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'Low Strangeness' Disappearances (Missing Persons; Runaways; Crime-Related)

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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.....................
 
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¬)
 
people who disapear

Harold Holt (do a bolt) disapeared whilst scuba diving off Portsea Beach, near Melbourne.Not that unusual people disapear all the time you say.True but he was prime minister,lending to the rumours that he was picked up by a Chinese submarine.
 
How Many???

I read in this weeks Observer that around 200,000 people a year dissapear in the UK! The majority re-appear at some point, but doesn't this mean that soon there will be no one left in the UK apart from me and that I might finally get a seat on the DLR in the morning? I hope.
 
Andrew Carneigie Whitfield (nephew of Andrew Carnegie the steel tycoon), vanished flying in a plane in 1938. Neither he or his plane were ever found. One report I read years ago said he was over well populated land on his proposed route. If true it's becomes rather strange they did'nt find the plane.

http://doenetwork.bravepages.com/848dmny.html



Manahattan socialite Dorothy Arnold is one of the most famous missing persons cases, even being noted by Mr. Fort himself. The basic story is here.

http://www.prairieghosts.com/arnold.html
 
NBI probes mysterious disappearance of Leyte bishop's brother


The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) started yesterday investigating the mysterious disappearance of the brother of a Catholic archbishop inside a commercial-residential building in Manila last December 14, officials said yesterday.



Lawyer Elfren Meneses, chief of Anti-Fraud and Computer Crimes Division (AFCCD), identified the victim as Cesar Rosales Dean, 73, a US citizen, of 18-E Legaspi Tower, Vito Cruz, Malate, Manila.


He was reported missing on December 14, 2005 at the 19th floor of Legaspi Tower, Vito Cruz, Malate, Manila. He is 5’5” tall, between 130 and 135 lbs., of fair complexion, and slightly medium built.


Dean is the brother of Archbishop Dean of Palo, Leyte. The NBI did not disclose the first name of the archbishop.


Investigation conducted by NBI Interpol Division headed by lawyer Ric Diaz showed that prior to the incident, the victim had a drinking spree with his friend, Mildred Milan, at the Tolits KTV at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum.


Special Investigator James Calleja said the victim and Milan returned to Legaspi Tower at 11:20 p.m.


Milan went out of the elevator on the 3rd floor while the victim got out on the 19th floor.


After arriving at the 19th floor, the victim disappeared. (Jeamma E. Sabate)


http://www.tempo.com.ph/news.php?aid=19937
 
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I remember when Vicky Hamilton went missing many moons ago, there were posters everywhere and descriptions issued. She was never found. What I don't get is how it can take over FIFTEEN YEARS to even begin to consider the possiblity that she was murdered?

DETECTIVES today launched a murder-style inquiry into the unsolved disappearance of teenager Vicky Hamilton, who vanished almost 16 years ago.

A "cold case" police squad will investigate what happened to the youngster who, officers believe, was most likely killed by someone in the West Lothian town of Bathgate.

Announcing the fresh inquiry, police said the "time is right" to stop treating the case as a missing person case, because there is "no evidence" she is still alive.

Vicky's father today said he hopes the appeal will help him discover what happened to his daughter, who he is convinced was killed in 1991.

The inquiry will focus on Bathgate, where Vicky was last seen, and where it has been suggested the 15-year-old was abducted and lured into a stranger's home.

Officers want to speak to residents who lived in Bathgate at the time. They plan to ask questions commonly used in murder probes - particularly asking people to remember if they knew any men who lived alone.

DNA tests may also be carried out on Vicky's purse - found in Edinburgh's St Andrew Square, 11 days after she vanished.

Police think the purse may have been dumped by her kidnapper to make it look like she was running away.

Still officially listed as a missing person inquiry - no body has been found - Vicky disappeared on Sunday, February 10, 1991, after visiting her sister Sharon, at her Bathgate home.

As part of the new appeal, posters have been put up in the spot where she was last seen, and the case will be highlighted on a TV programme tomorrow night.

A new report will be compiled as part of the review, which could eventually pave the way for a full re-investigation of the case.

One of Lothian and Borders' most experienced former detectives, Bert Swanson - who heads up the cold case police squad - is in charge of the inquiry.

He said: "During the original investigation, 7600 people were seen or referred to, 4000 statements were taken and 12,000 documents were looked at.

