🧭 Vanished: Unexplained Mysteries from the Bermuda Triangle

🎄 A Holiday Outing Turns Bizarre

On December 22, 1967, Miami hotelier Dan Burack invited his friend Father Patrick Horgan to join him aboard his 23-foot luxury cabin cruiser named Witchcraft. The plan was simple: cruise out a short distance from Miami’s shoreline, enjoy the festive holiday lights from the water, and return within the hour. The weather was calm, skies were clear, and the sea barely stirred—a perfect night for a peaceful outing.

At approximately 9:00 PM, Burack radioed the Coast Guard. He calmly explained that something had struck the boat and that they needed a tow. He emphasized that there was no emergency—no one was hurt, and the vessel wasn’t sinking. The Witchcraft was equipped with life jackets, flares, emergency gear, and even had special flotation devices installed, making it practically unsinkable. The Coast Guard arrived within 19 minutes. They found nothing.

A Ghost Ship Without a Trace

The search was immediate and intensive. Dozens of boats and aircraft scanned the waters around the reported location, just one mile offshore. It should have been straightforward. With calm seas, good visibility, and a short response time, finding a 23-foot boat should have been easy.

But the Witchcraft had vanished entirely. No debris. No life vests. No oil slicks. No bodies. It was as though the boat and its passengers had never existed.

Theories in the Wake

The bizarre nature of the disappearance triggered a wave of speculation. How could a boat disappear in such a narrow window of time—especially one so well-equipped for survival?

Some suspected foul play, yet no evidence supported that theory. Others proposed a sudden underwater sinkhole or rogue wave, but the calm conditions contradicted those possibilities. There were no distress flares seen, and no emergency signals activated. The Witchcraft seemed to dissolve into the sea without leaving a ripple. More outlandish ideas soon emerged: an interdimensional portal, a case of spontaneous teleportation, or even alien abduction. The fact that Burack and Father Horgan were never seen again—despite such a short time window—only gave fuel to these wild suggestions.

🌀 A Pattern or a Fluke?

To skeptics, the Witchcraft incident was just another boating accident—an unfortunate event lost to the chaos of the ocean. But to those who study the Bermuda Triangle, the story fit a troubling pattern: vessels disappearing under ideal conditions, with no reasonable explanation.

The proximity to shore made this case especially chilling. This wasn’t a deep-sea voyage. They were less than two miles from one of the busiest coastal cities in the United States. It wasn't remote or risky. It was supposed to be safe.

Case Closed… or Filed Away?

Despite an exhaustive investigation and a sprawling search operation, the U.S. Coast Guard closed the case without answers. Officially, the disappearance of the Witchcraft remains unsolved. The case was quietly archived, but it never left public imagination.

To this day, no part of the Witchcraft has ever been recovered. No piece of evidence has surfaced to suggest what happened that night. It stands as one of the most unsettling vanishing acts ever recorded—because it didn’t happen in a storm or hundreds of miles from land. It happened in plain sight, right off the coast of Miami, under a clear winter sky.

🧭 Next in the Series

In Part 6, we’ll investigate the mysterious case of the USS Cyclops—a Navy cargo ship that disappeared in 1918 with over 300 men onboard. What could cause the largest non-combat loss of life in U.S. Navy history during peacetime?