DISAPPEARED: The Carroll A. Deering

In 1921, Carroll A. Deering, a five-mastered schooner, was found run aground off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. While the ship was completely abandoned with no sign of the crew – there were other eerier signs something bizarre had happened. Theories about the crew's fate involved everything from piracy, to mutiny, to falling victim to the Bermuda Triangle.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  When life gets hard, I stop and think about how easy we have it these days. Not only do we have infinite knowledge at our fingertips, we can order any food we're craving to arrive at our doorstep within an hour. Need a dress for the weekend? It'll be here by tomorrow afternoon. But the one that I really take for granted is the ease that comes with travel nowadays. You can literally log on, book a flight anywhere in the world, and be on a plane by midnight. Pretty darn incredible, right? Especially because 100 years ago, traveling across the world on the fly was inconceivable. If you needed some imported goods or passage from one continent to another, chances were

• 0:47Speaker 00

  you needed a boat. You had to plan, prep, and hunker down for a long journey with countless dangers to stress about. I mean, if you think you have anxiety through TSA, I can promise you, there was no pre-check in the early 1900s. Even making it to your destination was a total crapshoot. But you figure, if the boat gets there in one piece, there's a good chance you will too. That is, unless you were aboard the Carol A. Deering. When this commercial ship arrived on the shores of North Carolina in 1921, it was in pretty good shape.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  But every single member aboard the vessel was missing, without any concrete indication of where they'd gone. Was it pirates? Mutiny? Or were there other dangers lurking at sea that haven't even been discovered yet? This is a mystery that still prevails to this day. And by the end of this episode, I think you'll be more than happy to spend that 30 minutes going through airport security. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is So Supernatural.

• 2:16Rasha Pecoraro?

  Welcome back to another episode of So Supernatural. I'm Rasha Pecoraro.

• 2:21Yvette Gentile?

  And I'm Yvette Gentile.

• 2:23Rasha Pecoraro?

  And today, we're covering a real-life ghost ship. In 1921, the crew of the Carol A. Deering disappeared from a routine pole hauling trip in the Atlantic Ocean. But when rescuers found their vessel, it was fully intact and empty.

• 2:40Yvette Gentile?

  Nobody knows if the missing sailors abandoned ship, got kidnapped, or suffered some sort of mutiny. But some people think their disappearance might be due to more supernatural reasons.

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• 3:33Rasha Pecoraro?

  Look, when I make plans with someone, I expect them to show up unless they cancel ahead of time. I'm totally fine if they cancel ahead of time. I'm like, sure, I'll go back to bed, no biggie. But them not showing up at all, that isn't cool, in my humble opinion.

• 3:50Yvette Gentile?

  Yeah, totally not cool. I mean, most of us have been in this situation before. You're in a waiting area at a restaurant, or a movie theater lobby, or a coffee shop. You're constantly checking the time, then you're checking your emails, you're checking your texts, you're going through all the things, rereading old threads and asking yourself, "Did I get the date wrong, or am I at the wrong place?"

• 4:13Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah, and I, for one, am always on time, if not early. And if you're like me, then you're probably sending increasingly panicked messages like, "Where are you? And are we still on? Are you okay?" Of course, it's frustrating for someone else to ghost you. But if you're a worrier like I am, then your anxiety can start running wild, too.

• 4:34Yvette Gentile?

  And you know me, I am the exact same way. You start wondering, what if your friend isn't just being flaky? I mean, we know some of those people, right, Raj, who are flaky?

• 4:44Rasha Pecoraro?

  We do.

• 4:45Yvette Gentile?

  But then you think, what if they got into a car accident or had a family emergency? I mean, it doesn't take a lot for our mind to just go to the worst-case scenario.

• 4:55Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, let's take that feeling and multiply it by 12. That's when you get today's story, when 12 men who were on their way home failed to reach their destination and were never seen again.

• 5:12Rasha Pecoraro?

  It's January 31, 1921. A U.S. Coast Guard ship is doing a routine patrol in Cape Hatteras in the body of water just off Hatteras Island in North Carolina. Even though the island is known to be a peaceful fishing spot, it does get hit regularly by hurricanes and storms. So for context, the area had to be evacuated during a hurricane in 2020.

• 5:36Yvette Gentile?

