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~ Kingston and Picton ~

A place marked by unexplained forces can be found out on the open waters of Lake Ontario. Some people refuse to believe it exists. Others light candles and pray.

For the past two hundred years and maybe more, ships, planes, and people have mysteriously vanished into thin air. Unusual objects and lights can be seen there, streaking across the sky. Known to sailors and others as a mysterious place of dread, it was named “The Marysburgh Vortex” in 1980 by Hugh Cochrane in his book, Gateway to Oblivion.

Hugh Cochrane’s account begins in 1883 when the Quinlan sailed out of Oswego harbour loaded with coal. She was headed on a course straight through the middle of what is now called the Marysburgh Vortex. No one could have foreseen the bizarre events that awaited the ship and her crew. Her fate, it seemed, was sealed the moment she was out in open water.

The Quinlan sailed into a fog bank. It was greedily engulfed in that misty blanket of moisture. Plummeting temperatures precipitated ice crystals on the deck and the railings and a driving snow was soon to follow. The crew was unable to keep up with clearing the deck and the churning waters tossed the ship and slammed its wooden structure. The crew held on for dear life.

The Quinlan was gripped and steered by some unknown force through the Marysburgh Vortex. Witnesses on land watched as her masts were snapped and her hull was split. Eventually she was tossed on the rocks near shore. A few crewmen were rescued, but most of them, tangled in rigging or injured, were pulled with the ship back into the lake, never to be seen again. The handful of survivors agreed that the ship had been gripped by an “odd attraction.”

In 1889 the Armenia, a tall-masted ship, sailed out of Kingston harbour at the end of May. The crew and captain were in search of the mysterious disappearance of another vessel, Bavaria.

Nine miles south of the Main Duck Islands the crew spotted the Bavaria, sitting upright on a small shoal.

As soon as the Armenia was within hailing distance, the crew called out — and were answered by silence. The solemn mood was broken only by the creaking of her timbers as the waters of Lake Ontario nudged her from side to side.

Something was very strange. As the captain and crew drew alongside, their suspicions were confirmed. The Bavaria was a ghost ship. The crew had completely disappeared without a single trace. Although a small amount of water was found to be in her hold, the ship was still seaworthy. A small repair job, visible on the deck, had been set aside, as though the seaman had been suddenly interrupted.

What mysterious force had beset the crew of the Bavaria? Searchers discovered a batch of freshly baked bread in the galley oven. The captain’s papers were on his desk along with a box containing a large quantity of money. It had been collected from the cargo recently delivered to American ports. Who would have left the money behind?

In one cabin a canary still chirped in its cage. It was ironic that the only survivor of such a mystery could not tell the tale.

The seamen did discover that one lifeboat was missing. Some men thought an explanation might still be found. The search continued.

On the return of the Armenia to Kingston, news of a ghost ship spread throughout the city. People speculated, but what was even more significant, they began to recall earlier days when others had set sail, never to return. Unnatural happenings in this region of water on Lake Ontario became a subject of much conversation.

Several days later it was reported by the captain of another vessel that there had been a storm at the time. They had sighted a lifeboat with two motionless figures at the oars shortly thereafter but repeated attempts to pull alongside failed. Each time the lifeboat was drawn away. No matter how the captain manoeuvred his vessel, the lifeboat remained out of reach. Eventually, the lifeboat disappeared into a thick fog and was never seen again. The two men in the boat had simply stared blankly and made no effort to be saved.

A lighthouse keeper also reported seeing two men adrift in a boat. He, too, attempted to save the men, but to no avail. According to him, each time he had the boat within his grasp he failed to snag it. He also reported that the men made no sound or attempt to be saved.

It remains a mystery.

In June 1900 the ship Picton, heavily laden with coal, sailed on course for the Marysburgh Vortex. Following in close proximity were the ships Minnes and Acadia, the crews of which rubbed their eyes in disbelief. The Picton had vanished before their very eyes.

While the men prayed silently, the other ships entered the vortex. They searched for hours, to no avail. There were no signs of wreckage, no signs of survivors. They concluded that the Picton had somehow sailed into the unknown.

When they reached port on the Canadian side, the crews shared their stories with others. Many listeners nodded their heads as if acknowledging what was already understood: the Marysburgh Vortex was a place where people and ships could vanish without a trace.

Others still hoped for a sign of wreckage or of a lone survivor. A few days later a clue surfaced at Sackets Harbour just a few miles northeast of where the Picton was last seen. The young son of a local fisherman spotted a bottle floating in the water just off the harbour. He borrowed his father’s boat and rowed out to get it. To his amazement he discovered a message from Captain Sidley in the bottle. Captain Sidley, of the missing Picton! The news of such a find became the talk of the district.

What was that message?

Sidley had written that he had lashed himself to his son in order that they could be found together. That was the extent of his hurried note.

