Interior of an RCC. The Coast Guard carefully plot, evaluate and respond to any crisis reported to them.

     It was a clear evening the night of December 22, 1967, when hotelier Dan Burack, in company of Father Patrick Horgan, cruised through the waterways of Miami’s harbor in his 23-foot cabin cruiser Witchcraft. Burack had invited Father Horgan to go out and enjoy the stunning view of Miami’s Christmas lights from off shore. They were only going to cruise out a short way and then stop and, in the silence of a dark sea, take in the panorama of Miami’s festive skyline.

   A 24-foot Cavalier, similar to Witchcraft.

     Exiting the harbor through Government Cut, Burack apparently went to the area of Buoy # 7, the first buoy on the left about a mile off the jetties at Government Cut. It was from around here that Burack sent an unexpected call for assistance to RCC Miami at exactly 9 p.m. that night. His was a casual, steady voice. He said he had hit something below. There was no emergency. However, he would need a tow back into the marina. Since Burack felt there was no emergency, it is logical to assume whatever he hit (if he knew) had damaged his propeller or rudder but not his hull. The vibrations after starting his motor would have been a dead giveaway. (Witchcraft had an inboard-outboard motor, so it is some part of the outboard that was damaged.)

     Port of Miami with Buoy 7’s location (marked in red) at the entrance to Government Cut.

     At 9:03 p.m. the Coast Guard cutter was in route. At 9:19 p.m. —only nineteen minutes after Burack signaled them— their searchlight beams were streaming the ocean in the vicinity of the buoys. However, there was no sign of the Witchcraft, of debris, life jackets, bodies or any flotsam. Burack had sent no other message indicating an emergency had developed. Therefore in that short interim of 19 minutes Burack and Father Horgan and the ill-nomen Witchcraft had vanished.

     There is great mystery in the disappearance of the Witchcraft. Whatever had befallen the cabin cruiser it had happened quickly and cleanly. Probably far more quickly than we can realize. Burack was to fire off a flare to guide them to his exact location. However, no distress flare had ever been seen.

   Despite the Coast Guard expanding the search by 1,200 square miles that night, including requesting all private vessels as far as Bimini (50 miles distant) to be on the lookout, no trace was found. Then they expanded the search northward into the Gulf Stream in case, by some remote chance, the cabin cruiser had been pulled out by a brief squall that had hit later that night and churned the sea into moderate swells of 4 to 6 feet. Finally on December 28, the search was halted after covering 24,500 square miles without a single clue having been found.

   The most unusual part, of course, is the total lack of the cabin cruiser,  for the Witchcraft had built-in floatation and was thus “unsinkable.” Although this term does not imply buoyancy, “unsinkable” means that some part of the hull should remain above water. It is like “corking” a vessel, so that the vessel’s gravity weight, even when fully flooded, is not enough to send it to the bottom. Some lumbering sunken form of the Witchcraft should have remained as a navigational hazard. The Coast Guard regularly destroys boats that have foundered or been swamped but, because of built-in floatation, remain a skulking hazard to other boaters.

   Burack was big on safety too. He had plenty of life saving gear aboard (all very floatable like seat cushions, life jackets, etc).

   No explanation could nor ever has been given for Dan Burack and Father Horgan’s sudden disappearance. And that is the keyword— disappearance— since it was never adduced how they could have perished. Despite the fact that Burack said it was not an emergency, he did have flares ready. In fact,  he told the Coast Guard he would fire one off to direct them to his exact position. We must assume then that Witchcraft was lost so unexpectedly as to even preclude Burack from firing the flare gun, and so completely as to eradicate any sign. Had that light squall drawn him suddenly to sea, he could still fire the flares and remain in radio contact with RCC Miami. There seems just no explanation.

   Nothing indicates that the Witchcraft sank. Yet on the other hand, it certainly did not remain. This puzzling paradox may have resulted in the conclusion: “They are presumed missing, but not lost at sea”— a nebulous conclusion however striking. This very well could only be a paraphrase of the Coast Guard’s conclusion. Nevertheless, this conclusion fits the unbelievable scenario perfectly. Those who searched for Burack have never contradicted it, perhaps because they could still recall the bell of  Buoy #7 clanging idly in an all-too- empty sea.

   February 21, 2024

     Twenty-five years ago when I put my first website up, the www was a billboard. Millions surfed it to discover the latest or hitherto arcane knowledge experienced in reality. That is what a billboard is for— where you post real information. My first website, long before artless, impromptu blogs, when personal websites reflected a lot of time, effort and authority, reintroduced the Bermuda Triangle after 20 years of neglect. A generation grew up with my research and adventures and thousands of schools used me as reference.

   Today, the internet has become its own reality, its own culture. Some make it its own cross-reference. If it’s not on the internet, they don’t even suspect it really exists. Yet I would venture only about 1 percent of collective experience and knowledge is on the billboard of the www, and this is often hidden within static.

