There are many mysterious places... Although the palm is among anomalous zones our planet rightfully belongs to the Bermuda Triangle, a small island of Palmyra, lost in the Pacific Ocean, can compete with it.
Palmyra is located about 1000 miles southeast of the Hawaiian Islands. This place seems to be a real paradise: untouched nature, lush tropical vegetation, lagoons and reefs in which life is in full swing ... And at the same time - a sense of trouble in the air ...
The history of Palmyra is a chain of tragic events. In 1798, the American ship Betsy, heading from America to Asia, swooped down on reefs near an island not marked on the maps. People who tried to swim to the island drowned or were eaten by sharks. Those who miraculously survived told later that in no case would they agree to return “to this damned land”. During the two months of their stay there, out of ten people, only three remained. The survivors claimed that everyone else was destroyed by the island, which in fact is a "living creature, a vile creature." Nevertheless, the location of the island was fixed on the map, and in 1802 it became known as Palmyra after the name of the ship that crashed off its coast.
In 1816, the Spanish caravel "Graduate", heading for Peru, fell into a terrible storm suddenly played out. Carried by the wind, she ran into the reefs and slowly began to sink. The storm died down immediately. The crew was taken on board by a passing Brazilian vessel. The captain of the "Graduates" carefully plotted the coordinates of all reefs on the map, but, sailing a year later in the same place, he did not find them.
In 1870 the American ship "Angel" disappeared off the coast of Palmyra. The corpses of the team members were later found on this island. They all died a violent death. But who killed them is unknown. Sailors today claim that Palmyra is a cursed place and it is better to bypass it. Mershan Marin, a passionate yachtsman and scientist, absolutely agrees with them. He believes that Palmyra has the aura of a living being, and it is very strong and undoubtedly black; but at the same time, the island attracts like a magnet or a powerful drug. Marin notes that Palmyra has a lot of oddities and mysteries. The weather there changes almost instantly. The nature is beautiful, but the magnificent lagoons are teeming with sharks, the fish are inedible, since the algae in these places emit special harmful substances. Many insects, including huge mosquitoes, as well as poisonous lizards, crabs and other unpleasant living creatures.
In 1940 the island was taken over by the United States. And during the Second World War, it was used by the American government to attack Japan. Joe Brow, one of the soldiers of the garrison located there during wartime, says that, having arrived in Palmyra, he considered himself lucky, since the place where he was supposed to serve looked like a real paradise. But the reality turned out to be far from so beautiful. “Everyone on the island was scared,” recalls Brau. - Some were afraid to approach the water, as it seemed to them that they would certainly be swallowed by sharks. Others assured that if they did not leave the island right now, something terrible would happen. There have been several mysterious suicides among the soldiers of the garrison. In addition, the island aroused an incomprehensible anger in people. The soldiers quarreled, there were fights and murders. ”One day an enemy plane was shot down over Palmyra, which began to smoke and, falling, disappeared behind the palm trees. The military tried to find the wreckage of the plane, but found nothing, although they searched the entire island. After the war, he again became uninhabited, but continued to attract seafarers.
In 1974, Trem Hughes and his wife Melanie went to Palmyra on their yacht. At first, Hughes kept in touch by radio with dispatchers in the Hawaiian Islands. Then the connection was cut, and the authorities decided to send a rescue boat in search of the missing yacht. She was soon discovered near Palmyra. But there were no people on it. A few days later, the bodies of the spouses were found in the sand near the water. They were dismembered and arranged in a special way. Who and why committed this crime is unknown.
Palmyra Island in the Pacific Ocean
In early 1990, the mysterious island was visited by amateur yachtsman Norman Sanders and three of his friends. “I didn't believe the rumors about the oddities happening on the island,” Sanders said later. - But I had to make sure on my own skin that Palmyra is one of the most mysterious places on Earth. We approached the island at night. I was not on deck, but immediately felt that we were close. A strange melancholy and loneliness seized me ... The sun rose, and a small crew gathered on the deck.
K0IR, K4UEE, K6MM, K9CT, K9NW, N2TU, N9TK, ND2T, W0GJ, W3OA, W8HC, WB9Z will be active from Palmyra Atoll (IOTA OC-085) 12 - 25 January 2016 as K5P.
They will operate on all HF Bands.
QSL OQRS, direct:
Palmyra DXpedition, PO Box 73, Elmwood, IL, 61529, USA.
DXCC Country - Palmyra and Jarvis Islands.
