The mysterious island of Palmyra. Palmyra Island in the Pacific Ocean: coordinates, area, photo, description The mysterious disappearance of the crew of an American ship on the island of Palmyra

02.07.2023

Palmyra Island... A paradise on Earth, or a killer monster?

At first glance, this is a beautiful place, almost an earthly paradise. Everything is here: beautiful landscapes,wonderful climate, magnificent nature, wonderful beaches, azure sea... But everything is so simple. What secrets does this island hide from us?

History of the island of Palmyra.

The history of this atoll island began when a tragic incident in 1798 helped to discover this atoll one and a half thousand kilometers south of the Hawaiian Islands, in the very center of the Pacific Ocean. The American ship Betsy hit the reefs here. The sharks devoured almost everyone on the ship. Only ten people made it to shore. Only three survived. And they talked about the mysterious death of the others.

The island was named Palmyra, put on maps and forgotten about this story. And four years later, another American ship called Palmyra sank here. Then there were the Spaniards. They mapped the underwater reefs so that there would be no more wrecks here. But after putting the reefs on the map, they could no longer be found.

During the Second World War, an American garrison was stationed on Palmyra Island. The soldiers said that after a few days on the island, people began to develop an uncontrollable fear of an unknown danger. It came down to suicides and fatal fights. The survivors were happy to leave this “paradise” island in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Subsequently, there were many who wanted to unravel the mystery of the island of Palmyra, but few survived. And those who remained talked about the same mysterious disappearances and violent (seemingly) deaths.

Palmyra is considered US territory. They even have coins with the image of the island (like our anniversary coins).

Today there are almost no people who want to visit this beautiful island. And visiting the island of Palmyra since 2011. permitted only with permission from the US Department of Conservation.

They say that the United States has begun transporting radioactive waste here. Many scary, sometimes fabulous, mystical stories continue to appear. But the mystery of the island still remains unsolved.

This atoll is located a thousand nautical miles from the Hawaiian Islands, so beloved by tourists. At first glance, the island looks like a piece of paradise, which seems to have everything for a happy and carefree life and relaxation: wonderful climate, magnificent nature, wonderful beaches, azure sea...

But soon people realized that Palmyra is some kind of mystical predator, which itself has the consciousness of a killer, and also keeps its henchmen in the form of terrible sharks, poisonous lizards, numerous mosquitoes, and so on, only in order not to leave it to humans. If you find yourself on an island, you don't have a chance to survive.

It all started when, back in 1798, the American ship Betsy landed on the reefs near this “paradise island.” People who found themselves in the water were immediately attacked by bloodthirsty sharks, as if they were waiting for this feast. Later, the survivors recalled that sea predators began to circle around the ship even before it crashed.

Ten lucky ones still managed to swim to the shore. And although a rescue ship soon sailed to the island, it picked up only three surviving members of the Betsy crew, who told such horrors about this atoll that many did not even believe in their horror stories.

The mysterious island was put on the map and began to be called Palmyra since 1802, when an American ship with that name sank near it. For a long time, sailors could not understand why ships crashed near this generally quiet place with a coastal bottom favorable for navigation. However, the Spanish caravel Esperanta, which crashed near Palmyra in 1816, clarified something. As the captain of the caravel described the wreck, a storm suddenly began not far from the island, which carried their ship onto the reefs. The crew of the Esperanta was picked up by a passing Brazilian ship, but the Spanish captain tried to put the coordinates of the reef on the map so that in the future no one would crash on them. Imagine his surprise when, a year later, sailing in this place, he did not find any reefs.

In 1870, the American ship Angel was wrecked near Palmyra. True, no one knows exactly what happened to him. The ship simply disappeared, and later the corpses of its crew were found on the island. Who or what killed the people remained unknown, since no one had ever lived on the atoll.

Our time has not cleared up the mystery of the island of Palmyra

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the island of Palmyra officially becomes a possession of the United States. When the Second World War began, the Americans stationed a military garrison here. As one of the soldiers of this unit, Joe Brow, wrote in his memoirs, at first they thought that they were very lucky - not a place, but just paradise. But the joy was premature. Within a few days, all the soldiers were seized with causeless fear. I wanted, Bry wrote, to leave this terrible place as quickly as possible, otherwise something irreparable would happen to you. Everyone became nervous and angry, and fights broke out between the soldiers every now and then, which often ended in death. And suicides began to occur with terrifying frequency.

