spookysouthwest: Grand Canyon National Park has one of the highest death tolls of all the National P
spookysouthwest: Grand Canyon National Park has one of the highest death tolls of all the National Parks–nearly 700 since the 1860s. About 12 people die every year in the park, largely from dehydration and heatstroke. But the leading cause of death in the Grand Canyon is actually air crashes. The worst occurred on in 1956, when two airplanes collided over the canyon and fell from the sky, killing all 128 people. In those days, flight and their paths were largely unregulated, and it’s believed that the planes didn’t see each other through an enormous stormcloud. It was hours before anyone realized the flights were missing, and the wreckage wasn’t discovered for another day after that. Some of the human remains were never recovered; many others were too mangled to be identified, and were buried in a mass grave in nearby Flagstaff, Arizona. Although the crash site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2014, its exact location is kept a secret, and the entire area is off-limits to the public. This has led to speculation that there was something unusual about the event, perhaps involving a UFO, or abnormal electromagnetic fields created by the high amounts of quartz in the rocks. Even stranger, the general area of the wreckage, now nicknamed Crash Canyon, is reported to be rather haunted. Reports of unexplained sights and paranormal activity date back to 1909, when G.E. Kincaide discovered a man-made cave that lead to an entire labyrinth of passages leading deep into the canyon walls. This cave has never been confirmed to exist, but the area where it would be is off-limits to everyone, including park rangers. (Photos are from the Deseret News Archive.) -- source link