A cool paperback I wanted for a while.. I heard about it years ago, when I saw it featured on a rerun of In Search of.. The episode featured some of the disappearances cataloged in this book. It's a well-researched compilation of both famous & obscure plane and boat disasters & disappearances. The author ties together different elements that he believed made the Great Lakes a uniquely mysterious travel zone. Book's publishing date is 1977, and I assume it went out-of-print because even worn-out copies are still kind of expensive. Going thru the missing flights & sunken ships, I have the contemporary advantage (and ease) of doing supplemental research online. I found some of the cases to be more just harsh weather, than a mysterious vortex at work. But there was one that embodied a combination of both. The 1879 disappearance of a boat named Waubuno. Which attempted a go in terrible weather (nothing especially mysterious about it's sinking).. but a passenger the day before had tried to avoid going on it, telling her husband she had a vision of them sinking & drowning in the icy waters. Unfortunately, she was right and disappeared with the ship.
A lot of tragedies in this book, but I tend to believe the harsh Great Lakes' weather is more of a culprit than any unexplained or surreal factors. But Gourley does produce some great chapter titles, and alternate suppositions.. Check out the table of contents, The Cloudy Shroud, Crew Insanity, Foreseen Events, Complete Disappearances.
If you appreciate a '70s-style dive in to the unexplained, this is a good one.
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