K5P News 18 January 2016 K9CT / KH5
We know that we are lagging behind in the number of scheduled connections on the 80m band and we have taken action to improve our signal.
For this occasion, we brought a mast from Spiderbeam.
We put it as close to the water as possible and tuned the wire antenna to the 80m CW section and added some counterweights as well.
Follow our activity tonight. We have already managed to make several connections with European stations, so this antenna is clearly performing better.
73 Craig K9CT / KH5
K5P News 18 January 2016
If you made contact with DXpedition K5P on 40 meters SSB on January 14 between 11.09 - 14.15 GMT, members of the expedition ask to rework the communications data, as they were conducted on frequencies not permitted for the region.
K5P News January 15, 2016
The antenna at 160 has been repaired and we will be active again on this range at sunset.
The SAL30 antenna is set to the low bands.
All antennas work well and are installed near the water. The passage is very interesting, a lot of signals with a characteristic echo and a long path.
We have an SVDA antenna pointing to Europe for 20m.
Good performance on 80, 40, 30 and 20m.
73 Craig K9CT / KH5.
K5P News January 12, 2016
K5P uploaded first logs to Club Log.
Palmyra atoll
Incorporated unorganized territory of the United States of America
Practically in the very center of the Pacific Ocean, a little south of the blessed Hawaiian Islands, there is a very small atoll, Palmyra, whose total area, according to geographers, is only twelve square kilometers. At the same time, its overland part occupies only less than four square kilometers, and the rest is the water surface.
Palmyra Atoll is, in fact, a certain number of islands concentrated in a very small area of \u200b\u200bthe ocean. In total, there are about fifty of them, and all of them are quite low, no more than two meters above the surface of the coastline. Today, Palmyra atoll is almost completely uninhabited: according to various statistics, from two to fifty people constantly live on it.
A brief history of Palmyra
When this atoll was formed, it is not yet reliably known, but historians have definitely established that it was completely uninhabited until, in 1798, a small research flotilla led by American captain Edmund Fanning stumbled upon it. This group of ships was on its way to Asia, and on the way its flagship, the ship "Betsy", was damaged. Thus, Palmyra became for Fanning and his companions that tiny piece of land to which they managed to moor and put the ship in order.
Palmyra Atoll did not arouse much interest among its discoverers, but in 1802, namely on November 7 of this year, the British landed on it. They did not colonize it, because they did not consider it necessary.
In the middle of the 19th century, Hawaii, as you know, did not yet belong to the United States, and King Kamehamea IV reigned supreme. He decided that Palmyra should become part of his state, and organized an expedition there. In mid-April 1862, it was crowned with success, but in 1889 the atoll was captured by Great Britain. This country did not possess Palmyra for long, and in 1898 it came under the jurisdiction of the United States, and in 1912 it began to belong to it administratively.
During the Second World War, this atoll was actively used by the US armed forces as an air base: seaplanes splashed down in its lagoons, passing there the maintenance, refueling, and replenishment of ammunition required for military operations against Japan. Copra was produced in small quantities on Palmyra until the middle of the 60s of the last century, and a little later it acquired its modern status.
Palmyra Atoll. Photo by Ethan Roth.
Nature and climate of Palmyra Atoll
Palmyra Atoll is of coral origin, and all the islands that make up it, rise very slightly above sea level. They are covered with rather dense shrub and grass vegetation, there are also small groves of balsa wood on them, the wood of which is extremely low density, very small in weight and, at the same time, quite high strength.
As for the fauna of Palmyra, it is not rich, and is represented mainly by several species of tropical birds that have formed their colonies there. The climate of the atoll is hot, equatorial, the average annual air temperature there is about +30 ° С.
Palmyra Atoll. Atoll International Airport :-). Photo by Ethan Roth.
What can you do in Palmyra?
Palmyra is not of particular interest to anyone yet. Only because there is absolutely no infrastructure on the islands of this atoll, with the exception of one single residential facility, in which (and even then not always) representatives of the American state live. You can visit Palmyra now only with special permission from the American authorities, and even then only for those foreigners who can prove the need for this (for example, professional activities in the field of nature conservation). In addition, radio amateurs have every chance to get to this atoll.
Palmyra is a killer island.
Palmyra Atoll has an area of \u200b\u200b12,000 m², located in the Pacific Ocean in its northern part, south of the Hawaiian Islands, at a distance of about 1000 miles. What is so remarkable about this small and uninhabited piece of land?
