Under that theory, Mullen was faking insanity, while Vance and Carter were sticking to the story. The motive might have been attention, notoriety, maybe money.
That theory was investigated too. Psychologists and investigators interviewed the men separately and compared their answers. Their backgrounds, relationships, and finances were checked.
Nothing turned up. No conspiracy. No benefit. All three men were found to be exceptionally reliable. Their records were clean, and their reputations solid.
The fourth explanation involved a secret experiment. The military had supposedly been testing chemical or psychological weapons on the reservoir bottom, and the divers had wandered into the test zone.
Without knowing it, they had seen what had been artificially suggested to them. That theory was checked through military channels. Officially, no such testing had taken place in that region.
The fifth explanation was never written into any formal report. It was discussed only quietly, behind closed doors. According to that version, everything was true.
Down there on the bottom, an endless service was really taking place. Dead people were still praying in a submerged church. The church was living its own life in defiance of physics.
It existed against logic and against materialism. But why? One possible explanation was that the place itself held something.
The church had been consecrated and prayed in for generations. The ground beneath it had been saturated with human faith. Nearby was an old cemetery where generations had been buried.
When the water came, it covered the physical place but could not touch whatever else remained. The place stayed alive. And those who refused to leave remained with it.
The second explanation was unfinished ritual. The service had begun but had never been concluded. And by church law, the liturgy must be completed.
The priest never dismissed the congregation. He never gave them leave to go in peace. That was why they remained there, waiting for completion.
And they would wait as long as the church stood. The third explanation was judgment. The town had been flooded by force, the cemetery had not been fully moved, and the church had not been properly closed or blessed before submersion.
Old customs had been violated. Something sacred had been mishandled. And the place answered with a reminder: you cannot simply cover the past with water and call it settled. The past does not drown, and the dead do not always stay quiet.
The fourth explanation was a time loop. The final service of April 22, 1954, had somehow frozen in place. Now it repeated endlessly.
The divers, going down, simply entered that suspended moment. They were not seeing the dead at all, but living people caught in the past. Time down there either moved differently or not at all.
All of these ideas were discussed, but none was accepted officially. To accept any of them would have meant admitting that science could not explain everything. That reality extended beyond materialism.
The government could not afford to admit that. So the case was quietly closed. The site remained under observation, and the area was declared hazardous to navigation.
Buoys were installed, and the maps were updated. The official reason given was unstable bottom conditions and underwater currents. But the real reason stayed in a sealed archive…
