I'd like to hear how some of your theories as to how "disappearances" happen. Such as when a judge visited an acquaintence's farm and as the owner was walking across the field, he simply vanished before everyone staring right at him. Or about the parapalegic who was left on his back porch for a few minutes and when his care-taker came back, he was gone. His wheelchair and clothes were there , but he wasn't.


I've always been fascinated by these reports. I realize many of them are legends but there may be some truth that the people are embellishing on.

About ten years ago, I researched this topic. Mostly, I pulled these stories, and a few others like them, from the Mysteries of the Unexplained book, by Reader's Digest and tried to track them down to their source. Ultimately, three of them led absolutely nowhere, as in they were made up and the people involved seemed more exasperated than anything else that the stories were still floating around, and the other two led to Charles Fort's books, at which point it dead-ended and I was unable to look further. Charles Fort had a habit of including any sort of report, as long as it was mildly credible, into his books, and rarely included references or verifications. He simply enjoyed the idea that such strangeness could exist.

Personally, I have never found a Disappearance report that has ever been even an exagerration of the truth. Inevitably, they end up being entire fiction. Possible the lost colony of Roanoke is the only one that has a basis in truth, but that mystery was solved a while back, thanks to genetic testing.

Really now? I didn't hear about that. What's the "mysterious conclusion" of Roanoake?o.O

yeah i haven't heard about the Roanoke thing either...i was always told that they had never been found (figured Native Americans got em)

Tell Tell!!

It isn't so much that the indians got them, but rather that they merged into the tribes.

Unusual Genetics in Indian Tribes

I couldn't find the actual study done by...Pollitzer, I think? This short bit mentions him and the results. More tests are being done now, but for all intents and purposes, morphology has shown that these people are the descendants of a white/native mix.

Remember, it isn't as if the colonies where in constant contact with the homeland. Roanoke was not the first colony to have gone under in the two years that it didn't have any visitors. The simple explanation is that the settlers, facing imminent starvation, went native, as so often has happened before.

Quite a number of these stories are just that...'stories'. Like urban myths of their time. The one you actually mention has its variations.
I used to be quite enthralled by them...But over the years researchers began to discover how many of them seemed to parallel each other: a bit here changes or it was a woman who vanished and not a man, it was in England and not in the USA...This was disappointing and I began to lose my interest. However, this is not to say there are not some real cases out there.

Vimjams

Have you ever heard of David Lang?

David Lang? Name sounds familiar....


Aquaticus..thanks for this info!! Wow...probably used mitochondrial DNA testing...i will definitely be looking more into this!!

Thanks so much!!

there is a lot of info on the roanoke , they were never found but years after they vanished new settlers were seeing -- european looking native americans

my WAG would be that the settlers were ravaged by illness and starvation and the few that were left joined or were taken captive by the local tribes.

i also think that is was a small number of remaining settlers by that time.


hey ever hear of the british army unit in ww 1 that vanished without a trace ?

i think that unit was a battilionor regiment size unit 500 to 1000+ strong .

the myth is they charged into a cloud --or fog and just vanished

the 1st of 4th norfork ? we know what happened to them (kinda) but it is an intresting reading anyways.

Yeah, the disappearing unit. Another case of a mystery where there is none.

After the war ended in 1918, a search of the Gallipoli fields ended with 13,000 unidentified remains, and over 14,000 unaccounted soldiers remains. That the 250 men, plus 16 officers of E Company in the 5th Norfolk Regiment went missing is hardly a mystery.

i remember reading somewhere where a french army unit from ww1 was found buired in the ground intact that was un-identified . another weird result of war i suppose.

i would say ww1 has the biggest number of MIA's (all sides)

http://wintersteel.homestead.com/David_Lang.html

Very interesting. But very dissapointing at the end.

I just bought a book whilst on holiday about mysteries and the first story in it was about a girl called Susie Lamplugh, who just disappeared one day after showing a man around a house, that the estate agency she worked for represented. They found her car a few days later, but they never found her, her body or the man. It's definitely true because it was headline news and my parents remember it all happening.

Yes Fairie...It is a true mystery. But I think you'll find it is more of a murder mystery than anything supernatural or 'strange'. The guy the police are(were) looking for was called Mr Fisher and If I remember it right...several years ago the police had a strong suspect but absolutely no evidence...and once again the case has faded into nothingness. The poor girls body probably lies buried someplace obscure and may never be found.
Vimjams

Yes, well, that would most likely go to the Criminal Investigations Unit, rather than to any researchers into unexplainable vanishings.

I'm afraid that calling a female realtor to view a house is a known method for rapists to acquire their victims.

If any one of you has links to stories concerning vanishings, I'm really interested.
Many times I have wondered if any of the stories I read were true. Most of this all happend in the US or UK, making it rather difficult for me to verify them.

I'm living in the Netherlands and now exactly such a strange vanishing has been in the papers for over a month now. Including photo's, names of people involved, etc. This story is real and happening right before me!
Which makes it all the more intriguing.

I have been looking into books on holes in space-time fabric. Any recommendations for literature on this topic are very welcome.

If you are interested in this particular vanishing story, let me know and I'll give you a short summary.

