Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. Monday we learned just why The Triangle might be the strangest result of number fudging in history and on Wednesday we explored the Triangle’s connection to aliens.

It only seems appropriate that our hatch-battened voyage through the Bermuda Triangle should take us from the star-gazing visions of Steven Spielberg to the subaqueous dreams of James Cameron. Sure, “The Abyss” has nothing to do with Atlantis, but given the number of Triangle enthusiasts whose necks are cramped in all the opposite places of the upward-looking UFO seekers, the film seems like a good place to start. USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects), like the one that Ed Harris’ character hangs out in while assuring the aliens that humans do, in fact, remember how to love, make frequent appearances in Atlantean-themed conspiracy manifestos.

While you can find various reports from around the world of actual submarine crafts sighted tearing through the waves of this or that ocean (Japan’s Dragon’s Triangle, another of the certified-vile vortices, boasts a panty vending machine’s worth) most USO sightings seem to involve mysterious lights shining up from deep below the surface of the water. Over the years, tons of sea-faring busybodies have reported seeing these bizarre illuminations, both in motion and stationary, within the increasingly non-specific bounds of the Bermuda Triangle. Many sightings have come with the speculation that, below the Triangle’s waters, lay the ruined spires and crumbling streets of Atlantis, a long dead city where, prior to its cataclysmic destruction, a bunch of forgetful mermen left the lights on.

Of course, I’m joking –Atlantis obviously didn’t use the wasteful electric lights on which we primitive humans so desperately rely. They used giant crystals. Or so said Edgar Cayce, the late 19th/early 20th century American psychic who used his cosmic extra-sensory brain power to chug down a trough load of Atlantean revelation, which he then spat back out during a number of his “readings.” These “readings,” which began in 1901 and continued on for 40 years, always started with Cayce entering a dozy trance state, and ended in mystical predictions about everything from politics and business to ancient history and fallen empires, of which Atlantis seemed to be Cayce’s favorite.

A background on Atlantis and the one piece of hard proof that might have proved the whole theory correct…

Quick background on Atlantis – the civilization was first mentioned by the Greek writer Plato, who portrayed the Poseidon-worshipping island nation as a powerful naval empire that was swallowed by a cataclysmic earthquake. Most believe Plato was simply using certain political and geological events of the time to tell a story both entertaining and germane. Others argue that the legend constitutes historical record. Still others, in true “Local Children Die in Sewer While Seeking Out ‘Ninja’ Turtles” fashion, are totally fixated on GPS-ing the joint. Cayce fell in that half-crazed, but full-on-enthusiastic middle category.

Cayce’s Atlantis was roughly the size of the Eur-Asian continent, and was divided into three giant islands. They had awesome technology. Their Xbox360s actually wrapped completely around the player, their version of Avatar was shot in 3E and all their novels were enjoyed in the form of physically addicting hypodermic injections. Powering the whole shebang? A whole bunch of huge, resonating crystals, including a super crystal that Cayce fans have decided must have been located in what is now the Bermuda Triangle.

But things weren’t all video games and book serums. There were two warring political factions – the upright crusaders for sunshine, called The Sons of the Law of One, and the mean old dag nasty constituents of yuckiness, The Sons of Belial. The biggest ongoing socio-political conflict hinged on “the Things,” a diverse species of subhuman chimeras with the intelligence and physical traits of animals, but the souls of humans. The Sons of Belial naturally wanted to enslave the Things. The Sons of the Law of One, on the other hand, wanted to evolve the Things into full-fledged humans. Probably by way of crystals. Long story short, the factions kept fussing and feuding until one day, they overpowered the crystals and the entire empire exploded (this may or may not have involved some sort of doomsday machine/”death ray” to which Cayce frequently alluded). According to the story, then, the lights that folks see shining up through the darkness of the Atlantic are still-pulsing remains of the Atlantean power cells. Likewise, the UFOs and USOs and crazy electromagnetic disturbances are also, supposedly, caused by the out-gassing of excess ancient crystal energy, which can cause strange manifestations and stuff.

Cayce also made a prediction: the Empire of Atlantis will rise again… in the 1960s.

So… that didn’t quite work out. What did happen in the ‘60s, though, was the discovery of the Bimini Road (sometimes referred to, drably, as the Bimini Wall), a half-mile-long linear strip of rectangular limestone blocks submerged beneath 6 meters of water off the northwestern coast of North Bimini Island (part of both the Bahamas and the Triangle). People effing freaked. Conjectures were pitched and volleyed. Is it an Antlantean thoroughfare? The outer surface of a much-more-complex Atlantean structure, like a weird octopus church or a lobsterball stadium? Could it actually be just a boring Atlantean wall?

No, no and no. Turns out it’s just a bunch of rocks. No tool marks are evident, similar formations have been discovered near other island chains and, also, seriously? A super advanced, crystal-powered civilization and the best they can do, road-wise, is jumble some stones into sort of a line? Even the enslaved Things could make a better road than that, and half of them had giraffe hands. Regardless, the Bimini Road was all it took to get a whole of mess New Agers and truth-seekers all frothed up and bonering over the possibility of a connection between The Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis and their precious crystals.

All we can conclude for sure is that, if there was an Edenic crystal-powered empire criss-crossed by uneven roads that were built by hideous subjugated mutants, they probably had some really weird pornography.

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