Harloween: Tales From The Everglades

[Music] [Music] [Music] hello everybody and welcome back to my channel thank you for joining me for another halloween video and this one is certainly spooky today we are heading to florida specifically the everglades the south florida everglades is the largest wetlands national park in the country and covers 1.5 million acres of land in the state of florida some people go into this area willingly on tours eager to see the gators sunning themselves or to experience a slice of untouched nature in a modern world but there's a lot about the everglades that will haunt you and some who have ventured there never return today we're going to talk about some of these secrets that hide in the dark murky waters of the everglades there were so many stories so many incidences for me to choose from i had to narrow it down to just three for the purposes of this video but if what i have to tell you interests you and makes you want to learn more there is no end to the mysteries that you will find and 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away from the water i choose from the many options that i have lined up and ready to watch and i take the longest slowest most blissful shower ever while i allow myself to be entertained and educated now magellan tv is offering viewers of this channel a one month free trial which you are free to cancel anytime there's no contracts no strings attached but by the time you get on there and see all the options see all the documentary movies and series i don't think you're going to want to cancel anytime soon magellan tv is available on roku amazon fire tv google play ios vizio and more all of these documentaries can be watched ad-free with unlimited access and no interruptions and many of them are also available in 4k for no additional cost magellan tv brings you documentaries worth watching and you can get started right now watching thousands of great documentaries with plans as low as 4.99 per month thank you so much to magento for sponsoring this video and thank you as always to all of you who understand the sponsors are essential to keep this channel going so i can keep bringing you content let's dive right in to our number one story which i've named dead reckoning flight 19 also known as the lost patrol is the most famous aviation mystery that's connected to the bermuda triangle now south florida lies just at the tip of the bermuda triangle adding to its mystique it was december 5th 1945 three months after the end of world war ii a training mission called navigation problem number one consisting of five torpedo bombers and 14 crew members led by 29 year old war veteran lieutenant charles taylor was scheduled to take off at 2 25 pm from the fort lauderdale naval air station it was a routine training flight and they would be navigating using something called dead reckoning which is basically navigation based solely on time air speed distance and direction pretty much only using a wrist watch and as scary as that sounds many seasoned pilots were well versed in flying like this and one of the main goals of this mission was to teach the students how to master it as well dead reckoning is a valuable lesson that pilots need to learn and should learn in case they ever find themselves in the air when their navigational equipment fails as long as they have a watch and their wits about them they should be able to land safely but that was not to be for flight 19. lieutenant taylor even at his young age was an experienced pilot and war veteran and he was known to keep his cool in stressful situations he had recently been transferred from miami to fort lauderdale where he was serving as a flight instructor with over 2500 flight hours and 616 flight hours with that specific torpedo bomber that he was to be flying that fateful day the squadron was instructed to perform a routine navigation exercise as well as a mock bombing run over the hen and chicken shoals in the bahamas before returning back to base at fort lauderdale their flight plan would include four different legs the first leg would take them from the air station to hen and chicken shoals their second leg would have them leaving the hen and chicken shoals and continuing on the same coordinates in a straight line about 67 nautical miles to the great stirrup k which was an area of coral before they would turn left heading northwest on the third leg which would have them flying north over grand bahama island to great cell k now at this point the mainland of florida should have been located to their left leg 4 would have them turn southwest heading back to fort lauderdale and the air station which would only have been about 120 nautical miles away now flight 19 never made it to the fourth leg of their journey it seemed as if taylor had been letting the students take turn flying the plane that they were on therefore leading the entire brigade since they were being followed by four other torpedo bombers so there was five planes in this mission and the plane that lieutenant taylor was in he was leading the mission because he was the teacher and he was letting some of the students take turns flying the plane that's what this mission was for to teach the students and he most likely felt that this was an easy run something he could do in his sleep and he wanted to give the others a chance to learn and maybe just maybe because taylor felt it was such a routine flight maybe he