"No evidence has been found to support the view that Vicky ran away.

"Regrettably, everything now points to the view that Vicky is no longer alive."

Mr Swanson continued: "This was the biggest missing persons case conducted in Scotland at the time, and it has remained active, but really the time is right to treat this case in a different light.

"There are some people in the area who were never spoken to, because this wasn't treated as a murder inquiry from the word go. The kind of information we want is similar to what we ask in a murder investigation.

"It's surprising how things can jog people's memories, and we want to change the perception in people's minds that Vicky ran away.

"For more than 15 years, she has been treated as a missing person. We're coming off the fence - we can't find her, and there's no evidence she ran away, so we think something more sinister happened."

Detectives want to speak to people who were in cars, pubs, churches or video shops on the date Vicky was last seen, when there was a heavy snowstorm.

There are people they haven't even spoken to? Well I'm sure leaving if for over FIFTEEN YEARS won't make any difference. Did I mention they have left it for more than FIFTEEN YEARS?

Is this normal??

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/index ... 1690842006
 
Young girls (and lads) who go missing are usually assumed by the police to have run off. This is because that is what has generally happened, and most missing teenagers eventually turn up safe and well.

It can be very hard for the young person's family to convince the police that THEIR youngster wouldn't run off or that they haven't had a family argument which resulted in the teenager flouncing out.

When I worked with teenagers in a kids' home, there was at least one 'missing person' report made every week, and often several. All those teenagers eventually rolled up again, more or less willingly.

15 years seems a long time to take to decide that girl of 15 has come to harm, though this may be a sign of a change in the attitude of the police to the problem.
 
Do we already have a general thread? If not, maybe this can be the first one. And first up - the strange case of Aimee Semple McPherson, who was a famous 20's era evangilist in LA:
"Kidnapping"

On May 18, 1926, McPherson went to Ocean Park Beach, California, north of Venice Beach with her secretary, to go swimming. Soon after arrival, McPherson disappeared.

It was generally assumed at the time that she had drowned; mourners crowded Venice Beach, and the commotion sparked a days-long media coverage of the event, fueled in part by William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner, and even including a poem by Upton Sinclair commemorating the "tragedy." Daily updates appeared in newspapers across the country; parishioners held day-and-night seaside vigils. A futile search for the body resulted in one parishioner drowning and another diver dying from exposure.

At about the same time, Kenneth G. Ormiston, engineer for KFSG, also disappeared. The two incidents were seen as unrelated.

About a month after the disappearance, McPherson's mother, Minnie Kennedy, received a ransom note, signed by "The Avengers", which demanded a half million dollars to ensure kidnappers would not sell McPherson into "white slavery". Kennedy later said she tossed the letter away, believing her daughter to be dead.

After 35 days (on June 23), McPherson stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town just across the border from Douglas, Arizona. She claimed that she had been kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and held for ransom in a shack in Mexico, then had escaped and walked through the desert for about 13 hours to freedom.

Several problems were found with McPherson's story. Her shoes showed no evidence of a 13-hour walk; indeed, they had grass stains on them after a supposed walk through the desert. The shack could not be found. McPherson showed up fully dressed while having disappeared wearing a bathing suit, and was wearing a watch given to her by her mother, which she had not taken on her swimming trip.

A grand jury convened on July 8 to investigate the matter, but adjourned 12 days later citing lack of evidence to proceed. However, several witnesses then came forward stating that they had seen McPherson and Ormiston at various hotels over the 32-day period.

The grand jury re-convened on August 3 and received further testimony, corroborated by documents from hotels in McPherson's handwriting. McPherson steadfastly stuck to her story that she was approached by a young couple at the beach who had asked her to come over and pray for their sick child, and that she was then shoved into a car and drugged with chloroform. However, when she was not forthcoming with answers regarding her relationship with Ormiston (who was recently estranged from his wife), Judge Samuel Blake charged McPherson and her mother with obstruction of justice on November 3.

Theories and innuendo abounded: she had run off with a lover; she had had an abortion; she was recovering from plastic surgery; she had staged the whole thing as a publicity stunt. No satisfactory answer, though, was ever reached, and soon after the Examiner erroneously reported that Los Angeles district attorney Asa Keyes had dropped all charges, Keyes decided to do exactly that on January 10, 1927, citing lack of evidence.
 
