The Haunted Railway Station of Begunkodor

The Haunted Railway Station of Begunkodor

Paranormal Activities – some of the very few most ‘googled’ keywords. When it comes to the supernatural, India surely attracts a couple of extra votes – and why shouldn’t it? India is a country with diverse cultures, religions, diverse nature of people and obviously so many different superstitions. Paranormal Activities in India have been setting up their own benchmarks. True or False, Believable or not, these stories have certainly mesmerized people for centuries.

Often, we overhear different incidents, reports, myths of variousghost stories in India. These incidents are rooted at various locales such as historical forts, railway stations, hotels, hill stations etc. Talking about railway stations - so many apparition stories have been reported worldwide. These are often referred to as ‘Ghost Trains’, ‘Haunted railway stations’, ‘Abandoned stations’ etc. One interesting thing when it comes to history of railways is that there are loads of incidences which may seem to be the probable causes to myths & legends. Railway lines and stations have stories of grisly deaths in which the victims stick around in spirits form. People die as a result of accidents, natural deaths and suicides. Obviously, the iron lines mesmerize people who are determined to end themselves. Some say many of these unfortunate souls linger on and are trapped within the physical boundary of their death

Though many railway stations in India have their own set of tell-tales, there’s one who leaps higher. Now, this is not just another one of the spooky stories in India since this one affected the lives of common middle class population localized in Begunkodor. Begunkodor is a village in Purulia district of West Bengal situated 46kms from Purulia. The village included a haunted railway stationthat remained closed for almost 42 years (from 1967 to 2009). According to villagers, one of the railway employees died in 1967 after witnessing a female specter draped in white saree (Indian female clothing). All the railway employees were terrified of the spook; they abandoned the station in fear. Soon this station was no longer a stop for the passing wheels. Basudeb Acharya, former chairman of the Parliament’s standing committee on railways argued that the railway staff ‘cooked up’ this story to avoid their posting at such a remote location. Mamta Banerjee, the railway minister in 2009 dismissed all the reports of the apparition appealing “I don’t believe in ghosts. It is all man-made.” The railway station was reopened calling it for celebration for the locals there.

On one hand the facts still remain vague while on the other hand there are reports affecting the locals for nearly half a century. One question that would certainly worry you would be: how did the senior officials agree to such stories from their employees? Isn’t India now way above ‘developing’ nations? But all the bureaucrats are the same aren’t they? You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours!

Many thoughts rush up to me when I think about such stories. Why remote railway stations? Why not buzzing airports? What would have the ghosts done even if the trains continued going through and stopping by this station? Would the trains disappear in thin air? How do the trains passing by trouble the shades anyway? Would the noise of trains be disturbing them? Some questions remain unanswered (for the higher good) and yet, living mortals continue to witness such unfinished businesses.

Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. According to the US Navy, the triangle does not exist, and the name is not recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names. Popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings. Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were spurious, inaccurately reported, or embellished by later authors.

Bermuda Triangle
Devil's Triangle
One version of the Bermuda Triangle area

Triangle area

The first written boundaries date from an article by Vincent Gaddis in a 1964 issue of the pulp magazine Argosy, where the triangle's three vertices are in Miami, Florida peninsula; in San Juan, Puerto Rico; and in the mid-Atlantic island ofBermuda.^[2] But subsequent writers did not follow this definition.^[2] Some writers give different boundaries and vertices to the triangle, with the total area varying from 1,300,000 to 3,900,000 km² (500,000 to 1,510,000 sq mi).^[2] Consequently, the determination of which accidents have occurred inside the triangle depends on which writer reports them.^[2] The United States Board on Geographic Names does not recognize this name,^[3] and it is not delimited in any map drawn by US government agencies.

The area is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, with ships crossing through it daily for ports in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. Cruise ships are also plentiful, and pleasure craft regularly go back and forth between Florida and the islands. It is also a heavily flown route for commercial and private aircraft heading towards Florida, the Caribbean, and South America from points north.

Origins

The earliest allegation of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 17, 1950 article published in The Miami Herald (Associated Press) by Edward Van Winkle Jones.^[5] Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door", a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger bombers on a training mission. Sand's article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered again in the April 1962 issue of American Legion magazine. In it, author Allan W. Eckert wrote that the flight leader had been heard saying, "We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." He also wrote that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes "flew off to Mars." Sand's article was the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident. In the February 1964 issue of Argosy, Vincent Gaddis' article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" argued that Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region.The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book, Invisible Horizons.