It is believed that along with the Bermuda Triangle, Palmyra Island is one of the most dangerous anomalous zones on Earth. This small piece of land from coral formations got its name after the shipwreck of the American ship "Palmyra" off its coast. This event took place on November 7, 1802.
Outwardly, the island looks very attractive. The coast of Palmyra is covered with fine white sand, and then lush and vibrant tropical vegetation begins. Those who have never heard the scary stories about this island would take it for a heavenly place.
The island of Palmyra has a completely incomprehensible and sinister properties. There, the weather can change almost instantly, in the picturesque lagoons there are many different types of fish, but they are all inedible in view of the fact that their meat contains poisons dangerous to human life. The reason for this is algae that grow in coastal waters and release toxic substances into the water. In addition, the water in the lagoons is literally teeming with bloodthirsty sharks from whose teeth more than one person died. Almost the majority of the island's fauna and many plants are poisonous. Another scourge of Palmyra is huge mosquitoes, the bites of which are very painful.
The first known victims of the ill-fated island were the crew of the American ship "Betsy" shipwrecked near the atoll. It happened in 1798. Most of the crew escaping from the wrecked ship drowned or were eaten by sharks. Of the ten crew members who managed to get to the island, only three people were able to wait for rescue. Those who survived unanimously insisted that their comrades were killed by the cursed island.
Another victim of Palmyra was the Spanish caravel "Esperanta" in 1816. A violent storm suddenly broke out near the atoll and threw the ship onto the reefs. After that, the storm stopped immediately. The crew escaped the sad fate of their predecessors. Since none of the people had time to get to the terrible island. The sailors from the Esperanta were picked up by a Brazilian ship passing by. The captain of the Esperanta managed to plot the reefs on which the ship threw on the map. But a year later, sailing past the island of Palmyra, he was surprised to find that the reefs in this place no longer exist.
In 1862, King Kamehameha IV, who ruled the Hawaiian Islands, annexed the island of Palmyra to his kingdom by his decree. And in 1898, the Hawaiian Islands, and with them Palmyra, came under the jurisdiction of the United States.
Meanwhile, the killer island demanded new victims. Another victim of Palmyra was the American brig "Angel" soon the corpses of the crew were found on the atoll. All people died a violent death. It is not known for certain what or who caused their mysterious death.
During the period when World War II was raging on the planet, a US military base was created on the territory of the island of Palmyra. The servicemen, who first came to the killer island, were initially happy that they would serve in such a beautiful and picturesque place. But the joy soon gave way to despair and a pathological desire to quickly leave the terrible place. One of the eyewitnesses who served at that time on the island of Palmyra, Private D. Brau, claimed that almost all the soldiers who served on the atoll were in a state of incomprehensible anxiety all the time, and some began to experience unreasonable fear. Some began to excitedly demand that they be immediately taken away from the island and claimed that they were threatened with imminent death, others were afraid to approach close to the coast, gently sloping that bloodthirsty sharks were waiting for them in the water. Sudden outbursts of aggression led to numerous fights and even murders. Several suicides occurred at the base. There was a case when a damaged Japanese plane fell on the killer island. Searches were conducted on the island and, although the island is very tiny, only 12 square kilometers, and many garrison servicemen were eyewitnesses of the plane's fall, no traces of the plane's fall were found. After the end of the war, due to the negative events taking place on the island, it was decided to close the military base and take out all the people.
However, the island's thin glory does not stop adventurers from trying to penetrate its secret. In 1974, amateur traveler Trem Hages, together with his wife Melanie, decided to visit the killer island to try to solve its mystery themselves. For this purpose, they used their own yacht. The spouses maintained constant radio contact with the dispatch service in the Hawaiian Islands, but when they reached the water area of \u200b\u200bthe atoll, the connection was suddenly cut off. For some time, the dispatcher tried to restore radio communication with the travelers, but this did not give results, a search group was sent to the killer island. The yacht was discovered near the atoll, but rescuers did not find the spouses on board. The search began on the island, which lasted for several days. The dismembered bodies of a man and a woman were found buried in the sand in a certain sequence, which gave rise to the assumption that some kind of ritual was performed on them. A thorough investigation and detailed searches were carried out throughout the island, but this did not give any result. Who could kill the spouses on a desert island and perform a savage ritual over them is unknown.