See, I think cases like the McPherson one are really strange reappearances. Another one is Agatha Christie's:

On 8 December 1926, while living in Sunningdale in Berkshire, she disappeared for ten days, causing quite a storm in the press. Her car was found in a chalk pit in Newlands Corner, Surrey. She was eventually found staying at a hotel in Harrogate under the name of the woman with whom her husband had recently admitted to having an affair. She claimed to have suffered amnesia due to a nervous breakdown following the death of her mother and her husband's infidelity. Opinions are still divided as to whether this was a publicity stunt or not. Public sentiment at the time was negative, with many feeling that an alleged publicity stunt had cost the taxpayers a substantial amount of money. A 1979 film, Agatha, starring Vanessa Redgrave as Christie, recounted a fictionalised version of the disappearance. Other media accounts of this event exist; it was featured on a segment of Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story, for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_christie

...which was also never satisfactorily explained.

True strange disappearances are the ones who are never seen again, like Ambrose Bierce, Frederick Valentich or D.B. Cooper. I don't know if you agree.
 
That Vanessa Redgrave film is really... erm... not that great.
 
Sorry for more forum necromancy, but this is my favorite Fortean subject of all. There is just something so frightening and mysterious about disappearance. (And sometimes appearance.) I have the book Among the Missing by Jay Robert Nash, which is a wonderful source of information ...

Dorothy Forstein

This story is interesting to me because it happened nearby. Here is a summary: http://tierra-santa.livejournal.com/379.html#cutid1 I don't remember where I first read about this, but I have found many different references to it online. No newspaper articles, though, which might mean it's fiction. My husband's family has lived in Philadelphia for a long time, but they never heard of this story.

See Also:
http://strangeco.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-strange-disappearance-of-dorothy.html
 
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I spent an afternoon last summer going through that Wikipedia list of mysteriously disappearing people, it can really give you chills that you could vanish so completely. But some of the more memorable stories that you stumble across in old books might not be quite as reliable as you might hope.

Leafing through a book by the Bords, I find Alex Cleghorn, a nineteen-year-old Scotsman out celebrating New Year in 1966 who was walking along a Glasgow road when suddenly his brothers noticed he wasn't beside them anymore. Five years later the mystery was unsolved and presumably still is. There's one not on Wikipedia.

NOTE: See subsequent 2010 posts in this thread for more on the Cleghorn case.
 
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s.c. governor

this really sounds like a suicide, although i hope not. leaving on father's day weekend, "to get away from the kids," turning off cell phone when contact is vital in case of weather or other state emergencies, just sounds like a total shut down.

by the way he had recently been "forced" to accept federal economic aid, a decision he had fought on political grounds...enough to commit suicide over? who knows why people do things? just fed up i guess.

the appalachian trail he was supposedly hiking has had crimes like random murders and kidnappings before, sometimes by creepy loners who meet the hikers where the trail is near roads. this isn't to say it's terribly dangerous, but hiking alone is never a good idea, things like that as well as accidents and falls can be deadly when alone.

btw, the story of the headless girl in the field really freaked me out. stories like these always seem to leave out the follow up, though. perhaps the parents kidnapped the girl, killed her and then their own daughter was given away or dumped somewhere. perhaps they had a whole yard full of
graves...and this is why they didn't "see" or report the body. there has to have been someone who saw something, but once so far removed in time it's impossible to know...(unless i give it as target to my remote viewing partner!)

has anyone seen the Mr.x website? he apparently tracked down some of fort's stories for the accuracy of the details given in the stories. if anyone has, i'd like to ask why they think mr. x needs to make such a point of his "secret identity?"? surely he could have just used a pseudonym.

what do died in the wool forteans think of mr. x?
 
alien abduction

p.s. i was surprised to see that no one thought of ufo/ alien/ fairy/ elf/ bigfoot abductions. but then this is a fortean and not a paranormal site.
 
Re: s.c. governor

thenumenorian said:
... i'd like to ask why they think mr. x needs to make such a point of his "secret identity?"? surely he could have just used a pseudonym.

what do died in the wool forteans think of mr. x?
X probably just wants to maintain his anonymity whilst at the same time having a memorable pseudonym - and given the linguistic symbolism of "X" as something mysterious, forbidden or unknown (as well as Mr X being in popular culture anyone with an air of the enigmatic) that name is eminently suitable.

