some disappearances https://bmysteriousworld.runboard.com/t16 Runboard| some disappearances en-us Thu, 28 Mar 2024 18:48:20 +0000 Thu, 28 Mar 2024 18:48:20 +0000 https://www.runboard.com/ rssfeeds_managingeditor@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds managing editor) rssfeeds_webmaster@runboard.com (Runboard.com RSS feeds webmaster) akBBS 60 Re: some disappearanceshttps://bmysteriousworld.runboard.com/p681,from=rss#post681https://bmysteriousworld.runboard.com/p681,from=rss#post681ORION WILLIAMSON Orion Williamson was a Selma, Alabama farmer who, on a July day in 1854, simply vanished into thin air while walking across his property. What makes this case especially notable is the fact he did so in full view of his wife and son, as well as two other witnesses (neighbor Armour Wren and his son James). The Wrens, who'd been riding along a road on the other side of the field in a horse and buggy, immediately ran to the spot where Williamson had last been seen, idly swishing the ankle-deep grass with a small stick, but found nothing. Most of the grass was gone from the spot where Williamson had disappeared as well. The news was quickly carried into town, and soon three hundred men formed a massive search party. They combed the field in three rows an arm length apart from each other, but their thorough search yielded no clues. As news of the inexplicable event spread for miles around Selma, hundreds of curious onlookers arrived at the farm to join in the futile search or merely to gawk at the scene. A geologist and a team of experts dug up the field to see if perhaps the ground underneath was unstable or abnormal at all. They found nothing unusual. Newspaper reporters swarmed to the place, and all their articles said essentially the same thing: "A man has vanished into thin air." The curious were still coming to gape at the field as late as the following spring. Mrs. Williamson allegedly revealed at this point that she and her son had heard the farmer's voice crying out for help from the area where he'd vanished, but the voice gradually grew weaker and faded away after a few weeks. A Mr. Ambrose Bierce was said to be very interested in the case. He interviewed members of the search party and studied the grassy, treeless field where Williamson had disappeared. Bierce was so fascinated by the incident that he consulted a German scientist, Dr. Maximilian Hern, who'd written a book entitled "Disappearance And Theory Thereof", which detailed his theories surrounding the spots of "universal ether" that he believed could completely destroy any solid objects that happened to be in them. Bierce scoffed at such ideas. The irony here is that Bierce himself would later become one of the most renowned missing persons in history. For unknown reasons, a reporter would write a fictional account which matched all the details of this event precisely, except that the farmer's name became David Lang, the locale Tennessee, and the date 1880. This mysterious fictionalization has caused a great deal of confusion over the years, with the " David Lang" version actually receiving far more publicity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE COWDEN FAMILY An entire family once disappeared from the Rogue River National Forest Campground in Oregon. On September 5, 1974, Richard Cowden and his wife Belinda, along with their two small children, David and Melissa, went camping for the Labor Day weekend. On Sunday morning, Richard was seen in nearby Copper, Oregon buying some milk. That was the last anyone ever saw of the Cowden family. When the family didn't show up for a scheduled Sunday dinner at Richard Cowden's mother's place, local authorities conducted a search. The camp scene was like something out of The Twilight Zone. Trooper Lee Rickson stated: "That camp sure was spooky. Even the milk was still on the table". Investigators found cooking utensils resting on a tree stump, fishing rods leaning against a tree and the family car was still parked above the campsite. Richard's wallet and his wife's purse were also discovered, with nothing apparently missing from them. There were no indications of a struggle. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- JAMES BURNE WORSON Worson was a shoemaker who lived in Warwickshire, England. He was prone to bragging about his prowess as a long-distance runner, and on September 3, 1873, he was challenged by two friends, linen draper Barham Wise and photographer Hamerson Burns, to run the 40 mile distance from Leamington to Coventry. Worson accepted and started jogging while his friends followed closely in a horse-drawn cart. Worson ran easily for several miles, conversing along the way with his friends. Suddenly, when he was only a half dozen yards from them, and with their eyes fixed upon him, Worson appeared to stumble in the middle of the road. He then fell forward and, as he went down, gave out an awful cry of terror. He then vanished completely. Burns and Wise searched frantically, but couldn't find a trace of their friend who appeared to have evaporated into thin air right before their eyes. A subsequent extensive search of the area yielded similar results, and Corson was never seen again. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- nondisclosed_email@example.com (MaTTsWoRld)Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:14:40 +0000 some disappearanceshttps://bmysteriousworld.runboard.com/p32,from=rss#post32https://bmysteriousworld.runboard.com/p32,from=rss#post32Between 1920 and 1950, Bennington, Vermont was the site of several completely unexplained disappearances: On December 1, 1949, Mr. Tetford vanished from a crowded bus. Tetford was on his way home to Bennington from a trip to St. Albans, Vermont. Tetford, an ex-soldier who lived in the Soldier's Home in Bennington, was sitting on the bus with 14 other passengers. They all testified to seeing him there, sleeping in his seat. When the bus reached its destination, however, Tetford was gone, although his belongings were still on the luggage rack and a bus timetable lay open on his empty seat. Tetford has never returned or been found. On December 1, 1946, an 18-year-old student named Paula Welden vanished while taking a walk. Welden was walking along the Long Trail into Glastenbury Mountain. She was seen by a middle-aged couple that was strolling about 100 yards behind her. They lost sight of her when she followed the trail around a rocky outcropping, but when they rounded the outcropping themselves, she was nowhere to be seen. Welden has not been seen nor heard from