Time Keeps on Slipping

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Olivia loves a challenge.

It's why she lifts heavy weights.

and likes complicated recipes.

But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way with Expedia.

She bundled her flight with a hotel to save more.

Of course, she still climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Ivy Tower.

You were made to take the easy route.

We were made to easily package your trip.

Expedia, made to travel.

Dating in the military can be tough, especially in the sea service branches.

Hard to meet someone and keep the relationship going when when you spend all your time out on the open water.

I actually did meet my wife during a port call.

That's what they taught us, right?

Improvise, adapt, and overcome.

But suppose a military man did meet a girl in a foreign city, immediate sparks.

What would make their first date memorable?

Let's say it starts with a romantic walk along the beach to watch the sunset.

and then an evening stroll through a quaint little village nearby.

So quaint the inhabitants still light their streets and homes with oil lamps.

And then, what if, as they both lay down on the grass to stare up at the stars, everything suddenly went dark?

They both fell asleep, blacked out, really.

And when they woke up, the village they had just walked through was now gone.

That certainly seems like a night that neither of them would soon forget.

Bizarre as it may seem, this is exactly what happened to a young Coast Guardsman named John and his companion, a young nursing student named Barbara, both of whom verified this story.

Despite having never known each other when they first met in Bermuda while John was on shore leave, what happened to them that night would become what some have called one of the most convincing accounts of time travel ever recorded.

This is the baffling and somewhat heartbreaking story of of a Coast Guardsman in Bermuda.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

So, what's the Coast Guard really like?

I mean,

I know it's not like the Navy, but you're always out there, right?

On the water, I mean.

Yeah, we're always out there.

It's different, though.

A lot of people think it's all rescues and chases, but a lot of it's just

routine, watching the waves, keeping things safe.

It's quiet, in a way.

You get used to the isolation.

I guess that must get lonely sometimes, huh?

I don't mind it.

It's kind of peaceful, actually.

But

yeah, it can get a little quiet out there.

That's why I don't mind coming to places like this.

Good change of scenery.

I get that.

Nursing schools...

Well, it's a grind.

You know?

You've got your hands full with those books, huh?

It was Thanksgiving Day, 1964.

As the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war and a little-known country called Vietnam began to dominate newspaper headlines, the U.S.

Coast Guard cutter, Half Moon, sailed its way into waters off the island of Bermuda.

For the young Coast Guardsmen aboard, including John Murphy, the tiny island situated in the western Atlantic was a paradise, like their own little slice of Hawaii half a world away.

While the Half Moon was there on an official training mission, the day's Thanksgiving festivities were in full swing aboard the vessel.

The crew enjoyed being treated to a hearty meal before then getting to spend some free time off ship in the nearby port.

For John and his three buddies, there wasn't a moment to waste.

As soon as the ship was docked and their dinner plates were scraped clean, they headed straight down to the pier, excited to start enjoying their next few days of shore leave.

Of course, it didn't take the Coast Guardsmen long to find the nearest bar, and it was there that John's life would take both an exciting and yet rather unbelievable turn.

Seated nearby at another table, a group of four young women, student nurses with the U.S.

Navy, caught the attention of John and his three friends.

After a couple drinks provided them some much-needed courage, the men decided it was time to make introductions.

John felt a bit sheepish.

He hesitated before leaving the table.

He had a fiancée back home.

And then,

maybe it was the alcohol, but he just couldn't help himself.

One of the women at the table gave him an odd feeling.

as if he recognized her from somewhere.

He felt inexplicably drawn to her, and it didn't help that she seemed to be just as interested in him.

So John made his way over, feeling a bit flushed.

Of course, he was just going to talk to her.

But boy, was she a knockout.

John soon discovered her name was Barbara.

She was 19.

John kept laughing in spite of himself.

He couldn't believe she was talking to him.

She was one of the prettiest girls he'd ever seen.

