He slept less than half an hour, awoke again, and found himself once more at the head of the companionway. After a little conversation with the first mate, who was pacing the deck, he returned to his berth. This worried him, since he had never walked in his sleep before. as usual with conditions normal, but awoke from a sound sleep between nine and ten (o'clock) to find himself on the upper steps of the companionway. (Many visitors to the island found that swimming and even wading in the island's lagoons was completely out of the question because of the large shark population and their aggressive nature). This has been noted by every person who has ever ventured to the island, sometimes with fatal consequences. The coral reef and lagoons at Palmyra are also a breeding ground for gray and blacktip reef sharks whose aggressiveness is well known throughout the Pacific. Local fauna consists of mosquitoes and other insects, lizards, land and coconut crabs, a huge bird population, palm and coconut trees and mangrove bushes. The island lies well off of the major shipping lanes for vessels plying the Asian/American run and is geographically perhaps one of the remotest places on earth and one of the last few truly uninhabited islands left in the world. the west lagoon is entered by a channel which will only accommodate vessels drawing 4 meters or less of water much of the road, the landing strip and many causeways built during are unserviceable and overgrownOn a nautical chart, Palmyra is but a tiny speck in the middle of the mass of blue that represents the Pacific Ocean. Lying six degrees above the equator, about fifty islets covered with dense vegetation, coconut trees, and balsa-like trees up to 30 meters tall. Listen to Richard Taylor, a yachtsman who spent time on Palmyra inĀ And Norman Sanders, another yachtsman who conducted geological experiments on Palmyra and who testified at the double murder trial, had this to say about the island: While many people who have ventured to Palmyra have described it as nothing short of a true paradise here on Earth, quite a few sailors who visited the island in the time before and after the murders took place have commented on the sense of "something not being quite right" on Palmyra and speak in cloaked terms of a malevolent aura and a foreshadowing of doom that the island seems to possess.
#PALMYRA ATOLL MURDERS MOVIE#
According to this tale, although Palmyra appears to be a tropical island paradise like something out of the movie South Pacific, there also seems to be a supernatural pattern of disaster and near-disaster associated with the place. While that book primarily focuses on the murders that occurred there during that time period, my internal radar was significantly aroused by the continuous allusions made by the authors and others who had been to the island regarding the "Palmyra Curse".