Unexplained missing people. Mysterious disappearances of people

That's a memory! As for the patronymic of my third mother-in-law, I forgot, but I remember a man named Ockham. I also remember his razor-blade (in different interpretations in different ways). This English monk in a black robe, as soon as he saw a tired traveler on the horizon, immediately ran up to the stranger, grabbed his hand and soulfully, looking into his eyes, repeated: "For God's sake, do not multiply the essence of phenomena." As a result, the principle was called "Occam's razor". Translated from English into Russian, this wisdom sounds like this: "If there is a simple explanation for what happened, there is no need to look for complex ones." Let's explain with an example: if you overlooked the child, and a plate suddenly broke in the kitchen, then most likely your curious baby did it. It can be assumed that the brownie misbehaved or the mouse fled, waving its tail (namely, the delinquent will insist on this), but the first explanation will still remain the most correct. Although it happens that William of Ockham nervously smokes on the sidelines and looks suspiciously at his compatriot Arthur Conan Doyle. The latter, twisting his mustache, says through the mouth of his favorite literary hero Sherlock Holmes: "Discard everything impossible, what remains will be the answer, no matter how incredible it may turn out to be." It is this phrase that applies to cases of strange disappearances of people around the world.

Cases of people disappearing without a trace

Everyone has heard and read about aliens, the transition to parallel worlds, time travel and other esoteric stuff.

Many then twist their fingers at their temples, others fervently prove that it is impossible not to believe this, since they themselves were repeatedly abducted by aliens.

Where do people disappear to in Russia?

In Moscow, a young mother left a sleeping baby for ten minutes while running to the store. When she returned, the baby was not in the crib. She opened the door with a key, no signs of forced entry. In a panic, I called my husband and mother at work, I thought, maybe they took the baby away for some reason? They called the police. Four years have passed since then.

A young couple. On their honeymoon, the newlyweds were going to take a boat ride down the Volga to Astrakhan. In the morning we packed our bags, ordered a taxi for 15.00. The girl went out to put money on the phone, returned half an hour later. The young husband has disappeared. At first I thought - a prank, after all the deadlines had passed, the trip broke down, I called my relatives. They called all the police departments, hospitals, morgues, the next day they wrote a statement. The case was filed in 2009.

The man went on a business trip to another city. I got a job at a hotel, from there I called home. I spoke with my daughter. Nobody else saw him. Presumably, he did not leave the hotel, because his boots (it was winter), a suit, a warm jacket and a hat were gathering dust in the closet. Another hangover from 2011.

The system administrator of a large firm left at the appointed time for lunch. I didn’t return to work from lunch, I didn’t come home in the evening. The family left a wife with two children. There were no scandals with his wife on the eve of the disappearance. There were no debts, no mortgages. There were no enemies. Everyone loved the guy, and for loved ones this incident became real. The statement to the police was written in August 2014.

Where do people go - statistics

There are tens of thousands of such examples in our country over many years, and millions in the world. I tried to figure out the statistics, but they are very contradictory, so I am not responsible for them, I am not the Levada Center.

Now, according to statistics, in the United States, over a million people go missing every year. 65 percent are within a week. Another 20-25 percent of the missing are found within a month to ten years. In total, about 90 percent.

The remaining 10 percent disappear without a trace forever. And this is about a hundred thousand people.

I read that, according to Russian statistics, there are twice as many missing people. Maybe. But 50 thousand is also a huge number.

Here is a list of the main causes of people disappearing:

1. Homeless. Among this category, the most disappeared without a trace. This is not surprising
2. Mentally ill people, drug addicts, alcoholics. These people leave home, run away from hospitals without documents, without phones. Not everyone is found and often they end up in the crematorium as unidentified corpses.
3. Fishermen, hunters, tourists, mushroom pickers and other nature lovers
4. Fugitive orphans
5. Exalted spouses who spat with their other half and "gone into the night"
6. Lost in a disaster or combat zone
7. Those who ran away from loans, from the impending deadline, from debts, alimony, bandits
8. Children and adolescents victims of domestic violence

These 8 points include 90 percent of the disappeared. But in the police reports there is one more item: "They disappeared suddenly and for no apparent reason." These are the same 50 thousand that have never been found.