One day, Joe recalls, they shot down an enemy plane, which crashed onto an island very close to them. But the soldiers could not find him, although they searched the entire atoll. After the war, the garrison left the mystical island, and it again became deserted.

And in 1974, the married couple Melanie and Trem Hughes decided to visit it, who went here on their expensive yacht. For three days they radioed to dispatchers that they lived on Palmyra and everything was fine with them. Then the connection stopped. Rescuers who arrived here just a couple of days later found the very carefully dismembered bodies of the Hughes couple, and their remains were buried at different ends of the atoll. At the same time, things and all jewelry remained untouched.

The last foray onto the mystical island in order to study this mysterious place was undertaken by the traveler and researcher Norman Sanders, who in 1990, together with three other daredevils, landed on the atoll, and this happened at night. According to Norman, they immediately felt fear and impending disaster. The researchers lasted only a week on Palmyra, although they planned to stay for two months. Within a couple of days they almost began to fight with each other, and one of them even attempted suicide. At the same time, for some unknown reason, their on-board instruments began to malfunction, their computers began to fail... In general, the guys fled from this damn place on April 24, but when they arrived home, it turned out that they had somehow mysteriously lost an entire day. Well at least they remained intact...

At the end of the last century, the American authorities began to place radioactive waste on the uninhabited island, so those wishing to visit this terrible corner of the planet today can be counted on one hand. And the military themselves, who bring deadly waste here, sometimes tell terrible things about the island, for example, about hordes of bloodthirsty rats that have bred on the atoll. True, the military mostly keep silent, since speaking too loudly in their business can result in dismissal from service, or even worse...

Attempts to explain the mysteries of the mystical island

Palmyra Atoll is very similar to a living monster, so many researchers tend to consider it as such, that is, an island with its own strong and destructive aura that lures and kills travelers.

But researcher Mershan Marin believes that there is some mysterious, very evil creature on the island that can control not only the weather, reefs and even sharks, poisonous reptiles, as well as other aggressive living creatures, but also influences the consciousness of people, making their uncontrollable zombies.

Another version is a portal to another, very scary world for us. It is from there that all the evil spirits break through here, which can somehow change our reality and kill people.

There are still a huge number of places on our planet that hold many mysteries. Literally every piece of Earth or part of water keeps its anomalous secrets. Among the mystical zones, the Bermuda Triangle is, of course, unrivaled. But few people know that...

Palmyra Island

About a thousand nautical miles south of the Hawaiian Islands is the medium-sized Palmyra Atoll (a representative of a ring-shaped coral group of islands). It must be said that in terms of the degree of anomalousness and mysticism of the events that took place there, it is not much inferior to its famous brothers - the islands of the Bermuda Triangle.

This atoll (Palmyra Atoll) has long belonged to the Line Islands group, and received its name relatively recently, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after the American ship Palmyra perished off its shores on November 7, 1802.

The mystery of Palmyra Island

The appearance of the island is beautiful: its coast is covered with delicate sand, and the atoll itself is literally shrouded in amazing tropical plants. It consists of two serene, at first glance, Western and Eastern lagoons. They are separated from each other by a sand spit: however, it is visible only at low tide. In appearance, this is a real paradise of unusual beauty, but these are only apparent impressions. In fact, this is rather not paradise, but its complete opposite: after all, Palmyra Atoll has received the notoriety of the killer island.

Palmyra Atoll and its victims

The first victims The then unnamed atoll became the crew of the American sailing ship Betsy, sailing to Asia and wrecked near the island at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (this was back in 1798). Only ten sailors were able to reach the shore; the rest of the crew either drowned or were torn to pieces by sharks.

Of the ten people who swam to the island, only three were able to survive to their real salvation - when they were picked up by a passing ship. When they were rescued, everyone, as one, repeated that the rest of the sailors were killed by the cursed island and they all passed away to another world in a strange, mysterious and terrible way: someone ripped open their stomachs...