     The price of neglect is obvious. Clickbait angles become a reality if not addressed and placed in context. And I’m afraid I’m responsible for neglecting to comment on developments for years.

   The Triangle has been intensely investigated in the real world by only 2 people since 1990. I am one. The other is Bruce Gernon, who specializes in the Electronic Fog. When it came time for a rival publisher to publish his book, The Fog, I wrote the introduction. Their catalog could not avoid Bruce referring to me thusly:

       Whether I or you like it, I can afford to crow over this subject. It may be a dubious distinction, granted, but my name, no matter how people mispronounce it, goes hand-in-hand with the topic and I have 2 books on the subject; neither is the product of browsing the web. I don’t mind being the successor to J. Manson Valentine.

     As for the case at hand, Cathy Burack and I had contact years ago. I referred a few TV producers to her. Her brother Mike Burack did a couple of the shows. They were 14 and 9 respectively back in 1967, old enough to remember that night.

     Because of the unbelievable nature of the Witchcraft’s disappearance, the case has lately become the object of click-bait. Basically, someone has been spitting words to see where they splatter.

     Either Burack contrived his own disappearance, so the ruminations go, or was into shady business and was “hit,” and Father Horgan was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This isn’t theory or thesis. It is just hurling accusations.

   Dan Burack, circa 1966

   In a recent interview with David Milloy for Ayreshire Magazine (in Scotland), he made me aware of a TV episode that challenges Witchcraft’s location at Buoy 7. This has long been questioned, but then the episode’s focus asserts Burack’s mayday call could have come from anywhere— i.e. it could have been a ruse.

     OK, so the stuff is leaping from blogs and getting on TV around the world now. It is time, I think, to finally update this page. I will be doing so in the next couple of months, adding pictures, maps, content, argument.

     First, today let’s reiterate what was reported. Daniel S. Burack was the son of hotelier Emanuel Burack. He was 40 years old. He had inherited the Galen Hotel in Pennsylvania in 1946 from his father. It burned down spectacularly in 1963. He also built the Galen Hotel in Miami and had sold it the year before. He lived in a nice house on Biscayne Bay with his wife Mary and 2 kids, Cathy and Mike.

   He had apparently custom built Witchcraft of sandwiched layers of fiberglass and there was built-in flotation gel. The cruiser was 23 to 24 feet, largely painted white with an outboard-inboard motor. He docked it behind his house.

   Dan Burack and Father Paidrig Horgan were not so unusual friends, as some have implied. Yes, Dan was of Jewish heritage, but his wife Mary (née Hartley) had Irish heritage. (Her mother was a Gallagher). Horgan was a priest at St. George’s Catholic Church in Fort Lauderdale and also a teacher at St. Patrick’s High School in Miami Beach. He was 34 years old.

   Father Horgan, 1962.

     On the evening of December 22, Father Horgan was Burack’s guest for dinner. After they had dined, Mary and the kids remained home and Dan took his friend to his own pier in his backyard and they boarded Witchcraft. The purpose was to go out and see the Christmas lights off Miami Beach.

   About 9 p.m. came the mayday. It is true the Miami Herald did not report that Burack mentioned Buoy 7 by name. “Burack radioed the Coast Guard Friday night,” to quote the paper, “that the boat had become disabled about a mile off Miami Beach.”

     Buoy 7 is about a mile off shore at the mouth of Government Cut. As already mentioned, this location has long been a challenged point. Humbugs like to point out that the mentioning of Buoy 7 comes from Dick Winer. However, this is not to be sniffed at. He was a local journalist. He knew everybody. (He would even get Vincent Price to narrate his own documentary The Devil’s Triangle in 1974.) Winer could have been told by the Coast Guard it was Buoy 7. They certainly began their search here at the mouth of Government Cut and went northward off Miami Beach.

In his self-produced documentary The Devil’s Triangle (1974), Winer has the Coast Guard search vessel speed past Buoy 7 and continue on.

     In any case, humbugs have only one click-bait intent— muddy the perceived aura of the Bermuda Triangle’s mystery. They say Dick Winer made it up so they can scoff at the traditional account of the Witchcraft’s case. Disappearing in 20 minutes from a specific location like a buoy is indeed very sensational. And the sensation is really there. Even if Witchcraft wasn’t precisely at the buoy, it wasn’t going anywhere beyond the Coast’s Guard’s reach in 20 minutes.

     Dick Winer was also less sensationalistic than you might think. As a local, he asks informed basic questions that apply not just to a boat around Buoy 7 but up and down Miami Beach.