also felt he didn't have to pay too much attention to where the students were flying because shortly after taking that turn on like three they were hopelessly lost now at this same time another pilot named lieutenant robert cox was flying nearby on another unrelated mission and he heard lieutenant taylor over the radio say i don't know where we are we must have gotten lost after that last turn although cox was also a flight instructor out of fort lauderdale he and taylor didn't personally know each other lieutenant taylor had just arrived from miami so he was actually new to fort lauderdale and there was a lot of flight instructors they didn't always just hang out together and taylor had also failed to precede his message with his call number which would tell anyone who was listening who he was in what plane he was flying so lieutenant cox got on the radio and he asked taylor to identify himself which taylor did before telling cox that both his compasses were not working and he was attempting to get back to fort lauderdale he said quote i'm over land but it's broken i'm sure i'm in the keys but i don't know how far down and i don't know how to get back to fort lauderdale end quote lieutenant cox told lieutenant taylor to put the sun to his port wing and fly up the coast to miami where he would find the miami naval station located on his left cox also asked for taylor's altitude so that he could change course fly south and meet taylor to which taylor responded i know where i am now i'm at 2 300 feet don't come after me now lieutenant cox ignored lieutenant taylor's wishes for him to you know not come and find him and cox flew south to try and locate taylor and the other planes anyways but he would never encounter flight 19 in fact the closer he got to the florida keys where taylor had been so sure he was the fainter the radio communications from taylor were suggesting that cox was actually getting further away from flight 19's actual location not closer for the next several hours naval air stations up and down the florida coast listened as the men on these five planes became more confused and frustrated and frantic and then outright terrified now lieutenant taylor could not have possibly been over the florida keys when he told lieutenant cox this his flight had made its scheduled pass over the hens and chicken's shoal just an hour before this communication was heard so for them to have been in the keys would mean that they had somehow flown hundreds of miles off course in that short time period it was almost impossible a short time later lieutenant taylor made contact with the port everglades base by the everglades forest saying we have just passed over a small island i have no other land in sight and the altitude is 3 500 feet does anyone in this area have a radar screen they can pick us up on now the everglades base actually did in fact have radar equipment but it had been dismantled after world war ii ended and they couldn't really put it back together and get it up and running in the short amount of time that they would need to so the base instructed taylor to have one of the other planes who had a working compass take the lead and get them back to fort lauderdale taylor responded roger to this but not long after taylor's voice was heard over the radio again telling the rest of flight 19. we are heading 0-3-0 degrees for 45 minutes then we will fly north to make sure we are not over the gulf of mexico lieutenant taylor clearly had no idea where he was at all he was actually closer to cuba than to the gulf of mexico and this was determined by the fact that some of his transmissions were being interrupted as he ventured closer to cuban airspace how did a professional well-trained pilot get so turned around on such a simple run-of-the-mill training flight as the hours passed and the sun began to sink those on the ground listened helplessly as the pilots of flight 19 scrambled to figure out where the heck they were and what they should do a transmission could be heard by fort lauderdale from one of the planes where the men were just shouting that if they only could turn back if they only could go west they could get back home taylor could then be heard again telling the flight to change course once more this time to zero nine zero degrees west for ten minutes he followed this up by saying in frustration we are going too damn far north instead of east if there is anything we wouldn't see it so they're lost they're literally lost it doesn't seem like any of their compasses are working and they're not always communicating directly with the bases but the bases on the ground can hear them because they're always listening in and they can hear what's going on inside of these planes and most of what they're hearing at this point is just these men panicking they have no idea where they are lieutenant taylor's compasses weren't working but if they were using dead reckoning something that he had been trained on all he would need was a wristwatch but he would also need an accurate idea of where he had started and it didn't seem like he really had that now the planes had 1 000 miles worth of fuel on them but they had been flying off course for far too long and as taylor continued barking out commands to go east go west go here go there everyone was aware they would not be able to stay in the air much longer port everglades heard taylor somberly tell the men of flight 19 quote join up and