Things That Never Really Happened

[Robbrent]

I was inspired by the man from Taured thread. to think about how many tales of the weird and wonderful were actually made up, the old mystery books are full of them, a few that come to mind, the man who disappeared in field in front of everyone, The argentine doctors UFO case, the Spanish solider turning up in the Philippines, there are loads of them but they keep appearing

Anyone know of any more?

To be honest when they turn out to be untrue I am left very disappointed

 

[Nosmo King]

I was inspired by the man from Taured thread. to think about how many tales of the weird and wonderful were actually made up, the old mystery books are full of them, a few that come to mind, the man who disappeared in field in front of everyone, The argentine doctors UFO case, the Spanish solider turning up in the Philippines, there are loads of them but they keep appearing

Anyone know of any more?

To be honest when they turn out to be untrue I am left very disappointed

An easy one to start with is the surgeons sighting and photo of The Lochness Monster

 

[GNC]

How about the Gulf of Tonkin incident that gave the USA the excuse to start the Vietnam War, but for which the evidence is dubious at best? Not very wonderful, I'll admit.

 

[EnolaGaia]

The man disappearing crossing a field story is discussed here:

Man Vanishes While Crossing a Field: Oft-Recycled Tale
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...ile-crossing-a-field-oft-recycled-tale.65926/

 

[EnolaGaia]

How about the Gulf of Tonkin incident that gave the USA the excuse to start the Vietnam War, but for which the evidence is dubious at best? Not very wonderful, I'll admit.

There's nothing particularly Fortean about the Gulf of Tonkin controversy.

 

[ChasFink]

How about the Cottingley Fairies? (Although there is some belief that the fifth photo is real.)

 

[EnolaGaia]

There's the story of the 19th century Englishman James Worson, who allegedly disappeared while running in full view of multiple witnesses. This turned out to be a retelling of Ambrose Bierce's story "An Unfinished Race."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Unfinished_Race

As discussed in ...

People Witnessed Spontaneously Vanishing
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/people-witnessed-spontaneously-vanishing.67252/

 

[EnolaGaia]

... The argentine doctors UFO case, the Spanish solider turning up in the Philippines ...

I can't place the 'Argentine doctors UFO' case. Can you provide any additional details or clues?

As to the 'Spanish soldier' story ... Are you referring to the Gil Perez story (of a Spanish guard in the Philippines being teleported to Mexico in 1593)?

 

[Eponastill]

How about the Cottingley Fairies?

Ah but didn't they always swear that they did see fairies (even if the photographs were fake)?

 

[Nosmo King]

I was inspired by the man from Taured thread. to think about how many tales of the weird and wonderful were actually made up, the old mystery books are full of them, a few that come to mind, the man who disappeared in field in front of everyone, The argentine doctors UFO case, the Spanish solider turning up in the Philippines, there are loads of them but they keep appearing

Anyone know of any more?

To be honest when they turn out to be untrue I am left very disappointed

The disappearance of flight 19 in the Bermuda Triangle

"Flight 19 was the designation of a group of five General Motors Eastern Aircraft Division TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945, after losing contact during a United States Navy overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida."

Later found to have got lost in fog, run out of fuel and crashed (according to latest theories)

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-flight-19-sleuths-20140406-story.html

 

[escargot]

lighthouse keepers disappear

Ah but didn't they always swear that they did see fairies (even if the photographs were fake)?

Yes! They also swore that one of the photos was really of a fairy, as mentioned by @ChasFink above.

Nobody now believes the girls saw fairies because the photos were exposed as fakes.

 

[ChasFink]

Hmmm...
Maybe we're getting a bit off topic here. As noted, even my example of the Cottingley Fairies has not entirely been proven to not have happened, just the first four pictures. Similarly the fate of flight 19 is only explained away "according to latest theories". I think the OP was asking for fortean events that we can reasonably conclude never happened at all, beyond reasonable doubt.

Of course, what constitutes reasonable doubt in matters fortean is open to question.

 

[Ogdred Weary]

There's the story of the 19th century Englishman James Worson, who allegedly disappeared while running in full view of multiple witnesses. This turned out to be a retelling of Ambrose Bierce's story "An Unfinished Race."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Unfinished_Race

As discussed in ...

People Witnessed Spontaneously Vanishing
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/people-witnessed-spontaneously-vanishing.67252/

Ironic considering Bierce's fate.

