The Bohinj Triangle

Here's a "triangle" that is not really a triangle, but may be just as mysterious and perhaps dangerous  as the one purportedly devouring ships and planes in the Bermudas. It is the name the locals give to a densely wooded area covering about 40 - 50 km2 around the lake Bohinj (pron. BAW-Hin) in the heart of the Julian Alps, in Slovenia.

Unfortunately, there is very little information about the mysterious goings-on  to be found online, and practically none in languages other than Slovene. That means we can only offer you a very brief "briefing" on the place, based on what we know from reliable local sources. 

Apparently quite a few people have vanished in this area. Not really surprising considering the terrain: lots and lots of unpredictable twists and turns and holes in the ground, some possibly leading to subterranean caves, not to mention the extensive woods themselves. And it is significant that most of the vanished seem to have been visitors, i.e. people foreign to the area. But not all of them. Some were reputed to be very familiar with those woods.

And while the remains of some were found, years later (and in some cases unusually far away from the place they had been last seen), there seem to be quite a few cases where no trace of the vanished was ever found.
(Among the latter is - so far - a British minister, Rev. David Fox, who disappeared in 2008. There are much older disappearances that remain unsolved, with no leads or traces.)



Größere Kartenansicht

What caught my attention most of all was the following story. (It seems to be at least two decades old, possibly much older.)

A couple - husband and wife - were walking along a path in the woods. Suddenly they encountered a rock barring their way. They walked around it - the wife from one side and the husband from the other. In doing so the husband allegedly vanished into thin air. Just like that. According to his wife, he never emerged from the other side of the rock. 
Naturally the area was searched, but apparently no trace of the husband - or his remains - was ever found.

Does it sound familiar?
If you've been reading this blog, it must have rung a bell. Exactly the same is said to have happened in the famous case of Paula Welden's disapperance  in the "Bennington triangle", in Vermont, USA.

The Alps, as mountains in general, can be notoriously "voracious" when it comes to unsuspecting - and reckless - humans roaming around. (Read about the Untersberg if you dare.) 
But some disappearances truly are baffling.
Is there something in the composition of the rocks - their geo-magnetic forces, perhaps - that messes with people's minds and/or obstructs the search for them afterwards?
(Magnetic fields  can do such things. See Is it the fault lines' fault? for more on this.)

More on the possible causes for such phenomena on some other occasion.
Meanwhile, if you know specific stories of unexplained disappearances in this area, please do let us know.

This stone-faced pretty gal gazing languidly on the hikers below - a wonderful mimetolith that nature carved into the face of a mountain (Prisojnik) - is not actually visible from Bohinj, as far as I know, but it is so picturesque, and relatively nearby, that I just had to include it here. It is the so-called Heathen Maiden (Ajdovska deklica), and there is a legend attached to it. Of course. However, the legend transcends the scope of this blog.

If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.

The Disappearing shop in Moscow

Here is a puzzling little story from one of our readers, J. K.
Enjoy.

This happened to my mother and a friend in the early 1980s, in Moscow, USSR. They went on a trip there with a group of other tourists. 

One day they fancied some fur hats, so they found a shop that sold them. My mother doesn't remember if she was told about it by a hotel receptionist (that's what she thinks) or somebody else told them about it. Anyway, they found a shop and bought some nice, cheap fur hats. 

That same afternoon or maybe the day after, soon thereafter in any case, they decided to go back and buy some more fur hats as gifts for friends and family, so they went back to the shop.  

The shop wasn't there. 

They walked the street up and down searching for the shop, they asked people, including a man standing on the doorway next to where the shop had been, but they were told there was no shop and there hadn't been one there for many years.

TBH, I don't think this was a timeslip but rather some fishy business in very fishy times in a very fishy country. But my mother still puzzles over this incident today.

Thank you, J. K.

What a lovely - and oddly amusing - story this is!

I must say, I agree with your "fishy" assessment. 

Assuming they didn't  mistake the street and the location of the shop, my first thought was: was it an illegal shop, perhaps - one that only operated  when they knew customers were coming? (The hotel receptionist could have informed the "shop" owner that customers were coming.)

But, as logical as this may seem, it does strike me as odd that such a highly risky operation could be performed - and in Moscow, of all places.

If any of our readers have an idea of what may have happened, please let us know what you think.

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