The site is terrific. Uncluttered, provides the original text without constant interruptions, and without eye-melting colouration or irritating midis in the background, sensible, well-judged comment, etc. Highly recommended if you want to go back to Fort.
p.s. i was surprised to see that no one thought of ufo/ alien/ fairy/ elf/ bigfoot abductions. but then this is a fortean and not a paranormal site.
More likely it's because there's no reason whatsoever in most of those cases to ascribe a paranormal explanation.
 
Re: s.c. governor

stuneville said:
X probably just wants to maintain his anonymity whilst at the same time having a memorable pseudonym - and given the linguistic symbolism of "X" as something mysterious, forbidden or unknown (as well as Mr X being in popular culture anyone with an air of the enigmatic) that name is eminently suitable.
Surely "Mr E" would be even better, though?
 
Click and click again!

Works better with the sound on.

To clarify what I meant by "...More likely it's because there's no reason whatsoever in most of those cases to ascribe a paranormal explanation..", in cases where there has been no indication of any paranormal involvement it's not helpful to immediately attribute a paranormal cause to it. Admittedly it would be slightly un-Fortean to eliminate them totally in the absence of evidence to the contrary, but as thenumenorian pointed out this is a Fortean site and as such isn't in the business of immediately categorising anything remotely odd as being supernatural in origin.

As we have discussed regularly on here, there are any number of sites which will point at any pic or anecdote and immediately screech "Proof! Aliens/ ghosts/ UFOs/ Cryptid etc etc", without a second thought. Hence such sites will instantly conclude that finding a marmite sandwich jammed into their video recorder is down to polt activity and nothing to do with the previous day's birthday party attended by fourteen badly-supervised toddlers. This also accounts for a small but consistent number of flounces from this site, when presented with superficially paranormal events that with a little unbiased examination don't seem quite so bizarre.

Many of these disappearances are quite disconcerting, yes, but if you take the Appalachian trail example whilst there have been quite a few murders, abductions and such, as it's 2000 miles long, traversing much of the eastern USA north to south, it cuts across a pretty big demographic, and as thenumenorian pointed out:
...things like that as well as accidents and falls can be deadly when alone
..in 99% of cases that's probably what's happened. Much of the trail is on very steep land, extremely remote (frequently 20-30 miles from even the most basic logging road), the path is in many places narrow and in adverse weather utterly treacherous with thick forest either side - slip from the path and you'll never be found, period. No-one will even realise you're missing for several days: again that's why people are advised never to hike it alone. It's not for fear of an unusual disappearance nearly as much as for fear of an entirely mundane but equally fatal one.
 
south carolina gov found!!!! shacked up

i was almost right, he committed political suicide.
it's always shocking to see someone who ran his campaigns on such a holier than thou platform (and he really did... christian values for the kids, blah blah) to take such a nosedive. i can forgive peoples" failings, but when they are so high and mighty it's hard to be forgiving. tacky political scandals make you yearn for something really fortean, like a good frog fall.

thanks for the feedback on mr.x.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ma ... -flynn-son

Forensic tests will be conducted on what two searchers believe are the remains of the Hollywood swashbuckler Errol Flynn's son, who disappeared during the Cambodian war 40 years ago, the US embassy said today.

Sean Flynn, a photographer, was among at least 37 journalists who were either killed or listed as missing during the 1970-1975 conflict between the US-backed Lon Nol government and the North Vietnamese-supported Khmer Rouge.

A number of journalists were known to have been captured by the Khmer Rouge, and are thought to have been executed.

John Johnson, a US embassy spokesman, said Australian David MacMillan and Briton Keith Rotheram handed over the remains on Friday.

They were sent to the Hawaii-based prisoner of war/missing in action accounting command (JPAC), which deals with accounting for missing US citizens from past wars.

"Obviously there is nothing conclusive and tests need to be conducted," Johnson said. "Each case is different, so it is difficult to speculate on how long the analysis may take."

The search for Flynn began not long after he and close friend Dana Stone disappeared in the province of Kampong Cham in 1970.

Freelance "bone hunters" have also taken up the search for both missing journalists and US service personnel. Some proved to be swindlers who demanded money from relatives of the missing.

