he Disappearing Castle

aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

The Baron’s fiancée, Lady Angela, lived in her family’s castle just three miles away from Lilliland Castle where the Baron lived. Lady Angela’s home was known as Alpine Castle. There had been many stories about both castles down through the years but none as strange as that of the disappearing castle.

The story of the disappearing castle is quite simple and direct. There is a beautiful castle somewhere in the uncharted section of the Alpine Mountains that seems to come and go. Mountain climbers will report and take pictures of the castle and make a compass heading, then go back to make a report to the Baron of Lilliland. The Baron will dispatch a team of explorers to investigate. When they arrive at the sight where the castle was seen, it is no longer there.

This event seemed to happen once or twice every ten years according to Lilliland records.

The Baron decided to call in his chief advisor to investigate the disappearing castle sightings. Was it true or just a hoax? The chief advisor, Professor Hamblin, asked to have two experts brought in from Cambridge University.

The Professor believed that there was a castle somewhere in the Alpine Mountains that was really seen. The pictures were real and the compass headings were real. But the Professor had a theory that might explain the mystery. Sometimes the mountains had a magnetic vortex compass change that caused the compass to point in the wrong direction by just a few degrees. But those few degrees could cause the explorers to be five or ten miles away from the exact location of the castle.

When the Professor asked the two visiting experts about his situation, they wanted to investigate further. They made a compass heading on a large rock and then came back for several days to see if the compass heading put them near the rock. For four days the compass heading was correct, but on the fifth day, it was off by several degrees. Professor Hamblin’s theory was true.

The Baron received the report of the changing compass magnetic vortex and decided to keep sending exploring teams back to the original compass heading where the explorers saw the disappearing castle.

Finally the disappearing castle was see again and clearly marked on all maps so that it would never disappear again.