In 1816, another victim of the island of Palmyra became the Spanish ship Esperanta, which crashed on the reefs near the atoll. The strange thing was that the storm came completely suddenly, and after the ship crashed, the storm immediately subsided.

The sailors from the Spanish ship were luckier than the crew of the Betsy, as they were immediately picked up by a Brazilian sailing ship. The mysticism was that when a year later the ship that saved the sailors from the Esperanta again passed near Palmyra, the reefs on which the Esperanta crashed were no longer in sight.

However, the island required new victims, and this time it was the American brig Angel. After some time, the corpses of his sailors were found on the island and they all showed signs of violent death. It is still not known for certain what or who caused their death.

Stories of Palmyra

From 1943 to 1946 , during World War II, a small contingent of American troops was stationed on the island. At first, the soldiers were delighted with what they saw and were glad that fate had given them the opportunity to serve in such a wonderful place. But this was only at first, as the euphoria soon gave way to an irresistible desire to leave the island.

Thus, one of the soldiers said that during their stay on the island, absolutely all the military personnel experienced fear and causeless anxiety. The soldiers felt as if someone was watching them. Perhaps for this reason, quarrels, fights and even murders arose between soldiers. The obsessive desire to quickly leave the island did not leave the military for a minute.

According to former military personnel of the garrison located on the island in those years, almost all of them saw how a Japanese plane once fell on the atoll. However, the search for him did not lead to anything: the pilot and the aircraft seemed to have fallen through the ground. After the end of the war, due to strange events on the island, the base was closed, and the people were transferred to a new duty station.

No less mysterious and mystical cases occur in the modern history of the island of Palmyra. So, in 1974 The spouses Hughes, Thomas and Melanie arrived on the island on a yacht.

For several days there was constant communication with them and they reported by radio that everything was fine with them. But already on the third day, the Hughes couple stopped communicating. Rescuers who arrived a few days later found the bodies of the spouses buried in different places, dismembered, and, characteristically, both, like many of the island’s previous victims, also had their stomachs ripped open.

In 1990, a group of researchers arrived in Palmyra under the leadership of the famous traveler and explorer Norman Sanders, consisting of four people and eager to unravel the mystery of the mysterious island. The brave souls landed on the atoll at night and planned to stay on the island for at least a couple of months. But already on the third day of their stay here, they began to quarrel among themselves, and one of the group members even attempted suicide.

The researchers had no choice but to leave this ominous place. It was also strange that after returning home it turned out that people were lost in time for a whole day! They believed that they returned on the 24th, although in fact it was already the 25th. It is, of course, possible to mix up the numbers if you stay away from civilization for a very long time, but in three days, and with four men at once, this is hardly possible.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century a group of scientists visited the island, which, in turn, also became convinced of the deceptiveness of this tropical paradise. The coastal waters here are teeming with sharks, the fish here are inedible, since the algae near its shores release substances that poison the water; and the weather on the island changes in the blink of an eye. But how to explain the murders and dismemberment of people?..

Some researchers believe that there is a certain mystical bloodthirsty creature on the atoll, which is capable of turning this paradise into a haven of horror and nightmare, and the random travelers who appear here into uncontrollable zombies and, ultimately, their victims.

What mysteries does the island of Palmyra hide?

But soon people realized that Palmyra is some kind of mystical predator, which itself has the consciousness of a killer, and also keeps its henchmen in the form of terrible sharks, poisonous lizards, numerous mosquitoes, and so on, only so as not to leave it to humans. If you find yourself on an island, you don't have a chance to survive.

From the history of the island of Palmyra

The mysterious island was put on the map and began to be called Palmyra since 1802, when an American ship with that name sank near it. For a long time, sailors could not unravel the mysteries of the island of Palmyra, and also why ships crashed near this, in general, quiet place with a coastal bottom favorable for navigation. However, the Spanish caravel Esperanta, which crashed near Palmyra in 1816, clarified something. As the captain of the caravel described the wreck, a storm suddenly began not far from the island, which carried their ship onto the reefs. The crew of the Esperanta was picked up by a passing Brazilian ship, but the Spanish captain tried to put the coordinates of the reef on the map so that in the future no one would crash on them. Imagine his surprise when, a year later, sailing in this place, he did not find any reefs. However, stranger mysteries remained unsolved.

