Some missing person cases are creepy due to the complete lack of evidence about what happened
to the victim.
They simply walked out of sight one day and were never seen again.
Sometimes even creepier are the cases where there is a long trail of evidence which only
comes to an abrupt end, leading investigators scratching their heads.
Number 5
Ruth Dorsey was 67-years-old when she vanished in August 1974.
Ruth had been a widow for nine years when she disappeared.
She lived alone on a 350-acre farm, her nearest neighbor more than a mile away.
Though she lived in an isolated location, she had a relatively active life.
She was very close to her nieces and nephews and would go out of her way to help friends
and family members.
After her husband died, Ruth had taken a job at the local bank which kept her mind active.
She also played the organ at the local church and taught at the Sunday school there.
It was the church that first realized Ruth was missing.
When she didn’t show up, they contacted police and asked for someone to check in on
her.
They found the front door to Ruth’s home wide open and her car missing.
Ruth wasn’t home, but her three dogs were found cowering in the bathroom.
Later that day, her car was found outside the duplex where she and her husband first
lived together.
It seems the building was abandoned but the front door was left open when they arrived.
Authorities said there was no evidence Ruth had gone inside.
Inside the car, police found the keys were still in the ignition.
Ruth’s glasses and purse were on the front seat.
Investigators found Ruth hadn’t been seen since the day before.
The Saturday had been a pretty busy day.
Ruth had spent the morning doing chores, including baking for her neighbors and arranging a vet
appointment for one of the dogs.
That afternoon, she had a call with an unidentified relative and went to a gas station where she
told the attendant she was going to pick up one of her kin.
At 6pm, a neighbor saw her turn into her drive way.
Ruth’s home was obscured from view, so the neighbor didn’t see Ruth go inside.
It’s not clear if the neighbor was able to tell whether or not Ruth was alone.
What happened to Ruth after those remains a mystery.
Some have suggested she may have suffered from dementia and gotten confused before losing
her life in an accident.
Others believe she may have taken her own life due to loneliness or fallen victim of
foul play.
No sign of Ruth or her remains have ever been found.
Number 4
At 5:30pm on December 18th, 2011, East St Louis police responded to a call about a car
that had been abandoned in the middle of the road.
The Chevy Blazer still had its engine running and personal belongings presumably belonging
to the car’s owner had been left inside, but the driver was nowhere to be seen.
The car was impounded and taken away.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later that the parents of the owner, Phoenix Coldon, would
be told about the car as they searched for their missing daughter.
It was only a few hours before the car was discovered that Phoenix had been last seen
by her parents.
Her mother saw her sitting outside in her car, where she would often go to take phone
calls.
At 2.20pm, her father watched her leave for the last time.
Phoenix was described as quiet, well read, and deeply religious.
Earlier that afternoon she had gone to church.
She also wanted to fit in wherever she went.
Her parents fear this might have led to her getting involved with the wrong crowd.
Phoenix was going through a lot of changes in her life around the time she disappeared,
her parents would discover after she vanished.
A few years earlier she had moved out of her parents home for the first time and told them
she was living with a female friend.
It would later emerge she had been living in an apartment with a boyfriend named Michael.
Her friends knew about Michael, but later said Phoenix had asked them not to tell her
parents, as they wouldn’t approve of them living together while only dating.
Early in 2011, something in the relationship changed and Phoenix moved back in with her
parents.
It’s not clear if she and Michael were still dating, but they still talked on the phone.
The day before Phoenix vanished she had spent an hour and a half on the phone with Michael.
When asked about what they spoke about, Michael claimed he couldn’t remember.
Police have said Michael isn’t a suspect, but her parents believe he introduced her
to shady characters who might be responsible for her disappearance.
It also later emerged Phoenix hadn’t signed up for classes in the fall.
Phoenix’s parents fear she might have been the victims of trafficking's, and there have
been a number of sightings of her across the country which have been investigated by a
private investigator.
Others suggest she ran away herself, and there has been an unconfirmed sighting that says
she’s living as a soccer mom in Iowa, though her own parents dispute this theory.