Yes, among them there may be people who were kidnapped into slavery, for forced prostitution, killed, who were destroyed, who died an absurd death (for example, hit by a car in a foreign city).

Everything is so, but there are cases that do not fit into these schemes, and which we talked about above. Even stranger disappearances are known.

Disappearances - real cases

USA

The American criminologist T. Bell, who interviewed many relatives of the missing, knows many such stories.

Los Angeles. City of Angels. . In a small, empty car park, a woman was putting groceries in the trunk. Her eleven-year-old daughter was here, there were no strangers nearby. Her mother lost sight of her for a few seconds. The search has been going on for many years.

San Francisco. A forty-eight-year-old man entered the house where he rented an apartment. Evan Jacobi. This moment was recorded by a video camera at the entrance. Evan didn't come back. Recordings on the camera confirm everything. Detectives combed the building several times. To no avail. Jacobi

David Paulides, who has worked as a law enforcement officer for more than twenty years, studied cases of unexplained disappearance of people on the North American continent and found out strange patterns. While the local authorities are investigating each case separately, Paulides has compiled a single picture, which turned out to be very mysterious.

David collected two thousand cases with the same mystical details. As he himself said on May 21 this year at the University of Toronto, it was like a plot from the famous X-Files.

Disappearances occurred most often in parks, near water bodies. Those who were found alive after that had memory lapses, and if they were found dead, it was difficult to determine the cause of their death. Sometimes the missing were found in places that could not be reached on foot, or in areas that had already been carefully searched. For example, the body of one little boy was found on a tree trunk that had once fallen and lay next to a path that had already been surveyed several times. It is also interesting that many people were missing shoes and part of their clothes.

Paulides says that in such cases, the dogs were not able to trace the disappeared person. Some bloodhounds generally behaved strangely: dodged, walked in circles, and then sat down and began to howl. The police also did not find any traces of crimes. It is characteristic that the disappearances occurred in places where there are no wild animals dangerous to humans. The common thing is that the bodies found had no physical injuries. And the companions of the unfortunate almost always said that before the incident for some reason (inexplicably and mysteriously) they separated from them ...

Mysterious disappearances of children

Paulides began to study similar cases in 2009, after retiring from the San Jose Police Department. Two park rangers told him at the time that they considered some disappearance cases worthy of further investigation.

Paulides extended the area of ​​his research to those areas of the city where similar cases took place, including earlier (in the twentieth and even nineteenth century). He told about the facts when from one place a person moved in an incredible way completely to another. This is especially impressive when it comes to small children who simply cannot travel long distances. So, in July 1957, a two-year-old boy named David Allen Scott disappeared in the Twin Lakes region near the Sierra Nevada ridge. The father, who was watching the child, only left for a minute to look into the van, and when he got out, he did not see Allen. The search team found the boy only three days later. To do this, she had to overcome a neighboring mountain, and then climb another mountain peak. It is quite obvious that a small child is not able to make such a journey alone.

Keith Parkins, another two-year-old boy, disappeared in April 1952 outside his home in Ritter after running behind a barn. He was found after 19 hours at a distance of 24 kilometers from the house. Keith lay face down on the surface of the ice-covered pond and was still alive.

Other mysterious disappearances

Paulides says that the bodies of the missing are often found in the water, but these cases are not like drowning. Many of the incidents he studied are related to the Great Lakes (which are so fond of UFOs) and city canals or reservoirs.