       “Could the craft have been blown seaward by the rising winds even as the Coast Guard cutter was heading out to her original position? There was a radio aboard, but possibly the Witchcraft actually was taking on water and her batteries flooded out, putting the radio out of commission. Also if Burack was as experienced and his boat as well equipped as his friends stated, why didn’t he anchor, for his original position was in water varying between 30 and 40 feet deep? Then too the boat was ‘unsinkable’ due to built-in floatation chambers.”  

       Actually, Winer’s account in The Devil’s Triangle (Bantam, 1974) does not accentuate Buoy 7. What he did accentuate is that Burack had said something strange. Let’s quote his account:

     “After being fully cooperative with the press throughout the first 5 days of the search, the Coast Guard suddenly refused to release any information as to exactly what was radioed by Burack during his first and only message. A Coast Guard spokesman said only that Burack sounded like he was in an ‘unusual’ situation. A Coast Guard legal officer said they were not at liberty to divulge the information.”

     . . . After the search was called off, a Coast Guard spokesman said: ‘We presume they are missing but not lost at sea.’”

     . . .Pages later he comes back to Burack’s last message again.

     “But what about the Coast Guard spokesman who, five days after the search was under way, suddenly refused to comment on Burack’s distress message other than that he sounded like he was in an ‘unusual’ situation? Burack’s last words, at least the last words the Coast Guard released, were, “It’s pretty odd. I’ve never seen one like this!”

     Okay. If implying a USO, the last words released imply Burack has seen quite a few and this one was really different. This context tends to make me think he wasn’t referring to a UFO of any kind. However, you can debate that. Miniature submarines were quite the thing in the 1960s, especially off Miami. He may have believed he was seeing a conventional mini submarine.

     However much you wish to debate this point, one thing seems clear: It doesn’t really sound like it’s a mob hit either. Burack is not going to be looking at a gun pointed at him and say to the Coast Guard: “It’s pretty odd. I’ve never seen one like this!”

     This was the era of Tony Rome. Frank Sinatra was living in Florida at this time, and his deal with the studio was to make movies here. He made Assault on a Queen (1965) and then played private detective Tony Rome in 1967 and in its sequel Lady in Cement. The movies give us Miami as it was in 1967-1968. Crime, drugs, racketeering.

     But how would this sordid underbelly involve Dan Burack and Father Horgan on this December night? Their cruise seems to have been impromptu. Mobsters coming aboard aren’t going to fake a mayday call. If they wanted to get rid of him, just make him disappear. Wait until he is alone.  

   If you were acquainted with Dick Winer, you know he was quite a character. He knew the Miami underground. He even claimed that the mob had blown his leg off by hot wiring his car ignition like in the movies. He turned the key and his transmission and leg went flying. He would not be averse to implying there was mob potential in the Burack disappearance had he heard anything. Yet he implied nothing.

     The buoys at Government Cut’s entrance are paired, lining the entrance. Winer only wrote that the cabin cruiser was in the vicinity of Buoy 7. In fact, Burack would have to give some qualifying point. A mile off Miami Beach is too non specific. He’d have to mention the distinctive lights of some hotel or the last buoy they saw. He had probably mentioned the buoy.

       Buoy #7 as seen in 1978 for the filming of Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle. Alan Landsburg’s In Search of . . . was quite popular and he branched out and did a few movie length documentaries pertaining to some of the topics Leonard Nimoy pursued in the TV series. Peter Tompkins hosted this documentary. Dealing with the Witchcraft case, the director had the camera pass by in close-up and then swing around as the helicopter rose up and away. This gives us the buoy in relation to the entrance to Government Cut between the jetties (the cruise ship is leaving in the background) and Miami Beach. It can be easily seen on Google Earth when going into street view (on a ship leaving the harbor). The other buoy paired with it can be seen beyond. I recall there are 6 buoys in pairs at Government Cut’s entrance.

     What the buoys looked like back then, as seen here in the beginning of the Ivan Tors movie Around the World, Under the Sea (1966). The Coast Guard cutter is cruising to Government Cut. Buoy #4 is clearly in the foreground.

     So the circumstances do not favor a mob hit. If Witchcraft was further up Miami Beach than the buoy, it still couldn’t get away from the Coast Guard in 20 minutes. Burack could still fire a flare. So the circumstances do not favor a natural explanation. Then what?

     This is where the “ah” and the all-knowing wink come in. “The call could have come from anywhere.” Burack must have faked it! With Father Horgan aboard? Think about that for a moment. Seriously, think about that. Don’t infer. Think.

     The scenario requires that Burack and Horgan both wanted to vanish or that Burack killed Horgan and then staged his disappearance at sea. Why? Strategy is easy, but logistics is difficult. What are the logistics?

     First, let’s consider what is involved. Where did they take the Witchcraft? Did they transfer to another vessel? How many other people then are involved? In order to sink the Witchcraft they’d have to load the cabin with boulders. The second? To feign his own disappearance, why do so with Horgan along and therefore have to dispose of him? The same argument applies to getting rid of the Witchcraft. He has to sink it with boulders somewhere. Really, what are the logistics here?