since. In mid-October, 1950, 8-year old Paul Jepson disappeared from a farm. Paul's mother, who earned a living as an animal caretaker, left her small son happily playing near a pig sty while she tended to the animals. A short time later, she returned to find him missing. An extensive search of the area proved fruitless. The Vanished Cripple Owen Parfitt had been paralyzed by a massive stroke. In June, 1763 in Shepton Mallet, England, Parfitt sat outside his sister's home, as was often his habit on warm evenings. Virtually unable to move, the 60-year-old man sat quietly is his nightshirt upon his folded greatcoat. Across the road was a farm where workers were finishing their workday by pooking the hay. At about 7 p.m., Parfitt's sister, Susannah, went outside with a neighbor to help Parfitt move back into the house, as a storm was approaching. But he was gone. Only his folded greatcoat upon which he sat remained. Investigations of this mysterious disappearance were carried out as late as 1933, but no trace or clues to Parfitt's fate were ever uncovered. The Disappearing Diplomat British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst vanished into thin air in 1809. Bathurst was returning to Hamburg with a companion after a mission to the Austrian court. Along the way, they had stopped for dinner at an inn in the town of Perelberg. Upon finishing the meal, they returned to their waiting horse-drawn coach. Bathurst's companion watched as the diplomat stepped over to the front of the coach to examine to horses - and simply vanished without a trace. Time Tunnel In 1975, a man named Jackson Wright was driving with his wife from New Jersey to New York City. This required them to travel through the Lincoln Tunnel. According to Wright, who was driving, once through the tunnel he pulled the car over to wipe the windshield of condensation. His wife Martha volunteered to clean off the back window so they could more readily resume their trip. When Wright turned around, his wife was gone. He neither heard nor saw anything unusual take place, and a subsequent investigation could find no evidence of foul play. Martha Wright had just disappeared. The Mysterious Cloud Three soldiers claimed to be witnesses to the bizarre disappearance of an entire battalion in 1915. They finally came forward with the strange story 50 years after the infamous Gallipoli campaign of WWI. The three members of a New Zealand field company said they watched from a clear vantage point as a battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment marched up a hillside in Suvla Bay, Turkey. The hill was shrouded in a low-lying cloud that the English soldiers marched straight into without hesitation. They never came out. After the last of the battalion had entered the cloud, it slowly lifted off the hillside to join other clouds in the sky. When the war was over, figuring the battalion had been captured and held prisoner, the British government demanded that Turkey return them. The Turks insisted, however, that it had neither captured not made contact with these English soldiers. The Legend of David Lang This famous case allegedly took place in September, 1880 on a farm near Gallatin, Tennessee in full view of several witnesses. The two Lang children, George and Sarah, were playing in the front yard of the family home. Their parents, David and Emma, came out the front door, and David headed off across a pasture toward his horses. At this time, a buggy carrying family friend Judge August Peck was approaching. David turned to walk back to the house, saw the buggy and waved to the judge as he strode across the field. A few seconds later, David Lang - in clear view of his wife, his children and the judge - disappeared in mid-step. Emma screamed and all of the witnesses rushed to the spot where David once was, thinking perhaps he had fallen into a hole of some kind. There was no hole. A thorough search by the family, friends and neighbors turned up nothing. A few months after the unexplained disappearance, the Lang children noticed that the grass on the spot where their father vanished had turned yellow and wilted in a circle measuring about 15 feet in diameter. The Stonehenge Disappearance The mysterious standing stones of Stonehenge in England was the site of an amazing disappearance in August, 1971. At this time Stonehenge was not yet protected from the public, and on this particular night, a group of "hippies" decided to pitch tents in the center of the circle and spend the night. They built a campfire, lit several joints of pot and sat around smoking and signing. Their campout was abruptly interrupted at about 2 a.m. by a severe thunder storm that quickly blew in over Salisbury Plain. Bright bolts of lightning crashed down on the area, striking area trees and even the standing stones themselves. Two witnesses, a farmer and a policeman, said that the stones of the ancient monument lit up with an eerie blue light that was so intense that they had to avert their eyes. They heard screams from the campers and the two witnesses rushed to the scene expecting to find injured - or even dead - campers. To their surprise, they found no one. All that remained within the circle of stones were several smoldering tent pegs and the drowned remains of a campfire. The hippies themselves were gone without a trace. The Village That Disappeared An individual that vanishes is one thing, but how about an entire village of 2,000 men, women and children? In November, 1930, a fur trapper named Joe Labelle made his way on snow shoes to an Eskimo village on the shores of Lake Anjikuni in northern Canada. Labelle was familiar with the village, which he knew as a thriving fishing community of about 2,000 residents. When he arrived, however, the village was deserted. All of the huts and storehouses were vacant. He found one smoldering fire on which there was a pot of blackened stew. Labelle notified the authorities and an investigation was begun, and which turned up some bizarre findings: no footprints of any of the residents were found, if they had vacated the village; all of the Eskimos' sled dogs were found buried under a 12-foot-high snow drift - they had all starved to death; all of the Eskimos' food and provisions were found undisturbed in their huts. And there was one last unnerving discovery: the Eskimos' ancestral graves had been emptied. there may or may not be a good explanation for these but they are still very mysterious nondisclosed_email@example.com (MaTTsWoRld)Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:13:15 +0000