Others would follow with their own works, elaborating on Gaddis' ideas: John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973);^[10] Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974);^[11] Richard Winer (The Devil's Triangle, 1974),^[12] and many others, all keeping to some of the same supernatural elements outlined by Eckert.

Natural explanations

Compass variations

Compass problems are one of the cited phrases in many Triangle incidents. While some have theorized that unusual local magnetic anomalies may exist in the area,^[28] such anomalies have not been found. Compasses have natural magnetic variations in relation to the magnetic poles, a fact which navigators have known for centuries. Magnetic (compass) north andgeographic (true) north are only exactly the same for a small number of places – for example, as of 2000, in the United States, only those places on a line running from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico.^[29] But the public may not be as informed, and think there is something mysterious about a compass "changing" across an area as large as the Triangle, which it naturally will.^[14]

False-color image of the Gulf Stream flowing north through the western Atlantic Ocean. (NASA)

Gulf Stream

The Gulf Stream is a major surface current, primarily driven by thermohaline circulation that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and then flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and, like a river, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a surface velocity of up to about 2.5 metres per second (5.6 mi/h).^[30]A small plane making a water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by the current.

Human error

One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to the loss of any aircraft or vessel is human error.^[31] Human stubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, the Revonoc, as he sailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958.^[32]

Violent weather

Tropical cyclones are powerful storms, which form in tropical waters and have historically cost thousands of lives lost and caused billions of dollars in damage. The sinking of Francisco de Bobadilla's Spanish fleet in 1502 was the first recorded instance of a destructive hurricane. These storms have in the past caused a number of incidents related to the Triangle.

A powerful downdraft of cold air was suspected to be a cause in the sinking of the Pride of Baltimore on May 14, 1986. The crew of the sunken vessel noted the wind suddenly shifted and increased velocity from 32 km/h (20 mph) to 97–145 km/h (60–90 mph). A National Hurricane Center satellite specialist, James Lushine, stated "during very unstable weather conditions the downburst of cold air from aloft can hit the surface like a bomb, exploding outward like a giant squall line of wind and water."^[33] A similar event occurred to the Concordia in 2010 off the coast of Brazil.

Methane hydrates

Main article: Methane clathrate

Worldwide distribution of confirmed or inferred offshore gas hydrate-bearing sediments, 1996.
Source: United States Geological Survey

An explanation for some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of large fields of methane hydrates (a form of natural gas) on the continental shelves.^[34] Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can, indeed, sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water;^[35][36][37] any wreckage consequently rising to the surface would be rapidly dispersed by the Gulf Stream. It has been hypothesized that periodic methaneeruptions (sometimes called "mud volcanoes") may produce regions of frothy water that are no longer capable of providing adequate buoyancy for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without warning.

Publications by the USGS describe large stores of undersea hydrates worldwide, including the Blake Ridge area, off the coast of the southeastern United States.^[38] However, according to the USGS, no large releases of gas hydrates are believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 years.^[20]

Notable incidents

Main article: List of Bermuda Triangle incidents

Ellen Austin

The Ellen Austin supposedly came across a derelict ship, placed on board a prize crew, and attempted to sail with it to New York in 1881. According to the stories, the derelict disappeared; others elaborating further that the derelict reappeared minus the prize crew, then disappeared again with a second prize crew on board. A check from Lloyd's of London records proved the existence of the Meta, built in 1854 and that in 1880 the Meta was renamed Ellen Austin. There are no casualty listings for this vessel, or any vessel at that time, that would suggest a large number of missing men were placed on board a derelict that later disappeared.^[39]

Schooner Carroll A. Deering, as seen from the Cape Lookoutlightvessel on January 29, 1921, two days before she was found deserted inNorth Carolina. (US Coast Guard)

USS Cyclops

Main article: USS Cyclops (AC-4)

The incident resulting in the single largest loss of life in the history of the US Navy not related to combat occurred when the collier USS Cyclops, carrying a full load of manganese ore and with one engine out of action, went missing without a trace with a crew of 309 sometime after March 4, 1918, after departing the island of Barbados. Although there is no strong evidence for any single theory, many independent theories exist, some blaming storms, some capsizing, and some suggesting thatwartime enemy activity was to blame for the loss.^[40][41] In addition, two of Cyclops's sister ships, Proteus and Nereus were subsequently lost in the North Atlantic duringWorld War II. Both ships were transporting heavy loads of metallic ore similar to that which was loaded on Cyclops during her fatal voyage. In all three cases structural failure due to overloading with a much denser cargo than designed is considered the most likely cause of sinking.

