ARCHIVES OF THE UNEXPLAINED

Creepy true tales of mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, related by an ancient mariner.

“Are you sure your…impressionable young minds…want to hear such terrible tales?” enquires a strange tour guide to maritime museum visitors Neal and Divya. Following Neal’s eager response—which readers will certainly echo—the guide proceeds to regale the pair with the stories of how both the USS Cyclops, at the time the largest ship in the Navy, and an entire squad of torpedo bombers dubbed Flight 19 disappeared without trace off the coast of Florida in, respectively, 1918 and 1945. Along with adding brief references to similar tragedies, including, tellingly, to two of the Cyclops’ sister ships, the grizzled storyteller—usually depicted in Toh’s melodramatic scenes with craggy features underlit for maximum atmosphere—offers strange coincidences and suggestive circumstantial evidence related to the episodes, as well as various theories that have been proposed to account for them, ranging from aliens and magnetic anomalies to innate design flaws that created vulnerabilities to unusual winds and waves, or even sabotage. Anyone wishing to make their own judgments will find plenty of maps and source citations, plus historical background on the whole notion of the Bermuda Triangle. Most figures in the art are light-skinned; Divya is brown-skinned, while Neal and the guide are tan-skinned.

Thrills and chills aplenty for fans of historical mysteries.