continue in formation if one plane has to ditch we all ditch together when the first plane gets below 10 gallons of gas we will all land in the water together does everyone understand that end quote after flying for some time with no communication taylor could be heard once again by port everglades saying very faintly over the radio is that a ship on the left someone responded to him most likely another pilot on flight 19 but the response was filled with static and couldn't be made out ten minutes later taylor could be heard over the radio saying my transmission is getting weaker at 5 53 p.m port everglades instructed taylor to switch off the training frequency he was using which only had a reach of about 125 miles but taylor answered back that he could not change the frequency saying quote i must keep my planes intact end quote now changing frequencies would have helped taylor gain better reception further reception but he ran the risk of losing communication with one of the other planes in the flight and they were still using that training frequency and he couldn't take that risk at 6 13 taylor could be heard trying to reach one of his other planes but he got no response he tried again at 6 17 and again at 6 37 but he never got a response after that all they heard on the radio from all five planes that made up flight 19 was static now at around 6 pm a search had been put into motion which would become known as the largest search and rescue mission of that time 200 planes and 17 boats were sent out looking for flight 19. two of these planes were mariners who were diverted from their own flights to join in the search they both took off from the banana river naval air base located between satellite beach and cocoa beach north of fort lauderdale but within 20 minutes after one routine communication one of these planes vanished from radar and it along with its 10 crew members were never seen or heard from again over the next five days the search parties took to the land air and sea in order to locate any of the six vanished planes but they never did navy lieutenant david white would later say quote they just vanished we had hundreds of planes out looking nobody ever found the bodies or the debris end quote now it has been reported that minutes before flight 19 was to take off lieutenant taylor had requested to be removed from the mission altogether his mother would later tell the press that her son had been visited by an ominous vision in his dreams the night before telling him to sit the flight out some believe that taylor having recently been transferred from miami had confused the bahamas with the florida keys a route that he was more familiar with but that does not answer the question as to why no one on any of those five planes switched on their zbx receivers this would have put them on the rescue radio frequency and they would have had a much better chance of finding navy radio towers on land which would lead them to safety they were told multiple times over the radio to turn them on but they either didn't hear these transmissions or they just didn't listen or they weren't able to switch to that rescue radio frequency maybe the equipment wasn't working properly as tends to happen in the bermuda triangle there were also reports of conversations between the pilots of flight 19 where these men sounded dazed and said things like everything looks strange even the ocean now many believe that flight 19 was one of the original bermuda triangle victims the alleged bermuda triangle covers 500 000 square miles of ocean off the southeastern tip of florida and if you believe the stories it has claimed dozens of ships and airplanes starting all the way back to when men first boarded ships and embarked into the unknown depths of the sea when columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 he wrote in his journal of a strange column of fire plummeting from the sky into the ocean he also noted that in this specific area the ship's compasses would spin wildly and were never able to find true north four years before flight 19 vanished into thin air a navy ship called the uss proteus carrying 58 passengers and a load of cargo from saint thomas to the east coast had also vanished in the bermuda triangle and a month later the proteus's sister ship the uss nerius also disappeared along the same route carrying 61 people and for every story you don't believe there are five more that bring up questions what is happening to these boats and these planes and the people on board sometimes wreckage is found but there's other times where nothing ever resurfaces and is it a coincidence that flight 19 made up of five different planes vanished into thin air and then one of the rescue planes that went out to look for it also vanished in thin air lieutenant taylor was well trained in flying using dead reckoning and as long as he had his wrist watch right he should have been fine now later in his personal effects a wristwatch was found which begs the question why would he have left his wrist watch behind when he knew he was going on a flight where he'd have to be using dead reckoning now there are other stories and other reports that say he owned a second wristwatch that the one he left behind was just his backup wristwatch and this may be true but once again that begs the question if he had a wristwatch and he was a trained pilot as we know he was why couldn't he navigate himself and his crew back to