Disappearances (Paranormal)
History has recorded many instances of mysterious disappearances,
sometimes with equally mysterious reappearances.
Such incidents are not, however, generally thought of as paranormal,
since the evidence is usually anecdotal, reports uncorroborated,
and incidents subject to more mundane explanations.
In the case of well known or important individuals in the
history of politics and religion, kidnapping, secret imprisonment,
or assassination may have been responsible for many disappearances.
In the case of ordinary folk, many young people
throughout history have quarreled with their parents and left
home, sometimes dying in foreign wars, or, more likely today,
on the streets, victims of crime, prostitution, or drugs. Adults
in one kind of difficulty or another have often had good reason
for disappearing. There have also been many cases of genuine
amnesia, or loss of memory, resulting in the victims traveling
far from home and reappearing without any clear recollection
of what happened.
Many such explanations are equally valid for the thousands
of disappearances every year in many countries of the world in
modern times. However, there are a number of cases that remain
intriguing mysteries.
For example, in November 1809 Benjamin Bathurst, a
member of the British diplomatic service, vanished while returning
from a mission to the court of Emperor Francis at Vienna.
Bathurst stopped for a meal at an inn in Perleberg, a small
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German town, and in the evening checked the horses of his carriage.
He was seen by witnesses to walk around to the far side
of the horses and then disappear. He was never seen or heard
of again, in spite of the most extensive investigations.
In the 1550s, in the French town of Artigues, Martin Guerre
left his wife and young son one morning, walking in the direction
of his fathers farm. He disappeared without a trace. Eight
years later, he returned and was welcomed by his wife, his four
sisters, and his uncle Peter. His father had died. Martin resumed
married life and fathered two more children. Three
years later, another Martin Guerre turned up, a soldier with a
wooden leg who had served in the Flanders war. The first Martin
was arrested for impersonation, and even Uncle Peter
changed his mind and said he was an impostor. At the trial, 150
witnesses were examined, and their evidence was conflicting.
Martins brothers took the side of the arrested man, who presented
his case convincingly. Eventually Martins wife changed
her mind and said the man with the wooden leg was the real
Martin. The other was imprisoned and executed.
In his books Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932), Charles
Fort, the chronicler of the anomalous and inexplicable, recorded
a number of mysterious disappearances and reappearances,
including other cases with a strange resemblance to the
story of Martin Guerre. Fort cited the case of a New York
woman around 1920 whose husband was in an insane asylum.
The woman was visited by a man who greeted her fondly, claiming
to be her husband. The woman accepted him and settled
down with him. Some time later she learned that her husband
was still in the asylum, and thereupon had the other man arrested.
How could she have made a mistake in the first place?
Fort noted another case where a man came to a woman whose
husband was a sailor and claimed that he was the husband. Go
away! said she, you are darker than my husband. Ah! said
he, I have had yellow fever. So she accepted him, but later
changed her mind and this case also ended in a police court.
Although a wife should surely know her own husband, even
after a prolonged absence, it is reasonable to suppose that she
might still be mistaken, or have preferred an impostor for reasons
of her own. Some other cases of disappearance are apparently
inexplicable, especially when various people have disappeared
in exactly the same mysterious circumstances.
The Vanishing Children
One night in November 1878, at Quincy, Illinois, Charles
Ashmore, age 16, was sent to fetch water from a well. When he
did not return his father went to look for him with a lantern.
The boys footprints in the snow ended abruptly. A few days
later, his mother heard his voice, as did other members of the
family and neighbors, but the boy was never seen again.
On Christmas Eve 1889, 11-year-old Oliver Larch of South
Bend, Indiana, also went to a well to fetch water. After a short
while, his parents heard him crying out, Help! Help! Theyve
got me! Help! The cries seemed to be coming from overhead.
Olivers father and others in the house went to look for the boy,
carrying a lamp. Halfway to the well, about 75 feet from the
house, the boys footprints in the snow ended abruptly, and
there were no other tracks. The boy had vanished forever.