Number 3 It was 9.45am on August 4th, 1981, when a
woman visiting the shopping center on Manhattan Boulevard looked through the window of a law
office to check the time on the clock that hung on the wall.
Beneath the clock sat Cindy Anderson at the desk where she worked as a secretary.
She was alone at the time, the lawyers that she worked for out at court that morning.
It was the last time anybody saw Cindy, and her disappearance remains unsolved to this
day.
Cindy was 20-years-old at the time of her disappearance.
She was strait-laced, according to those that knew her, and came from a relatively devout
Christian fundamentalist family.
She was looking forward to going to classes at William Tyndale Bible College in Detroit
at the end of the summer.
Cindy would be attending alongside her boyfriend, Jeff Lehmke, the man she believed she would
one day marry.
From the outside, it looked like there was nothing out of the ordinary going on in Cindy’s
life.
But even clients at the law firm knew there was more going on than met the eye.
Cindy had been receiving strange phone calls for months leading up to her disappearance.
The calls came through at work and appeared to terrify Cindy, though nobody ever heard
who was on the other end of the line.
One client who came in to pay his legal bill the day before Cindy disappeared reported
seeing her cheerfully answer the phone only to quickly slam the receiver back down.
The phone began to ring again a few moments later and Cindy answered the phone again,
more nervous this time.
It appeared to be the same person, and Cindy slammed the phone down again.
The client was so concerned about how scared Cindy seemed to be that he called police and
asked them to check in on her.
Cindy had also been having strange dreams alongside the phone calls.
In them, a man she knew would force her out of her home and into his car before taking
her life.
Her parents tried to convince her they were just dreams but Cindy couldn’t shake the
feeling they were related to her stalker.
The strange occurrences cumulated into her disappearance on August 4th. 15 minutes after
she was last seen by a passing shopper, her mother tried to call her on her work phone.
Cindy didn’t pick up.
Her mother assumed she was talking to a client on the other line, but it would soon turn
out nobody had been able to get through to the office.
When the lawyers eventually arrived at the office at around noon, they found nothing
out of place.
Phone messages had been neatly left for them at their desks, the air conditioner had been
switched on.
Cindy’s car was still parked outside.
The only thing wrong was Cindy was nowhere to be seen, and her keys and purse were also
missing.
Police and Cindy’s family believe foul play was involved.
Who would have taken her and why is the subject of countless theories, including one suggesting
one of the lawyers had something to do with her disappearance, though there’s no evidence
to connect any of the theories.
How Cindy could have been taken is also a mystery.
None of the phones were left on hold, as would Cindy would usually do when she had to leave
the office, so it seems unlikely she had stepped out to grab lunch and had been taken on the
way to her car.
However, there was also no sign of a break in and Cindy kept the door locked due to her
concerns over the stalker.
Cindy’s friends and family are still hopefully answers may come one day, but the case has
been cold for decades.
Number 2
Ronald Tammen was a sophomore at Miami University in Ohio when he vanished into thin air on
April 19th, 1953.
Ron was a relatively well-liked student.
He was smart, and could often be found helping out his classmate with homework.
He played string base in the school jazz band, which he adored, and was a member of the wrestling
team as well as part of a fraternity.
The weekend Ron disappeared seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary.
The Friday before he disappeared, Ron paid the insurance on his car, a 1929 Chevy.
He was one of the few students allowed to bring their car on campus.
The following day he attended a handful of classes and played with the band at a fundraiser
for the honor society.
He also hung out with his brother, who was a freshman at the same university.
Nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary that evening and much of the Sunday followed
in the same manner.
There were no classes to attend, but a number of Ron’s fellow students spotted him around
campus, eating in the dining hall, heading towards the shower, studying in his room.
At around 7pm, he visited Richard Titus, a close friend who lived down the hall from
Ron’s own dorm-room.
The two often played practical jokes on one another and not long earlier Ron had short-sheeted
Richard’s bed.
Ron helped Richard out with his homework before returning to his own dorm-room, saying he
needed to finish his own homework.