Here is what happened in Anoka, Minnesota, for example. 24-year-old Jelani Brison, a student and football player, was found in a pond on the golf course. The young man was last seen alive and unharmed in the house of his friends. Later, Brison's cap was found in one yard near the field, and his shoes were found in another. The last days were rainy, and the golf course was covered with mud, and the socks of the deceased were clean. It turns out that Brison did not come here, but was brought by someone and thrown into the pond. The cause of death could not be established, but drowning was ruled out. And this is just one of many similar cases that have occurred in the area.

David Paulides has written a number of books, including Missing in Action: Strange Coincidences. The author tells about the disappearances of young men in the area of ​​urban reservoirs. Most of the cases occurred in the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Their scenario is almost the same: the guys have a drink with friends in a bar, and subsequently no one can remember how and when they left. A few days later, the bodies of young people are found in the water. Everything seems to be logical: the cause of their death is alcohol intoxication. However, according to Paulides, things are not so simple. Often a person is considered to have disappeared for several days, and the pathologist claims that the body was in the water for one or two days, or even just a few hours. This often happens in forested areas and parks. Such incidents are typical not only for North America, but also for other regions of the world, although Paulides did not consider foreign cases in detail.

Recently, the case of corpses in the Manchester Canal (Great Britain) has attracted general attention. English newspapers have reported that dozens of dead, mostly male, bodies have been found in this canal over the past few years. According to journalists, this is the work of a serial killer, who was even given the nickname - Dropper. However, it is not clear to Paulides: how could so many healthy men drown in such a shallow canal without any signs of violence on the body? ..

Some explanations for the mysterious disappearances

Many attribute such disappearances to supernatural causes, such as kidnappings by Bigfoot or space aliens. The latter, ufologists say, is more likely, since the bodies of the victims almost never show signs of violence.

As for Paulides himself, he is reserved and declares that he never made any hypotheses, but simply described the facts. Of course, rational explanations can be found for individual incidents. However, when it comes to hundreds of similar cases, the perspective changes, there is a feeling of something mystical ... The easiest way, of course, is to blame everything on aliens, but then a lot of new and also very difficult questions arise ...

As soon as a person or a group of people disappears without a trace, the construction of various, sometimes supernatural versions of what happened begins. The people in this collection have disappeared once and for all, and their stories have already grown into legends and rumors.
Hundreds of thousands of people disappear every year in the world, in Russia alone, about one hundred and twenty thousand people disappear a year - think about it, this is a whole city, and rather big one at that.
Of the 120,000 people who went missing last year alone, the majority are men - almost 59,000. 38 thousand are women, 23 thousand are minors and small children.
But here's what is surprising, according to statistics, even traces of a quarter of the missing are never found - these people simply disappear ...
I bring to your attention a selection of the most mysterious and inexplicable disappearances of people recorded in history.

1763 England, Shepton Mallet. Owen Parfitt, 60, was sitting in a wheelchair in the front yard of his sister Suzanne's home. When the weather began to deteriorate, Susanna and her neighbor went out into the yard to help her brother return to the house. But he was not there. Owen's coat lay lonely in the armchair. Where could a person who was actually unable to move independently go?

The most famous disappearance in the world is the disappearance of British Ambassador Benjamin Batust in Germany, which occurred on November 25, 1809.
1809 Germany. British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst (1784-1809), who disappeared between Berlin and Hamburg. With his companion, they were heading to Hamburg. On the way, they stopped to dine at a hotel in the city of Perelberg. After eating, the men returned to the crew waiting for them. The nobleman left a little earlier than his servants to the horses and no one ever saw him again. There was an assumption that the French could have kidnapped him. It was then decided that he had been stolen to demand a ransom. But until mid-December, no ransom demand or news of the fate of Batust was received. Then for the search his wife came in. At first, she identified all the corpses found since November 25, but did not recognize them as her husband. Then Batust's fur coat was found in the annex of the house of the peasant Schmidt. On November 16, two women brought Batust's trousers, which they found in the forest, to the police. Police decided that Batust disappeared on his own initiative.Later it turned out that Batust left the fur coat in the hotel, and the mother of that peasant took it away when she found out about the disappearance, she worked at that hotel. In March 1810, Mrs. Batust searched all the neighborhoods of the city of Perleberg with a detachment of solbats and dogs. But she didn't find anything. In April 1852, the hotel building was demolished and a skeleton was found near the stable gate. The back of the head was pierced with a heavy object. But to find out who this person was before was not possible at that time. Although it was determined by the teeth and crowns that the person was not poor.