     As for Burack hitting a USO which he took to be an odd mini but conventional submarine, there is a somewhat parallel case. I extract it from The Bermuda Triangle II An Odyssey of the Sea, my second Bermuda Triangle book, and insert it here.    

•   One motive UFO theorists do not raise, however, merits interjecting here— destruction and not abduction. There is only one truly confirmed type of UFO/USO, but it is too small to be involved in abduction. It is an ovoid disc 10 by 12 feet and only a few feet thick. Originally, it was seen far out in the Atlantic, but it has in the decades since first seen come so close into shore that it has been struck at by fishermen and even Coast Guardsmen, the latter incident inspiring a sobering report which was later released through FOIA request initiated by CAUS (Citizens Against UFO Secrecy). This case is the Pascagoula USO incident (not to be confused with the supposed UFO abduction).
•   On the night of November 6, 1973, this ovoid disc crept silently into the shallows near Petit Bois Island where 4 groups of fishermen— the Ryans and the Rices— were mullet fishing in skiffs. It had some form of light source on top from which it illuminated the water over it. After recovering from his surprise, Rayme Ryan struck at it with his oar. The object was metallic. The group finally concentrated around it and struck at it more. Rayme Ryan then struck at it with “intent to kill.” It finally dimmed its light and left. About 30 minutes later he went to check on his fish buoy. The disc had actually been sitting beneath it waiting. It re-illuminated. The group called the Coast Guard. Guardsmen Chuck Crews and Larry Nations came in a 16 foot boat. They too soon found the USO and struck at it. Crews was also sure it was metallic. The USO eventually moved on to the southwest before it finally disappeared.
•   This encounter was so startling that it was also reported in the local newspaper. Two officers, E.A. Wilbanks and Lt. Commander C.E. Dorman, were dispatched from the Naval Ship Research and Development Lab at Panama City, Florida, to investigate. After interviewing all witnesses, they report:
•   Light from object was directed toward surface; it appeared to come from a coherent source approximately 3” diameter, with a surface intersection circular or elliptical in shape and approximately 10’ x 12’ in size. Color was generally described as yellowish/amber, or with a light red tint. Intensity varied from “almost too bright to look at” to zero, depending on amount of disturbance (brightest when first approached). When seen from the side, it was described as looking like a parachute underwater.
•   Object felt metallic when struck, but could not be consistently struck. Portion of oar underwater was not visible from surface when in light beam from object. Object “turned off” when struck with beam from flashlight; when light removed, object reilluminated to previous intensity in about 1 minute.
•   In its generalized SW travel, object appeared to stop when it encountered an anchored boat. . . It would then remain in area until disturbed for 15 to 30 minutes.
•    
•   The first time such an object was seen and described it was in the air skimming about 70 feet over the Atlantic. The date was August 4, 1950. The report came from the captain and two crew of the MV Marcala heading toward the Gulf Stream. It is contained in CIA files released under FOIA request. It was silver metallic, an “ovular” or ellipsoidal disc, and the captain marveled that it was only about 10 feet in diameter and a few feet thick. One of the other crew described it as an egg cut in half lengthwise— basically the Pascagoula USO, parachute shape on top but with an essentially flat bottom. It sped off toward Nova Scotia, following a path out of the Triangle. 

       Let’s come back to this page on Burack’s and Horgan’s disappearance. We should note some similarities. This USO/UFO sought out boats to lurk by and when the boats were not around hung out at a buoy. It was obviously on remote and attracted to manmade objects. Such an object could have been lurking about Buoy 7 on the night of December 22. In fact, that may be why Burack and Horgan really weren’t off Miami Beach but still at the mouth of Government Cut. Perhaps they saw the glow under the water and went to the buoy, which by no means is the way northward (it is the southern buoy), to have a gander. When Burack’s cabin cruiser edged in he hit it, damaging the outboard part of his engine. In such a context, he might indeed have thought it a conventional mini submarine, but an odd looking version of one.

     What happened thereafter? Well, it certainly didn’t abduct him. It would be too small. If it sank him, where’s the debris? No matter how you look at it, the disappearance of Dan Burack and Father Horgan is a mystery. No theory can neatly explain it.

     My UFO section, which is but a small sampling of my research, reveals how jaded I am on the alien UFO angle. At least since the 1950s most UFO reports can be explained by black projects, including small “saucers,” that are still not admitted to. I don’t mean spy planes and U-2. I mean manmade flying saucers and Project Lightcraft.

     Either way you cut it, Burack and Horgan were probably in a very “unusual” circumstance.

   “Remarks want you to make them,” declared Philip Marlowe. “They’ve got their tongues dangling out waiting to be said.”

     This case needs fewer remarks. It is time to place it in far more precise context.