The mysterious disappearance of the crew of an American ship on the island of Palmyra

Our time has not cleared up the mystery of the island of Palmyra

And in 1974, the married couple Melanie and Trem Hughes decided to visit it, who went here on their expensive yacht. Perhaps the mysteries of the island haunted them. For three days they radioed to dispatchers that they lived on Palmyra and everything was fine with them. Then the connection stopped. Rescuers who arrived here just a couple of days later found the very carefully dismembered bodies of the Hughes couple, and their remains were buried at different ends of the atoll. At the same time, things and all jewelry remained untouched.

The last foray to explore this mysterious island was made by traveler and explorer Norman Sanders, who in 1990, together with three other daredevils, landed on the atoll, and this happened at night. According to Norman, they immediately felt fear and impending disaster. The researchers lasted only a week on Palmyra, although they planned to stay for two months. Within a couple of days they almost began to fight with each other, and one of them even attempted suicide. At the same time, for some unknown reason, their on-board instruments began to malfunction, their computers began to fail... In general, the guys fled from this damn place on April 24, but when they arrived home, it turned out that they had somehow mysteriously lost an entire day. Well at least they remained intact...

At the end of the last century, the American authorities began to place radioactive waste on the uninhabited island, so those wishing to visit this terrible corner of the planet today can be counted on one hand. And the military themselves, who bring deadly waste here, sometimes tell mysterious, terrible things about the island, for example, about hordes of bloodthirsty rats that have bred on the atoll. True, the military mostly keep silent, since speaking too loudly in their business can result in dismissal from service, or even worse...

Attempts to explain the mysteries of the mystical island

Palmyra Atoll is very similar to a living monster, so many researchers tend to consider it as such, that is, an island with its own strong and destructive aura that lures and kills travelers.

Another version is a portal to another, very scary world for us. It is from there that all the evil spirits break through here, which can somehow change our reality and kill people.

There are many mysterious places on Earth. Although the Bermuda Triangle is rightfully considered the most famous among the anomalous zones of the Earth, the small Pacific island of Palmyra (Palmyra Atoll) can give it serious competition.

Palmyra Atoll is a small coral group of islands in the central Pacific Ocean, located approximately 1,200 kilometers south of Hawaii as part of the Line Archipelago. The relief of all the islands of the atoll is low and flat. Low sand dunes on the islands do not exceed a height of 1-2 meters above sea level. The coast of the islands is replete with both surface and underwater reefs.

The islands of the atoll are covered with fairly dense shrub and grass vegetation, coconut palms and small groves of balsa wood (up to 30 meters high), the wood of which is characterized by extremely low density, very small weight and, at the same time, quite high strength.

The atoll has two internal lagoons - Western and Eastern, which are separated from each other by a spit that rises above the ocean surface only during low tides. The seemingly serene lagoons are teeming with aggressive sharks and carnivorous fish of various sizes. There are many seabirds and green sea turtles that occupy the shores and reefs and sandbars that rise from the water during low tides.

Why is this island called mysterious? A whole chain of tragic events occurred in the history of Palmyra.

In 1798, the American ship Betsy, heading from America to Asia, struck reefs near the island. Most of the people who tried to swim to the island drowned or were eaten by sharks. The survivors said that they would never agree to return to this damned land again. During the two months that they were there, only three out of ten people survived. The survivors claimed that the island had killed everyone else.

A sunken ship near Palmyra Atoll (photo from loveopium.ru)

On November 7, 1802, the frigate of the American fleet USS Palmyra, under the command of Captain Sawle, was shipwrecked after colliding with the atoll reef. The surviving part of the brig's crew, having reached land, named the atoll after their ship.

In 1816, the Spanish caravel Esperanta struck the reefs of Palmyra. Her captain later assured that the storm that spun the ship began suddenly, against the backdrop of an absolutely clear sky and complete calm. And the wind died down exactly at the moment when the caravel received a hole. Fortunately, a Brazilian merchant ship passed by and saved the crew of the Esperanta. The Spanish captain carefully mapped the location of the reefs and the fairway, along which even a large ship could be navigated into the western lagoon of the atoll. But a year later, when he sailed in the same places, there was no longer a single underwater obstacle at the old coordinates. It is not surprising that the sailors soon called Palmyra a cursed place and tried to avoid it.