In 1920-1950. in Bennington, Vermont, strange disappearances have repeatedly occurred. From 1945 to 1950, not far from a place called Long Pass, seven people disappeared without a trace. The body of only one of them was found.
"Bennington Triangle" is a phrase first used in 1992 by writer and folklorist Joseph Seatrow to refer to an area in southwestern Vermont. The exact boundaries of this anomalous zone are unknown, but it includes the cities of Glastonbury, Woodford and Somerset - once quite large industrial settlements abandoned by people in connection with the decline of the lumber industry in the region.

The first documented case of the disappearance of a person in the area occurred on November 12, 1945. On this day, 74-year-old Middy Rivers, who led a group of 4 hunters, went missing. He moved a little away from his comrades, after which no one saw him. The search party found only a rifle cartridge in a nearby stream. It may have fallen out of Middy's pocket when he leaned into the water to quench his thirst or wash his face. No traces of a struggle or other objects of the man could be found. Middy Rivers was an experienced hunter and fisherman who knew the area well and couldn't just get lost.
On December 1, 1946, 18-year-old student Paula Jean Welden disappeared on a campaign. She was the eldest daughter of renowned engineer, architect and designer William Archibald Welden, and her disappearance attracted a lot of public attention. The FBI got involved. Witness interviews yielded little results: a group of hikers saw Paula on the Long Trail route in the evening. Detectives suggested that the girl was crossing the forest, but with the onset of twilight she got lost. The FBI, police and search parties combed the entire district, but did not find even a hint of the missing student.
In 1949, veteran James Tedford disappeared in the same region, returning home by bus from a trip to relatives. According to witnesses, the man was last seen on the bus at the last stop in front of Bennington, but at this point James's tracks are lost. The transport came to the city with his luggage, but without him. On the seat, next to the veteran's belongings, was an open brochure with the bus schedule, where James had disappeared - a mystery.
On October 12, 1950, 8-year-old Paul Jepson went missing while riding in a truck with his mother. At one of the stops, his mother was briefly distracted, during which time Paul disappeared. The search engines did not find any trace of the boy, although he was wearing a bright red jacket that was easy to see. With the help of dogs, we managed to follow his trail to approximately the same place where Paula Welden was last seen 4 years before.
On October 28, 1950, the last officially confirmed disappearance of a person happened. Freida Langer, 53, and her cousin set off on a hike from a camp near Somerset. After she stumbled and fell into the stream, she told her brother that she would go back to the camp to change. This was the last time she was seen alive - the woman never made it to the camp. In the next two weeks, 5 search expeditions were undertaken with the participation of aviation and more than 300 searchers, with no results. However, on May 12, 1951, the remains of Freida Langer were found at a site that had been carefully explored by searchers 7 months before. Due to the long period of time that has passed since her death, the cause of it could not be established.
According to one version, the missing were killed by a maniac who committed his crimes at a certain time of the year, when his mental illness worsened. According to another version, sectarians were involved in the case.

1971, England. Another disappearance in one of the most mysterious places in the world - the famous Stonehenge. At that time it was not protected from outsiders and a group of hippies decided to camp near these charming stones
Several people decided to spend the night in the center of the structure, setting up tents there. A storm broke out during the night. Suddenly, a bright blue flash lit up Stonehenge. Two witnesses, a farmer and a policeman, rushed to Stonehenge, thinking to find the wounded there. But no one was found. Young people were never found - neither alive nor dead ...

Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold (born Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold; 1884, New York, USA - went missing on December 12, 1910, ibid.) - American socialite and heiress of a perfume company.
The disappearance of Dorothy Arnold caused a lot of controversy and rumors in American society and became one of the most mysterious in US history.
At 11 am on December 12, 1910, Dorothy Arnold left her room, located on the second floor of the Arnold house, and went down the stairs. Before her daughter left, Arnold's mother offered to keep the girl company, but Dorothy politely refused. When leaving, Dorothy did not take any luggage with her, and of the money the girl had only $ 25 in cash, while her monthly allowance, appointed by her father, was $ 100. The day before, she had withdrawn $36 from the bank to join her friends for lunch.
On the way west along Fifth Avenue, Dorothy met several people she knew. Subsequently, they all recalled that Arnold was in a great mood and was heading towards the Park and Tilford candy store on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 27th Street. The last place Arnold came to the attention of people that day was the bookstore at 26 Brentano Street. Here she bought a humorous book of epigrams by Emily Calvin Blake, Notes of a Busy Girl, which she also paid for with a family loan, and met with her girlfriend, Gladys King. She waved goodbye to Gladys. It happened at two o'clock in the afternoon, and since then no one has seen her. King later recalled that before parting, Dorothy told her that she was going to walk home through Central Park. However, there is a further version of events, according to which Arnold, having left the bookstore, went to a travel company located nearby, where she inquired about the schedules for the departure of steamships from New York to Europe. She also asked the firm's staff about pricing and sales schedules, but ended up leaving without purchasing a ticket.
Subsequently, all versions, starting from memory loss due to trauma, as well as murder and suicide, were refuted. The disappearance remained unsolved, despite the fact that Dorothy's parents spent about $ 100,000 searching for it, which at that time was a huge amount.

One of Britain's greatest unsolved mysteries is the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers on the Scottish island of Flannan in December 1900.
The day after Christmas, a transport ship arrived on the island. To the crew's surprise, the lighthouse keepers, as usual, were not waiting for them at the island's small dock. After sounding the signal and launching flares, they did not notice any activity on the island. Ultimately, the ship's crew sent a replacement lighthouse keeper, Joseph Moore, to check.
As he approached the door, he saw that it was not locked. As he stepped carefully, he also noticed that two of the three waterproof jackets usually kept in the front room were missing. When he reached the kitchen, he found the remains of food and a chair lying on the floor. The kitchen clock has stopped. The lighthouse keepers were nowhere to be seen.
Further investigation unearthed a discouraging last entry in the lighthouse log. The entry for December 12 was written by a curator named Thomas Marshall. In it, Marshall claimed that such strong winds hit the island that were worse than anything he had seen in his life before. Despite the fact that the lighthouse was strong enough to survive any storm, Marshall wrote that the head keeper, James Dukat, was very quiet. The third keeper, William MacArthur, was an experienced sailor and a known hardy brawler who liked to get rowdy in taverns. The entry in the registration log noted that at that moment he was crying.
Further records said that the storm continued to rage for days on end. Safe in the lighthouse, the three men began to pray nonetheless. The last entry read: “The storm is over, the sea is calm. Thank God".
At the same time, the main version is still a death during a storm, which may have been provoked by some kind of accident, and the bodies were washed into the sea during bad weather.

The Parisian doctor Bonvillain was extremely surprised when he did not find his patient Lucien Busier in the office. In 1867, a mysterious disappearance happened in Paris in the office of Dr. Bonvilina. The victim was his neighbor Lucien Busier, a tall young man. That evening, Lucien went to the doctor to consult about a weakness that had appeared in him. The doctor ordered the young man to undress and lie down on the couch, while he himself went for a stethoscope. After a minute's absence, the doctor returned to the patient, but found only his things lying on a chair. The patient himself was nowhere to be found. He was not at home either, where the doctor went to take the clothes. Searches for concerned relatives also failed.