After a few more laughs and cheerful conversation over drinks, the men invited the women back to the half-moon, offering to give them a private tour of the ship.

When their tour had finished, the four Coast Guardsmen, each of them now locked arm in arm with one of the young women, made their way back out into town, eager to keep the night going with more drinks and some dancing.

John and Barbara, however, had other plans.

They quietly broke away from the group, deciding they would much rather enjoy one another's company alone.

They walked towards the nearby Fort St.

Catherine, a fortress with its origin stretching back to the earliest days of British settlement in 1612.

As they walked and talked, John felt a little more at ease.

It turned out that Barbara was also engaged to be married.

So they kept things light, their conversation feeling both fun and effortless.

But as their time alone wore on, John began to realize it was much more than flirty banter and charisma.

For some strange reason, this all just felt too familiar.

It was an odd sensation, as if they had known each other for many years.

As he looked at Barbara, her arm tucked in his, her carefree laugh and wonderful smile, John suddenly realized this wasn't merely a boyish attraction.

He may be young, but he knew this feeling.

It was love.

What a beautiful view.

Nothing like this back in North Carolina, huh?

Uh, no.

Uh, not as such.

Barbara,

this is gonna sound crazy.

And maybe it is, but.

What is it, John?

Does this feel

familiar to you?

I don't know how to explain it, but

talking to you just feels.

I know what you mean.

Uh you do talking to you just feels

right.

It's like I've been away for a long time

but the second I saw you

I was I was back home

listen

why don't why don't we

why don't we just keep walking, huh?

I need to uh

I need to stretch my legs.

Come on

So we're sitting on top of this low wall

looking out at the the battlements, Fort St.

Catherine.

You got the ocean and there's the sun just dipping below the horizon.

It was very beautiful.

And

I finally told Barbara Barbara

what I was feeling, which was this sense that I already knew her,

and I was hoping she wasn't just going to think it was some kind of pickup line.

It was

truly a feeling I could not explain fully.

But to my surprise, Barbara not only seemed to understand,

but she said that she had been feeling much the same.

They stared at each other, the sun now slipping out of sight as the sky turned a brilliant pink.

Then they came to their senses.

Both were engaged, and an affair was the last thing either of them wanted.

Smiling sheepishly, John and Barbara left their place on the low wall, but decided to at least continue their walk.

Without really thinking about it, their feet seemed to draw them both down a small trail leading away from the fort and towards a hill.

As they neared the crest of this hill, John was struck by another odd sense of familiarity, like deja vu.

He had never been to Bermuda before, but now even the landscape around him suddenly felt very familiar.

He then had a strange thought.

Knowing she wouldn't make fun of him for sharing it, he turned to Barbara.

Before reaching the top, he said that even though he had never been here, he knew what was waiting for them on the other side of the hill.

He couldn't explain it, but he just knew they were about to see an old colonial village with a tall church tower.

Seemingly bemused as he was, Barbara said, yes, that's exactly what she was thinking, further adding that the church steeple had a broken clock, showing a time of 12.30.

Then, it felt as if the world around them had, in a moment, become unnaturally calm and silent.

Even the constant crashing of the waves now seemed to be muted.

Finally reaching the top of the rise, the couple looked down over the other side and stopped.

Even in the tropical humidity, they felt a chill run down their backs.

Before them was a small 18th century colonial settlement.

It was almost exactly as Barbara and John had predicted.

Prominent amongst the small houses and buildings was a church, its tower looming over the humble town square.

On its steeple, a clock displayed the time of 1230.

The hands appeared to be unmoving.

It was broken.

While baffling, the scene felt overwhelmingly familiar to both of them.

So, taking one another's hand, they descended the hill and entered the village.

The old town was like something out of another time.

Not only the buildings themselves, but John and Barbara couldn't help noticing that the streets were still lit by oil lamps.

Peering in through windows, they saw lanterns burning within the many homes and buildings.

What was more, the village was eerily desolate.

John and Barbara saw no one else as they wandered the streets seemingly all alone.