  Yeah, so interesting fact, because of all the shipwrecks that have happened here over the centuries, this region is actually called the graveyard of the Atlantic. And that's why the Coast Guard is so active along this stretch of the shore. And that's even true today in 2025.

• 5:53Rasha Pecoraro?

  That January morning around 6:00 a.m., the Coast Guard sees a schooner in the distance. That's the word for a sailboat or a ship with two or more masts. So they're usually a decent-sized vessel. While the Coast Guard can't make out the name on the side of the ship, they can tell that it's run aground. It's clearly in distress.

• 6:13Yvette Gentile?

  Now, to be clear, when we say the ship has run aground, that doesn't mean it was on the mainland. Cape Hatteras is surrounded by shallow underwater sandbars called the diamond shoals. It's kind of like if you ever swim out far enough and find yourself suddenly able to stand, that's probably because you've reached a sandbar. And Russia, we know all about sandbars, especially growing up in Hawaii, right?

• 6:37Rasha Pecoraro?

  Right. They're absolutely beautiful. And it's so ironic because you can stand, it's like you're standing in the middle of an ocean when you're on a sandbar. It's pretty cool. But this particular boat is practically stuck in the sandbar. It can't get out. And to make matters worse, the sea is pretty choppy that day. A storm is brewing. But around 10 a.m., the Coast Guard workers figure they've got to do something before the weather gets a lot worse. So they launch a few small rescue boats who row out to the ship. But the wind and the waves keep driving them back to shore. It takes a full hour and a half until about 11:30 a.m.

• 7:18Rasha Pecoraro?

  for anyone to get close enough to the wrecked ship to see something worthwhile. Here's what they notice. First, the lifeboats on the schooner are gone, and so is the crew.

• 7:31Yvette Gentile?

  At least the crew seems to be missing. And it's hard to say for sure because the Coast Guard still can't get close enough to make their way onboard. If anyone's hunkered down below deck, they won't know until they actually get onto the ship.

• 7:45Rasha Pecoraro?

  And frankly, that's impossible. The more time they spend trying to row out to the schooner, the worse the seas get. Fate is not on their side. Now, if the Coast Guard could tell for sure there was someone onboard the vessel, say if they'd spotted someone on the deck waving and yelling for help, they might keep trying to rescue them. But since they don't see any people or lifeboats onboard, they assume, quite reasonably, that the crew might have abandoned ship. It doesn't make sense to keep risking their lives to reach an empty wreck, right? So they call off the rescue attempts for the day. They tell themselves they'll try again once the weather is better and the seas are calmer.

• 8:25Yvette Gentile?

  Except the water isn't any better by the next day, and the Coast Guard still can't get to the schooner. So they bring in the big guns. There's a ship called the Seminole docked down the coast. So some officials send it a telegram asking it to stop by the shoals and help the grounded vessel. If nothing else, hopefully the Seminole can figure out what the schooner is, where it came from, and how it ended up there.

• 8:52Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, the captain gets his marching orders at 10:30 a.m. on February 1st. He takes about a day to arrive at Cape Hatteras and starts looking around. Now, he and the crew only see one other ship in the area, but the captain's confident that it's not the wreck they were sent out to find. It's also a schooner, but it's in such great condition, they figure it can't be the one they were sent to help with. It has to be some other one. So he keeps sailing, looking for an actual shipwreck. Finally, he reports to the Coast Guard that he can't find this in-nistress schooner. When he mentions the one he did see, the one that's in perfect condition, his contact is like, "Uh, yeah, that's the one you were supposed to rescue."

• 9:35Yvette Gentile?

  Unfortunately, by the time this is all sorted out, the weather has gotten worse, and it's not safe for the Seminole and its crew to backtrack. So once again, the abandoned ship is out of luck. But let me tell you why this is so strange. Sailors don't abandon perfectly functional, well-operating ships and leave them to run aground. If the Seminole's captain can't even tell what's wrong with this thing, then you really have to wonder, how did it end up here?

• 10:07Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, almost a week goes by before the water is calm enough to try again. The good news is that the rescuers don't need to worry about the schooner getting swept off into the sea. It's buried deep in the shoals, so it's really stuck. But during that week, the Coast Guard finds new information that makes this weird situation even weirder.

• 10:27Rasha Pecoraro?