safety you may be a skeptic i am i am for sure but i do know this i'll try to avoid flying over the bermuda triangle at all costs at least for the foreseeable future [Music] it was december 29th 1972 about 11 30 p.m 163 passengers on eastern flight 401 buckled their seat belts as the captain's voice came cheerfully over the pa system welcome to sunny miami captain bob loft announced as the routine flight from jfk to miami international began its descent to the airport the temperature is in the 70s and it's beautiful out there tonight ronald infantino looked at pharah his wife of 20 days and squeezed her hand they were flying back to miami after honeymooning in new york city and arriving home was bittersweet after such a romantic couple of weeks with his new bride gustavio and ziomara casado had moved to new york from miami several years prior but they were on their way back for a visit with family to introduce them to someone special their two-month-old daughter christina as the lights of miami came into view xiomara snuggled the soft pink-clad baby who was sleeping soundly in her mother's arms one of the flight attendants mercy ruiz was strapped into her seat preparing for dissent when she noticed that the plane had passed the airport and was actually flying away from miami she unbuckled herself and walked over to another flight attendant pat gissels to ask what was going on at this same time jan minguzzi coryello was trying to wake up her four-year-old son nikki who she had placed in a row of seats across the aisle from her so he could sleep as mercy ruiz approached her fellow co-worker pat gissels and asked what was going on pat looked up at mercy and smiled saying oh mercy stop complaining it's the holidays if we're a little late it's overtime within minutes pat gissel and 100 others on flight 401 would be dead later those who survived remembered that everything was normal until it wasn't in the cockpit 55 year old captain robert loft 39 year old first officer albert stocksville and 51 year old second officer donald repo were discussing what to do they had lowered the landing gear but the light on the control panel that would usually turn on to signify the landing gear was in position was not lit up they needed to figure out if there was a problem with the landing gear or just the light so they decided to fly past the airport and make a loop over the everglades with the plane in autopilot while they got to the root of the issue and ensured that it was safe to land as the state-of-the-art jumbo jet circled west over the everglades at about 2000 feet someone in the cockpit accidentally bumped into the autopilot throttle turning it off and beginning the plane's silent descent at 11 41 captain loft had decided that the landing gear was fine they were just dealing with a faulty light so he turned his attention back to actually flying the plane but it was too late a minute later flight 401 disappeared from air traffic control radar and slammed into the everglades going 225 miles per hour survivor richard mccauley looked back on that moment and marveled at how one minute life was going along normally and the next he realized he was in a plane that was plummeting to the ground he said quote i remember thinking [ __ ] the plane is crashing and before i got finished thinking it it was over you could hear the cry of death funny how people scream for god at a time like that i probably did too i'm sure end quote jan coviello who had just moments before had her hand on the back of her four-year-old son nikki remembered a jarring pull to the left as the wingtip sliced into the ground the lights went out and a fireball ripped through the cabin of the plane it took her a few moments to realize her hand was no longer on nicki and that he was gone later she found out he had died on impact it was as if he had been sleeping peacefully in the safety of her grasp one moment and gone from the world the very next the miami herald reported that when the wingtip hit the jet went into a horizontal cartwheel slamming down and breaking into several large sections with each spinning off across the slippery terrain surviving passengers would later compare the experience to being caught in the swirl of a tornado or being the unwitting prisoner of a violent roller coaster 101 people died that day including newlywed farah infantino and a garment manufacturer from new york named rosario messina rosario had been vacationing in miami with his wife sadie and their two sons when he got called back to the city for a few days on business his wife had begged him not to leave she'd had a bad feeling about them being apart and this had hung around her like a dark cloud his entire trip away and she was at the miami airport waiting at eastern gate 87 for his return when suddenly from behind her where the gates were located she heard a whistle it was their special family code that she her husband and her two sons used and only they knew about she whipped around to look in the direction of the gate but it was closed at first she thought she was imagining things but her two sons admitted later that they had heard it as well after sadie found out later that her husband was one of those who had lost their lives in the everglades that day she began believing that the ominous feeling that had hung over her had been an omen and that the whistle had been her husband rosario's way of reaching out to his family who had been his