The private passenger plane carrying a New York businesswoman and her family has gone missing. After spending Mother’s Day in Puerto Rico, Jennifer Blumin, her pilot boyfriend Nathan Ulrich, and Blumin’s two sons took to the skies at 11 am on a plane heading for Titusville, Fla. At 2:10 pm, Miami Air Traffic Control lost all communication with the twin-engine MU-2B as it flew at 24,000 feet with a speed of 300 knots. According to the Independent.co.uk, the last known location of the plane was 37 miles to the east of Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas, as well as within the area comprising the infamous Bermuda Triangle.

The cause behind the family’s disappearance has yet to be determined. Coast Guard spokesman Lieutenant commander Ryan Kelly stated: “There was no indication of significant adverse weather at the time”, ruling out the possibility of bad weather.

Rae Dawn Chong, daughter of comedian Tommy Chong and Ulrich’s ex-wife, has placed the blame on the plane, commenting: “He’s an excellent pilot. You couldn’t get a better pilot. I’ve flown many hundreds of miles with him. It had to be a plane issue.” To this, Kelly said that Ulrich may have been listed as the pilot, but it was unknown if he was the one flying the plane at the time of its disappearance.

Though there is no definite answer yet to the question of “what happened to Blumin and her family”, one may be coming in the near future. The NYPost.com reported that debris was found in the waters 15 miles east of Eleuthera. It hasn’t been confirmed by the US Coast Guard if it came from the missing plane, however. “We’re putting two and two together and assuming that it is, unless we get more information,” said Luke Clayton, also a Coast Guard spokesman. The debris has since been sent to the last mechanic who worked on the plane, with the hope that they might be able to identify it.

At the time of writing, speculations continue to run rampant as the mystery of Blumin and her family’s disappearance remains unsolved.

A brief overview of the Bermuda Triangle

Also known as the “Devil’s Triangle”, the Bermuda Triangle refers to the 500,000 square miles of ocean bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. The name “Bermuda Triangle” was coined in 1964 by author Vincent Gaddis, who first used it in a magazine article discussing the hundreds of planes and boats that vanished within its purported area of influence. Everything from navy bombers to cargo ships have all entered the Bermuda Triangle but never came back out. The death of Joshua Slocum, famous as the first person to sail around the globe by himself, and the loss the USS Cyclops, a 542-foot-long Navy Cargo ship carrying 300 men and 10,000 tons of manganese, have all been attributed to the Bermuda Triangle.

Aliens, sea monsters, and even reverse gravity fields have been cited as the causes behind the Triangle’s mythical destructive nature. Similar to Blumin’s case, there doesn’t yet exist a conclusive answer to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. Theories and counter-theories have popped up and will continue to pop up until then—from both the believers and the skeptics of the Triangle. (Related: Has the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle been solved?)

Visit WeirdScienceNews.com for more stories about the strange, the unusual, and sometimes the paranormal.

Sources include:

Independent.co.uk

TheNewDaily.com.au

NYPost.com

History.com