In the United States, the story of how the soldier James Thetford disappeared is known. The event took place on December 1, 1949 in the presence of eyewitnesses. Thetford, along with fourteen other passengers, was on a bus from Albany to Bennington. Everyone saw that he sat down in his place, read the newspaper and fell into a slumber. The bus ran non-stop for an hour. Nobody paid any attention to Thetford. When the bus arrived at its destination, one passenger was not in the cabin. Just disappeared James Thetford. His place turned out to be empty, and under the seat they found a bag with personal belongings and a newspaper that he was reading. How the passenger disappeared from the non-stop bus remained a mystery to everyone. The police investigation yielded no results.

According to materials:
http://esoreiter.ru/index.php?id=0815/08-08-2015-123249.html&dat=news&list=08.2015
http://www.rg.ru/2008/10/28/fantomi.html
http://mishanya.com/bravovonqueen/b49z5Fy
http://darkbook.ru/publ/ssha/benningtonskij_treugolnik/7-1-0-188
http://kartcent.ru/tainstvennye-ischeznoveniya-lyudej/#ixzz3itX15BR0
http://nekropole.info/ru/Doroti-Arnold
http://muz4in.net/news/10_strannykh_tajn_kotorye_tak_i_ostalis_nerazgadannymi/2014-05-28-36220

Many people go missing every year, month or week. Some are later 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 talking with them. Researchers of anomalous phenomena believe that such people accidentally fall into the invisible portals to other dimensions, time traps or something else like that.

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

In 1815, a strange disappearance occurred in a Prussian prison in Weichselmund. A servant named Diderici was imprisoned on charges of impersonating his master after he died from a stroke. Chained prisoners were once taken for a walk along the fenced 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 - participant in the American Revolution, former chancellor, member of the university council and business consultant of Columbia College, legislator, mayor of Albany, state councilor - disappeared without a trace in December 1829. He stayed at a New York hotel where he had already been once.

In the evening, Lansing left the hotel to mail letters, hoping to send them by night boat across the Hudson to Albany. And no one else saw him, although the search was carried out very intensively.

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 rode behind him in a cart, and James slowly ran ahead. He ran part of the way without any problems, suddenly stumbled, swayed forward - and disappeared.

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

In February 1940, on the Veryan River (Northern Australia), an experienced nurse who went to a remote area to rescue a man wounded by a shot met two people dressed in white medical coats there. The "medics" literally vanished into thin air and disappeared before her eyes...

One of the most famous disappearances in British history took place 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 2:06 p.m., he noticed the girl driving along a country road. And at 2:12 p.m., 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 scenario for the disappearance, but the attacker would only have six minutes to kidnap the girl and leave the crime scene unnoticed. April's extensive search turned up no leads.

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

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 a 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 hadn't left yet. The disappearance of a schoolgirl led to one of the largest police investigations in Toronto history, but no trace of her has ever been found.

The most plausible assumption was that someone could have kidnapped Nicole right after she left the apartment, but the building had twenty floors, so it would be quite difficult to get her out of there unnoticed. One of the tenants said that he saw Nicole approaching the elevator, but no one else saw or heard anything. Thirty years later, authorities still haven't collected enough data to establish what happened to Nicole Maureen.

Around 4 a.m. on December 10, 1999, 18-year-old UCLA freshman Michael Negrete turned off his computer, playing video games with friends all night long. At nine in the morning, his roommate woke up and noticed that Michael had left, but left all his belongings, including his 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 try to track the student to a bus stop a couple of miles from the dorm, but how could he have gotten this far without shoes? Only one person was seen near the scene at 4:35 a.m., but no one knows if he is connected to the disappearance of the guy. There is no reason to believe that Michael disappeared of his own accord, 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 time Jason was seen by his neighbor was about half an hour before the scheduled meeting time, when the guy was carrying garbage cans into his garage. Jason had no personal problems or any other reason to disappear, nor is there any evidence that anything could have happened to him. His fate remains a mystery many years later.