  The higher-ups check around to see if anyone in the area sent out a distress signal recently. Because you'd think if the crew really did escape on the lifeboats, someone would have reported what was going on before the evacuation. Only, there's no record of any kind of mayday or SOS call from the past week. And of course, if the crew did leave the ship in those rowboats, they would have ended up somewhere. But there's no sign on land of any new shipwreck or survivors, nor have any bodies washed ashore. It's like the sailors and their lifeboats both just vanished.

• 11:03Yvette Gentile?

  So Rush, I don't know if you've watched this show on Netflix. It's called 1899.

• 11:08Rasha Pecoraro?

  I haven't yet.

• 11:09Yvette Gentile?

  Well, Gino and I have watched it, and it is so similar to this story. It is so eerily real in what is happening that it makes your mind think it has to be supernatural. So with all that being said, let's just jump back into the story. So the Coast Guard is hopeful they'll be able to answer all their questions once they get on board and look around. And sure enough, at 8:30 a.m. on February 4th, the seas calmed down enough for them to send out a crew. They take a small boat, literally called "The Rescue." And this time, they get close enough to finally identify the schooner.

• 11:54Yvette Gentile?

  And the name painted on the side reads "Carol A. Deering." It's an American coal hauling schooner. The ship is owned by a main base business, the G.G. Deering Company, and the boat is named after the owner's son, Carol. The Deering is supposed to be making a routine run from Brazil to Virginia. It has a small crew of just 11 or 12 men. And less than a month ago in January, it made its last stop in Barbados. So it totally makes sense for the Carol A. Deering to be in Cape Hatteras, because it's on its way to Virginia after dropping off that coal in Brazil. But it's less clear how it ended up abandoned and crashed in the shoals.

• 12:40Yvette Gentile?

  Eventually, the rescue crew manages to board the deering. And it's just like what those other teams said earlier. The lifeboats are missing and there's nobody on board. But even though the rescue doesn't find any survivors, what they do discover is even creepier. Food, like a whole lot of it, sitting out on plates half eaten and dirty dishes still on the stove. It's starting to look like, somehow, some way, the crew might have just vanished mid-meal. As if they were there one second, but gone the next.

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• 13:53Yvette Gentile?

  On February 4th, 1921, the Coast Guard searches the Carroll A deering, an American coal hauling schooner that's owned by the G.G. Deering Company. The first thing they confirm is that the deering is, in fact, abandoned. There's no one on board, no lifeboats. But there's one very strange detail that makes them think, these guys must have left in a frickin' hurry. There's food sitting out in pots and pans on the stove. There's ribs, there's pea soup, coffee. And even stranger, in some reports, the crew of the rescue noticed that the stove was still warm.

• 14:34Yvette Gentile?

  So something had to have happened so quickly to get them off that boat that they weren't even worried about it burning down.

• 14:43Rasha Pecoraro?

  But here's where it gets super weird. All of the other rooms on the ship suggest something else. Because get this, the rescuers can't find anyone's personal possessions onboard. It actually looks like the crew took their time packing up their things. Because it's all very orderly and organized. So it doesn't seem like they left in a rush. Which completely contradicts what rescuers found in the kitchen. And while the Deering crew left their poor little kittens behind, do you know what they did manage to take with them? Literally, all of their navigational equipment. I'm talking maps, charts, and other different tools.

• 15:24Rasha Pecoraro?

  Everything that sailors use to measure angles and do complicated math to work out their location. But this is actually a good sign. It suggests that when the crew abandoned ship, they were being thoughtful about it. Presumably, someone brought this equipment into their lifeboats so they'd be able to safely make their way back to shore.

• 15:44Yvette Gentile?

  But that still doesn't explain where they actually ended up. Or why the crew of the Carroll A Deering abandoned ship.

• 15:52Rasha Pecoraro?

  And eventually, the Coast Guard learns there was an eyewitness. The ship was actually sighted at sea about two days before it ran aground. And the details of that encounter frankly lead to more questions than answers. On January 29, the Deering was about 100 miles south of Cape Patteras. They were in another part of North Carolina called Cape Lookout. And that's when they sailed by a Cape Lookout lightship.

• 16:20Yvette Gentile?

  And we can think of a lightship like a mobile lighthouse. They sail around in areas where it's not practical to build an actual lighthouse. And they light up in dangerous or choppy waters for other boats to see.

