Borrowed from "Dr. Ryles' Strange Sites: The Paranormal & Bizarre Blog"
Hello and welcome to the playhouse!
Tonight's stories are about strange and mysterious disappearances.
History is peppered with intriguing tales of people who, for all intents and purposes, inexplicably vanish from the face of the earth without a trace. These stories – some of the most fascinating in the annals of the unexplained – vary from being well-documented to having the flavor of mere legend and folklore.
"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 simply disappeared!
"The Strange Case 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 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!
"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 camp-out 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 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 the horses – and simply vanished in to thin air!
Stay Tuned for more Trippy Tales...Appearing Soon!
~Queenie~