"Over the years, a number of us have tried to resolve the fate of our mates. Not only have fellow media been on this quest, but officials from the US, Japan and France," Tim Page, a colleague who searched for Flynn, wrote last week.

Page expressed concern about how MacMillan and Rotheram had allegedly conducted their search.

"It was not a forensic dig – they used an excavator and uncovered a full set of remains, which they removed from the site," Page said.

He said nine foreigners, mostly journalists, were thought to have been held in the area of the excavation at the time of Flynn's disappearance.

Page said the MacMillan and Rotheram excavation was carried out in March, while in January, JPAC conducted an excavation in the same province in search of a US pilot who was shot down and then killed, Um Sam An, a senior provincial police official, said.

Flynn, an actor who turned to photojournalism, covered the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia before his capture at the age of 28.

Several documentary films and books have appeared about Flynn and colleagues who suffered the same fate.

His Tasmania-born father was a leading star in films of the 1930s.

So not everyone disappears forever (if it is Sean), just goes to show that there's always hope, if not exactly a happy ending.
 
Just read about this in the Express today. To be honest I didn't even know Flynn had a missing son. Very intriguing stuff. There is something I find fascinating about those missing in 'Nam/ SE Asia. The whole myth/legend of trapped POW's still being held 40 years on. Hopefully a few more can be identified and give some final closure, however late it may be...

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/170085/Has-Errol-Flynn-s-son-been-found-at-last-
 
Dont forget one of the Rockefellers disappeared in New Guinea.
 
gncxx said:
I spent an afternoon last summer going through that Wikipedia list of mysteriously disappearing people, it can really give you chills that you could vanish so completely. But some of the more memorable stories that you stumble across in old books might not be quite as reliable as you might hope.

Leafing through a book by the Bords, I find Alex Cleghorn, a nineteen-year-old Scotsman out celebrating New Year in 1966 who was walking along a Glasgow road when suddenly his brothers noticed he wasn't beside them anymore. Five years later the mystery was unsolved and presumably still is. There's one not on Wikipedia.

Very belated reply, this, but a surviving cousin of the Cleghorns recently appeared on BBC Scotland's 'Reporting Scotland' program, commenting on how it was retained as part of ongoing missing persons files in Glasgow's Strathclyde Police records. It had apparently divided the family for decades, one of the brothers going abroad to become a "miner and pool hustler" in South Africa.
It appears half of the family believe Alex Cleghorn had merely vanished while the other half believe Alex had fallen into the River Clyde - by accidental means or foul - after drunken revelry. The road where Cleghorn disappeared - Govan Road in Glasgow - is just yards from "Clydeside" as can be seen in this map:

Hyper Link to: Govan Road, Glasgow, on Google Maps

It is a remarkable story and I do the occasional hunting about for more and more pieces of information on it as a partial hobby. I shall keep you posted!

Edit: Link re-sized. P_M
 
Thanks for the update! It is a strange but compelling story, so simple but so chilling. To still not have it solved after well on 45 years must be agonising for the family to have lived with all that time.

But I'm surprised the Clyde wasn't searched at the time of the disappearance, or was it? Would the body have been carried along by the current, and wouldn't it have turned up on the bank at some point if it was?
 
Come on, a crowd of Scotsmen out celebrating New Year near a big river, and one goes missing? Seems obvious to me what happened. :(

OK, no body was found,but that's not entirely unheard of.

We have a thread somewhere about young men going missing and dying along a big American river. Drink is often involved. That's a helpful clue.
 
There doesn't have to be a supernatural explanation, but he could just have easily been whisked away into a side street by a mugger, or wandered off on his own to his doom. I can't recall any instance of anyone falling in the Clyde and never being found, but it's as possible as the other explanations, if not very likely.
 
Yesterday was the 100 year anniversary of the disappearance of Dorothy Arnold in New York City Dec 12, 1910. She was last seen at a bookstore purchasing a book of Epigrams. At the bookstore she met a female friend, who later reported that Arnold had intended to walk home through Central Park. She was never seen again.
Her father, not wanting his daughter's disappearance in the news, refused to notify the police for six weeks, leaving a cold trail to follow. The man she had been quietly seeing without her parents permission was cleared of any wrongdoing. It's thought that Arnold either died of a botched abortion or was attacked and killed in Central Park, however there is little concrete proof for any of the explanations offered.

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1960/5/1960_5_24_print.shtml
 
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