Unexplained disappearance is the physical disappearance of people or other objects without apparent cause or reason.
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Benjamin Bathurst (born 1784) was a British diplomatic envoy who disappeared from the White Swan inn in the town of Perleberg, Germany, during the Napoleonic Wars. A reward of ₤1,000 was offered by the British government (a vast sum of money in those days) for information leading to his return and was doubled by Bathurst's family and even contributed to by Prince Frederick of Prussia, who took great interest in the case, to no avail. It was thought he may have been murdered by French espionage agents who were monitoring his activity, and Bathurst's family even went so far as to approach the Emperor Napoleon himself about the disappearance, who swore he knew nothing more about it than he had read in the newspapers of the day. The town of Perleberg was also known to have a strong criminal element at the time and another theory was that he was snatched away and murdered, given that he was a man of obvious wealth. In 1852, forty-one years after Bathurst's disappearance, a male human skeleton with a fractured skull was discovered when a house some 300 m from the White Swan inn was demolished. Bathurst's sister travelled to Perleberg but was unable to identify the remains. Bathurst's disappearance is referenced in several works of science fiction and the paranormal, most of which describe him falling into a portal leading to some other place, time, or alternate timeline.
The Mary Celeste was a ship discovered in December 1872 abandoned and unmanned in the Atlantic. The crew were never seen or heard from again and what happened to them is the subject of much speculation. Their fate is regarded as one of the greatest maritime mysteries of all time. Some say the crew was thrown overboard by a large wave, but no remains were ever found.
The Flannan Isles mystery was the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers in 1900 who vanished from their duty stations, leaving behind equipment important to surviving the hostile conditions at that location and time of year. However, the official explanation for the disappearances was mundane, concluding that the men were swept out to sea by a freak wave.
Ambrose Bierce (born 1842) was an American editorialist, journalist, short-story writer and satirist. Today, he is best known for his short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and his satirical dictionary The Devil's Dictionary. In October 1913, the septuagenarian Bierce departed Washington, D.C., for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. By December he had proceeded on through Louisiana and Texas, crossing by way of El Paso into Mexico, which was in the throes of revolution. In Ciudad Juárez he joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer, and in that role participated in the battle of Tierra Blanca. Bierce is known to have accompanied Villa's army as far as the city of Chihuahua. After a last letter to a close friend, sent from there December 26, 1913, he vanished without a trace, becoming one of the most notable disappearances in American literary history. There is no evidence to support speculation that he went to the Grand Canyon, found a remote spot and shot himself. Investigations into his fate have proved fruitless, and despite an abundance of theories his end remains shrouded in mystery.
During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. Fascination with her life, career and disappearance continues to this day. No confirmed remains or debris have ever been found.
On 10 March 1956 four B-47 Stratojets left MacDill Air Force Base in Florida for a non-stop flight to Ben Guerir Air Base in Morocco and completed their first aerial refueling without incident. After descending through cloud to begin their second refueling, over the Mediterranean Sea at 14,000 ft, the aircraft manned by Captain Robert H. Hodgin (31, commander), Captain Gordon M. Insley (32, observer), and 2nd Lt. Ronald L. Kurtz (22, pilot) failed to make contact with the tanker. Neither the aircraft nor wreckage from it was ever found.
Frederick Valentich disappeared in 1978 while piloting a Cessna 182L light aircraft over Bass Strait to King Island, Australia. In his last radio contact, Valentich reported an unusual aircraft was following his, and his last words were: "It is hovering and it's not an aircraft." No trace of Valentich or his aircraft was ever found, and an Australian Department of Transport investigation concluded that the reason for the disappearance could not be determined.
In this 1960 movie by Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni, Anna, a wealthy woman, disappears while on a leisure trip to a deserted volcanic island on the Mediterranean sea in Italy. Her friends look for her in vain on the rather small Island. The disappearance is never explained. Anna's lover and Anna's best friend slowly fall in love through the journey and, while deciding to go along with their love story, never forget their vanished friend.
Mary Rose is a play by James M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) which tells the bizarre fictional story of a girl who vanishes twice. As a child, Mary Rose's father takes her to a remote Scottish island. While she is briefly out of her father's sight, Mary Rose vanishes. The entire island is searched exhaustively. Twenty-one days later, Mary Rose reappears as mysteriously as she disappeared ... but she shows no effects of having been gone for three weeks, and she has no knowledge of any gap or missing time. Years later, as a young wife and mother, the adult Mary Rose persuades her husband to take her to the same island. Again she vanishes: this time for a period of decades. When she is found again, she is not a single day older and has no awareness of the passage of time. In the interim, her son has grown to adulthood and is now physically older than his mother.
