Strange fish: the scientifiction of Charles F. Berlitz, 1913-2003.

Strange fish: the scientifiction of Charles F. Berlitz, 1913-2003.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Skeptics Society & Skeptic Magazine

CHARLES FRAMBACH BERLITZ DIED ON DECEMBER 18, 2003, at University Hospital in Tamarac, Florida, not far from his home in Fort Lauderdale. He was 90 years old. Berlitz was, according to the cover of his Around the World with 80 Words, one of the 15 eminent linguists of the 20th Century, a Yale alumnus (class of 1936) and speaker of some 25 languages (though "to varying degrees of fluency"). During his long life, Berlitz sold more books than any other linguist in history, most of them travel guides and foreign language phrase books like Passport to french, Swedish for Travelers, and Spanish Step by Step. What the cover of Around the Worm does not say is that aside from his work as a translator and foreign language instructor, Charles Berlitz maintained a second writing career tint brought him even greater fame. "Charles Berlitz wrote the book on the paranormal," wrote Adam Bernstein in the Washington Post after Berlitz's death. (1) That's an understatement. Charles F. Berlitz was responsible for some of the greatest pseudoscientific hoaxes in history.

The Berlitz family name carries an impressive cachet. Charles' grandfather Maximilian Berlitz opened a language instruction center in Providence, Rhode Island, back in 1880. That center would grow into what is now Berlitz International, Inc., a multinational corporation whose headquarters occupy a 70,000 square-foot, four-story lake front complex in Princeton, New Jersey. Today the company boasts of more than 300 language schools worldwide. Its phrase books, dictionaries, and teaching materials are among the most widely used foreign language resources in the world. After graduating from Yale, Charles worked his way up to vice president of what was then the Berlitz Company. But in 1967, Berlitz International was purchased by Crowell, Collier & Macmillan, Inc., and the new company sued to prevent Charles from using his own ever-so-marketable family name on his publications. He continued to write language instruction books anyway, although he did poignantly disavow any connection to the family business. Today, the Berlitz corporate literature no longer mentions Charles at all.

Berlits Lost at Sea

Berlitz's other career has roots that stretch back to 1930, when he was 17 years old. In June of that year a two-bit pulp fiction magazine called Amazing Stories published what it called a "scientifiction" piece by A. Hyatt Verrill titled "The Non-Gravitational Vortex." The magazine's gaudy cover shows a mammoth ocean liner in the grip of a mysterious tractor beam, floating into the sky above the ocean while horrified sailors look on in disbelief. (2) Some 20 years later a writer calling himself George X. Sand pursued the ocean vortex theme in the pulp magazine Fate. It was Sand who first suggested that some ill-defined region of the Atlantic was responsible for a few too many unexplained nautical disasters. In February, 1964, yet mother low-brow magazine called Argosy published its own version of the vortex tale. By the time John Wallace Spencer published Limbo of the Lost in 1969, the vortex was an obscure but established legend.

It would remain obscure until 1974, when Charles Berlitz wrote The, Bermuda Triangle. Berlitz could not have picked a better time to make his mark in the world of the paranormal. Still giddy from the intellectual excesses of the previous decade, America in the 1970's had a ravenous appetite for fixings otherworldly. Berlitz's rival Erich Von Daniken had already made a fortune with Chariots of the Gods? and a suite of sequels like Gold of the Gods and Gods from Outer Space. The legend of the Bermuda Triangle was perfect material for Berlitz, an avid scuba diver who often turned to the sea for inspiration. In fact, Berlitz's first foray into pseudoscience was The Mystery of Atlantis. (3) A modest success in 1969, Atlantis was easily eclipsed by the stellar The Bermuda Triangle, which would eventually sell morn than 18 million copies, be translated into 30 languages, and finish 1974 on the New York Times bestseller list. That same year saw the release of Richard Winer's documentary film The Devil's Triangle, with narration by horror-film icon Vincent Price and a soundtrack by the perennially weird rock bond King Crimson. The film's promotion promised a $10,000 reward to anyone who could solve the mystery of the triangle. Thanks largely to Berlitz, Trianglemania struck the world like a tsunami.

As far as I know, the ten grand promised in The Devil's Triangle promos was never paid. However, a forthright assessment of the legend shows that the money is probably owed to Lawrence Kusche, a librarian from Arizona State University who just one year after the release of Berlitz's breakout bestseller, published The Bermuda Triangle Mystery--Solved. (4) After reading Kusche's book, you will likely conclude that them is indeed a mysterious vortex at play in Berlitz's world, but it is not located in the Atlantic. Rather, it exists in Berlitz's narrative, a place where facts, nor ships and planes, seem to vanish unaccountably.

To make sense of The Bermuda Triangle, a quick primer...