- Imagine someone disappearing.
A coworker, a friend, or even a loved one.
It's a scary thought.
Now consider the idea of hundreds, or even thousands,
of people mysteriously vanishing without a trace,
without anyone to provide insight
or any kind of explanation to their families.
The following are just such cases.
Here are 10 chilling cases of mass disappearances.
Number 10 is the 5th Norfolk Battalion.
The 5th Norfolk Battalion was used
during the First World War in an attempt to defeat Turkey.
However, one day the battalion mysteriously vanished.
They were fighting in the Galapagos campaign
and attacked Turkish troops on August 12th, 1915.
Following this attack, the entire battalion,
over 250 soldiers, were never heard from again.
Now, usually in such situations,
prisoners would have been taken.
But the Turkish army had no knowledge
of taking any prisoners from the 5th.
All that's know is that during the attack,
the Norfolk Battalion had become separated
from the larger 163rd Brigade.
Over 50 years later, in 1965,
a New Zealand sailor along with three other veterans
had claimed that they had witnessed
strange clouds hovering over the 5th Battalion
which seemed to consume them.
To this day there's no explanation
for the mass disappearance, and it remains unsolved.
Number nine are the Lake Michigan Three.
On July 2nd, 1966,
three young friends vanished without a trace.
Ann Miller and Renee Bruhl were only 19 at the time,
and Patricia Blough, the third missing woman,
was only 21 years old.
The day that they disappeared,
they visited a beach on Lake Michigan.
There, surrounded by the crowded sunbathers
on a summer's day,
the three women boarded a small motorboat,
leaving their belongings behind.
Unfortunately, they were never heard from again.
No one knows what happened to the three friends,
but many wonder about the unidentified man
who was supposedly at the helm of the motorboat.
The question is, was he their murderer?
Disturbingly, some have speculated
that two of the women were pregnant
and were traveling to a known illegal abortion clinic,
which operated from a houseboat on the lake,
and then suddenly something went wrong.
Was that the case, or were they murdered,
or was it something else?
To this day, nobody knows.
Number eight is Flight 19.
While taking part in a routine training exercise,
five large aircraft disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle.
The disappearance occurred on December 5th, 1945,
and included the loss of 14 airmen and crew.
The bombers were designated Flight 19
for the duration of their three-hour training mission.
This was to take them on a triangular path
from the Florida coast.
Most of the air crew involved
had logged around 300 hours in flight time.
But during the mission, for some unknown reason,
the pilots reported their compasses were malfunctioning.
That's when the flight commander radioed in
that they were hundreds of miles off course.
His last message was faint and seemed to be
about preparing the planes for a crash landing.
No evidence or wreckage has ever been found
to explain the disappearance.
Number seven is the 9th Legion.
The 9th Roman Legion was involved in one of the most famous
mass disappearances of all time.
Sometime around A.D. 120,
the legion disappeared from Roman documents.
This is unusual, as Romans kept meticulous records.
Many have speculated about what exactly happened to the 9th,
but we do know that it was operating in Britain at the time.
One popular theory is that the legion was sent
to deal with the Celtic tribes of Scotland
and disappeared while in the Scottish wilderness,
most probably at the hands of the Picts
or Celtic tribes who lived there.
Then there are others that believe
that they made a last stand in the English town of York.
To this day, no evidence of the true fate of the 9th Legion
has ever been found, and perhaps never will.
Numer six is the Flannan Isles lighthouse.
In another case coming out of Scotland
was another bizarre mass disappearance
that was directly connected to the Flannan Isles lighthouse.
Located on one of the Flannan Isles in the Outer Hebrides,
the lighthouse became the center of a mystery when in 1900
the lighthouse keepers staying there completely vanished.
A relief vessel known as the Hesperus
arrived at the Isles on December 26th only to find
that all three lighthouse keepers had disappeared.
The only sign of trouble was a single overturned chair.
No bodies were ever found,
and theories range from one keeper killing the others
and fleeing to foreign spies kidnapping them.
The locals themselves believe that a phantom ship
of ghosts had been seen on the sea
and had taken the men for some unearthly purpose.
Number five is Mary Celeste.
The Mary Celeste is the most famous
mass disappearance at sea.
The ship, an American merchant brigantine,
was found deserted in the Atlantic Ocean
on December 5th, 1872.
Now, while the ship seemed a little disheveled,
she was seaworthy, and when boarded,
rescuers found that the entire crew was missing.
The cargo was still intact,
and the crew had left their belongings behind.
Some of the ship's navigational equipment was missing,
as well as a single lifeboat.
This led many to speculate
that the crew and her captain left the ship
to avoid some unknown danger.
Possible explanations include a seaquake,
which could have released poisonous gas from the sea floor,
which the crew tried to escape.
Another is that someone on the ship
murdered everyone and then left the lifeboat.
But if either of those were the case,
wouldn't you think that there would be
at least one body left behind?
To this day, not a single explanation
has been put forward that explains anything.
Number four is the Lake Anjikuni settlement.
In 1930, Joe Labelle, a fur trapper in Canada,
claimed that an entire Inuit village disappeared.
The story goes that there was a small Inuit village
on the shores of Lake Anjikuni,
which was well known for the hunters in the area.
Labelle claimed that he had been welcomed there
many times previously.
However, in 1930, when he visited again,
he discovered that the entire village had been abandoned.
He found evidence that people left quickly,
in the middle of even preparing food.
Most chilling of all, he claimed to find
that the village's sled dogs, critical for Inuit survival,
had been left to starve to death,
and that for some reason
a body had been removed from a nearby grave.
Now, some believe this story to be a hoax,
while others maintain that something terrible
came from the people of that small village.
Perhaps from the grave itself.
Number three is Kuldhara.
Kuldhara village, in the Rajasthan district of India,
remains the location of a perplexing mass disappearance.
Founded in the 13th century,
the village thrived for centuries, but suddenly,
during the 19th century, its people disappeared.
Various tales exist
about the mass disappearance of Kuldhara,
but what could make over 200 families
leave their homes so suddenly?
Some believe that an earthquake in the region
destroyed much of the village,
while others argue that the local water wells dried up.
The village has developed a reputation
for being haunted by the dead spirits of the villagers,
who will not allow anyone to live there.
Number two is Hoer Verde.
The Hoer Verde mass disappearance
is either a fascinating myth
or one of the most terrifying cases
of mass disappearance ever recorded.
Hoer Verde was supposedly a Brazilian settlement
home to 600 people, all of whom disappeared in 1923.
When some travelers passed through the village at that time,
they found it to be deserted.
The police investigated these claims
and could not find any of the villagers.
However, what they did find was a gun
and a message on a school blackboard,
which read, "There is no salvation."
Many people believe
that the events were covered up for some reason
and that the disappearance is a conspiracy.
Interestingly, the origin of this story
is just as mysterious as the story itself.
And number one is the Roanoke Colony.
The Roanoke Colony was the location
for the most infamous mass disappearance of all time.
It was the first attempt by England
to form a permanent colony in North America.
Founded in 1587, the settlement was home to 115 colonists.
Soon after, the governor, John White,
sailed back to England, leaving the colonists behind
and promising to return within a year with supplies.
When he finally made it back, the colony had vanished.
All he found was the mysterious bones of a man
and the word Croatoan, written on a wooden post.
To this day, nobody knows where this colony went,
and it remains one of the greatest mysteries
of disappearances of all time.
These disappearances are some of the greatest of all time,
but what do you make of them?
Do you think that there's a logical explanation for them,
or is it something more nefarious or otherworldly?
Only you can decide.