Mystery or fake news? Reality or legend? The story is about a passenger airliner that departed from New York on July 1, 1955, with 61 people on board, it unexpectedly disappeared from the radar. And then, according to some witnesses, it reappeared 37 years later at a Caracas airport.
In 1955, despite the large-scale search operations, it was not possible to find the crash site of the aircraft. Neither had any parts of the vehicle ever been found. Nothing at all.
No hope of finding the passengers and crew. An aspect that has left room for many questions and hypotheses.
Until the incredible happened.
Let me start from the beginning. In the end, I will reveal how it ended and share the moral. There is a lesson that I have deduced from this story that has made people talk amongst themselves.
WAS THE PLANE WAS SUCKED FROM SPACE, TIME, AND THE SEA?
The plane left New York in the morning, and everything went smoothly. The aircraft was a Douglas DC-4, one of those vehicles that had propellers and not turbines like today’s airplanes.
The flight was supposed to be in Florida three hours later, at 9.55, again on July 2, 1955.
But it never arrived. And it didn’t land anywhere else… until 37 years later!
But what happened? Here’s what we know…
When air traffic control contacted the New York tower, they got a puzzling response: Pan Am Flight 914 had disappeared from radar without a trace.
What happened? Why was the radar no longer intercepting the passenger flight?
“Everything indicated that the plane was lost. Air traffic control was unable to reach the pilots even by radio “.
Thus began the search. One of the theories was that Pan Am Flight 914 had crashed in the Atlantic Ocean.
A crash in which 61 people would have lost their lives. But it remained a hypothesis. Because certain evidence was never collected.
I can tell you that every time a plane crashes like this some remains are found. Whether it falls to the ground (and in this case, it would be very obvious) or if it falls into the water.
Even in the water, some remains of the plane would float to the surface and be found. In this case, nothing was found.
1 – The pilots had not sent maydays or requests for help via the radio. Total silence.
2 – No pieces of the plane were ever found.
It seemed to have disappeared into thin air. For years this story aroused curiosity and mystery.
When obvious answers and proofs are not found, everything became a mystery. It happens often. This is compared to many theories and hypotheses, sometimes even the stranger ones.
The fact is, however, that no theory explained with certainty what had happened to Pan Am flight 914.
The most probable theory remained that it fell in the Atlantic Ocean. Until the incredible happened that turned this story into one of the most bizarre and incredible stories I’ve ever heard.
THE CARACAS WITNESS: THE GHOST FLIGHT!
Let me get right to what was said to have happened 37 years later.
The description of the ’92 report, the testimony of an air traffic controller at Caracas airport, whose name was Juan de la Corte.
It was as quiet on his tower as every morning when a green dot appears on the radar, appearing out of nowhere. It shouldn’t have been there because there were no flights waiting to arrive. Suddenly…
The Pan Am 914 as it had disappeared was back. But Juan still didn’t know.
In less than 10 minutes, the McDonnell Douglas DC-4 showed up on the radar.
At first, it looked like a normal plane ready for landing (although none were planned).
“But then both Juan and the others realized that something was wrong: it was an antique plane. By now in the 90s they were all planes with turbines. And that one had propellers ”.
The control tower is contacted by the mysterious plane: “Where are we?”
The control tower asked the pilot to identify himself. The answer: “We are Pan Am Flight 914 en route from New York to Miami, Florida, with a crew of 4 and 57 passengers on board.”
At this point, the control tower personnel were stunned in silence.
What was a Pan Am flight doing 2,188 km from the destination? And how did it get there? The ground units were immediately called to help the plane and passengers. The plane managed to land without problems.
After recovering, Juan decided to ask the pilot a question that bothered him. “Do you know that today is September 9, 1992?”.
After a long silence, Juan heard the panicked pilot’s voice saying: “Jesus Christ Jimmy where are we? No! Stay away! Now, let’s go! ”
The second pilot waved his arms out of the window in terror, inadvertently dropping something. The pilot restarted the engines and, without waiting for the take-off, brought the plane to the runway and took off despite Juan trying to stop it.
For some time Pan Am Flight 914 could be seen in the air, but it soon vanished into thin air again. The pilot of the plane probably realized he was in some strange place, a “different world”, and in terror, he flew away.
THE TRUTH IS IN THE POWER OF MYSTERY
What happened that they were flying for 37 years? Where had they been?
Had he really landed at Caracas airport and then left?
Or is it just the result of a distorted version or a fake story?
It must be said that this story is very controversial. First of all, because the incredible story that happened in Caracas was reported by a tabloid called “Weekly World News”.
A newspaper that had already known the story of the plane that disappeared in 1985. Seven years before the alleged appearance.
Subsequently, the same tabloid published two other versions changing something (like the photo of Juan de la Corte) and adding some details.
The story has thus become an urban legend that no one denies or confirms and has as its only real witness a small calendar of 1955 that would have fallen from the plane when it landed and then left again.
But what happened to the passengers?
The witness from the control tower?
No other major newspaper reported his testimony. There is too little evidence to confirm what appears to have happened 37 years later.
Basically, the rest of the story is a tale of fantasy. An exaggerated word of mouth perhaps. Or a person that just wanted attention.
Or a reporter having fun.
There is no truth. No apparitions occurred 37 years later of Pan Am 914.
But why was all this narrative born around an event that happened many years ago?
I’ll be honest, in this case, there was really a Best Seller novel written on this story.
But what can we learn from this story? Certainly an interesting lesson.
“That is, the human being tends not to accept NON-ANSWERS. We are unable to accept the fact it is a MYSTERY: without explanations worthy of an answer ”.
What happens at this point: is where the guesswork begins. Assumptions are fine too, as long as they are rooted in reality.
Instead, the longer the mystery goes unsolved, the theories become more imaginative and incredibly daring.
But in everyday life, what does it mean?
Simple: when you don’t know the facts about a dispute with a friend, a work colleague, your boss, your partner, here’s what you need to do.
“Always look deeper into the information, ask questions, ask for more details. And if you haven’t found a certain answer, if you make any deductions or hypotheses, make sure they are as realistic and plausible as possible”.
Most likely, and unfortunately, Pan Am 914 is on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. And it is part of the tragedies that sometimes happen.
If you’ve enjoyed pondering the strange story of Pan Am 914, I have another mystery that might interest you.
Unfortunately, there is no doubt that this tale is all too true. On March 8th, 2014 Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 vanished from the skies without a trace with all 239 souls on board. The ensuing search was enormous.
Despite this, the plane has never been found… Some of the facts around this case are truly spooky. For example, the flight data that was logged before MH370 went dark continues to baffle experts.
To this day, almost ten years later, no one knows what happened. Theories range from the suicide of one of the pilots, to terrorism, and even to a mysterious hijacking by parties unknown.
The truth is, we might never know. When I heard about the tragedy of MH370, I had to learn more.