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The ruins of the Arecibo Observatory's radio telescope in the mountains of western Puerto Rico. In 1974, the radio dish sent out humanity's first attempt to contact alien civilizations. (Photo courtesy Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz) This is the third installment in this series and the final one featuring the mysterious island of Puerto Rico. TALKING TO ALIENS Puerto Rico is a classic mixture of modern civilization thrown in with ruins of all sorts, ranging from Native American Ta

Isla Caja de Muertos, or Coffin Island off the southern coast of Puerto Rico. (Mary T. Hoffman) THE DREADFUL SECRET OF COFFIN ISLAND   Long ago in Old San Juan there was a bookkeeper and budding pirate named Jose Almeida who fell madly in love with the wife of his boss, a very powerful man in Puerto Rico at the time. Because revealing his love for Alida, as she was called, to the husband would mean certain death, Almeida only divulged his secret to Alida herself and wisely ke

NOTE: The series "Tales of the Caribbean Sea" will resume next Friday. That most mischievous of holidays alternately known as All Hallow’s Eve, Samhain, All Saints Day or Halloween, is upon us again, signaling the change in seasons from summer’s light to the coming chill of fall and winter. Below, you will find a handful of ghostly tales experienced over the years by some of our island locals.     THE PEBBLY BEACH ROAD HITCHIKER   American folklore is filled with tales of oth

An afternoon thunderstorm, no doubt a spin-off from Hurricane Melissa currently threatening the island of Jamaica, rolls across the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Here in the barrio  of Santurce where I have my rental unit, life comes to a standstill due to the ensuing deluge. Shop owners linger in their doorways, construction workers lounge under convenient overhangs and laundry set out to dry is hurriedly taken in.   I’m here for the next five weeks in that region of the Ca

Coming this month, travel to that most fabled and mysterious of seas, the Caribbean, as I embark on a six-week odyssey to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and their European sisters, the British Virgin Islands.   There, I’ll not only be blogging my way through that little corner of the West Indies, I’ll be doing research for future books. It’s all part of the plan to produce a series of Mysterious Island books, bringing you the same storytales of ghosts, pirates and their

Nobody likes Monday mornings.  Monday mornings are the proverbial realm of hangovers, lethargy and hind-sighting quarterbacks. But the morning of Monday, Nov. 12, 1934, was especially dreadful for a group of workers at Catalina’s East End rock quarry. Quarry work has always been a hazardous affair. The combination of heavy equipment, explosives and unyielding, unforgiving rock make it one of the most dangerous professions on earth. But in pre-OSHA times and before modern safe

(Image courtesy Sony Pictures Television) This is the second in a two-part series on the author's experience as a contestant on Who Wants...

(Graphic courtesy Sony Pictures Television) This is the first of a two-part series on the author's experiences as a contestant on the...

In a previous post, I told the harrowing story of the near-tragic flight of a Grumman Goose amphibian seaplane enroute to Catalina...

Catalina Festival of Art book signing. (Photo by Bruce Hall ) Happy to report I had great success at the 66 th annual Catalina Island...

Few legends have persisted as long as the legend of Atlantis, a supposed continent from the ancient world that through one cataclysm or...

Humans Against the Sea Over the dozen or so decades that have passed since the town of Avalon first hung out its shingle as a tourist...

N.C. Wyeth, 1920 In the first couple of years that I lived on Catalina Island after moving here in 1995, I found myself from time to time...

One of the earliest accounts of Catalina Island passed down through the centuries by early Spanish explorers tells us of a mysterious...

To paraphrase the Bard, there are more mysteries on Catalina Island, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The bizarre, at...

Of the many motion pictures that have been filmed on Catalina in the 100-plus years since Hollywood first discovered the island’s...

(Photo: Kevin Sebold/Wikimedia Commons) Catalina Island has been the home to, or at least the vacation destination of, myriad celebrities...