Picnic at Hanging Rock (and its successful film adaptation) is about a group of Australian schoolgirls who disappear in mysterious circumstances. It is often thought to be a true story. This belief was propagated by Joan Lindsay, the author of the fiction book. There are no newspaper accounts of the event, nor any record of any searches conducted between the supposed disappearance and the book's publication – a gap of over sixty years.
The Unreals, a 2007 sci-fi/fantasy novel by Donald Jeffries, begins with the mysterious disappearance of the main character's grandfather, and the subject of disappearances in general is central to the story (with Ambrose Bierce playing a prominent role).
Samantha Mulder, sister of Fox Mulder, is one of the central characters in the TV series The X-Files, and her disappearance plays a central role in the mythology of the series. Much of Mulder's obsession with the paranormal, particularly aliens, is explained by reference to Samantha's disappearance and his belief that she was abducted by aliens. The mystery of her disappearance is also used as a recurring plot line with Mulder occasionally forming, and then usually rejecting, different theories about the true nature of her disappearance.
There are several tales of people vanishing at the hands of fairies, pixies and other supernatural folk. An example is the tale of Jan Coo, who was said to have vanished after being called away from his Dartmoor home by a mysterious voice. This story would appear to be a warning against wandering away from safety on the dangerous moor, woven into a tale involving the little people to make a better story.
Typical tales of fairy kidnapping are told by William Butler Yeats in his book, Mythologies.[1] Yeats describes how many stories of fairy kidnappings involve newborn babies or newlyweds being carried off by the fairies. In one such story, a young newly-wed man met a band of fairies who had stolen his wife for their chief to marry. The fairies appeared at first to be mortal men, but the young man realized the truth when he saw them carry his wife away.
There are also many tales of sailors and fishermen being seduced or abducted by mermaids which are said to lure men away from land by singing. The mermaid of legend perhaps dates back to Classical times (c.f. Aphrodite rising from the sea), and the comb and mirror are stated in Anna Franklin's The Encyclopedia of Fairies (Paper Tiger, 2004) to signify the vulva. Thus the sexual nature of the mermaid seems a long-running theme, perhaps linked to the possibilities of temptation while at sea.
A very similar scenario is noted in the modern Egyptian folklore tale Al Naddaha.
Celtic legends exist of the Kelpie. This is a horse which, once harnessed or mounted, leaps into the nearest body of water, taking its human captor with it - never to be seen again. Similar stories appear in Scandinavia.
Many accounts of mysterious vanishings contain a similar narrative, and a similar lack of evidence that those involved ever existed, and can in many cases be dismissed as new versions of older hoaxes or variations on fictional accounts.[2]
The disappearance stories of David Lang and Oliver Larch are commonly cited hoax examples.
According to the stories surrounding him, on 23 September 1880, Lang, of Gallatin, Tennessee, was walking across the grounds of his farm to meet Judge August Peck who was approaching his farm in a horse and buggy, when Lang vanished mid-step and in full view of the judge, his wife Chanel and his two children, and the judge's brother-in-law. The ground around where Lang had been walking was searched in case he had fallen into a concealed hole, but no trace was found. The story further states that Lang's children later called out to him, and heard a disembodied voice calling as if from a great distance.[3][4]
The story of David Lang was published in Fate magazine by journalist Stuart Palmer,[5] who claimed that he had been told the story by Lang's daughter. However, no trace of David Lang nor his family (including his apparent daughter) was ever found in any records of that period, and the entire article was later determined to be a hoax likely inspired by the short story "The Difficulties of Crossing a Field" by Ambrose Bierce (1909), collected in his book Can Such Things Be?.[2] In 1999, the modern composer David Lang based an opera on Bierce's story.[6] (The story has also become a popular urban legend).
The story of Oliver Larch (Sometime known as Lerch or Thomas) follows a similar pattern to that of David Lang. According to the narrative, Larch was on his way to collect water from a well one winter when he vanished, leaving nothing behind but a trail of footprints in the snow which terminated abruptly, and a series of terrible cries for help such as "Help, they've got me!" that appeared to come from above. Larch's story was later found to be a variation on "Charles Ashmore's Trail", published in 1893 by Ambrose Bierce. In some versions, Larch's story is set in late 19th century Indiana, in others, it is set in North Wales.[7] One particular recurring variation was an Oliver Thomas of Rhayader, Radnorshire, mid-Wales with the date given as 1909.
American paranormal researcher and ufologist Jerome Clark notes that some areas, such as the Bermuda Triangle, which have a reputation as sites of frequent vanishings, do not in fact have significantly more instances than other areas with similar geographic, tidal or meteorological conditions.[2]