The Most Mysterious Disappearances

2023 Author: Adelina Croftoon | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-07-30 23:26

Every year, month or week, a lot of people go missing. Some are then found alive or dead or killed. Some are never found.

Even if we exclude teenage runaways and the criminal component of the case, there will still be many rather strange cases of disappearances.

Especially strange are the cases when a person in the literal sense of the word disappears without a trace in front of eyewitnesses or a few minutes after communicating with them. Researchers of anomalous phenomena believe that such people accidentally fall into the invisible portals to other dimensions, temporary traps or something else like that.

In Britain, former sailor Owen Parfitt disappeared on the evening of June 7, 1763, straight out of his wheelchair. Eyewitnesses claimed that Parfitt was sitting quietly in the wheelchair, then there was a pop - and that's it …

In 1815, a strange disappearance occurred in a Prussian prison at Weichselmund. A servant named Diderici was in prison on charges of posing as his master after he died of a stroke. The prisoners who were chained up were somehow taken out for a walk along the fenced-in prison parade ground.

Suddenly, according to the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses from among the guards and prisoners, the figure of Diderici began to lose its shape, in a few seconds the former servant seemed to evaporate, and his shackles fell to the ground with a clang. No one has ever seen this man again.

95-year-old John Lansing - a participant in the American Revolution, former chancellor, university councilor and business consultant of Columbia College, legislator, mayor of Albany, councilor of state - disappeared without a trace in December 1829. He was staying at a New York hotel, where he had been once before.

In the evening, Lansing left the hotel to send letters, hoping to have time to send them by night boat through the Hudson to Albany. And no one saw him again, although the search was very intensive.

In 1873, the English shoemaker James Worson disappeared in front of his friends. The day before, he bet that he would run from their hometown of Leamington Spa to Coventry and back (a distance of 25-26 km). Three friends followed him in a cart, and James ran slowly in front. He ran part of the way without any problems, suddenly stumbled, staggered forward - and disappeared.

The friends, in a panic, tried to find James. After all their unsuccessful attempts to find any trace, they returned to Leamington Spa and told the police. After a long interrogation, they believed the stories, but they could not help.

In February 1940, on the Verayan River (northern Australia), an experienced nurse who went to a remote area to rescue a shot injured person met two people wearing white medical coats. The “medics” literally disappeared into thin air and disappeared before her eyes …

One of the most famous disappearances in British history occurred in Norfolk on April 8, 1969. April Fabb, a 13-year-old schoolgirl, left the house and went to her sister in a nearby village. She rode her bike there and was last seen by a truck driver.

At 14:06, he noticed a girl driving along a country road. And at 2:12 pm, her bike was found in the middle of a field a few hundred yards away, but there was no sign of April. Kidnapping seemed like the most likely disappearance scenario, but the attacker would have only six minutes to kidnap the girl and leave the crime scene unnoticed. April's extensive search yielded no clue.

This case has a lot to do with the disappearance of another young girl, Janet Tate, in 1978, so Robert Black, the notorious child killer, was considered a possible suspect. However, there is no evidence to conclusively determine his involvement in April's disappearance, so this mystery also remains unsolved.

Eight-year-old Nicole Maureen left her mother's penthouse in Toronto, Canada on July 30, 1985. That morning, the girl was going to swim with her friend in the pool. She said goodbye to her mother and left the apartment, but 15 minutes later, her friend came to find out why Nicole had not yet left. The disappearance of the schoolgirl led to one of the largest police investigations in Toronto history, but no trace of her was found.

The most plausible assumption was that someone could have kidnapped Nicole right after she left the apartment, but the building was twenty stories high, so it would be rather difficult to get her out of there unnoticed. One of the tenants said that he saw Nicole coming to the elevator, but no one else saw or heard anything. Thirty years later, authorities have never collected enough data to establish what happened to Nicole Maureen.

At about four in the morning on December 10, 1999, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of California, Michael Negrete, turned off his computer - all night long he played video games with friends. At nine in the morning, his roommate woke up and noticed that Michael had left, but left all his belongings, including keys and wallet. He was never seen again.

The most curious thing about Michael's disappearance is that even his shoes remained in place. Investigators used search dogs to track the student to a bus stop a couple of miles from the dorm, but how could he get so far without shoes? Not far from the scene at 4:35 am, only one person was seen, but no one knows if he is connected with the disappearance of the guy. There is no reason to believe that Michael disappeared of his own free will, but there has been no news of his fate since then.

On the morning of June 13, 2001, 19-year-old Jason Yolkowski was called to work. He asked his friend to pick him up, but he never showed up at the meeting point. The last Jason was seen by his neighbor about half an hour before the time of the scheduled meeting, when the guy was bringing trash cans into his garage. Jason had no personal problems or any other reason to disappear, and there is also no evidence that anything could have happened to him. His further fate remains a mystery many years later.

In 2003, Jason's parents, Jim and Kelly Yolkowski, immortalized their son's name by founding their project, a non-profit organization that has become one of the most famous foundations for families of missing persons.

Brian Shaffer, a 27-year-old medical student from Ohio University (USA), went to a bar on the evening of April 1, 2006. He drank a lot that night and after talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone, somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00, he mysteriously disappeared. He was last seen in the company of two young women, and no one could remember where he was after that.

The biggest unanswered question in this story is how Brian left the bar. The CCTV footage clearly shows how he entered, but none of the footage captured how he got out.

Neither Brian's friends nor his family believe he went into hiding on purpose. He studied well and was planning to go on vacation with his girlfriend. But if Brian was kidnapped or the victim of another crime, how did the attacker get him out of the bar without being noticed by witnesses or security cameras?

Barbara Bolick, a 55-year-old woman from Corvallis, Montana, went hiking with her friend Jim Ramaker from California on July 18, 2007. When Jim stopped to admire the scenery, Barbara was 6-9 meters behind him, but turning around less than a minute later, he found that she was gone.

The police joined the search, but the woman could not be found. At first glance, Jim Ramaker's story sounds absolutely incredible. However, he cooperated with the authorities, and since there was no evidence of his involvement in Barbara's disappearance, he was no longer considered a suspect. The culprit would probably try to come up with a better story, and not claim that his victim just disappeared into thin air. No traces and any hints of what could have happened to Barbara were never found.

On the evening of May 14, 2008, 19-year-old Brandon Swenson was driving back to his hometown of Marshall, Minnesota, on a gravel road, and his car flew into a ditch. Brandon called his parents and asked them to come for him. They left immediately, but could not find him. His father called him back, Brandon picked up the phone and said that he was trying to get to the nearest city of Lead. And in the middle of the conversation, the guy suddenly cursed - and the connection was abruptly cut off.

The father tried to call back several times, but did not receive an answer and could not find his son. Police later found Brandon's car, but could not find him or his cell phone. According to one version, he could accidentally drown in a nearby river, but no body was found in it. No one knows what prompted Brandon to swear during the call, but it was the last thing they heard from him.