For a thorough study of Palmyra in 1990, an expedition led by Norman Sanders went to explore the killer island. The scientist was skeptical about those ominous rumors that circulated about the mysterious island, but soon became convinced that they were largely confirmed. Now Sanders believes that the atoll is fraught with many mysteries. Feelings of anxiety, melancholy and even fear appeared in people when they approached the mysterious island. The researchers were able to hold out on the island for less than a month, but it was originally planned to spend much more time there. Sanders is forced to admit that people from his team began to behave in many ways inappropriate, there was an incomprehensible irritation of everyone to everyone, and many of his friends turned into enemies.
On the island, most of the instruments at the disposal of the expedition began to malfunction or stopped working altogether. But the most surprising and inexplicable awaited people after the voyage. They were surprised to find that they had returned on April 24th, but according to their calculations it should have been April 25th. Where did the whole day go, and how they lagged behind the times, the explanation for this phenomenon was never found.
The French biologist M. Marin suggests that the island may be influenced by some living sinister entity with magical powers or strong bioenergetics. There are other opinions as well. One of the versions suggests that a portal to another dimension may exist on the killer island and all negative phenomena arise under its influence. It has been suggested that the island has been a refuge for an ancient magical sect or order and many others since ancient times.
Today a group of researchers is constantly working on the island of Palmyra. Scientists are trying to find answers to the mysteries of the killer island, but so far there has been no sensation.
There are still a huge number of places on our planet that keep many mysteries. Literally every piece of the Earth or part of the water keeps its anomalous secrets. Among the mystical zones beyond competition, of course, the Bermuda Triangle. But few people know that ...
Palmyra Island
About 1,000 nautical miles south of the Hawaiian Islands lies the medium-sized Palmyra Atoll (representative of the ring-shaped coral group of islands). I must say that in terms of the degree of anomalousness and mysticism of the events that took place on it, 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 got its name relatively recently, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after the American ship "Palmyra" sank off its coast on November 7, 1802.
The mystery of the island of Palmyra
The appearance of the island is beautiful: its coast is covered with delicate sand, and the atoll itself is literally wrapped in amazing tropical plants. It represents two serene, at first glance, Western and Eastern lagoons. They are separated from each other by a sand bar: however, it is visible only at low tide. It looks like a real paradise of unusual beauty, but these are only seeming impressions. In fact, it is, rather, not paradise, but its complete opposite: after all, Palmyra Atoll received a notoriety for the killer island.
Palmyra Atoll and its victims
The first victims the then unnamed atoll became the crew of the American sailing ship "Betsy", which sailed to Asia and wrecked near the island at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (this was the distant year 1798). Only ten sailors were able to reach the shore, the rest of the crew either drowned or were torn apart by sharks.
Of the ten people who sailed to the island, only three were able to live to see 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 accursed island and they all departed into the world in a strange, mysterious and terrible way: someone ripped open their stomachs ...
In 1816 another victim of the island of Palmyra was the Spanish ship "Esperanta", which crashed on the reefs near the atoll. The strange thing was that the storm flew in quite suddenly, and after the ship crashed, the storm immediately subsided.
The sailors from the Spanish ship were more fortunate than the Betsy's crew, as they were immediately picked up by a Brazilian sailboat. The mysticism was that when a year later the ship that rescued the sailors from Esperant again passed near Palmyra, the reefs that Esperant had crashed were no longer in sight.
However, the island demanded 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 were all with traces of violent death. It is still not known for certain what or who caused their death.
Palmyra stories
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 gave them the opportunity to serve in such a beautiful place. But this was only at the beginning, as the euphoria was soon replaced by an irresistible desire to leave the island.
For example, one of the soldiers said that during their stay on the island, absolutely all the servicemen experienced fear and causeless anxiety. It seemed to the military that someone was watching them. Perhaps for this reason, quarrels, fights and even murders arose between the soldiers. The obsessive desire to quickly leave the island did not leave the military for a minute.
According to the former military garrison located on the island in those years, almost all of them saw how one day a Japanese plane fell on the atoll. However, the search for him did not lead to anything: the pilot and the aircraft seemed to have sunk through the ground. After the end of the war, due to strange events on the island, the base was closed, and people were transferred to a new duty station.
There are no less mysterious and mystical cases 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, communication with them was constant and they reported on the 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, which is typical, both, like many previous victims of the island, also had their stomachs ripped open.
In 1990, a group of researchers arrived in Palmyra led by the famous traveler and explorer Norman Sanders, consisting of four people and eager to unravel the mystery of the mysterious island. The daredevils 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 row among themselves, and one of the group members even had suicide attempts.