entire world sadie said quote we were so very close closer than two people could ever be the whole family my two sons rosario and me i loved him so much and he loved me more than two people could ever love end quote after she lost her husband sadie claimed to sometimes see him at night in the darkness of her bedroom as if he was actually there with her in one night he put his arms around her to hold her the next morning sadie awoke to find her limbs frozen in place she could not move and a doctor had to be called she was diagnosed with temporary paralysis and she soon recovered but she always believed that her husband rosario had come back to visit her that night but rosario messina was not the only soul from flight 401 to linger on earth the phenomenon of psychometry claims that souls may be able to retain some relationship with inanimate objects and that they are somehow tied to these objects or places even after death after the plane crashed and the dust had settled the airline company eastern took away the wreckage but instead of throwing it in the trash heap they salvaged what they could using parts from the crashed plane to frankenstein onto other planes such as plane number 318 in early 1973 just months after the crash an eastern airlines pilot getting ready to take off from newark new jersey and fly to miami was brought out of the cockpit to handle a dispute between two flight attendants and a passenger the senior flight attendant had been doing a final headcount before takeoff when she realized they had one extra passenger another pilot who was sitting in first class now she assumed he was deadheading which is quite common and it happens when a pilot needs to be in a certain place other than where he or she is but the attendant wanted to know if this pilot was going into the cockpit at some point during the flight which they sometimes did or if he was just gonna stay in his seat the whole time so she approached this pilot and she said to him excuse me captain are you jump seating this trip i don't have you on my list now the pilot stared straight ahead in response as if she hadn't even spoken so she tried again saying i beg your pardon captain i've got to check you off either as a jumpsuit or a first class pass writer can you help me still she received no response another flight attendant walked over noticing the trouble her colleague was getting and also tried to get an answer out of the man but he continued to stare ahead unblinking and unmoved so finally the captain of the plane was summoned out to handle his fellow pilot and as he bent down to address the man he gasped and said my god it's bob loft now bob loft was a fellow eastern pilot after all and the two men had been friends the only problem was bob loft had died in the cockpit of flight 401 in the middle of the everglades the other two men in the cockpit albert stocksville and donald repo had died not long after in the hospital there was no possible way months later that the captain of flight 401 could be sitting in a first class seat flying to miami and sure enough as the shock set in the mute pilot vanished right before the eyes of the captain and the two flight attendants they delayed takeoff and they searched the plane for him but they found nothing over the next year and a half many employees and passengers of the airline would report seeing the spirits of bob loft and second officer donald repo but only on planes that carried salvage parts from their own doomed flight an entire cockpit crew reported that repo visited them to warn them about a faulty electrical circuit on the plane and when they landed they inspected the plane only to find that he had been right they repaired the issue and had a safe journey to their next destination had they not fixed it though the plane surely would not have made it there repo was also seen on another flight hard at work fixing one of the galley's ovens that had stopped working and on yet another flight an engineer heard a knocking coming from the compartment under the cockpit so he looked inside to see what was making the noise only to encounter donald repo an account of these sightings was published in a 1974 issue of flight safety foundation a newsletter that was not known to indulge in theories about ghosts in the paranormal eastern airlines was not happy about the publicity and every time another flight attendant or pilot or flight engineer came forward with their own experience they would be sent to the company psychiatrist eventually it was made clear to those who worked for the airline that if they wanted to continue working for the airline they would probably need to stop seeing ghosts on their planes or at least keep it to themselves if they happen to 101 people on a routine flight from new york to miami sitting in their seats thinking about the things that people usually think about when they're on a plane like i hope the baggage claim doesn't take too long or i can't wait to sleep in my own bed one minute they were concerning themselves with mundane everyday things the next they were gone 98 of them died right there in the florida everglades before help could arrive when search and rescue teams did arrive they had already been dead for hours and those in the rescue boats claimed they were hearing moans and cries for help coming from everywhere but when they went in that direction to find these people and help them they found nothing but dead bodies one searcher