 

[Nosmo King]

Hmmm...
Maybe we're getting a bit off topic here. As noted, even my example of the Cottingley Fairies has not entirely been proven to not have happened, just the first four pictures. Similarly the fate of flight 19 is only explained away "according to latest theories". I think the OP was asking for fortean events that we can reasonably conclude never happened at all, beyond reasonable doubt.

Of course, what constitutes reasonable doubt in matters fortean is open to question.

If you read the article in the link i posted, the circumstantial evidence is quite compelling that at least one of the planes crashed in the everglades, given that the airforce and navy have no record of any other missing aircraft in the area at that time, we can only go on the information we have, it could be said that the surgeon really did see The Lochness Monster and took a photo of it, the photo didnt come out so he fabricated a model and recreated the image he saw, it was only admitted that the photo published was a fake, we dont know that he didnt see and photograph a monster. Similar to the fairy photos, once you admit to fakery in some form it is neigh on impossible to get anyone to believe anything you subsequently say. A classic case of 'the boy who cried "wolf"'

 

[Timble2]

The "Rudolph Fentz" story about a man dressed in 19th Century clothes suddenly appearing in the centre of New York City’s Times Square, in the middle of 1950, panicking and getting run over and killed. Identified from the contents of his pockets, which were all time-appropriate to the late 19th century as a man who'd vanished mysteriously 74 years earlier. It's actually based on a short story by Jack Finney (best know for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers), that was reprinted, without Finney's permission, stripped of it's obviously fictional elements in booklet promoting the concept of Time Travel, and was lifted by various other "mysterious world" publications that never bothered to check their sources.

 

[Zeke Newbold]

I can think of two - rather similar ones.

There is the story of the mother who mysteriously vanishes in a hotel in Paris - and is later discovered to have had a terrible virus which the French authorities wanted to cover up. I began a thread on this:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/disappearance-in-a-parisian-hotel-fact-or-fable.67660/

This has been mentioned as though it were a true story in some Anthologies of the Unexplained - such as the Reader's Digest one. However, it seems to be something of a European urban Myth which has spawned many fictional variants.

Then, from Australia, there is `Pic Nic At Hanging Rock` whiich was introduced as being a factual account by the writer Joan Lindsay - and has sinced made a for a superb film and a drama series (which I haven't seen and can't comment on) - as well as numerous journalistic ruminations about a murder and so on. And yet -again - the whole original tale seems to have been fabricated.

 

[ChasFink]

If you read the article in the link i posted, the circumstantial evidence is quite compelling that at least one of the planes crashed in the everglades...

I don't disagree about anything you say, and in fact have long thought that the disappearance of flight 19 was due to mundane causes - Occam's razor and all that - but the "it never happened" here is not quite as certain as is the case of the man who disappears in the field, Rudolph Fentz, etc. which can be traced to fictional sources. In fact, the disappearance did happen. It's the explanation that's in doubt.

My point is that when dealing with fortean phenomena we sometimes want to be a bit more open-minded in allowing for paranormal or unorthodox explanations. In fact, after some thought I want to say that while the events "documented" in the first four Cottingley photos definitely never happened, I am not 100% convinced that the girls did not see fairies. My own mother and aunt told me many times that they once encountered fairies (in their own bedroom!) so I will allow that it's possible that something can make us believe we are seeing them.

Occam's razor basically says that the simplest explanation is the best; exactly what constitutes "simplest" in fortean inquiries is a big question. Consider the Mandela effect: I accept that the simplest explanation is that people's memories are faulty, and in certain cases - for a number of reasons - those faults in memory repeat themselves in a large number of people. Others may think the "number of reasons" unnecessarily complicate the issue and prefer to believe that the simpler explanation is that the universe can change, and some people remember the way it used to be.

So there are a lot of fortean things that probably never happened, but the topic here is things that never did happen.

 

[Nosmo King]

I don't disagree about anything you say, and in fact have long thought that the disappearance of flight 19 was due to mundane causes - Occam's razor and all that - but the "it never happened" here is not quite as certain as is the case of the man who disappears in the field, Rudolph Fentz, etc. which can be traced to fictional sources. In fact, the disappearance did happen. It's the explanation that's in doubt.

My point is that when dealing with fortean phenomena we sometimes want to be a bit more open-minded in allowing for paranormal or unorthodox explanations. In fact, after some thought I want to say that while the events "documented" in the first four Cottingley photos definitely never happened, I am not 100% convinced that the girls did not see fairies. My own mother and aunt told me many times that they once encountered fairies (in their own bedroom!) so I will allow that it's possible that something can make us believe we are seeing them.

Occam's razor basically says that the simplest explanation is the best; exactly what constitutes "simplest" in fortean inquiries is a big question. Consider the Mandela effect: I accept that the simplest explanation is that people's memories are faulty, and in certain cases - for a number of reasons - those faults in memory repeat themselves in a large number of people. Others may think the "number of reasons" unnecessarily complicate the issue and prefer to believe that the simpler explanation is that the universe can change, and some people remember the way it used to be.

So there are a lot of fortean things that probably never happened, but the topic here is things that never did happen.

My reason for including flight 19 was that it was probably the main reason for the myth of the Bermuda Triangle, and it has pretty much been debunked that it was nothing to do with 'mysterious happenings' in an area of sea which has been know for centuries to have unpredictable tides and shallow reefs that have been a danger to shipping since ships began sailing through it, in my opionion there is nothing mysterious about the area of sea known as the 'Bermuda Triangle', so the disappearance of flight 19 is not a fortean event, mearly a training exercise gone wrong. In the spirit of the OPs inspiration, 'the man from Taured', which is a mystery, just not a fortean one, i think it is a justified case for this thread.

 

[Austin Popper]

"Pretty much been debunked" is a lot like "mostly dead". The basic events around the disappearance of Flight 19 are not in question. Assumptions, opinions, conclusions based on assumptions, opinions, and circumstantial evidence might be correct. Or not. "Never really happened" has a specific meaning. Many events in Oliver Stone movies never really happened, or so I'm told. I've never wasted any time watching them. Flight 19 disappeared. No one knows why. The pilots were students, yes, but they were experienced pilots in the process of becoming instructors, if memory serves. Most debunkers just glom on to the student aspect, then proceed to pile assumptions on that. I don't operate that way.

 

[Nosmo King]

"Pretty much been debunked" is a lot like "mostly dead". The basic events around the disappearance of Flight 19 are not in question. Assumptions, opinions, conclusions based on assumptions, opinions, and circumstantial evidence might be correct. Or not. "Never really happened" has a specific meaning. Many events in Oliver Stone movies never really happened, or so I'm told. I've never wasted any time watching them. Flight 19 disappeared. No one knows why. The pilots were students, yes, but they were experienced pilots in the process of becoming instructors, if memory serves. Most debunkers just glom on to the student aspect, then proceed to pile assumptions on that. I don't operate that way.

As i clarified in my post, i agree there is no doubt that the planes of flight 19 disappeared on a training mission, much like 'the man from Taured' did exist, the thing im saying is, there is compelling evidence that their disappearance was not a fortean event, in the way that TMFT was not a fortean event, unusual, strange yes, but not fortean.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

The Cumberland "spaceman" was nice while it lasted and provided an entertaining thread here for many years, but has been thoroughly debunked.

 

[Austin Popper]

Maybe we should have a thread for "Things That Aren't Really Fortean, In My Opinion". Maybe we have one. I'm sure there are threads about Flight 19, which of course really happened.

 

[EnolaGaia]

As i clarified in my post, i agree there is no doubt that the planes of flight 19 disappeared on a training mission, much like 'the man from Taured' did exist, the thing im saying is, there is compelling evidence that their disappearance was not a fortean event, in the way that TMFT was not a fortean event, unusual, strange yes, but not fortean.

Maybe we should have a thread for "Things That Aren't Really Fortean, In My Opinion". Maybe we have one. I'm sure there are threads about Flight 19, which of course really happened.

These points illustrate the problem in clearly addressing Robbrent's original intention for the thread. There's a difference between asking:

"Did a purportedly paranormal / Fortean incident ever really occur at all?"

versus ...

'Did a claimed paranormal / Fortean incident occur, but without the involvement of any extraordinary factor(s) or cause(s)?"

The examples of stories demonstrably originating from Ambrose Bierce's fictional writings responds to the former version. The increasingly (but not yet conclusively) asserted claim that Flight 19 simply disappeared due to some sort of flier error responds to the latter version.