Certainly the existence of such a note indicated that the captain and his son did not die suddenly but had experienced some sort of chaos. Some researchers believe the Picton entered a doorway to another dimension.

The next autumn, 1915, at the end of the shipping season, the F.C. Barnes set sail along the north shore of Lake Ontario headed for Kingston. Witnesses later remarked that while watching the ship from shore it seemed to disappear into a cloud of mist. Once again, this occurrence was at the edge of the Marysburgh Vortex.

When the mist dissipated, the tug was no longer visible. Although a search party scoured the waters, no debris was ever found to explain its disappearance. Authorities listed the disappearance of the F.C. Barnes as “unexplained.”

The eeriest story on record is the simple but bizarre story of Captain George Donner. On April 28, 1937, Captain Donner and his crew sailed down the middle of Lake Ontario. At 10:15 p.m. the captain ordered the second mate to notify him when they neared their destination and then he retired to his cabin.

A few hours later the second mate knocked at the captain’s door. There was no answer. He continued to knock. Something was wrong. He opened the cabin door. No one was there. The crew searched the entire ship. Captain Donner had vanished. Some of the crew testified that they had seen him enter his cabin. Others had heard him moving about in his quarters.

The authorities in port launched a thorough investigation. Nothing turned up. Was it possible that the captain fell overboard? This was quickly discounted since the trip was calm and an experienced sailor like Donner would not have fallen overboard.

Although the authorities alerted all vessels to watch for his body, nothing ever surfaced. Another unsolved mystery.

David Childress, in his book entitled, Anti-Gravity & the World Grid, described the existence of an Earth Grid or “crystalline Earth” in the Marysburgh Vortex.

According to Childress, “This Earth Grid is comprised of geometrical flow lines of gravity in the structure of the Earth itself.”

Richard Lefors Clark made reference to this in an article called “Earth Grid, Human Levitation & Gravity Anomalies.” He states, “The pyramids and ley lines are on the power transfer lines of the natural Earth gravity Grid all over the world. The Earth Grid is comprised of the geometrical flow lines of gravity energy in the structure of the Earth itself.

“While the subject of the Earth Grid has been covered in a considerable number of publications, one point in the Grid, marked by a long and strange history at the eastern tip of Lake Ontario is worth special mention.”

David Childress also refers to the significant number of aircraft and ship incidents in the Lake Ontario Earth Grid area known as “The Other Bermuda Triangle” and “The Gateway to Oblivion on the eastern end of Lake Ontario.”

Clark referred to a project started in 1950 by the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada and the United States Army to investigate the magnetic anomalies and possible magnetic utility of this area. Officials call it “Project Magnet.” Was it top secret? Perhaps.

Project Magnet was the first official government research program involving the Earth Grid System. Wilbert Smith, a Canadian communications engineer for the Department of Transportation, directed the project. Smith and a team of scientists did find something. However, as Richard Clark explained, “Project Magnet was terminated.”

Wilbert Smith was born in Lethbridge, Alberta in 1910. According to journalist Paul McManus in an article entitled “Project Magnet,” “Smith graduated from the University of British Columbia, with degrees in electrical engineering and worked as the chief engineer for radio station CJOR in Vancouver. By 1939 Smith was working for the federal Department of Transportation designing Canada’s wartime monitoring systems.”

McManus added, “In 1950 Smith attended a North America Radio Broadcast Association conference in Washington, DC, where he became further convinced of the existence of UFO’s, and that they used magnetic forces to operate.”

Smith described what happened at the conference. “In 1950 I was attending a rather slow-moving broadcasting conference in Washington, DC, and having some free time on my hands, I circulated around asking a few questions about flying saucers, which stirred up a hornet’s nest. I found that the United States government had a highly classified project set up to study them, so I reasoned that with so much smoke maybe I should look for the fire.”

Upon his return to Ottawa, Smith met with Dr. Omond Solandt, chairman of the Canadian Defence Research Board. Solandt agreed to provide laboratory space, equipment, and personnel for research into geo-magnetism.

McManus stated, “In his project proposal of November 21, 1950, Smith outlined seven areas of geo-magnetic research. UFO research was not mentioned. Commander C.P. Edwards, Deputy Minister of Transport for Air Services, accepted the proposal. The project, named Magnet, was department classified, as there was a potential to create new technologies with unknown potential.”

By 1953 Project Magnet moved into the Department of Transport facilities at Shirley’s Bay, just upstream of Ottawa, on the Ottawa River. Some of his research equipment included a magnetometer, a gamma-ray detector, a powerful radio receiver, and a gravimeter, in order to measure gravity fields in the atmosphere.

