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The Disappearance Of Benjamin Bathurst (1809)

S

swelle

Gone But Not Forgotten
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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.)?
 
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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.
 
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More on Benjamin Bathurst here.
Link is dead. No archived version found.

Carole
 
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(The Man Who Walked Around The Horses was Benjamin Bathurst. An investigation by the Fortean Society concluded that Bathurst was murdered and his corpse concealed,either in a robbery or by French agents. Bathurst was engaged in secret political business, and the French may well have wanted him out of the way.)

Time to put this one to rest.
 
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Mike Dash's 1990 Fortean Times article on the Benjamin Bathurst case illustrates how much fanciful mythology has encrusted the story over the centuries.

Charles Fort called it the shortest story he knew. That Benjamin Bathurst, a British envoy to the Austrian court at Vienna, stopped for a meal at an inn in the Prussian town of Perleberg. That after finishing his supper, he went outside to look over his coach, that he ‘walked around the horses’ — and vanished.

Bathurst’s disappearance, on 25 November 1809, has become one of the classics of the Fortean genre. Almost every author who has cited the case, including Fort, stresses both the suddenness with which the young diplomat vanished, and the presence of witnesses who looked on as he stepped into the unknown. But, unfortunately, none has checked the story against the original sources. ...
Click to expand...

The text of the article was once presented on Dash's website. It is still accessible via the Wayback Machine at:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150323054226/https://www.mikedash.com/extras/forteana/bb/bb-paper
 
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