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Posted: 08-12-2001 02:12 Post subject: people who just... disappear

I was just reading an article about the mysterious disappearance of a man called David Lang from Virginia in the 1880's... he was in an open field, going up to the wagon a Judge Peck, when he just disappeared, witnessed by his wife and two kids as well as the judge. What is the famous British disappearance of the fellow who walked around the team of horses, never to be seen again? What was his name? And are there any other noted disappearce cases I can look into (not missing people, but people who just VANISH.)?

Posted: 08-12-2001 13:46 Post subject:

Benjamin Bathurst was the 25 year old diplomat who disappeared
on November 25th, 1809 at an inn in Perleberg. Witnesses said he
walked around his horses on an otherwise deserted street and
disappeared.

The case of the man crossing a field has been traced back to a
story in Fate Magazine, 1953. One David Lang was named but
no census records or other documentary evidence has ever shown
the story to be other than fiction. It would appear to have been a
retelling of a tale by Ambrose Bierce. Ironically, Bierce himself
disappeared in 1913 when covering the rebellion of Pancho Villa in
Mexico.

Cases of people vanishing into thin air in front of reliable witnesses
are not easily found, sadly. Sad

Posted: 08-12-2001 14:34 Post subject:

Posted: 08-12-2001 14:59 Post subject:

This happened, I'm told, to someone in my street, in the late 60s. She was a young mother of two little children and one morning her elder child, who was 3, was run over in the street, having wandered out through an open front door. Neighbours went to find little Kay's Ma but only the baby was there. Breakfast dishes were in the sink and the woman's coat and handbag were there, washing machine was on, but no Ma. She was never seen or heard of again. Her husband eventually remarried so she must have been declared dead at some point.

Both husband and second wife are now dead but I sometimes work with the second wife's daughter and will ask her some details when I think the time is right.

Posted: 08-12-2001 15:46 Post subject:

Posted: 08-12-2001 17:11 Post subject:

Perhaps the Ambrose's are turned into Ambrosia....

Those old Gods were a nasty lot.

Posted: 08-12-2001 19:25 Post subject:

This is where my brain unearths snippets of information without the necessary details, which I may or may not find later.

Wasn't there a case of a (English?) young lady who visited Paris with her mother some time during the 19th century. They were in separate rooms and the mother just disappeared. The hotel management denied all knowledge of the mother, and the room where she was staying had none of the mother's belongings in it. There were speculations that the mother had been suffering from plague, or some other deadly, infectious disease (and therefore the secrecy over her disappearance to avoid mass panic), but this never seemed plausible to me. I think a film was made loosely based on this story.

I'll look through my 'library' and see if I can turn up more specific details.

Carole

Posted: 08-12-2001 20:01 Post subject:

Posted: 08-12-2001 20:19 Post subject:

I have read the story in many compilations of weird stuff but never
with a name for the girl or the hotel.

The RD Mysteries of the Unexplained volume is par for the course,
describing her as merely a distraught young Englishwoman who
came to the British Embassy in Paris one day in May 1889.

The source cited is The RD Strange Stories and Amazing Facts!

Anyone know of a none RD source for the tale?

Posted: 08-12-2001 20:39 Post subject:

Yeh, RD is probably my source, James! Thanks for that, we can always rely on you:)

Carole

Posted: 09-12-2001 00:48 Post subject:

Peter Weir's spooky Australian film "Picnic at Hanging Rock" features some mysterious vanishings and missing time when a party of school kids visit an aborigine monument. There has been much debate over whether the events depicted were based on truth, to no solid conclusion. It's likely that it is a compound myth, based on many stories woven into one.
The Australian outback is a favoured place in which to disapppear, apparently, especially around the old aborigine sites.

Posted: 09-12-2001 00:56 Post subject:

Conversely, as a wide-eyed kid I read in my Unexplained a story about a dead man that had appeared to "step out of nowhere in mid-air and plunged to his death". He was unidentified and had some drugs in his pocket that only a handful of doctors worldwide knew about. It was a case within the last forty years.

Posted: 09-12-2001 19:43 Post subject:

I sometimes wonder if these people who disappear into thin air are found later but we never hear of their re-emergence because why ruin a perfectly good yarn of spooky goings on or maybe the two stories are never married up. I base this sweeping assumption on reading in some paranormal book about a young lass who went missing in the 70's. The books authors tried to put a paranormal spin on her disappearance but the poor soul later turned up as one of Fred Wests victims.....................

Posted: 09-12-2001 20:07 Post subject:

Like they tried to do with Christine Markham, a sad, abused and neglected child, who is, in all likelyhood buried under a shopping precinct, or in the Trent muds. I was about 5 or 6 when she vanished, and remember the police searching house to house and street by street for her

8¬)

Posted: 10-12-2001 06:06 Post subject: