Strange Encounter
I’ve got to get this off my chest. LORD knows, I’ve been around a while. I can’t remember an incident more nerve wracking and more eerie in my whole tumultuous life to date then the one I’m about to relate to you. Yeah, I’ve told a few people about it, to be sure, some near, some dear some not so. But before I cash it in, I’m gonna’ let YOU in on it.
Take a deep breath, close your eyes and imagine you’re in the left seat, as pilot in command, inside the cockpit of a relatively small tail dragger, D8 airplane, climbing up off a remote island somewhere off the coast of Florida on a typical hot, sunny day near high noon. The muffled sound of twin engines humming around your head-phoned ears, a thin scrap of metal separating you from the low rumble and the ominous sea below –the Bermuda Triangle. Not a care in the world to bother me and, why, after all, should it? Here I was, flying with my pal, instructor Jim in the right seat, getting the coveted “many engined” time one might normally pay a small fortune to obtain. In my case, I bartered block time with Jim, helping him out doing menial jobs loading and unloading planes full of supplies for the “islands” and transporting various aircraft from here, thither and yon. What a life.
I digress. I swore I’d take the memories of that hot day, many years ago, to the grave with me, lest people think I’m some kinda’ loony toon or something. I’ve since been persuaded otherwise. Here goes.
Spool back into your imagination.
We were ascending to an assigned altitude of 5000 feet over the Bermuda Triangle, the sun off to the West, glinting off the aluminum wing into the cabin, slightly irritating. All’s well as I glance around in our cloistered environment, the smell of old leather and oily rags permeating the air, a bit fidgety handling the old bird. At a forty degree angle in the climb, suddenly my attention is captured by the instrument panel, as dials on the dashboard in front of me start to do the saber dance. First one, then the other. Altimeter, artificial horizon, airspeed indicator fluctuating wildly, as if a wind had suddenly swept through the cockpit, engulfing them. I grabbed the half moon wheel tightly as I shouted above the hum of two loud engines. “Jim, what the hell is hap–” As I glanced at Jim to my right, my attention was sucked towards an image outside the cabin window– felt the D8 yank into a sharp right bank, stopping me in mid sentence.
My heart stopped, as my line of sight, aligned with the tipping wing, terminated in a large, red ball just below the wingtip, maybe thirty miles or so to the North West, about two miles off the coast of West Palm Beach, Florida and maybe three, four miles short of the active runway, shimmering twenty feet or so beneath the surface of the Atlantic ocean, a blurred glow seemed to be slowly advancing into the oceans depth beneath the rippled water, straight into the Bermuda Triangle. “What—” I started to say to Jim at the top of my lungs. “Just fly the plane, Rick, just fly the plane,” he said somberly. Sensing my hesitation in that split second, Jim suddenly grabbed the yoke on his side, yelling at the top of his lungs, ” I’ve got it, I’ve got it” as he banked sharply from our two ten radial and headed South, the Florida coast off to the right side of the D8. As abruptly as it started, the instruments caught hold”, stabilized and settled down to their normal functions as Jim leveled the plane out at five thousand feet. “OK, you’ve got it now, Rick, take us home,” he said calmly. The radio came alive with a static, hollow voice–“Gulf-Charlie-Whiskey, this is Miami approach –is everything OK?” Calmly, Jim answered “Roger that, Miami. “
We continued in silence.
I never determine what it was I saw out there in the Triangle that fateful day off the coast of West Palm Beach. Jim wasn’t talking and I was completely in the dark. What did he know that I didn’t?
Unfortunately, I was destined never to find out. You see, the day after the incident, I was determined to get to the bottom of the strange sighting, I drove to Jim’s house on one of Lauderdale’s canals where he lived with wife Penny and his “rat” dog (he had more cockpit time then most pilots I know!) “They bred ‘em to dig down into rat holes in England in search of–yup–RATS!–get hold of one and get pulled out of the rat hole by it’s tail with –RAT in tow!” Anyway, I knocked on the door. No answer. I walked to the back of the house to see if he might be on his beloved sailboat, taking in the Florida sun, perhaps. Nope. “Strange,” I thought, both cars were in the driveway, front door locked. Suddenly, something Jim had told me long ago, crept into the back roads of my mind. Something like “someday, I’m gonna take me and Penny and rat dog for a long, long ocean trip in my sailboat. Maybe when I retire or lose my CFI ticket.”
The sailboat was gone–the house secure–both cars were in the driveway-“-Nothing strange about that,” I mused. But where was Jim and his crew?
I grinned an uneasy, knowing smile, as I remembered him once say, in passing, “Someday, I’m gonna’ sail off into that beautiful sunset and just disappear”
Perhaps into the Bermuda Triangle? Who knows, but I haven’t seen nor heard from Jim, since—-and that was—
—–thirty years ago.