The “Alaskan triangle”: An area where 20,000 people mysteriously disappeared
According to the IFL Science website, nearly 20,000 people have disappeared in the “Alaskan Triangle” since 1972 (2,225 per year). This is an area of the planet with the highest number of unsolved disappearances.
Because Alaska, the largest state in the USA, has a rather low population density of 0.43 inhabitants/km², the number of disappearances is all the more impressive, reports the Belgian media RTBF. All the more reason for conspiracy theories: alien abduction, Bigfoot intervention, inverted gravity...
The triangle covers a large part of Alaska, stretching between Utqiagvik, Anchorage and Juneau, and is mainly made up of wilderness, alpine lakes, glaciers, caves and dense boreal forests.
It all began in 1972 when a plane suddenly disappeared between Anchorage and Juneau. Despite an exhaustive search involving 40 military aircraft and 50 civilian planes, which lasted more than 3,600 hours, neither the passengers nor the wreckage was found. Other planes, hikers and tourists also disappeared. One of the most famous cases? That of 25-year-old New Yorker known as Gary Frank Sotherden. He had gone hunting in this much-talked-about area of Alaska in the mid-1970s. It was only 7 years later that his skull was found, split open by a bear, on the banks of the Porcupine River (north-east Alaska).
The region's wild nature, very cold and harsh climate in winter (but also in summer), and abundant wildlife (bears, lynx, wolves) may explain the large number of disappearances, but they don't stop conspiracy theorists from developing their own paranormal hypotheses.
(MH with AsD - Source : RTBF - Illustration : Unsplash)