Dissaperences are very interesting, at the same time scary as hell... they say there is a reason for everything that happened... i believe as you stated most people just make up dissaperences for publicity while others are telling the truth, you do not know which ones are real... but im sure some our real

A bit late in the day, I know, but I have just found this post and have registered so that I could reply. This case is of special interest to me as my father was a witness at the time. He lived in Dorncliffe Road, in Fulham and saw Suzie Lamplugh sitting in a car outside his house (even down to the straw hat on the back shelf). The reason he took notice was that his neighbour, who lived in the basement flat, was a heroine dealer and my father thought it was odd that the well-dressed man, who'd got out of the car, had visited the basement flat as he didn't look like one of the usual customers. He told the police, at the time, and gave a statement. The problem was, he had told the police that Suzie had blonde hair and, at the time, the photo issued of Suzie showed darker hair (she'd had it highlighted blonde shortly before she disappeared). I think it was 2002 that the case was re-opened and the police decided to go through all the old witnesses due to the fact that the investigation was somewhat flawed. Sadly, my father had died in 1998. I do believe that, if they had taken my father's statement seriously, they may have had a better chance of catching the man, "Mr Kipper" as he was known, due to the fact that he wore kipper ties. The man, who lived in the basement flat, also had links to Wormwood Scrubs prison, where Mr Kipper had served a sentence and was released shortly before Suzie's disappearance. My father was very annoyed he wasn't listened to and every time the topic came up in the news, he would go on and on about it. This was the case, right up until his death. All I could tell him was that as he had told the police, that's all he could really do.

Welcome to the forum, Clairy. That's and interesting bit of info, and enforces the notion that this is less a mystery of the unknown, and more a criminal mystery.

Thanks for the welcome Aquatus1

Pardon me if I appear naive. Trust me to jump straight in feet first I would think that, for some cases, at least, the difference between a mystery of the unknown and a criminal mystery would merely be the presence or absence of any witnesses. Anyhow, I am an avid follower of all kinds of mysteries/ crimes and will be glued to this forum from now on. Hopefully, I might be able to contribute little tidbits from time to time

Thanks for that info Clairy and wlecome to the forum... I know what you mean about being glued...

Disappearances interest me tremendously as well, though also wish there was verifiable data..

Yes, Janna, I for one am interested. What happened? Although I see your post is almost a year old. Why hasn't anyone else asked about it?????

The Mary Celeste remains an intriguing mystery. Were the crew frightened into disembarkment and then lost at sea or were there stranger causes at work...

The following is a copy of my first ever post on UM, and the experience which led me to the website. I believe it is connected to your topic.

Doorways in the Sky

Was Googling this topic and came up with a couple of hits from this site. I am interested in finding out more about this topic, particularly to see if anyone has shared, or heard about, an experience like the one I will outline below. I offer no explanations, just a description of what happened to me. I am a 50 plus school teacher. My wife and I lived on a small property about 35k's from the nearest town. One night I heard our dogs barking. I went outside to throw a rock up on the roof of the converted chook yard they were locked up in at night. It was a bright clear night. No moon, stars everywhere, with perhaps some light cloud cover.
As I went to lob the rock onto the dog's roof, I saw a doorway in the sky. It appeared about the size and shape of a standard door, although it was difficult to get a true sense of size without any reference point. It was about 30/40 degrees above the horizon, in a S.E. direction. It was clearly defined with very sharp edges. Behind it, but not shining through it was an intense white light, filling the whole space. It was of flourescent quality, although several orders of intensity greater than household flourescent/neon lighting. I only had a few seconds to observe it before it began to move directlytowards me.
As it approached it magnified in size, quickly filling most of my view. I tried to back away, but came up against a vehicle parked in the yard. At that point i shut my eyes and remember thinking. This is it. You are having a stroke or some similar medical experience.While I cannot honestly say i felt any definable physical feelings, some thing "meta physical" occurred at that point.
I went back inside. My wife asked what had happened, because "i looked as if I had seen a ghost." I explained what had happened and she, being a practical person passed it off as just one of those inexplicable things some people are lucky/unlucky enough to experience.
This was several years ago. I am curious to see if this phenomena has been experienced by others, and this site seemed a good place to start. I have not visited it before and will now spend some time exploring to see if there are any related events.

This is also copied from an earlier post of mine

Interesting concept, and another one on which I keep an open mind. This might have been what I saw and described in the thread, "Doorways in the sky" At the time it occured to me that I might have been experiencing either a worm hole or some type of doorway in the space/ time continuum Luckilly,or unluckilly, while I am sure that it passed through me, I did not pass through it. I have also heard about a story, supposedly true, but now almost apocryphal, called something like "The man who walked around the horses." This was about a supposedly true event, where a man in one of the middle European countries walked around a carriage and horses and disappeared/appeared in the same place but in an entirely different time. One of the great science fiction writers wrote a story about it, but I am pretty sure he said his story was based on this earlier and allegedly true event. One end of the Hole was in the 1800's or even earlier. The other was at a much different time. Several people witnessed both the disappearance and appearance. I have a feeling the bloke survived the experience but went insane, but am not certain of this.