No, this is not that Palmyra of legends and searches, and not even that Syrian Palmyra. 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 mind of a killer, and its henchmen in the form of creepy sharks, poisonous lizards, numerous mosquitoes and so on keeps only in order not to leave a person who gets to the island does not have a single chance to survive.
From the history of the island of Palmyra
It all started with the fact that in the distant 1798 the American ship "Betsy" sat 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, he 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.
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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 crash 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 on 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, Bry wrote, to leave this terrible place as quickly as possible, otherwise something irreparable will happen to you. Everyone became nervous and angry, fights broke out between the soldiers every now and then, 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 fine with them. Then the connection ended. Rescuers, who arrived here just a couple of days later, discovered the very carefully 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 the mystical island in order 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 sensed fear and impending disaster. The 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 fail, computers fail … In general, the guys fled from this damn place on April 24, but when they arrived home, it turned out that they had lost in some mysterious way 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 …