remembers seeing a pale eyeless body floating just beneath the water so he turned to the others in his boat to let them know and when he looked back it was gone 24 years later in may of 1996 another plane crashed just two miles away from where flight 401 went down this time all 110 people on board lost their lives now they say you have a 1 in 9821 chance of dying in a plane crash which technically means our odds are pretty good that most of us don't die in a plane crash right but after hearing stories like this it makes you wonder if those statistics are completely accurate it makes you wonder what is it about that spot in the everglades that caused two massive planes to crash did a powerful force throw flight 401 into confusion by causing the landing equipment light to malfunction did someone really accidentally nudge the autopilot off bob loft was an experienced pilot with years in the cockpit would he have allowed such a rookie mistake to happen because when all was said and done it turned out that the landing gear was fine it was just that one little light that went out we will never know what actually happened but what we can take away from this story is maybe a good captain never abandons ship even after death [Music] our third and final story brings us to the ten thousand islands near the florida everglades edgar j watson was a wanted man an og outlaw who used the florida everglades to hide out from the authorities in the early 1900s ed watson or bloody ed watson as he is known had been born on november 11 1855 in edgerfield south carolina his father was a civil war veteran who worked as a prison warden and his father was also a man who was known to have a bad drinking problem and a violent temper and it seemed that any time those two things collided his son edgar was on the receiving end of his fury it's said that by the time edgar was nine he'd killed his first person a farmhand he'd allegedly killed this man because little edgar had been planting peas in a lazy sort of way and he didn't want this guy to tell his father finally after little edgar had been beat within an inch of his life one too many times his mother took him they left his father and they ran to lake city florida now ed grew into a strong strapping lad standing over six feet tall handsome red hair he was not as strong mentally as he was physically he seemed to have inherited his father's propensity to drink too much and get into fights when he was 20 he killed a man in a bar fight after which edgar and his wife and kids fled florida and traveled to arkansas now on the way out of florida he killed three more people once again while fighting in a bar once in arkansas watson ended up gravitating towards other criminals and outlaws and violent individuals and he joined a gang led by the infamous bell star who apparently liked the savagery she saw in watson balistar was a well-known american outlaw who's best remembered for her contradictory style i suppose she could ride side saddle on a horse wearing a velvet dress and a huge plumed hat and still hit her mark every time with one or both of the pistols that she always had strapped across her hips she's also become infamous for her mysterious and violent death which apparently ed watson did not think was so mysterious because he would later tell people he came into contact with her and it was he who had killed her another man named frank pistol pete eaton supported this version of events he claimed he'd been her last partner during a dance when edgard approached and asked to cut in meaning he wanted to dance with belle she said no but that answer did not satisfy edgar so he followed her when she left the dance and when she stopped to let her horses get a drink of water he shot and killed her now watson was allegedly questioned about her death and charged with the murder but he hired a shark of a lawyer who argued that all they had was circumstantial evidence somehow watson was acquitted but the first chance he got he fled arkansas and ended up in oregon where he got married again even though he was already married and he had left his wife and kids in arkansas but what his wives didn't know wouldn't hurt them am i right he continued his murderous streak before being chased out of the state after which he ended up back in florida a place he was already wanted for murder but that didn't stop him from doing it again he was in a bar is anyone surprised at this point when he saw a man named quinn bass fighting with another dude rolling around on the ground and apparently this quinn bass was cutting the other guy with a knife when watson told him to stop making himself the next target for quinn bass bass ran at watson with his knife pulled but before he could reach him watson had shot him once again bloody ed watson was on the run from authorities but this time he ended up somewhere out of the way and isolated the ten thousand islands a chain of islands between everglades city and cape romano watson purchased chatham bend from the widow of a man who had recently been killed in a shootout it was not somebody that watson had killed i know it's crazy because it seems like he's just shooting everyone but this was a separate shootout that had nothing to do with watson allegedly so edgar watson bought this island chatham-bend and he started a thriving sugar cane farm his most profitable product was a cane syrup called island pride which was shipped to towns all along