By an astonishing coincidence, another 11-year-old named
Oliver, son of a Mr. Thomas, a farmer at Rhayader in Wales,
also vanished while going to fetch water from a well on Christmas
Eve 20 years later, in 1909. The boys footsteps also
stopped in the snow, and he too was heard to cry out in terror
before disappearing forever.
What happened to these children who vanished under such
amazingly similar circumstances? They appeared to have been
lifted up into the air. But explanations involving kidnapping
balloonists or predatory eagles are too far-fetched to consider.
An 11-year-old boy weighs some 75 pounds, far beyond the lifting
capacity of an eagle. No balloonists were reported in the
areas.
Mass Disappearances
It is not unusual for armies to be decimated in combat, particularly
in view of the awesome destructive capabilities of modern
armaments, but in most military campaigns there are reasonably
satisfactory accounts of the fate of regiments, with a
tally of corpses or survivors. However, there have been a few instances
in both ancient and modern history where whole armies
have disappeared without trace.
An early example dates from the Roman conquests of Britain.
About the year 119 C.E., the Ninth Roman Legion, known
as Hispana, was sent to subdue one of several revolts in Brigantia,
a confederacy of tribes in northern Britain. The Ninth
Legion, Composed of some six thousand men, disappeared
without a trace.
Some historians do not accept the evidence for this mass disappearance,
but there are other cases in more recent history.
During the Gallipoli campaign in World War I, the British
First-Fifth Norfolk Regiment under Col. Sir Horace
Beauchamp pursued the enemy through forest territory and
disappeared without a trace. The regiment was composed of
250 soldiers and 16 officers. Their strange story was reported
in an eyewitness account by Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton in a dispatch
to Secretary-at-War Earl Kitchener. On the fiftieth anniversary
of the Gallipoli landings, former sapper Frederick Reichardt
(who had been in the New Zealand Engineers) signed a statement
in which he recalled the appearance of a strange, huge
cloud about 800 feet long and 220 feet high, into which the illfated
regiment marched. When this cloud lifted soon afterward,
the men had disappeared.
During the Spanish War of Succession (170114), an army
of four thousand fully equipped troops was reported to have
marched into the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains and disappeared
without a trace.
As recently as 1939 a Chinese army of nearly three thousand
troops disappeared overnight. They were stationed 16 miles
south of Nanking and had orders to fight to the finish. One
hundred and thirteen men were detailed to guard a strategically
important bridge over which the enemy could advance; the
other troops, 2,988 men, dug in at their front line. Col. Li Fu
Sien gave the troops their orders and returned to headquarters,
a couple of miles behind the front line. In the morning he
found no response from the army field telephones and went to
investigate. The detachment guarding the bridge was in position
and assured the colonel that no enemy forces had passed
across the bridge, but the 2,988 men in the front line had all
disappeared. If they had deserted en masse, it is strange that
they were never heard of again.
Disappearance and Reappearance
There are many stories of mysterious disappearances with
equally mysterious reappearances at a great distance, and some
old and new examples are discussed elsewhere as incidents of
teleportation.
In the case of Spiritualist mediums, the claimed phenomenon
usually involves theories of dematerialization (rendering
physical matter intangible) with rematerialization at a distance.
In the case of inanimate objects or small living creatures (such
as insects, birds, snakes), the appearance or disappearance over
a distance is termed an apport. To date there is neither a satisfactory
theory to account for paranormal transportation, nor
any verified case illustrative of its occurrence. Reports of such
cases must be considered highly questionable, especially in
light of the numerous verified cases of fraudulently produced
apports.
The books of Charles Fort meticulously list many accounts
of objects or groups of objects that have appeared or disappeared
suddenly, including insects, fish, blocks of ice, and unusual
artifacts, some the subject of mysterious falls from the
sky. Many of these have been explored as products of infrequent
but natural phenomena.
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Ancient accounts of teleportation of human beings are more
impressive than modern ones, insofar as limited means of
transport would preclude conventional rapid transit as an explanation.