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 they returned on the 24th, when in fact it was already the 25th. Of course, you can confuse 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 deceitfulness of this tropical paradise. The coastal waters here are teeming with sharks, the fish are inedible here, since algae near its shores emit substances that poison the water; and the weather on the island changes in the blink of an eye. But here's how to explain the murders and dismemberment of people? ..
Some researchers believe that there is a certain mystical bloodthirsty creature on the atoll, which turned out to be able to turn this paradise into a haven of horrors and nightmares, and random travelers who appear here into uncontrollable zombies and, ultimately, their victims.
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 ... (website)
What mysteries the island of Palmyra hides
But soon people realized that Palmyra is some kind of mystical predator, which itself has the mind of a killer, and its henchmen in the form of terrible sharks, poisonous lizards, numerous mosquitoes and so on keeps only in order not to leave a person, who got to the island, not a single chance to survive.
From the history of the island of Palmyra
It all began with the fact that in the distant 1798 the American ship "Betsy" landed on the reefs near this "paradise island". The people in the water were immediately attacked by bloodthirsty sharks, as if they were waiting for this feast. Later, survivors recalled that sea predators began to circle around the ship even before it was wrecked.
Ten lucky ones still managed to swim to the shore. And although the rescue ship soon sailed to the island, it picked up only three surviving members of the Betsy's crew, who told such horrors about this atoll that many did not even believe in their horror stories.
The mysterious island has been mapped and called Palmyra since 1802, when an American ship with that name sank near it. For a long time, navigators could not solve the mysteries of the island of Palmyra, and also for what reason 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 that crash, a storm suddenly began near the island, which carried their ship to the reefs. The crew of the Esperanta was picked up by a Brazilian ship that was following the trail, but the Spanish captain tried to plot the coordinates of the reef on the map so that no one would crash into them later. Imagine his surprise when a year later, swimming in this place, he did not find any reefs. However, more strange riddles remained unsolved.
The mysterious disappearance of the crew of an American ship on the island of Palmyra
In 1870, the American ship "Angel" was wrecked near Palmyra. True, what happened to him, no one knows for sure. The ship simply disappeared, and later the corpses of its crew were found on the island. Who or what killed the people remains unknown, since no one has ever lived on the atoll.
Our time has not clarified the mystery of the island of Palmyra
From the beginning of the twentieth century, the island of Palmyra officially became the possession of the United States. When World War II broke out, the Americans deployed 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 heaven. But the joy was premature. Within a few days, all the soldiers were seized with unreasonable fear. I wanted, wrote Bry, to leave this as soon as possible spooky place, otherwise something irreparable will happen to you. Everyone became nervous and angry, and fights broke out between the soldiers, which often ended in death. And suicides began to occur with terrifying frequency.
Once, Joe recalls, they shot down an enemy plane that fell on an island not far from them. But the soldiers could not find him, although they ransacked the entire atoll. After the war, the garrison left the mystical island, and it again became deserted.
And so in 1974, the married couple Melanie and Three Hughes decided to visit him, who went here on their expensive yacht. Perhaps the mysteries of the island haunted them .. For three days they told the dispatchers by radio that they were living on Palmyra and everything was in order. Then the connection ended. Rescuers who arrived here just a couple of days later found the very neatly dismembered bodies of the Hughes spouses, and their remains were buried in different parts of the atoll. At the same time, things and all jewelry remained untouched.
The last trip to explore this mysterious island was undertaken by the traveler and explorer Norman Sanders, who in 1990, together with three of the same daredevils, landed on the atoll, and this happened at night. According to Norman, they immediately felt fear and impending disaster. Researchers lasted only a week on Palmyra, although they planned to stay for two months. After a couple of days, they almost began to fight each other, and one of them even attempted suicide. At the same time, for some unknown reason, their on-board instruments began to junk, computers fail ... In general, the guys fled from this damn place on April 24, but when they arrived home, it turned out that in some mysterious way they had lost a whole day. Well at least they remained intact ...
At the end of the last century, the American authorities began to place radioactive waste on an uninhabited island, so those who want 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 creepy things about the island, for example, about the hordes of bloodthirsty rats that bred on the atoll. True, the military generally keep quiet, since a long language in their case 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 think of it as such, that is, an island with its strong and destructive aura that lures and kills travelers.
But the researcher Mershan Marin believes that there is some mysterious, very evil creature on the island that can control here not only the weather, reefs and even sharks, poisonous reptiles, like other aggressive animals, but also affects 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 in some way can change our reality and kill people.
