a decade later with Charles Berlitz’s bestselling book, “The Bermuda Triangle,” which drew from Graddis’s theory.

Since then, the Bermuda Triangle has become prevalent in pop culture as the symbol of mystery and is often linked to superficial beliefs despite scientific evidence refuting the theories.

It has continued on as a legend today, taking hold of skeptics and enthusiasts alike. While believers continued to churn out theories that time warps took planes and ships hostage, trapped them in time, or in the lost city of Atlantis, skeptics worked just as hard to prove the unlikelihood of such a phenomenon.

The most recent incident was back in December of 2020 with the disappearance of a small boat carrying twenty passengers. The boat was meant to sail from a district located in the Bahamas to Florida, a distance of roughly fifty nautical miles, which was meant to arrive in the following day.

They never arrived. A 43-hour-long search over an area of twenty thousand square miles later, the twenty passengers on board had not been found. The search was suspended, and the vessel, along with its passengers, was forgotten.

While many people were quick to point fingers at the age-old mystery, skeptics pointed out the most obvious errors of all: human error and freak weather. 

With the improvement of maritime navigational technologies, the Bermuda Triangle became less of a myth that had the possibility of being true and more of a story to teach children of the dangers of the sea.

From the very beginning of its rise to fame in 1974, critics have immediately clammed up to shut it down. A book titled “The Bermuda Triangle: Solved” was published in 1975 by Larry Kusche, who used cold reasoning to dispute all claims Graddis had previously stated.

He stated that many of the incidents were exaggerated with mundane explanations such as human error and unpredictable weather. Some cases, Kusche stated, that were reported were not even within the vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle.

In 2025, oceanographer Simon Boxall continued Kusche’s argument, backed up with better evidence made irrefutable by scientific reasoning and statistics. 

Boxall claimed that factors besides human error included “rogue waves”. Rogue waves are highly unpredictable, some even appearing in seemingly calm seas and soon disappearing within minutes of their appearance.

They are often described as “walls of water” as these waves appear to be twice as high as the waves surrounding it. These natural disasters occur when several waves align and focus all of their force in a single, concentrated wave that towers over large sea-faring vessels. 

According to Boxall, the unpredictable nature of these waves may be the reason why disappearances had occurred so suddenly and vessels were capsized without a trace.

Pairing these unnatural dangers with the exaggeration of disappearances to romanticize the mystery, it all becomes clear that the Bermuda Triangle was never meant to be a mystery in the first place. It was just an area of the sea where several disappearances occurred, which, statistically speaking, are similar to overall disappearances in other parts of the ocean.

The Bermuda Triangle mystery has finally been solved.

At the end of the elaborate theories of time warps and lost empires, it was all erased by the mundane explanation of human error and freak weather incidents.

As some have stated, “A good lie is always more attractive than the dull old truth.”