the gulf coast he had a big house he was making tons of money he lived on his own island he was doing pretty well for a man wanted by several different law enforcement agencies in several different states but the community on nearby chokoloskee island always felt there was something off about him especially when he started violently attacking them now chokoloskee was a small community at that time there was only five major families living there and one of these families was led by a man named adolphus santini the largest property holder on the island now one day adolphus outbid watson on a land sale and in response watson slit his throat now santini somehow managed to survive this attack and the two men settled it outside of court with watson paying a santini nine hundred dollars a payment that some might call hush money later on watson who was on a land buying binge purchased a small island called watchman's key but he didn't figure out until after the sale that a man named tucker and his nephew were living on a small portion of the island they were kind of squatting there watson told tucker that he needed to go and get off his island that he just bought and tucker wrote him a letter basically saying that he wasn't going to leave the island and that watson should essentially f off not long after this tucker and his nephew were found dead most likely killed by edgar watson now in the spring of 1910 a man named leslie cox arrived at chokoloskee island requesting that he be brought over to chatham ben so it seemed to me like chokoloskee was kind of like the main place where there would be like a convenience store and you know a church and the main dock would be there so anybody coming to the ten thousand islands or that area of the ten thousand islands would sort of dock at chokoloskee and then have a smaller boat bring them to another island if they wanted and most of these other islands were just being used like edgar watts and used his for a private residence or you know for a sugar cane mill or something like that but chokoloskee had like a convenience store and a place where you could buy bullets and a place where you could find bait if you want to go fishing and things like that so that is where ed watson would usually go to do his shopping and where other people from surrounding islands would go to do their shopping so this mystery guy shows up leslie cox and he wants to go to chatham bend so they bring him to chatham bend soon after this however another man arrived named herbert duchy melbourne a fugitive from key west who had been accused of burning down some factories and murdering a sheriff these were not the only people showing up asking to be taken by boat to chatham bend there was another man named frank waller a woman named hannah smith and a man named sip lindsay who was also on the run from the law now it's not clear whether edgar watson brought these people there or if they just ended up settling there but i have to assume because they were living eventually with him on chatham bend that he brought them there because we all know what happens if you you settle on his island and he doesn't want you there you end up dead so the spring and the summer pass without any kind of issues and the following october sip lindsay leaves chatham bend and he goes to chokoloskee and he claimed that leslie cox had forced him to take part in the murders of hannah smith frank waller and herbert duchy melbourne sip lindsay was terrified and he wanted to get to the mainland as soon as possible now the next day a boat a fisherman looking for clams saw a foot sticking out of the water near chatham bends the foot belonged to hannah smith former resident of chad and ben's she had been cut open and her stomach had been filled with weights to keep her submerged but she was over 300 pounds and she was very tall and the weights hadn't been enough to keep her foot from resurfacing now at this time bloody ed watson was nowhere to be found but no one had much time to think about where he was because just a few days later a horrible hurricane ripped through the ten thousand islands leaving devastation in its wake when it passed watson showed up at the general store on chukolowski saying he needed bullets to take care of the murderer leslie cox so i guess he was telling the townspeople don't worry about about this murdering guy i'm gonna go and bring him back here to you and then you can dole out whatever justice you think is appropriate but many of the chokoloskee residents had already begun to suspect that cox and watson were working together and more than that they believed the two men had been partners in other illegal activity in the past before watson had washed up on their island they decided it didn't really matter to them who the real killer was edgar watson had to go a group of armed men waited for watson to return to the island which he did a few days later pulling in on his boat and as watson got closer he saw the group of about 20 men waiting for him and when he docked they asked him where's cox leslie cox the murderer you promised to go to chatham-bend and bring the culprit back but here you are alone in the boat now edgar watson also armed claimed that cox had been killed during a struggle and he had just kind of like pushed him into the ocean but he brought back the man's hat as proof no one believed him and even if they had believed him they didn't really care like i said he was