Carroll A. Deering

Main article: Carroll A. Deering

A five-masted schooner built in 1919, the Carroll A. Deering was found hard aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on January 31, 1921. Rumors and more at the time indicated the Deering was a victim of piracy, possibly connected with the illegal rum-running trade during Prohibition, and possibly involving another ship,SS Hewitt, which disappeared at roughly the same time. Just hours later, an unknown steamer sailed near the lightship along the track of the Deering, and ignored all signals from the lightship. It is speculated that Hewitt may have been this mystery ship, and possibly involved in the Deering crew's disappearance.^[42]

Flight 19

Main article: Flight 19

US Navy Avengers, similar to those of Flight 19

Flight 19 was a training flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on December 5, 1945, while over the Atlantic. The squadron's flight plan was scheduled to take them due east from Fort Lauderdale for 141 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 140-mile leg to complete the exercise. The flight never returned to base. The disappearance is attributed by Navy investigators to navigational error leading to the aircraft running out of fuel.

One of the search and rescue aircraft deployed to look for them, a PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew, also disappeared. A tanker off the coast of Florida reported seeing an explosion^[43] and observing a widespread oil slick when fruitlessly searching for survivors. The weather was becoming stormy by the end of the incident.^[44] According to contemporaneous sources the Mariner had a history of explosions due to vapour leaks when heavily loaded with fuel, as for a potentially long search and rescue operation.

Star Tiger and Star Ariel

Main articles: BSAA Star Tiger disappearance and BSAA Star Ariel disappearance

G-AHNP Star Tiger disappeared on January 30, 1948, on a flight from the Azores to Bermuda; G-AGRE Star Arieldisappeared on January 17, 1949, on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. Both were Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways.^[45] Both planes were operating at the very limits of their range and the slightest error or fault in the equipment could keep them from reaching the small island. One plane was not heard from long before it would have entered the Triangle.^[14]

Douglas DC-3

Main article: 1948 Airborne Transport DC-3 (DST) disappearance

On December 28, 1948, a Douglas DC-3 aircraft, number NC16002, disappeared while on a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami. No trace of the aircraft or the 32 people on board was ever found. A Civil Aeronautics Board investigation found there was insufficient information available on which to determine probable cause of the disappearance.^[46]

KC-135 Stratotankers

On August 28, 1963, a pair of US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft collided and crashed into the Atlantic. The Triangle version (Winer, Berlitz, Gaddis)^[1][11][12] of this story specifies that they did collide and crash, but there were two distinct crash sites, separated by over 160 miles (260 km) of water. However, Kusche's research showed that the unclassified version of the Air Force investigation report stated that the debris field defining the second "crash site" was examined by a search and rescue ship, and found to be a mass of seaweed and driftwood tangled in an old buoy.^[14]

Connemara IV

A pleasure yacht was found adrift in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on September 26, 1955; it is usually stated in the stories (Berlitz, Winer)^[11][12] that the crew vanished while the yacht survived being at sea during three hurricanes. The 1955 Atlantic hurricane season shows Hurricane Ione passing nearby between the 14th and 18th of that month, with Bermuda being affected by winds of almost gale force.^[14] In his second book on the Bermuda Triangle, Winer quoted from a letter he had received from Mr J.E. Challenor of Barbados:^[47]

On the morning of September 22 Connemara IV was lying to a heavy mooring in the open roadstead of Carlisle Bay. Because of the approaching hurricane, the owner strengthened the mooring ropes and put out two additional anchors. There was little else he could do, as the exposed mooring was the only available anchorage. ... In Carlisle Bay, the sea in the wake of Hurricane Janet was awe-inspiring and dangerous. The owner of Connemara IV observed that she had disappeared. An investigation revealed that she had dragged her moorings and gone to sea.

Twin Earth

An Earth analog (also referred to as a Twin Earth, Earth Twin, or Earth-like planet, though this latter term may refer to any terrestrial planet) is another planetor moon with environmental conditions similar to those found on the planet Earth.

The possibility is of particular interest to humans under reasoning that the more similar a planet is to Earth, the more likely it is of sustaining complex extraterrestrial life. As such, it has long been speculated and the subject expressed in science,philosophy, science fiction and popular culture. Advocates of space colonizationhave long sought an Earth analog as a "second home", while advocates for space and survival would regard such a planet as a potential "new home" for mankind.

