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Young Man Disappears Going To Well: Oft-Recycled Tale

Xeyes

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Does anybody out there remember or know about the story of a young Welshman who disappeared whilst going out to get some water/coal from outside? The others inside the house heard him scream and ran out but could not find him, his voice tailing off and sounding as if it was rising into the air? His footsteps in the new snow stopping abruptly and no other impressions of feet were found! The bucket thrown to one side. His voice tailing off into the heavens saying "they've got me". I remember hearing about it when young and occasionally since, but now I do not seem to be able to find anything else about it. Once I even remember looking on a map to see the town where it happened, it was slightly south of Mid-Wales and inland abit.

Cheers and a merry festive season to you all.
 
Well, can you remember the name of the town, or give us the year you first heard about it?

The internet's a wonderful resource, but it needs some facts if a websearch is to turn up anything. (In fact, much the same applies to a human memory search too!)
 
No Sorry Rynner I remember reading it in books usually about strange happenings that I read in the 70's and 80's and before i read it I heard adults talk about it, now I can find nothing about it that is why I have posted as I surely can not be the only person who heard and read about it. I thought it was quite a scary story so hopefully it would stick in your mind if you did read it.
 
The OP's description seems to match the Oliver Thomas disappearance story (Powys County, Wales, 1909).

1909, December 24: Oliver Thomas’ Disappearance

The Legend:

Five inches of fresh snow had fallen during the day of December 24, 1909, in the county of Powys, Wales. That evening at the farm of Owen Thomas and his family there was a happy Christmas Eve gathering with friends in attendance; everyone was roasting chestnuts and singing carols, and generally enjoying themselves. In attendance was not just the Thomases, but also several friends including the local minister and his wife.

Around 11:00 PM, Mr. Thomas asked his 11-year-old son Oliver to fetch some more water from the well, as the bucket was getting low and it was a sure bet that the guests would still need more water to drink. Oliver put on his boots and overcoat, took the bucket, and walked out to get the water.

Less than ten seconds later, the mood of the party was shattered by Oliver's screams for help.

The minister grabbed a paraffin lantern as the group ran out the door to assist... but Oliver was nowhere to be seen. He could, however, still be heard; from somewhere above the groups' heads, Oliver screamed "They've got me! They've got me!" They flashed the lantern upwards, but could only see the black, starless sky... Oliver kept screaming, but the sound grew fainter and fainter. Eventually, the call faded away altogether.

The snow in front of the group didn't help explain what happened. The deep new snow clearly displayed Oliver's footprints leading from the house towards the well; but about seventy-five feet away from the house, the tracks simply stopped. The wooden bucket was found about fifteen feet away from the last footprint in the snow. There were no other tracks or signs in the fresh snow to explain what happened.

The following day saw the arrival of police officials from the nearby town of Rhayader, who formed a search party and scoured the countryside. The well was probed with grappling hooks; all who attended the party were fully interrogated... the simple evidence of Oliver's tracks in the snow told a story the police were not able to believe, so they attempted to find any other possible explanation for the boy's disappearance. But the evidence all pointed to the one impossible conclusion: Oliver had gone up, by means unknown... and that was all that could be said. ...

SOURCE: http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1909-december-24-oliver-thomas-disappearance

SEE ALSO:
http://test.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1044541/pg1
 
The Oliver Thomas story appears to be a recycling of an earlier story attributed to Xmas Eve in Indiana, involving a young man named Oliver Larch or Lerch:

http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1889-december-24-oliver-larchs-disappearance (1889)
http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1890-december-24-oliver-lerchs-disappearance (1890)

This version of the story was propagated in FATE magazine and Frank Edwards' books.

It would appear even this version of the story is a recycling of a completely fictional tale attributed to Ambrose Bierce in 1888. Bierce named the lost boy Charles Ashmore.
 
Here are some excerpts from my essay on the subject:

In Frank Edwards' Strangest of All and Morris K. Jessop's Case for the UFO, the boy's name is Oliver Lerch, but in C. B. Colby's Weirdest People in the World, where I first came across it, and John Keel’s Our Haunted Planet, the boy's last name is "Larch". Well, what's one letter off, more-or-less?

Brad Steiger's Strangers from the Skies: "It was on Christmas Eve, 1909, that 'they' took 11-year-old Oliver Thomas up into the sky." Wait -- what? Young Oliver Thomas of Rhayader, Wales, sent out to get a pail of water, started screaming for help. The gathered family and guests rushed outside, only to hear his voice echoing down from high above. His footprints made a trail across the yard for about 75 feet, then they stopped abruptly. "There was only one conclusion that the authorities were able to render: Oliver Thomas had inexplicably vanished -- straight up." [Steiger, pp. 33-34]

Finally, and perhaps inevitably, we reach way back to American literary celebrity Ambrose Bierce and his story "Charles Ashmore's Trail," one of the vignettes that form "Mysterious Disappearances." It seems that the family of Christian Ashmore lived on a farm in Quincy, Illinois, in the nineteenth century:

"On the evening of the 9th of November in 1878, at about nine o’clock, young Charles Ashmore left the family circle about the hearth, took a tin bucket and started toward the spring. As he did not return, the family became uneasy, and going to the door by which he had left the house, his father called without receiving an answer."

The Lerch version appeared in Fate Magazine (September 1950) under the title “What Happened to Oliver Lerch?”, by Joseph Rosenberger. It is this version that most later writers took as a source. Joe Nickell, a researcher known for exploding numerous modern myths, tracked down Mr. Rosenberger and interviewed him. Rosenberger admitted the tale was false, written out of a need for money. “Every single bit is fiction. I wrote the damn piece way back when, during the lean days.” [Shoemaker, p. 21; Paijmans and Aubeck, p. 43]

The strange thing is, the confession of a hoax is itself a hoax. Theo Paijmans and Chris Aubeck, checking many back issues of newspapers and magazines, discovered several references to the Lerch story before 1950. The original version was apparently one that appeared in the New York Sunday Telegraph, December 25, 1904, written by an Irving Lewis. This early and elaborate version gives a list of names at the end, witnesses to the tragedy that signed an affidavit as to the truthfulness of the matter. As you might guess, further research failed to prove that any of these witnesses – or the Lerch family itself – ever existed. Presumably “Irving Lewis” lifted the story idea from “Charles Ashmore’s Trail.”


Paijmans, Theo, and Chris Aubeck, “Nightmare Before Christmas: The Strange Disappearance of Oliver Lerch,” Fortean Times no. 335 (Jan. 2016), pp. 42-47.

Shoemaker, Michael, “Three Discoveries in Fortean Folklore,” INFO Journal no. 66 (June 1992), pp. 20-21.
 
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