 

[Austin Popper]

This discussion raises a pet peeve of mine, in this field. I think it's relevant here. Many modern revisionist explainers seem to think that the people investigating weird or even just mysterious events in the past were somehow less intelligent or rational than the modern armchair "investigator" or blogger or what have you. To me, the idea that the people looking into such things at the time of their happening were somehow deficient is about as rational or intelligent as claiming the ancient Egyptians couldn't possibly have built all that stuff without the help of, to put it bluntly, "white people from space". UFO investigators in the 40s and 50s seem to get this treatment more than most. Back then, such people were often professionals of one stripe or another, and if you actually go and read what they wrote back then, it's obvious they were careful, logical thinkers who spent time with witnesses, studying whatever evidence was left, querying weather records, calling up airport personnel, and so on. Exactly the sort of thing not done by the typical internet sleuth.

The disappearance of Flight 19 is unexplained, simple as that. To the people doing the searching immediately afterward, it didn't make sense. It still doesn't make sense. Probably the planes are in the ocean somewhere, but we don't know why. Revisionist explainers like to say things like, "Well they were inexperienced pilots who got lost in the fog." Never mind they were not inexperienced, and there was no fog. We all need to sleep at night, and some of us can't do that knowing there are mysteries out there that might not have "logical explanations".

Amelia Earhart's disappearance is unexplained too, but the situation was vastly different. She was on the hardest, most dangerous leg of a flight that was just about doable. Her plane is probably on the bottom of the ocean too, but it's hardly surprising. She was not adept at using the technology she had at her disposal, and she was trying to find a speck of land barely big enough to land a plane on in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It would, perhaps, have seemed more surprising to us if she'd made it. Read about that nutball Lindbergh and think about what his chances of success actually were. He was at least as much daredevil as he was brilliant aviator.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

How about the Ourang Medan?
This enduring tale of a supposed ghost ship discovered with the crew all dead and with expressions of terror on their faces, was debunked in a recent FT as being completely fictional.

Similarly, the Ghost of Flight 401 and Santiago Flight 513, whilst cracking short stories, turned out to be exactly that - creepy fiction masquerading as true events.

 

[escargot]

How about the Ourang Medan?
This enduring tale of a supposed ghost ship discovered with the crew all dead and with expressions of terror on their faces, was debunked in a recent FT as being completely fictional.

Similarly, the Ghost of Flight 401 and Santiago Flight 513, whilst cracking short stories, turned out to be exactly that - creepy fiction masquerading as true events.

The Ourang Medan story is told in a Mr Ballen video I've just seen, and I did a search for it on'ere. In fact I've only just finished reading about it.

 

[escargot]

Ghost of Flight 401

The Flight 401 sightings weren't 'creepy fiction masquerading as true events'. The plane did crash with heavy loss of life and many airline employees did claim to see members of the deceased 'Whisperliner' crew on later flights.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Creepypasta.com is a repository where fans of horror and the paranormal can submit their own short stories.

At least two such pieces of fiction - a Soviet era experiment in sleep deprivation that drove the subjects mad and Ted the Caver's account of an encounter with something ghostly or demonic whilst potholing, have subsequently done the rounds many times as supposedly true accounts.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

The Flight 401 sightings weren't 'creepy fiction masquerading as true events'. The plane did crash with heavy loss of life and many airline employees did claim to see members of the deceased 'Whisperliner' crew on later flights.

There really was a flight 401 that crashed, but the alleged ghostly sightings that occured on other aircraft where salvaged parts from the crashed plane were recycled, were all embellishments, with no basis in fact.

This is from the Wiki page:

"According to Robert J. Serling's 1980 book From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines, the claim that wreckage from Flight 401 was installed and later removed from other Eastern aircraft was false, and no Eastern employees had ever claimed to have seen or believed in the alleged ghost sightings. Skeptic Brian Dunning claims that the origin for the ghost sightings was a joke made by an Eastern Air Lines captain after an emergency landing in which he quipped that he "thought [Don] Repo's ghost was on the plane."[22][24]"

 

[escargot]

There really was a flight 401 that crashed, but the alleged ghostly sightings that occured on other aircraft where salvaged parts from the crashed plane were recycled, were all embellishments, with no basis in fact.

This is from the Wiki page:

"According to Robert J. Serling's 1980 book From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines, the claim that wreckage from Flight 401 was installed and later removed from other Eastern aircraft was false, and no Eastern employees had ever claimed to have seen or believed in the alleged ghost sightings. Skeptic Brian Dunning claims that the origin for the ghost sightings was a joke made by an Eastern Air Lines captain after an emergency landing in which he quipped that he "thought [Don] Repo's ghost was on the plane."[22][24]"

Yeah, trust Wiki.