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

Brian Shaffer, a 27-year-old medical student from the University of Ohio (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 sometime between 1:30 and 2:00, mysteriously disappeared. He was last seen in the company of two young women, and no one could remember where he was after that.

The most difficult question in this story, which remains unanswered, is how Brian left the bar. The footage from the security camera clearly shows how he entered there, but not a single frame captured how he left.

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

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

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 certainly have tried to come up with a better story, rather than claiming that his victim simply vanished into thin air. No traces or any hints of what could have happened to Barbara were ever found.

On the evening of May 14, 2008, 19-year-old Brandon Swenson was returning to his hometown of Marshall, Minnesota on a gravel road when his car went into a ditch. Brandon called his parents and asked them to come pick him up. They immediately left, 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 town of Lead. And in the middle of the conversation, the guy suddenly cursed - and the connection abruptly ended.

The father tried to call back several more times, but received no answer and could not find his son. The 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.

Thousands of people go missing every year, and the cases of these disappearances become truly discouraging, when investigators have virtually nothing to work with - situations in which no one has seen anything, and there are no reasonable explanations. It's almost the same as if these people literally vanished into thin air.

1 Maura Murray

On February 9, 2004, 21-year-old University of Massachusetts student Maura Murray emailed her teachers and employers that she was forced to leave due to the death of a (fictitious) member of her family. She had an accident that evening, crashing her car into a tree near Woodsville, New Hampshire. By a strange coincidence, a couple of days earlier, Maura also had an accident and crashed another car.

The driver of a passing bus approached and asked Maura if the police should be called. The girl said no, but the driver still made the call as soon as he got to the nearest phone. When the police arrived ten minutes later, Maura was gone.
No signs of a struggle were found at the scene, so Maura may have asked someone to give her a ride. The next day, Maura's fiancé from Oklahoma received a voice message, presumably from her, but heard only sobs on the other end of the line. Although Maura acted a little strange in the last days before her disappearance, her family does not believe that she disappeared of her own free will.

Nine years have passed, but it has not been possible to find out what happened to the girl.

2. Brandon Swanson

On the evening of May 14, 2008, as 19-year-old Brandon Swenson was driving back to his hometown of Marshall, Minnesota on a rural gravel road, his car went into a ditch. Brandon called his parents and asked them to come pick him up. They immediately went in search of the vyn, 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 town of Lead. And in the middle of the conversation, Brandon suddenly cursed, and the connection abruptly ended.

Brandon's father tried to call back several more times, but received no answer and could not find his son. Later, the police found Brandon's car, but could not find either the guy himself or his cell phone. According to one version, he could accidentally drown in a nearby river, but no traces of the body were found in it. No one knows what prompted Brandon to swear during the ringing, but it was the last thing they heard from him.

3. Louis Le Prince

Louis Le Prince is a famous French inventor who was the first to capture moving images on film. Oddly enough, the "father of cinema" is also remembered as the subject of one of the strangest disappearances in history. On September 16, 1890, Le Prince was visiting his brother in Dijon and then went by train to Paris. When the train arrived at its destination, it turned out that Le Prince had disappeared.

Le Prince was last seen entering his carriage after checking his luggage. There were no signs of violence or anything suspicious during the trip, no one could remember seeing Le Prince outside his carriage. The windows were tightly closed, so it would have been rather difficult to jump off the train, but the possibility of suicide seemed unlikely at all, since Le Prince was going to go to America to get a patent for his new invention.

As a result of this disappearance, the patent for the kinetoscope (an apparatus for showing successive photographs of movement) went to Thomas Edison. As for Le Prince, his fate is still a mystery.

At four in the morning on December 10, 1999, an 18-year-old UCLA freshman named Michael Negrete turned off his computer, playing video games with friends all night long. 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 the guy even left his shoes. Investigators used search dogs to try to track Michael to a bus stop a couple of miles from the dorm, but how could he have gotten this far without shoes? Only one person was seen near the scene at 4:35 am, but no one knows if he is connected to Michael's disappearance. There is no reason to believe that Michael disappeared of his own accord, but there has been no news of Michael's fate for more than a decade.