Wilbert Smith described Project Magnet in these terms. “Project Magnet was authorized in December 1950, following my request to the Canadian department of Transport for permission to make use of the Departments’ laboratory and field facilities in a study of unidentified flying objects and physical principals which might appear to be involved.”

In an article entitled “We are Not Alone,” Wilbert Smith truly described his beliefs and findings. “Our universe is a very large place. The universe is also incredibly old. Maybe the universe doesn’t even have an age, that it is eternal and ever passing through the cycle of energy to matter and matter to energy.

“It is only reasonable to speculate that somewhere else in the vastness of space and the eternity of time, other intelligent life could have blossomed forth. Since we have made such rapid progress toward space travel in such a short time, a differential of only a few hundred or at the most a few thousand years between the development on some other planet and ours could easily have resulted in a race capable of doing right now what we plan to do in the future. In fact, intelligent races might even set about accelerating environmental conditions to their liking, seeding and stocking planets with appropriate life forms, and watching over them as they develop.”

Smith then addressed the UFO sightings.

“Thousands of people have seen lights and apparently solid objects in the sky that behaved as no light or object normally seen in the sky ought to behave. Thousands have seen these objects under circumstances, which enabled them to say definitely what they were not, even though they were not able to say what they were. Reliable photographs and movies have been taken, and bits of ‘hardware’ collected which cannot be explained away without challenging the integrity of a great many cases, and there is quite a bit of evidence of physical contact with these strange craft.”

Smith summarized by stating, “There is virtually no doubt that alien craft are visiting this Earth, and that the beings who operate them are very much like us, probably our distant relatives.”

By 1953 the press became suspicious of Smith’s work. Word leaked out that he and his team were doing UFO research. Questions were soon asked of the Department of Transport. Paul McManus stated, “Denials were made, but it became obvious that something unusual was under way.

On August 8, 1954, “contact” was made at 3:01 p.m. The gravimeter results, recorded on graph paper, showed a very large and unexplainable deflection and the researchers rushed outside to have a look. All they saw was dense cloud cover.

Two days later the Department of Transport issued a press release admitting they had been performing UFO research for three-and-a-half years.

Smith stated what happened next. “When the Project Magnet report was made and permission sought to extend the scope of the investigations through federal support, the decision was finally made in 1954 that this would not be advisable in the face of the publicity from which the whole project had suffered.”

The conclusions reached by Project Magnet and contained in the official report were based on rigid statistical analysis of sightings and were as follows:

There is a 91 percent probability that at least some of the sightings were of real objects of unknown origin.

There is about a 60 percent probability that these objects are alien vehicles.

In 1961 Smith was involved in an interview with television station CJOH. During the session he was asked if he believed that flying saucers were real.

Smith replied, “Yes. I am convinced that they are just as real and tangible as most things we deal with in our everyday lives.”

“Next question, Have you, yourself, actually handled any material believed to be from a flying saucer?”

Smith, “If by that, you mean material substance showing evidence of fabrication through intelligent effort and not originating on this planet, I have.”

During the interview Smith never used the word UFO. He knew from the very beginning that the phenomena he was studying and tracking was extraterrestrial.

According to Wilbert’s son, Jim Smith, just prior to his father’s death in 1962 his father called him in, and told Jim that he had in fact seen the alien bodies from a crash, and had been shown the crashed remains of a flying saucer outside Washington D.C while conducting the official Canadian investigation.

Smith did reveal that there were sometimes mobile gravity anomalies all over the Lake Ontario area. He especially noted areas of “reduced binding” in the atmosphere above the lake. He described the areas as “pillar-like columns a thousand feet up in the atmosphere.” Some of these invisible, mysterious columns appear to change location.

One phenomenon that might play a role in the unexplained events in the Marysburgh Vortex is the number of magnetic anomalies. According to Smith there are no fewer than 14 of these magnetic anomalies — areas of strong local magnetic disturbance — plainly marked on present-day navigation charts. The majority of these locations are clustered in the eastern end of Lake Ontario.

The Marysburgh Vortex was also one area where Smith conducted a number of investigations into UFO sightings. There had been another earlier discovery here that may have the same origins but also has some folkloric aspects. In 1804, Captain Charles Selleck and his crew of the Lady Murray detected something on the surface of the water during a crossing of Lake Ontario. It seemed that in one small area the wave movement was different. The ship was stopped and a lifeboat was lowered over the side. He and some crew members rowed to the area to investigate.

What they found was a gigantic stone monolith just three feet (one metre) beneath the surface. It measured 40 feet (over ten metres) square. Sounding it revealed a sheer drop on all sides of approximately 300 feet (less than 100 metres) straight down.

The captain entered his findings in his logbook; this object was a major navigational hazard and others would need that information. Curious seekers sailed out to poke and prod this immense monolith for many months to follow. Among the visitors to the site was Captain Thomas Paxton of the government schooner Speedy. No one knew what this foreshadowed for Captain Paxton. An event near the village of Port Perry on Lake Scugog would precipitate this strange incident.