Crossing the village square, the two made for the church, pulling on the solid wooden doors only to find that the building was locked.

Looking around, feeling drawn to it, they then strolled over to the nearby cemetery.

Across the center of it, they noticed a low stone wall had been built, evidently to divide one half from the other.

Again, despite this being their first time seeing it, the two instinctively knew something they couldn't explain.

This wall was meant to segregate the headstones of white and black burial plots.

Barbara wanted to rest for a moment.

John agreed, unable to explain the feeling.

Finding a spot to sit atop the wall that bordered the exterior of the cemetery, something even more extraordinary then happened.

Barbara and John were flooded with strange memories.

But this time it wasn't about old churches, broken clocks, and cemetery walls.

It was as if they were catching glimpses of a life they'd once shared together, as if they had once lived on the island, as a married couple raising a family.

Though neither John nor Barbara could begin to understand how, after sharing these memories as they occurred, one after another, the two of them reached an identical and awful conclusion.

They had an overwhelming sense that they had also died together in this past life.

An ominous feeling they had both met a tragic end.

Still, they were perfectly fine now.

They smiled.

It was an odd thing.

Meeting each other in a bar, touring his ship.

and then walking into a strange village and recounting identical memories from a life they had never lived.

It was only a shame they hadn't met each other sooner.

Barbara looked up at the night sky.

Hopping down off the wall, she dug into her bag, pulling out a blanket she'd used earlier during a trip to the beach.

Laying it out on the soft grass of the cemetery, she and John lay down, staring up at the stars.

The air was chilly.

They held each other a little more closely, trying desperately to keep their thoughts on the fact that they were both engaged to someone else.

This is

really nice.

Yeah.

Sure, Pete's ditch and rescue drills, that's for sure.

John?

Yeah, Barbara.

I want you to kiss me

just once.

Oh.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that's when it happened.

I closed my eyes and leaned forward to kiss her,

but before our lips came together,

everything around us grew dark,

and it felt as if we were tumbling together into a bottomless abyss.

The sensation of falling finally ended,

and then, without any warning, both of us passed out.

John said that he and Barbara woke up a few hours later, feeling groggy and very confused about what had just happened.

As it was now in the early morning hours, they left the village in a hurry, making for the town of St.

George, to the hotel where Barbara and her friends were staying.

Before she went inside, Barbara stopped and looked at John.

What could she say?

He forced a smile.

Their goodbye was awkward.

They exchanged addresses, promising to stay in touch.

The next morning, Barbara would catch her flight back to the U.S.

John would stay in Bermuda for another 10 days.

After a brief hug, she turned, and John watched her walk away.

Earlier in the evening, it had felt like he had lost her once before.

Although he couldn't understand why,

John felt like he was losing her all over again.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

As many of you know, Mr.

Balin and Balin's Studios have been a huge help in bringing this podcast to life.

And if you'd like to believe you are something of a storytelling connoisseur, then you need to check out Mr.

Balin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious.

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Balin weaves gripping tales of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, diving into true crime, unsolved mysteries, and paranormal events that keep you on the edge of your seat.

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Balin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, is available on all podcast platforms, and it is free, just like ours.

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Making his way back to the ship, John fell into a restless sleep in his bunk.

That same night, he had a very vivid dream.

He was back in the village.

When he woke the next morning, he knew the dream meant something.

His meeting with Barbara.

None of it made made any sense, but he had to find out why.

He decided he would try to find out as much as he could about the strange village before his time in Bermuda ended.

It was another two days before he was granted shore leave again.

His first stop would be the village.

On one hand, he wanted to see if he would experience the same sense of eerie familiarity that he had felt with Barbara.

At the same time, he wanted to recreate the sense of being with her, to relive that uncanny feeling that they had shared together about having once lived there as a husband and wife.

However, as he once again crested the top of the same small hill which hid the town from view, he stopped dead.

John looked around, feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of his stomach.