Before the scientific search for and study of extrasolar planets, the possibility was argued through philosophy and science fiction. The mediocrity principle suggests that planets like Earth should be common in the universe, while the Rare Earth hypothesis suggests that they are extremely rare. Philosophers have pointed out that the size of the universe is such that a near-identical planet must exist somewhere. In the future, technology may be used by humans to artificially produce an Earth analog by terraforming. The multiverse theory suggests that an Earth analog could exist in another universe or even be another version of the Earth itself in a parallel universe.

On November 4, 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Waygalaxy.^[1][2] 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting Sun-like stars.^[3] The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists.^[1][2]

Scientific findings since the 1990s have greatly influenced the scope of the fields of astrobiology, models of planetary habitability and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). NASA and the SETI Institute have proposed categorising the increasing number of planets found using a measure called the Earth Similarity Index (ESI) based on mass, radius and temperature.^[4][5] According to this measure, as of 23 July 2015, the confirmed planet currently thought to be most similar to Earth on mass, radius and temperature is Kepler-438b.^[6] Scientists estimate that there may be billions of Earth-size planets within the Milky Way galaxy alone.

Attributes and criteria[edit]
Size[edit]
Size Comparisons: Kepler-20e^[24] and Kepler-20f^[25] with Venus and Earth.

Name	Earth masses (M⊕)	Earth radii (R⊕)	Note
Kepler-69c	0.98	1.7	Originally thought to be in the Circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), now thought to be too hot.
Kepler-9d	>1.5[27]	1.64	Extremely hot
COROT-7b	<9	1.58	Extremely hot
Kepler-20f	< 14.3[25]	1.03[25]	Slightly larger and likely more massive, far too hot to be Earth-like
Tau Ceti b	2		Extremely hot. Not known to transit.
Alpha Centauri Bb	1.1[28]		Closest known mass to Earth but much hotter NOTE: May not exist (NYT, June 10, 2013).[29]
Kepler-186f		1.1[30]	Orbits in CHZ
Earth	1	1	Orbits in habitable zone
Venus	0.815	0.949	Much hotter
Kepler-20e	< 3.08[24]	0.87[24]	Too hot to be Earth-like

The probability of finding an Earth analog depends mostly on the attributes that are expected to be similar, and these vary greatly. Generally it is considered that it would be a terrestrial planet and there have been several scientific studies aimed at finding such planets. Often implied but not limited to are such criteria as planet size, surface gravity, star size and type (i.e.Solar analog), orbital distance and stability, axial tilt and rotation, similar geography, oceans, air and weather conditions, strong magnetosphere and even the presence of Earth-like complex life. If there is complex life, there could be some forestscovering much of the land. If there is intelligent life, some parts of land could be covered in cities. Some factors that are assumed of such a planet may be unlikely due to Earth's own history. For instance the Earth's atmosphere was not always oxygen-rich and this is a biosignature from the emergence of photosynthetic life. The formation, presence, influence on these characteristics of the Moon (such as tidal forces) may also pose a problem in finding an Earth analog.

Size is often thought to be a significant factor, as planets of Earth's size are thought more likely to be terrestrial in nature and be capable of retaining an Earth-like atmosphere.^[26]

The list includes planets within the range of 0.8–1.9 Earth masses, below which are generally classed as sub-Earth and above classed assuper-Earth. In addition, only planets known to fall within the range of 0.5–2.0 Earth radius (between half and twice the radius of the Earth) are included. In contrast, the Earth Similarity Index uses both mass and radius as criteria.

According to the size criteria, the closest planetary mass objects by known radius or mass are:

This comparison indicates that size alone is a poor measure, particularly in terms of habitability. Temperature must also be considered as Venus and the planets of Alpha Centauri B (discovered in 2012), Kepler-20 (discovered in 2011^[31][32]), COROT-7 (discovered in 2009) and the three planets of Kepler-42 (all discovered in 2011) are very hot, and Mars,Ganymede and Titan are frigid worlds, resulting also in wide variety of surface and atmospheric conditions. The mass of theSolar System's moons are a tiny fraction of that of Earth whereas the mass of extrasolar planets are very difficult to accurately measure. However discoveries of Earth-sized terrestrial planets are important as they may indicate the probable frequency and distribution of Earth-like planets.