In 1806 the Farewell family opened a trading post for barter with the Native peoples on Washburn’s Island on Lake Scugog. One day the Farewells left their agent, John Sharp, in charge of the post. When they returned, they found him dead. It was alleged that a Native named Ogetonicut had done the deed to avenge the murder, by a white man, of his brother, Whistling Duck. Ogetonicut was arrested and after a preliminary hearing it was decided that the trial would be held at the Newcastle courthouse.

Newcastle was the new district town planned for Northumberland and Durham to be located at Presqu’ile. The murder had been committed in that judicial district. Ogetonicut was taken first to York, now Toronto, to await transportation to Presqu’ile. A government schooner named the Speedy was chartered in October to take those who needed to be present at the trial down the lake. Judge Thomas Cochrane, court officials, and a selected group of dignitaries were to officiate.

The Speedy had two alternate captains. One was Thomas Paxton and the other was James Richardson. Apparently Richardson had some forewarning concerning the trip, his intuition told him not to go. There was danger. He attempted to change the minds of the officials. Even the witnesses refused to board. Paxton, however, was ordered to do the job.

According to local lore, Ogetonicut’s mother travelled from Lake Scugog to the shores of Lake Ontario near Oshawa to watch for the Speedy. When she caught sight of the vessel, and in the knowledge that her son was on board, she began to chant against those who had taken him away.

That evening a violent storm struck. By midnight, enormous waves crashed the shore. The Speedy was being pursued by a deadly gale. Captain Paxton, for some unknown reason, never sought the shelter of the harbours he passed in the night. Instead, the ship steered straight for Presqu’ile Bay.

As the ship neared its destination, locals lit bonfires to help direct the ship into harbour, but the Speedy seemed to be on a different course. Hugh Cochrane elaborated, “The captain paid them no heed. Nor did he appear to have control of his vessel, for her course seemed unerring. As if drawn by a huge magnet, the ship headed directly for the area of the monolith, then was lost from sight as the storm closed over the scene.”

That was the last time anyone saw the Speedy.

The ship had simply disappeared. The next day searchers sailed out to the area of the monolith hoping to find either survivors or wreckage of the ship. They were shocked when they dragged the lake and found nothing. Even the stone monolith was gone. There was no longer a three hundred foot depth of water; instead, it was shallow and sandy.

No wreckage and no survivors of the Speedy were ever found.

Janet Kellough is a seventh generation Prince Edward County resident. She knows about the existence of the Marysburgh Vortex. “When you’re in a recreational boat your compass doesn’t work out there. I know a pilot who was flying out over the middle of the vortex when he encountered a strange phenomenon. It was like a giant hand reached out and flipped his plane over. Then a sudden force righted the craft. People also report seeing strange lights out over these waters.”

Dave Whatton has lived in Prince Edward County for the past 54 years. He is a local historian who is knowledgeable concerning these events and who has theories about this mysterious area in Ontario. I asked David to share his views.

“I will say that many of the doomed sailors on the vessels that disappeared undoubtedly experienced some form of shock, which can separate various aspects of the Etheric body from the other body layers. This results in emotionally charged energy fragments that loop. We know them as ‘ghosts.’ They are quite akin to an endless loop video of a few seconds duration. The figure appears, does its thing, then disappears, only to repeat the scene any number of times.

“This repeating pattern has been noted throughout the world, and certainly has manifested itself in this area. I recognize that the phenomenon is truly real to the perceiver and that certain individuals are more able to receive this sensory-based communication than others.

“I live in the so-called Marysburgh Vortex. It is a quiet, rural area populated by a mixture of farm folk, fisher folk, and city escapists.

“The specific area referred to by some as the Marysburgh Vortex is in the extreme southeastern sector of Prince Edward County, bounded by water on three sides with no more than two miles of land separating an arm of inland sea, namely Prince Edward Bay, from Lake Ontario proper.

“The Marysburgh Vortex is more than just a mysterious place where people, ships and planes go missing, it is a sacred territory emitting a strong atmosphere of mysticism and of healing qualities.”

As to the spirituality of the area, David points out that shamans of various Native cultures spanning thousands of years have treated this area as sacred. The Hopewell/Adena (circa 300 B.C.) not only settled in this spot for several hundred years but built their Mounds here as well. “Two thousand years later, the island of Waupoos was named after a Cayuga holy man. The ancients knew that this area was special and I concur.”

If you plan to sail in The Marysburgh Vortex or even to pay a visit, keep your eyes peeled for the unusual — lights, mists, and vanishing objects; keep your ears keened and listening for unexplained cries in the night and keep your mind and other senses tuned and open. Light your candles; and say your prayers. The mystery continues.