• 16:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  Exactly. So the Deering and the lightship passed pretty close by one another that day. Close enough that the crew of the lightship could actually see what was happening on the decks of the Carroll A Deering. And what they spotted was a bit concerning. The crew of 11 or 12 should have been busy with all sorts of tasks. Steering, adjusting the sails, cleaning and fixing equipment, the list goes on. After all, the Deering was a big ship. The largest one their company owned. And the crew was tiny. But to all appearances, the people on board the Deering were just kind of hanging out. They were lounging around, not working. Only one of the men seemed interested in doing anything at all.

• 17:17Rasha Pecoraro?

  He picked up a megaphone and started shouting at the lightship crew. He spoke in broken English and he had a very strong accent. The folks on the lightship thought he sounded Scandinavian, but they weren't sure. They were pretty confident, though, that the captain, or any high-ranking officer, would speak in proper English. Because again, this was an American ship, presumably with American officers. So they assumed this was a random crewman.

• 17:45Rasha Pecoraro?

  Still, the mystery man with the megaphone told them they had just sailed through a storm. The ship was intact, but they'd lost both of their anchors, and apparently, their radio too. So the man just wanted to notify his bosses at the Gigi Deering Company. He asked if someone on the lightship would contact the company and let them know they needed to get their anchors replaced. And while the crew of the lightship would have ordinarily helped the Deering, they couldn't that day. At least not at the moment. The lightship's radio was broken as well, so they couldn't call anyone on their behalf. Still, the Scandinavian man seemed unbothered. He was sort of like, "No worries, I'll find someone else to help. Have a nice day." Then, they each sailed their separate ways.

• 18:30Rasha Pecoraro?

  The lightship crew probably would have gone on to forget the whole interaction if the Deering hadn't turned up abandoned in Cape Hatteras two days later.

• 18:39Yvette Gentile?

  So while nobody can explain where the crew went, or why they left the schooner to run aground, everyone has some sort of theory. Rumors are flying in little fishing villages all up and down the coast. And journalists are publishing all kinds of speculation. Some folks suggest that the crew of the Carol A. Deering must have staged a mutiny. Maybe they killed the captain and then panicked when they realized that they'd be tried for murder as soon as they got back to shore. So rather than face the consequences, they fled the ship. I mean, okay, I know it sounds like something out of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but there's actually some pretty solid evidence to back this up.

• 19:21Rasha Pecoraro?

  First of all, when the crew of the rescue is searching the schooner, they find the captain's logbook. But the entries from January 23 onward are in a different handwriting than the ones before then, so it looks like someone new took over his duties around that time. There are also signs that someone other than the captain has been sleeping in his quarters. There's a spare bed there and it's unmade, like someone has been using it. It would be weird for the captain to use the spare bed rather than his own. But if someone had taken over the job, and I don't know if they felt weird about using the captain's bed, maybe they'd sleep in the spare? And earlier, you mentioned that a lot of navigational charts were missing.

• 20:06Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, the rescuers find some of them in the captain's personal bathroom. This is obviously not where they're supposed to be put away. But some folks think that if the official navigator took over the captain's job, he might have used the space for extra storage. And here's another piece of evidence to support the mutiny theory, which happened only about a month before the ship was abandoned. We mentioned earlier that the Carroll A. Deering stopped in Barbados to pick up supplies before sailing to Virginia by way of North Carolina. Well, during this pit stop, the Deering's captain, Willis Romell, struck up a conversation with a buddy of his at the port.

• 20:47Rasha Pecoraro?

  According to Captain Romell, his first mate, Charles B. McClellan, was a huge problem. Apparently, Charles drank too much. He was verbally abusive and nobody on the crew could stand him. Now, it might be easy to assume that Romell was just venting, except right as Captain Romell finished griping about Charles's temper, who would show up but Charles? Drunk out of his gourd, he was actually unruly enough to pick a fight with Captain Romell right there in public. Charles ranted in front of everyone that Romell was a micromanager who wouldn't leave him alone to do his job. Charles also said that Captain Romell was pretty bad at navigating the ship, so he was always having to step in and do his job for him.