a criminal they kind of knew he was a criminal and they didn't want him around anymore because it seemed like whenever he was around just people ended up dead also he had you know previously slit adolphus santini's throat who lived on chokoloskee island so people weren't really like a big fan of him so they all leveled their weapons at watson they all had guns and he was out gunned but he was also an outlaw a fight to the death don't let him see the whites of your eyes kind of outlaw so he lifted his revolver and pulled the trigger but nothing had happened all the goods from the general store had been soaked from the hurricane and the wet bullets in his gun would not fire watson was shot and killed and a later post-mortem showed he had 33 bullets in his body now it's funny this little sidebar of the story but um the sheriff from another island from the mainland came and tried to like find out who was responsible for his death but nobody would kind of point the finger at anybody and once he discovered that there was 33 bullets in his body he kind of assumed like every single person who had been there that day had had most likely fired a shot at watson so he couldn't very well arrest them all so everybody got away with it and that was it nobody ever saw any prison time for shooting bloody edgar watson now later when the people of chokoloskee travel to chatham bends in order to investigate more fully they were greeted by a horrific site it is reported that all along the beach that have been turned upside down by strong hurricane winds rain and waves there could be seen a hand here or a foot there poking through the sand when all was said and done roughly 50 skeletons were recovered from edgar watson's beach now it turned out that watson had a tendency to hire people from the mainland to work on his sugarcane farm these people were usually desperate for money and had little or no family watson would promise them a place to sleep three meals a day and some money in their pockets if they would come live on the island and work for him many of these people never left chatham bend as it turned out watson believed it was easier and cheaper to kill them rather than to pay them and we will most likely never have an accurate count of how many victims bloody had watson killed but it is said that those who lost their lives on that island never left and roam the darkness of the everglades trying to find their way back home now in this video like i said we were only able to touch on a couple of the many mysteries of the florida everglades there's many of them to choose from cryptids a pirate ghost ship that's doomed to wander through the waters of the everglades forever people who have ventured into the everglades and never returned and plenty of missing ships and planes i don't know how much of it is true how much of it is mythology or created from spooky stories told gathered around a campfire but what i do know is i personally won't be taking a trip into the everglades any time soon because it's better to be safe than sorry also investigating all of these um incidences of crashed planes and missing planes it did not help my fear of flying so i probably won't be going anywhere anytime soon for a while until i forget about this it's what happened after the mh370 video too i was terrified to get back on a plane but i hope you enjoyed this video i know it's a little bit of a different format because usually we just tell one story and here i kind of slipped in three different ones and maybe it was a little confusing for you guys let me know if you like this format if you'd like to see more of it in the future and if you do want to see more of it in the future where we talk about more than one story in a video what kind of things would you like to see that are all kind of related and can be fit into one video don't forget to check out magellan tv in the description box to try it out for yourself free for 30 days thank you guys so much for being here i am having so much fun enjoying this halloween season with you bringing you these spooky stories hopefully they are scaring you but not too much but i do want them to scare you a little bit okay i don't want this to be you know like child's play over here unless it's child's play the scary movie and then okay let me know what you think in the comment section make sure to share this video if you thought it was worth sharing make sure to like this video if you liked it and make sure that you are subscribed make sure you're still subscribed if you were subscribed you might not be subscribed anymore youtube loves unsubscribing people from my channel they are so funny quite the pranksters youtube i didn't know they had so much playful energy in them but they they do like messing with me anyways make sure you like the video comment share subscribe and thank you so much for being here with me for this halloween video stay kind stay beautiful and stay spooky and i'll see you very soon [Music] [Music] you don't know how deep it goes until that's getting you slowly so you got to let it go i got blood on the stream

Channel: Stephanie Harlowe

Views: 228,201

Rating: 4.9406915 out of 5

Keywords: The everglades, Florida everglades, The lost patrol, Flight 19, Ghost flight 401, Eastern airlines, Captain bob loft, Stephanie Harlowe, Harloween, True crime, Halloween

Id: OStSsOQSWSM

Length: 47min 48sec (2868 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020