The village was gone.

All that he could see was open pasture land, not a single building in sight.

I fully expected it to be there.

In addition to wanting to see it in the daytime, I was going to find a place to sit and write a letter to Barbara.

I was totally surprised and found it hard to believe when it wasn't there.

I don't know if it's important, but thought you might want to know that we were able to touch and feel the houses and the church, and both of us sat on the graveyard wall.

These were solid objects.

Also, when we tried to enter the church, the doors wouldn't open, but they definitely made noise when I pulled and pushed on the door handle, so there were definitely sounds.

Understandably shaken, John quickly made his way back to St.

George, stopping at a local pub.

He needed a drink to settle his nerves, probably more than one.

After a few sips, the Coast Guardsman struck up a conversation with the bartender.

trying to sound casual as he asked the elderly man if he knew anything about an old village nearby.

The man thought for a moment.

While he wasn't aware of any current villages or towns in the direction John had pointed, he recalled once hearing about a hamlet that had once stood near the old fort.

It had been built sometime in the 1700s, but was wiped out in the late 18th century by what he called the Great Hurricane.

The massive storm was otherwise known as Hurricane San Calixto, the Great Hurricane of the Antilles, and the 1780 disaster.

It wreaked havoc on the islands of the Western Atlantic, Caribbean, and Florida coast.

With wind gusts up to 200 miles per hour, it devastated the settlements, killing upwards of 20,000 to 22,000 people, making it the deadliest hurricane to ever hit the Atlantic.

As John thanked him and got up to leave, the bartender suggested that he should try talking to a local sea captain by the name of Sam.

He was pretty sure Sam's ancestors had lived in the old lost village.

Then remembering it was called St.

Catherine, he scribbled something on a bar napkin and handed it to John.

It was a map showing where the captain lived.

He then recalled the captain was likely on an extended trip to England and wouldn't return until after the new year.

John decided he would check for himself, following the old man's directions to the captain's house.

But before he could knock, one of the neighbors leaned out of their window and confirmed what the barman had said.

Sam wouldn't be back for several weeks.

John felt a pang of disappointment.

It's not as if he could just come back to Bermuda whenever he wanted.

Leaving Sam's home, his feet then carried him back to the town square to meet his friends at the White Horse Tavern.

He sat quietly, mulling over a few drinks.

Two of his shipmates from the first night out then started bragging about how they had made out with the student nurses.

John forced a smile, then downed his last drink.

He then ducked out of the bar before anyone could ask him what had happened with Barbara.

Making his way back to the ship, he had a sudden surge of hope.

It was likely they would return back to Bermuda sometime in the next year.

That's when he would speak with the captain.

In the meantime, he would make the most of the remaining days he had on the island to do some research.

Two days later, John's request for early liberty was approved.

John made his way back into St.

George, his first stop being the modest two-room cultural center.

For being such a small island, the many displays of memorabilia gave John the sense that Bermuda had a long history.

He paged through photo albums and scrapbooks, hoping to find something that would reference the missing village.

Halfway through one binder, something caught his eye.

It was a picture of a man wearing a nautical hat, standing by several paintings.

The caption for the photo told him the man in the picture was Captain Sam.

John's eyes then moved over the painting to Sam's right.

It was a portrait of two people, a man and a woman.

What sent sent chills down John's spine was when he looked at the face of the woman in the painting.

It was Barbara.

Now John was certain he needed to speak with Captain Sam.

The following day, John's John's cutter, the Half Moon, left port.

It wasn't time to leave Bermuda, but the ship sailed offshore to conduct a series of ditch and rescue exercises, a routine practice which prepared the crew for real-life rescues of ditched aircrafts.

The drills kept John's mind off of Barbara and the growing mystery of St.

Catherine.

What brought them back to mind was something the crew witnessed later that night.

The ship continued on with the exercises past sundown.

John was assigned to the 8 to p.m.

watch.