• 21:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  Now, I don't know who is in the right there. If Captain Rommel was the problem, or if Charles was. I will note that both of them were pretty new to the ship. The usual captain and first mate had both left their positions the previous fall due to a sudden illness. So maybe both of them had issues? Who knows? I do know where the Barbados police were leaning, though. Because they arrested Charles that day. And at some point during this whole thing, Charles straight up threatened Captain Rommel. Multiple witnesses heard him announce, "I'll get the captain before we get to Norfolk. I will." For that, Charles ended up sitting in a jail cell for almost a full month until January 9.

• 22:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  And you might be thinking that Captain Rommel was totally relieved this guy was off his back. But he was actually the person who bailed Charles out of jail. This guy had threatened him, publicly insulted his work, and he certainly didn't help out with the supply run, since he was behind bars the whole time.

• 22:34Yvette Gentile?

  In spite of that, Rommel welcomed him back on board and sailed off into the sunset with him? So, it's easy to think maybe Charles goaded the rest of the crew into doing something to Captain Rommel? Or maybe, I don't know, both of them were badly hurt or even killed in some kind of shipwide battle?

• 22:53Rasha Pecoraro?

  That might explain the weird vibe on deck when they made contact with the light ship. And why their crew thought the Scandinavian man who spoke to them probably wasn't a high-ranking officer. But if the captain and first mate were both murdered in the mutiny, maybe that mystery man was the only person left to be in charge.

• 23:12Yvette Gentile?

  Okay, there are some issues with that theory, though. The biggest one being, how do you get from rebelling to abandoning the ship? Even if we assume that the crew was afraid to face justice, they could have covered up the crime, saying that Rommel and Charles died in, I don't know, accidents? Or some type of illness? Something must have happened between that conversation with the lightship and when they actually evacuated. But I'm not 100% convinced mutiny is the answer. I'm more inclined to believe this next theory, that possibly pirates may have taken control of the dering and then forced the crew to abandon ship.

• 23:56Yvette Gentile?

  I mean, even the newspapers at the time spoke of pirate attacks, especially after April of 1921. By then, it had been three months since the Carroll A. Deering ran ashore. That's when a man named Christopher Gray reportedly finds something on a North Carolina beach: a message in a bottle. The note inside is very short. It simply says, "Deering captured by oil-burning boat." Well, Christopher passes this message along to the authorities, and they launch a huge investigation. They assume the phrase "oil-burning boat" means a ship that runs on oil, rather than coal or sails. So they're searching all their records

• 24:41Yvette Gentile?

  for references to pirate ships with oil-burning engines. It would take five more months before investigators finally shared their conclusions and what they found through the entire investigation into a completely new light.

• 25:03Speaker 03

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• 25:07Speaker 04

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• 25:36Rasha Pecoraro?

  In 1921, a man named Christopher Gray found a mystery message in a bottle. He was a US Navy veteran, but by the time he found the bottle, he was working as a fisherman, though his dream was to be a lighthouse keeper.

• 25:50Yvette Gentile?

  Which is no surprise, because lighthouse keeping was a pretty cushy, high-profile gig back in the day. It came with a lot of respect. Plus, keepers had a lot of downtime to spend on hobbies like reading and fishing.

• 26:05Rasha Pecoraro?

  There was just one problem for Christopher, though. There weren't any openings at the local lighthouse. Christopher had talked to the folks in charge of hiring, and he just knew that he was qualified for the job if one ever opened up. But in the meantime, he was out of luck until someone else quit or got fired. Well, from the sound of it, Christopher wasn't willing to sit around and wait for a job to appear on its own. He decided it was time to take fate into his own hands and force someone out. He did this by setting up an elaborate hoax. He planted some fake evidence on a beach. It was a forged letter purportedly from a famous ghost ship. Yep, I'm talking about the message in a bottle about the Carol A. Deering,

• 26:50Rasha Pecoraro?

  the one that read, quote, "Deering captured by oil-burning boat." I'm not entirely following Christopher's logic here, but from what I can tell, he thought this letter would embarrass the local lighthouse keepers, like they missed this key piece of evidence that was right under their noses, but he found it. He hoped the lighthouse keepers would either be fired or so ashamed that they would quit. Then he could take their job. Again, weird, but desperate times, I guess. Rumor has it, it's actually Christopher's daughter who exposes the whole plot. She tips off the government investigators. Then they compare the handwriting in the note to some papers he filled out during his time with the Navy.