5. Barbara Bolick

On July 18, 2007, Barbara Bolik, a 55-year-old woman from Corvallis, Montana, went hiking in the mountains with her friend Jim Ramaker, who was visiting from California. When Jim stopped to take in the scenery, Barbara was 6-9 meters behind him, but turning back less than a minute later, he found that the woman had disappeared. 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 certainly have tried to come up with a better story, rather than claiming that his victim simply vanished into thin air. Six years have passed, but no traces of a violent death have been found, as well as any hints of what could happen to Barbara.

On August 23, 2008, 51-year-old Michael Heron went to his farm in Happy Valley, Tennessee, planning to cut the grass on the lawn. That morning, neighbors saw Michael leave the farm in his all-terrain vehicle - and that was the last time he was seen. The next day, Michael's friends visited the farm and saw his truck parked on the road. A trailer was attached to it, in which a lawn mower was found, but the grass on the lawn remained untouched. His friends returned the next day and were worried when they saw the truck parked in the same place, which still had the keys, cell phone and wallet.

Three days after Michael's disappearance, investigators found the only clue: an all-terrain vehicle on a steep hill, located one and a half kilometers from his house. However, it was not clear why he needed to go there. In addition, no traces of violence were found. Michael had no enemies and no other reason to hide, so he became a truly incomprehensible mystery.

7. April Fubb

One of the most famous disappearances in British history took place in Norfolk on April 8, 1969. A 13-year-old schoolgirl named April Fabb 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 2:06 p.m., he noticed the girl driving along a country road. And at 2:12 p.m., her bike was found in the middle of a field a few hundred yards from where she was seen, but there was no sign of April.

Kidnapping seemed like the most likely scenario for April's disappearance, but the attacker would only have six minutes to kidnap the girl and leave the crime scene without anyone noticing. April's extensive search turned up no leads.

This case has much in common with the disappearance of another young girl, Janet Tate, in 1978, so Robert Black, a notorious child killer, was considered as a possible suspect. However, there is no evidence to definitively determine his involvement in April's disappearance, so this mystery remains unresolved as well.

8. Brian Shaffer

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

The most difficult question in this story, which remains unanswered, is how Brian got out of the bar. CCTV footage clearly shows him entering the bar, but none of the footage shows him leaving! Neither Brian's friends nor his family believe he went into hiding on purpose. Three weeks earlier, he had been studying well and was planning to go on vacation with his girlfriend. But if Brian was kidnapped or he was the victim of another crime, then how did the attacker get him out of the bar without being noticed by any witnesses or security cameras?

9. Jason Yolkowski

On the morning of June 13, 2001, 19-year-old Jason Yolkowski was called to work. He asked his friend to pick him up at a nearby high school, but he never showed up.

The last time Jason was seen by his neighbor was about half an hour before the appointment, when the guy was carrying garbage cans into his garage. High school security cameras show he didn't show up there. Jason had no personal problems or any other reason to disappear, nor is there any evidence that anything could have happened to him. His further fate remains a mystery even twelve years later.

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

10. Nicole Maureen

On July 30, 1985, eight-year-old Nicole Maureen left her mother's penthouse in Toronto. That morning, Nicole was going to swim in the pool with her friend. She said goodbye to her mother and left the apartment, but 15 minutes later her friend came to find out why Nicole hadn't left yet.

Nicole's disappearance led to one of the largest police investigations in Toronto's history, but no trace of the girl has ever been found. The most plausible assumption was that someone could have kidnapped Nicole right after she left the apartment, but the building had twenty floors, so it would be quite difficult to get her out of there unnoticed. One of the tenants said that he saw Nicole approaching the elevator, but no one else saw or heard anything. Nearly thirty years later, authorities still haven't collected enough data to establish what happened to Nicole Maureen.