In 1870, the American brig Angel did not return from an expedition to the island. After some time, the remains of a shipwreck and the corpses of crew members were discovered on the shores of Palmyra. All of them reportedly died violent deaths, but who killed them is unknown. Sailors still claim that this island is a cursed place.

In 1940, the island was taken under US control. During World War II, the American government used it to attack Japan. Joe Brow, a soldier of the garrison located on the island, said that when he arrived there, he considered himself lucky, since the place looked like a real paradise. But soon his opinion changed dramatically. “Everyone on the island was scared,” Brau recalls. - “Some were afraid to approach the water, because it seemed to them that they would certainly be swallowed by sharks. Others claimed, hysterically, they demanded to leave the island, assuring that otherwise something terrible would happen. Several people committed suicide, and unmotivated outbursts of aggression were observed among the soldiers, which led to quarrels, fights and even murders.

An American plane from World War II in the bushes of Cooper Island (photo from airfields-freeman.com)

Hal Horton, a former naval officer who was stationed on Palmyra from 1942 to 1944, said the following: “One day one of our patrol planes crashed near the island. We searched long and hard for it, but didn’t even find a bolt or piece of metal. It was strange and amazing. On another occasion, the plane left the runway, climbed about 60 meters and turned in the wrong direction. The plane was supposed to fly north, but instead it flew south. The day was clear. We couldn't understand anything. There were two people on board whom we never saw again. We had very bad luck on this island. Experienced sailors called him damned. One day we heard the sound of a plane above us, looking for us, but it crashed into the water before it found the runway. We didn't get to the guy in time. The sharks discovered him first.”

After the war, the mysterious island again became uninhabited, but continued to attract sailors.

In 1974, two people were killed while sailing on a yacht in Palmyra. According to testimony at the ensuing trial, Malcolm Graham and Eleanor Graham of San Diego were killed, possibly because of their expensive sailing ship, the Sea Wind, and its food supplies by ex-convicts who had settled on the island. The motives for this wild crime and who committed it remained unknown.

In 1980, the remains of Eleanor Graham were discovered by another yachting couple, Sharon and Robert Jordan. Walking along the beach, Sharon found a skull and bones that had apparently fallen from a World War II metal box that had washed ashore. It is amazing that Sharon was in this particular place and at this time, since the next low tide would have carried the bones back to the sea forever. It is believed that Eleanor Graham was either shot or bludgeoned, burned with an acetylene torch, dismembered and her remains placed in a small metal container taken from an old military rescue boat on the island, which was then sunk in the lagoon. Malcolm Graham's body was never found.

In early 1990, Norman Sanders and his team visited the mysterious island. He later recalled: “I did not believe the rumors about what was happening on the island. However, I had to convince myself from my own experience that Palmyra is one of the most mysterious places on earth. We approached the island at night. Although I was not on deck, I immediately felt that we were close. A strange melancholy and loneliness overwhelmed me. It was a magnificent day - blue ocean, blue sky and gentle sun. However, according to some members of the team, the mood was such that they wanted to throw themselves overboard.”

People stayed on the island for about a month, although at first they expected to spend much more time there. According to Sanders, during their stay on the island, people turned from friends into bitter enemies. Devices on the mysterious island often failed or did not work at all. Returning from the voyage, all crew members discovered that they were behind the times. In reality, they returned on April 24, although according to their calculations it was the 25th. The expedition members' watches were running absolutely normally and did not stop. Where the whole day went remains a mystery.

Palmyra Atoll. Photo by Ethan Roth

Currently, all the islands of Palmyra Atoll are uninhabited. On Cooper Island alone, from 5 to 25 people are constantly stationed from among employees of various US government agencies, researchers, representatives of the Nature Conservation Organization and the military. They typically live for a short period on a rotating basis in an erected semi-temporary barracks that is located close to a World War II airstrip. The entire infrastructure of Cooper Island, built during the war - the runway, roads, temporary piers in the Western Lagoon, nuclear testing monitoring posts - are now abandoned and completely unusable.