• 27:34Rasha Pecoraro?

  And wouldn't you know it, the samples are an exact match. It's obvious that Christopher forged the whole thing. So the investigators have all of this evidence. They ask Christopher if he can explain it away, and he can't. Instead, he confesses to fraud, meaning the only person who is publicly shamed by the whole debacle is Christopher himself.

• 27:58Yvette Gentile?

  Okay, so the whole message in a bottle was a hoax, but that doesn't mean the whole pirate theory is wrong. It's possible that the Deering really was captured, even if nobody wrote a secret note about it.

• 28:10Rasha Pecoraro?

  Except if pirates were going to steal a ship, I think they'd likely keep it. That was a big part of their MO and how pirates got ships in the first place, by capturing them. They wouldn't order everyone to row away and then just leave the ship there empty. Sort of defeats the purpose.

• 28:29Yvette Gentile?

  Unless they just wanted to steal everything on board, including the navigational equipment, which probably would have been worth a pretty penny back in the day. Pirates could also explain why everyone's possessions were taken, right? Meanwhile, the hot food was left behind.

• 28:47Rasha Pecoraro?

  Except if those men were forced out into rowboats, you'd imagine at least one or two of them would have made it to shore somewhere. And yet, none of them were ever seen or heard from again. All to say, there are a lot of grounded explanations for what might have happened to the crew of the Deering, but none of them really hold water. Pun intended. Which is why I think we have to start thinking a little more out of the box here. And there's one detail we haven't mentioned about the Carolay Deering yet. It might not be important, or it might be the key to the entire mystery. But here it is. During its final voyage,

• 29:28Rasha Pecoraro?

  the Deering passed through the Bermuda Triangle.

• 29:33Yvette Gentile?

  And we've all heard of the Bermuda Triangle. We've seen it in TV shows and movies. It stretches across a patch of ocean between Florida, Bermuda, and the island chain, where you'd find Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. But nobody's entirely sure where the exact boundaries of the triangle are. So it's hard to say precisely how big it is. It's anywhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million square miles. So at its smallest, that's a bit tinier than Alaska. And at its largest, that's bigger than the whole nation of India. Pretty big difference, I know. The reason the Bermuda Triangle

• 30:17Yvette Gentile?

  has such a spooky reputation is because a lot of vessels have gone missing there. I'm talking more than 50 ships and 20 airplanes just in the past 100 years or so. And when these craft disappear, many just tend to go, poof, gone without a trace. If search teams go looking for them, they almost never find any wreckage or any survivors. Sometimes the missing folks don't even send out a distress signal before they vanish. A lot like how the Carol A. Deering didn't send a distress signal before it was abandoned. And get ready for this, there are also multiple reports of people evacuating ships in the triangle

• 31:02Yvette Gentile?

  for no clear reason. There are multiple stories of passerby's finding a perfectly intact vessel floating along. Nothing wrong with it, but no one's on board. Exactly like what happened to Carol A. Deering.

• 31:19Rasha Pecoraro?

  It's true. Take this story from 1840. In mid or late August, a British trading vessel found a large ship called the Rosalie drifting in the triangle. Just like with the Deering, the Rosalie was completely intact. There was no sign of damage. The Rosalie was a French trading ship, and its goods were all accounted for on board. Meaning it wasn't taken in a pirate attack. Because if it was, they would have stolen the wine, silk, and fruit that was in the hold. And get this, the crew's animals were all also still on board the Rosalie. This included a very hungry cat and a few canaries. But the entire crew had vanished without a trace.

• 32:02Rasha Pecoraro?

  The French authorities launched a massive investigation, but they never found any sign of what happened to the missing sailors.

• 32:10Yvette Gentile?

  It's so eerily similar to what happened to the Carol A. Deering. But I don't want you to think this is sort of the thing that only happened in the 1800s and early 1900s. Because abandoned ships are still found in the Bermuda Triangle to this day.

• 32:27Yvette Gentile?

  See, on July 24, 2015, two 14-year-old boys decided to take a sailing trip together without any adults. Their names were Austin Stefano's and Perry Cohen. And we don't know their exact destination because they didn't ask for permission or tell anyone where they were headed. They just hopped on a boat that day and took off. They'd grown up together in Florida and they knew their way around the waters, or at least they thought they did.