They are, of course, countered by the inability to
verify what often comes across as a tall tale. According to
Philostratus the Elder (ca. 170245 C.E.), the great mystic Apollonius
of Tyana vanished from a crowded courtroom in Rome
and reappeared the same afternoon at Puteoli, 100 miles away.
Similar stories are told in the Bible. In the Acts of the Apostles,
the apostles were delivered from a prison, though the officers
testified the prison house we found shut in all safety, and the
keepers standing before the doors; but, when we opened, we
found no man within (Acts 5:23). St. Philip, after baptizing the
Ethiopian, was caught away by the spirit and found at Azotus
(Acts 8:39).
In modern times, an astonishing story was reported of Armando
Valdes, corporal in the Chilean army. On April 25,
1977, he was said to have disappeared in front of six of his men,
reappearing minutes later. But the calendar on his watch was
dated five days ahead and he had grown something like a fiveday
beard! He could remember nothing of what had happened.
Had he been taken five days into the future before being returned?
This telescoping of time recalls the folklore of supernatural
time in the kingdom of fairies and the legend of Rip
Van Winkle.
Another case of apparent time anomaly is the strange story
of Rudolph Fentz. In the book Vanishings (1981), author Michael
Harrison states that Fentz left his home in Florida in
1876 because his wife objected to his smoking in the house.
Fentz went for a walk and was missing for 74 years. In June
1950 he appeared in Times Square, New York City, dressed in
the formal wear of 1876shepherds plaid trousers, button
boots, Prince Albert coat, glossy plug hat. He stepped off the
pavement and was knocked down by a taxi, dying instantly. His
pockets contained $70 in outdated bank notes and two gold
certificates. His calling cards showed an address on Fifth Avenue.
There was a bill from a livery stable in Lexington Avenue
for feeding and stabling one horse and washing one carriage,
$3, but the stables had long ceased to exist and the premises
were now occupied by a shop.
In his book Lo!, Fort records that in the town of Romford,
Essex, in England, no less than six individuals were found wandering
in the streets between 1920 and 1923. All of them were
unable to tell how they got there, or anything else about themselves.
Even stranger was the report of a man who was walking
down Euston Road in west central London one day, but nine
months later found himself working on a farm in Australia.
Many stories have been told of ships that vanish at sea, or
even crews that disappear, as in the case of the famous Mary
Celeste. Claims have been made that certain ocean areas, like
the so-called Bermuda Triangle, have mysteriously snatched
ships and aircraft, though most of these claims have now been
laid to rest. One of the most time-honored legends of the sea
is that of the Flying Dutchman, condemned to sail his ship
from age to age until redeemed by the love of a pure maiden.
One of the strangest disappearances of modern history is
surely that of the famous writer Ambrose Bierce (18421914?).
He had written many strange stories himself, including three
about mysterious disappearances. One of these was based on
the real-life story of David Lang, a farmer in Gallatin, Tennessee,
who was said to have vanished in full view of five other people
while crossing a field. A year later, his two children were out
walking and heard a mans voice calling for help. They shouted
Father, are you there? and Langs voice answered. The children
fetched Langs wife and the calls for help persisted, but
got fainter and eventually died out. Bierce visited the farm in
Gallatin and based his story The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
on the incident.
Bierce himself disappeared without a trace some time after
1913. One theory is that he died in Mexico during the civil warfare
between Villa and Carranza, but no one really knows how,
where, or when he died.
Sources:
Begg, Paul. Into Thin Air: People Who Disappear. North Pomfret,
VT: David & Charles, 1979.
Berlitz, Charles, and J. M. Valentine. Without a Trace. Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977.
Fort, Charles. The Books of Charles Fort. New York: Henry
Holt, 1941. Reprinted as The Complete Books of Charles Fort. New
York: Dover Publications, 1974.
ODonnell, Elliott. Strange Disappearances. London, 1927.
Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1972.
Phillips, G. Ragland. Brigantia: A Mysteriography. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976.
Steiger, Brad. Strange Disappearances. New York: Magnum
Books, 1972