As they stared at the radar, John and the other crew saw what seemed to be a large landmass appear that wasn't plotted on their maps.

The only piece of land that existed near Bermuda was off the other side of the ship.

This was something else.

Confused, the technicians checked the radar, thinking it might be a glitch.

It was working fine.

The chief technician then turned on the air search radar to confirm that the landmass appeared on that that set as well.

Sure enough, as soon as it had warmed up, there it was, clearly defined.

It looked like a small island about three miles across, situated about 10 miles away from the ship.

Radioing up to the bridge to report this, the men heard the quartermaster laugh into the handset, suggesting that maybe they had discovered Atlantis.

John was the only one who didn't laugh at this.

With everything else he had seen over the past few days, nothing would surprise him.

The crew eventually returned to focusing on their exercises, almost forgetting about the strange appearance of the island, until a few minutes before 11 p.m., when it suddenly disappeared from their screens.

One sweep of the radar, it had been there.

The next sweep, it was gone.

The crew shrugged it off, but John furrowed his brow at the news.

Why did things around Bermuda seem to appear and disappear so suddenly?

Following the completion of their exercises, the half-moon returned to port.

The men aboard would have one final opportunity to go ashore before the ship would leave the island.

John made a stop over at the White Horse Tavern for a drink before walking out to St.

Catharine's Beach.

Staring out at the open water, he closed his eyes and tried to recall the image of Barbara to mind.

He became overwhelmed by the thought that he might never see her again.

Eventually making his way back to the ship, John knew in his heart that, whatever his feelings for Barbara were, it was over.

It wouldn't be fair to his fiancée to keep pining after Barbara like this.

He needed to focus on his upcoming marriage.

When the ship set sail for New York, John had decided to put all thoughts of the young woman he had met on Bermuda out of his mind.

However, it was a hopeless effort from the start.

His reunion with his fiancée was bittersweet.

During his time away, it was as if they had grown apart.

The following weeks were fraught with uneasy tension and disappointment.

Two months after he had returned, John broke off the engagement.

John had also started sending letters to Barbara in earnest.

something that likely contributed to his decision to end his engagement.

He found it difficult to express into words words how he felt and tried sending her poems.

Barbara responded kindly to his letters, but John noticed her replies didn't match his own deep affections.

She was still involved with the other man, after all, although John hoped he sensed in her writing her own feelings of reluctance in keeping up the relationship.

It was a delicate thing, courting her through letters.

But in spite of his burning desire to tell her, John said nothing of what he had discovered after Barbara had left the island.

I didn't want her to think I was some kind of nut by telling her the place was gone or had been an illusion until I had some explanation.

Luckily, the Coast Guard sent me to a training course, which gave me a chance to go back to the island after only a few months in April of that same year.

Having been enrolled in the Coast Guard's Oceanography School, in April 1965, John's class took a training cruise as part of the final exercises.

The cruise started in Portland, Maine, and ended in St.

George, Bermuda.

The crew was given a single day of liberty.

John wasted no time, seizing the first opportunity he had to slip away from his fellow classmates and head back to the home of Captain Sam.

This time, Sam was home.

Sam was noticeably taken aback by John showing up at his door, asking questions about the lost village of St.

Catherine, saying he had some strange connection to it, and wanting to know what Sam knew about it.

But after John explained that he was with the U.S.

Coast Guard, Sam invited him in.

John's first line of questioning was to ask about the photo he had seen, with Sam standing in front of a large painting with two people in it.

He tried to sound offhand when he mentioned that the woman in the photo resembled someone he knew.

Sam then led John back into his parlor, and there, on the wall, was the same painting.

It depicted a man in a sharp-looking Navy uniform and a beautiful woman in a gold-colored gown.

Sam explained these were his great-great-grandparents.

It was their wedding portrait, painted by a renowned English artist at the time.

The old sailor explained that they had indeed lived in a small village a stone's throw away from Fort St.

Catherine.

They had been married in its church around the year 1764, but sadly, they had died in the great hurricane of 1780.

The entire village had been wiped out.

As Sam talked, John stared intently at the painting.

The woman did look remarkably like Barbara.

He told Sam this, only wishing he had a photo of her to prove it.

To John's surprise, the captain looked him over and said that he, John, looked quite similar to the man in the painting, his great-great-grandfather.

John looked at the man in the painting.

He didn't see it, maybe only slightly.

but it was nothing compared to the woman and Barbara.

Out of curiosity, John then asked what their names were.

When Sam told him, John nearly fell over.

Their names were Sir John and Lady Barbara.

Sam asked if he was alright.

When John managed to find his voice, he explained that his friend shared the same name, Barbara, that the two of them had met the previous November and walked into the village together.

Now Sam looked confused.

and asked John to explain what he meant.

They sat down, and John recounted everything that had happened to him during his time with Barbara.

By the time he finished telling the story, he wondered if Sam thought he was a lunatic.

He watched as Sam quietly got up, reaching into a dusty old cabinet next to the table, pulling out a stack of old papers.

He combed through them.

Clearly, these were some kind of family records, because Sam began telling him about Sir John and Lady Barbara.

Lady Barbara, he explained, came from a noble bloodline, while her husband John served as a naval attaché to the British governor of the colony.

Sir John had an impressive military career, and he had been knighted by King George for several acts of heroism, including one in the Philippine Islands, during which he was injured.

He was then posted to Bermuda, and it was there that Sir John met and fell in love with Lady Barbara.

When the great hurricane swept across the shores of Bermuda, Lady Barbara was in the final weeks of pregnancy.

The day after the storm moved on, her body was found washed up onto a hill after the water had receded.

When the rescuers saw she was full term, a midwife was quickly called and she carefully removed the baby.

Miraculously, the child survived, and that child was Captain Sam's great-grandfather.

Two days later, John was back at the Coast Guard campus in Connecticut.

He and the other classmates had taken a flight to get back.

After all of his hesitancy in his previous letters, John now couldn't wait to tell Barbara everything he'd learned.

But the letter he planned to send would never be written.

When John returned, he went through his mail to find a letter from Barbara.

Unironically, the letter began, Dear John,

Barbara was asking John to stop writing to her.

She wanted to focus on her relationship with her fiancé.

John quietly put the letter down and left the barracks.

He was never much of a drinker, but that night, he got completely hammered.

Okay.

All right, John.

What's the worst that can happen?

Well, she might think you're crazy.

I would think I was crazy.

Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.

At the tone, please record your message.

When you have finished recording, you may hang up or press one for more options.

Hi, Barbara, if this is Barbara's number.

My name is John,

and I know this is.

I'm not sure if you'd remember me.

I know this might sound strange, but

we met

when I was in the Coast Guard

a long time ago, back in 1964,

and on Bermuda.

Again, I'm not sure if you remember me, Barbara, but this is Barbara's number.

Could you call me back?

After receiving her final letter in 1965, John would spend the following years haunted by his experiences in Bermuda.

Then, in 2008, he happened to watch a documentary about Bermuda that prompted him to find out where the student nurse he had met all those years ago ended up.

Without knowing her current last name or the correct spelling of her maiden name, the search took months.

Finally, he found her engagement announcement in a Wisconsin newspaper dated April 14th, 1965.

Even after 43 years, a feeling of melancholy washed over John.

That was around the time Barbara had sent her final letter.

John wondered what might have happened if he had just told her everything he had learned in Bermuda anyway.

Who knows what might have unfolded under those circumstances.

It might have made a difference in both of our current lives.

John continued to search, tracing her name to a high school yearbook, then to a nursing pamphlet to a nursing registry.

and finally to her address and phone number.

It was the most exhilarating phone call he'd ever dialed.

As the dial tone rang, John wondered if Barbara would even remember him.

Maybe she really would think, after all these years, he had gone crazy.

The call went to voicemail.