• 32:55Rasha Pecoraro?

  Except the boys were never seen again. The following March, their empty sailboat was recovered in the Triangle. Austin's cellphone was in it along with other personal possessions. But to this day, no one knows exactly what happened to Austin and Perry. One popular theory was that the ship may have capsized just long enough for the boys to fall overboard and drown, but not long enough for the phone or the other items to get swept into the water, I guess.

• 33:25Yvette Gentile?

  And it's hard to say what's going on with any of these accounts. And that may be because nobody is entirely sure what makes the Bermuda Triangle so mysterious and dangerous. Although, we know there are a lot of theories, and they range from electromagnetic irregularities to bizarre, unexpected weather patterns. The Bermuda Triangle also has an unusually high amount of methane gas in its depths that can lead to unexpected waterspouts and eruptions, and also makes it easier for ships to get pulled under.

• 34:00Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, some people think UFOs are especially drawn to this region based on the fact that there are a ton of sightings in the Triangle. Others say there's ancient technology from the lost kingdom of Atlantis deep under the sea, and it causes weird disturbances. The point is, we don't know what makes the Bermuda Triangle the way it is. But whatever's at play, maybe it had something to do with whatever happened to the crew of the deering.

• 34:30Yvette Gentile?

  This reminds me of a story that I read about a man named Bruce Gernon, who flew through the Bermuda Triangle in 1970. The trip was supposed to last an hour and a half, but part of the way through, he flew through a cloud and everything went black, like someone had literally turned the sun off. His equipment also stopped working, and he tried to steer and adjust the controls, but his plane didn't respond to anything that he was doing. Then, just as suddenly, everything went back to normal. The sun was back, the sky was clear, and the airplane was functioning normally. Bruce might have shrugged it off if not for what happened next.

• 35:14Yvette Gentile?

  He reached his destination in Miami in record time. And I don't mean he landed, say, five or 10 minutes early. He made what should have been a 90-minute trip in 45 minutes. Bruce could only come up with one explanation. He must have teleported nearly 100 miles further into his route. Maybe something similar happened to the crew of the deering. Time travel, maybe, I don't know, but maybe they teleported as well, but their ship didn't go with them. It's possible they found themselves swimming in unfamiliar waters with no way back to shore.

• 35:57Rasha Pecoraro?

  Out of all the theories, this one just might be my favorite. But there's one giant problem with it. The light ship saw the Carroll A. Deering with the crew still onboard on January 29. At that point, they were sailing near Cape Lookout, which is in North Carolina. They were more than 700 miles north of the Bermuda Triangle, which means they probably didn't go missing there. All in all, we might never know what happened to the crew. But the story of the Carroll A. Deering? Well, that's one that's going to stick with us for a long time.

• 36:31Yvette Gentile?

  As for the actual ship, after the rescuers searched the wreck, they decided to destroy it. That was cheaper and more practical than trying to haul it to shore and fix the damage from the shoals, especially because it was buried 14 feet deep in the sand. So what did they do? They blew it up with dynamite. Some of the wreckage settled in the shallow waters just off the shore of North Carolina. And anyone who dived or sailed near the beach for the next 30 years could see the rotting planks just beneath the surface of the sea.

• 37:07Rasha Pecoraro?

  And there it was, a haunting reminder of one of life's uncomfortable truths. Because sometimes, even when an answer can seem so tantalizingly close, the solutions to some mysteries will always be just out of reach.

• 37:34Yvette Gentile?

  This is So Supernatural, an Audiochuck original, produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at @so supernaturalpod and visit our website at so supernaturalpodcast.com. We'll be back next week with an all-new episode from Miss Ashley.

• 37:55Yvette Gentile?

  So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

• 38:02Speaker 06

  I've been having a hard time trying to explain what Midnight Burger is. How about I let them give it a shot?

• 38:08Yvette Gentile?

  Your podcast is amazing.

• 38:09Speaker 07

  It's such an amazing show altogether. You guys have actively ruined all other audio dramas for me. You can't get people to understand the humaning that happens in this damn show. Keep doing what you're doing, because it's awesome. You might not think it, but you are far more important than you realize. Thank you.

• 38:24Speaker 06

  At the nexus of all things, there is a diner. Look for Midnight Burger on your favorite podcasting app, or just go to weopenat6.com.