There, he would find Richard had put a fish from the pond outside in his bed.
At 8pm, he went down to retrieve fresh sheets from the hall manager and returned to his
room.
It was the last time anyone would see him.
Ron’s dormmate came home about 90 minutes later, having spent the weekend away from
the university.
He found the door to Ron’s room open, with the radio playing and Ron’s textbooks out.
His wallet and keys were still in the room, his car was still outside, but Ron was nowhere
to be found.
When Ron hadn’t returned home the next day, his dormmate reported him missing.
A search of the local area got underway, with 400 students volunteering to help look for
Ron.
The only clues that were ever found was a sighting reported by a woman a few weeks later.
She told police someone matching Ron’s description had knocked on her door just after midnight
on April 20th.
He seemed dazed and confused and asked for directions to the nearest bus stop.
The woman lived in Seven Mile, a village some 10 miles away from the university campus.
Over the years there have been countless theories about what happened to Ron that night.
Many have concluded someone took Ron’s life, and there are numerous ghost sightings at
the university which have been blamed on Ron’s restless spirit.
When the building that had once housed his dorm was demolished, the rubble was searched
for his remains, but nothing turned up.
Some have suggested he survived and has been living undercover.
Others have made connections to CIA experiments going on at the time.
Number 1
When Hannah Upp disappeared on her way to the school where she worked in September 2017,
it was the third time in nine years she had vanished without warning.
This time, though, she wouldn’t reappear a few weeks later.
Hannah is still missing, and no trace of her has been found.
Hannah suffered from a rare form of amnesia which effectively made her temporarily forget
who she was.
The condition has been nicknamed the James Bourne syndrome, named after the main character
from the Bourne series.
However, Hannah wasn’t some spy.
She was a school teacher, working with elementary school children.
The first time she disappeared was August 2008.
She was living in New York City and had left her apartment to go on a jog.
It was a few days before anybody realized she was missing.
She had told friends she was going to visit her mother for the weekend, and it was only
when she hadn’t returned home by that Monday that they grew concerned.
20 days after she was last seen, two ferry walkers hoisted her out of the water south
of Manhattan.
They found Hannah lying facedown in the water, wearing only her running shorts and sports
bra.
Thankfully, she was still alive, though she was suffering from hypothermia, dehydration
and sun burns on her back.
While she was in hospital, she revealed the last thing she remembered was leaving the
house to go for a jog.
She had no memory of three weeks having passed, and she was eventually diagnosed with dissociative
fugue, a condition which is usually triggered by trauma or internal conflict.
As far as anyone knew, Hannah hadn’t suffered any such trauma and the reason why she developed
the condition remains unknown.
For the next five years, Hannah lived a relatively normal life.
She went back to work as a teacher, eventually moving to Maryland where she worked as an
assistant teacher.
Only a week after she started working there, she disappeared again.
She was reported missing after she failed to show up for work.
This time, it was only a few days before she remembered who she was and she borrowed a
phone from a stranger to contact her mother and brought herself back to her old life.
A year later, Hannah moved to St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands to work as a teacher
at an elementary school there.
She had a happy life there for two years, made new friends, and enjoyed her work as
a teacher as well as island life.
But in the summer of 2017 she started acting strange.
She confided with a friend that she struggled in the fall, and started behaving strangely.
Her friend didn’t pry into what struggles Hannah was dealing with but, as her two earlier
disappearances had happened in late August and early September, it’s possible there
was a reoccurring event that was troubling Hannah.
On September 6th, Hurricane Irma hit the island.
Hannah survived the hurricane, but there was another on the horizon.
She was one of a number of volunteers who set about preparing the school for the net
hurricane, which was due to hit in about a week’s time.
On September 14th, she told her housemates she was going to the school to help out and
left in her car.
It was the last anyone would ever see her.
The following day, her car keys were found on the beach beside her neatly folded clothes.
A search party immediately set about trying to find Hannah, but the second hurricane hit
before any progress could be made.
The group tried to reorganize again after the natural disaster, but any evidence had
been washed away.