John decided he would still leave a message.

He then anxiously waited for Barbara to call back.

Several hours later, she did.

and she remembered him and their meeting in Bermuda.

After spending some time catching up on four decades, John told Barbara everything he'd wanted to, about the village disappearing, about the painting and the photo, about going back to the island several months later and finding Captain Sam, about the history of the village, and seeing the portrait of Sir John and Lady Barbara in Sam's home.

In 2016, when John later spoke about these experiences with authors Bruce Gernan and Rob McGregor, they insisted on speaking with Barbara as well to hear her side of the story.

After contacting her, she confirmed that, yes, she and John did walk through the village together and that they both fell asleep near the graveyard.

Having never returned to Bermuda herself, Barbara was surprised to learn that the village had been destroyed when John told her about the hurricane.

There were otherwise some details of the village she couldn't recall as clearly as John, such as the church clock being stuck at 12:30.

But she did remember feeling a strange attraction to the village.

52 years ago, I was 19 years old and had no awareness of past lives.

When I met John, he was respectful, comforting, and safe to be with, so it felt okay to go off alone with him and away from the group.

It actually felt like I had known him before.

When we arrived at the village,

I remember that it felt familiar and and inviting, but I have no recollection or sense of having lived there.

It may have been different more than a half a century ago when me and John first walked through it, but now I have no recollection.

What I remember about the village was the church and very vividly a stone wall where we sat as we talked and rested.

It was indeed a memorable 24 hours.

When John contacted me eight years ago and shared his feelings, I could relate fully to this since I had been interested in past, present, and future lives through most of my adult life, which was contrary to my family upbringing as a Christian.

Recently, I had been studying the Buddhist perspective on past lives.

It confirms my beliefs.

The fact that there are many others who have also had experiences of past lives is also very affirming.

Direct experience has a lot to say about reality.

Remembering what John told her about the lady Barbara who had lived in the village in the 18th century, Barbara mentioned that upon reflection, some of the events in her life now seemed more understandable.

I have had many dreams throughout my life about being married in a small church.

But I was never married in a small church in this lifetime.

I also have been unexplainably fearful and sometimes panic when swimming in deep water.

I've always been a good swimmer in this life and would swim laps daily in three feet of water.

But if I would go to the deep end of a pool or lake, I would start feeling very anxious.

But I have always been drawn to the ocean and the waves and have found the rolling waves particularly calming.

However, I would never go on a cruise ship even if it offered the world to me.

I like having the earth under my feet.

So when John said I drowned during a hurricane in Bermuda,

it resonated with my attraction as well as my panic.

John Murphy, a native of North Carolina, left the Coast Guard after eight years, then at the age of 32.

During his time in service, he had become one of the youngest chief petty officers.

During his life, he married twice.

He went on to work in the field of computer programming, eventually making waves in the telecommunications industry.

He retired in 2002 and has six grown children and five grandchildren.

Barbara, a resident of Minnesota, preferred to keep her last name off the record.

After graduating in 1966 with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing, she worked as a nurse for several years before then pursuing her master's degree.

She continued in nursing and authored a book.

In 1984, she went to law school, graduating in 1988.

She then worked for nine years, specializing in the defense defense of doctors and hospitals in malpractice suits.

In 1997, she became the owner, administrator, and primary caregiver in a business which provided care for the disabled.

The authors noted that as of the publication date of their book, she continued in her latest work, considering it the most rewarding in her life.

She is the mother of one son from her first marriage and two stepsons from her current marriage.

John and Barbara's incredible story was first published in 2017 in Bruce Gernon and Rob McGregor's book, Beyond the Bermuda Triangle.

They had issued an open call for stories about strange happenings involving the infamous triangle, and the Coast Guard veteran was one of those who reached out.

John and Barbara's initial meeting in Bermuda in 1964 was the only time they met in person.

In this life, anyway.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acascio, and Witt Lacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stiddam.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Cloxen-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.