In classic stories the distant castle containing the horrifying paranormal creatures and ghosts is always sought on a dark and stormy night when the clouds open up and a torrent of rain comes pounding down alongside thunder that shakes the pillars of the heavens threatening to bring everything crashing down in one fell swoop. But is the world of fiction in this respect giving us a symbolic motif, or has it been documented over time to suggest when thunder and lightning starts to tear through the heavens we are more likely to see something out of the ordinary?
This is one of those times when urban legends and folklore diverge slightly from more recent accounts. In urban legends, the addition of a dark and stormy atmosphere often seems almost a necessity to the story that follows. And just like that nebulous cloud of rumor that we can rarely trace back to its source, these urban legends sometimes suggest that the addition of clouds and lightning are a component ingredient to the narrative itself. Meanwhile, more traceable paranormal accounts do sometimes recall how the weather did influence the experience – particularly when the incident is caused by the weather such as the famous “ghost in the window” photograph often cited as not entirely atypical of the paranormal when it comes to chance happenings in haunted houses.
Of course few places are more famous for their paranormal encounters than the legendary Bermuda Triangle, which is documented to suddenly unleash storms of biblical proportions before returning witnesses to a world that looks exactly as it did when they left moments later. The storms of the Bermuda Triangle up in the clouds and on the rippling waters are often depicted in contemporary accounts as strange but their paranormal nature is occasionally disputed by skeptics who suggest they are nothing more than a series of coincidences that have become wrapped up in the lore of the triangle rather than actually being caused by supernatural forces.
And while it may or may not have been paranormal in nature, the single largest loss of life in the Navy not related to wartime action took place when the USS Cyclops entered the Bermuda Triangle and was subsequently never seen again, resulting in the loss of the entire crew of 309 people on March 4, 1918. Since the incident, several theories have arisen in an attempt to explain what happened, but none have gained much traction due to a lack of evidence.
Could storms and electrical energy from rolling clouds influence our perception of the paranormal? It would seem the paranormal and the electromagnetic spectrum do have a relationship, which would no doubt be affected by the passing of storms and lightning strikes. So if this is the case, there may be something more to the idea of fearing a dark and lonely castle in the middle of the wilderness more than just a few memories of urban legends and lore.