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“I am just going outside and may be some time,” were the last words of British explorer
Lawrence Oates as he walked out into a blizzard during an Antarctica expedition. He did this
because he was sick and slowing the others down. He made a sacrifice and was never seen
again. We can, however, infer that Mr. Oates didn’t survive very long and perhaps the
remains of his body are still out there entombed in ice. But there are some people who bid
friends adieu and just seemed to disappear off the face of the planet. This even happened
to an entire plane-full of people not too recently. Today we’ll look at some of the
most renowned vanishing cases, in this episode of the Infographics Show, Disappearances that
Still Can’t Be Explained.
10. Richey Edwards We’ll start with a rock star, and no, this
list won’t include Elvis despite some people not believing he is six feet under. Richey
Edwards, a member of the iconic rock group “The Manic Street Preachers”, did actually
disappear, and his body has never been found. The enigmatic, political poet became a member
of the “27 club” when it’s believed he may have committed suicide. It’s not
that simple, though, as Edwards had given a book to a friend just before he went missing
about a vanishing. While missing, he was also apparently seen at a passport office by a
fan. His car was later found abandoned, close to a bridge known as a suicide spot. He had
always said he was too strong for suicide, in spite of self-harming. To add to the mystery,
people have said they have spotted him as far as Goa, India, and also on some Spanish
islands. To this day, some people think he’d had enough of fame and wanted complete anonymity,
rather than he threw himself off a bridge in Wales.
9. Benjamin Bathurst And now for someone completely different,
a British diplomat called Benjamin Bathurst. Like the person at number 10, Bathurst’s
disappearance has also been the focus of widespread speculation. On 25 November, 1809, he was
staying at an inn in Germany while on government business. He was getting ready and told his
travel companion he’d be down in a second and would join him in the horse and buggy.
He was never seen again. Search parties were sent to look for him, even though he’d only
gone missing walking out of an inn to a parked carriage. His story became a thing of science
fiction, with people writing about him entering a parallel universe, or an inescapable maze
in another dimension, or that he was taken into the future. Others believe he was simply
murdered by someone very skilled at hiding dead bodies.
8. Jim Thompson American Jim Thompson was known as the “Silk
King” and he made a fortune in the 50s and 60s when he almost single-handedly reinvigorated
the Thai silk industry. Still today his stores bear his name in bold letters. But at 61-years
old in the year of 1967 Jim went missing on a walk in the Malaysian highlands, and since
then his vanishing has become the subject of many conspiracy theories. There is even
a book about his vanishing called, “Jim Thompson: The Unsolved Mystery.” No one
knows what happened, although that didn’t stop clairvoyants from chiming in with theories.
Was he murdered, killed by a tiger, inexorably lost, or was he kidnapped? He was certainly
rich, but no one has ever asked for a ransom. The most recent theory put forward in the
film “Who Killed Jim Thompson,” was that he was killed by rebels from the Communist
Party of Malaya.
7. D B Cooper This isn’t his real name, because no one
knows what this man’s real name is. This brave criminal hijacked a Boeing 727 in 1971
while it was in the sky flying to Seattle. During the flight he handed a message to the
flight attendant that read, “Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb.”
He then laid out some demands, which included refueling when they landed, him getting $200,000
(over a million in today’s money) and a bunch of parachutes. On landing in Seattle,
he released most of the passengers, but then took off again after getting what he had requested.
During the flight, Cooper jumped from the aircraft at a dangerous height. He was never
seen again, but the FBI have kept the case open believing he may have gotten away with
it and gone into hiding.
6. The crew of the MV Joyita You’ve all heard of ghost ships, right?
Well, this is one of the strangest stories of ships being found with the entire crew
missing. Sailing in the South Pacific in 1955, the ship was found, but the 25 people that
should have been aboard were nowhere to be seen. Ok, so the ship wasn’t in great condition,
but still no one can figure out why the entire crew would have abandoned her when she was
certainly not going to sink. The crew were never found.
5. Mary Celeste The ghost ship story that started them all
was the tale of the Mary Celeste, an American merchant ship that was found eerily floating
without any crew in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in 1872. When she was found, it had
been 10 days since anyone had written in the log book, and the ship was in fair condition.
Just the 10 men weren’t there, and they were never seen again. All the food and water
were there and a huge amount of alcohol that was worth a good sum of money was still in
the cargo hold. Numerous stories have been put forth, such as insurance fraud, phenomenal
disaster, and most of all, lots of paranormal tales have been written and discussed. Informal
investigations continue even today.
4. The Sodder Children This is a sad case of five missing children,
Maurice, 14; Martha 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; Betty, 5, whose faces could be seen on
billboards in West Virginia many years after they apparently vanished. On the night before
Christmas in 1945, a fire broke out at their household while they were sleeping, along
with 4 of their other siblings as well as their parents. At first it was thought the
five that remained died, but their bodies were never discovered. It was believed the
fire was not strong enough to totally cremate the bodies. So, what happened to them? The
parents later told the press about a lot of strange things happening prior to the fire,
including a mysterious man watching their kids. A woman came forward during the search
saying she had served them breakfast sometime after the fire, while many other sightings
were reported. That’s why a reward poster with the children’s faces on it could be
seen in the area for many years to come. It remains an unsolved mystery.
3. Connie Converse This American singer-songwriter active in
the 1950s apparently had been burned out at the end of her career, something that often
happens to those who acquire a certain amount of fame. In August of 1974, she wrote a series
of letters to friends and family, explaining that it was time to start a new life, to head
to greener pastures. She wrote in one letter, “Human society fascinates me and awes me
and fills me with grief and joy; I just can't find my place to plug into it.” It sounds
ominous, but in another letter she asked someone to make sure her health insurance was fully
paid. She packed her clothes and drove away in her Volkswagen Beetle and was never seen
again. Did she find those pastures, or did she take her own life? No one knows.
2. The Missing Village Yes, this is the case of an entire village
going missing. It happened in the early to mid-20th century and involves around 30 Inuit
people who lived at a site around Anjikuni Lake in a fairly remote part of Canada’s
Northern Territories. One night a tired trapper by the name of Joe Labelle, who’d been to
the bustling village before, decided he would take rest there. Only on this visit everyone
was gone. He did find a burning fire, and on inspection of the houses found clothes,
valuables, weapons, and equipment that would have most definitely been needed had the people
just decided to move on. The food stores were all full, too. So, what happened? The Canadian
Mounted police were called and they too were stumped. They searched for months and never
found the people. Outlandish theories were since put forward, including alien abduction,
although skeptics believe the whole story may have been a case of fake news even back
when it was first reported. The story is still being talked about in the media now, so we
don’t know what to believe.
Frederick Valentich We’ll finish up with an equally outlandish
case, and that is the disappearance of Frederick Valentich. His disappearance is certainly
not fake news, but you might be skeptical as to the theories relating to his sudden
vanishing. The Australian pilot had been on a training flight in his Cessna 182L light
aircraft on 21 October 1978. His last transmissions to radio control described that he was not
alone in the sky, and that a large object was above him. “It's not an aircraft,”
were his exact words. He described this thing as orbiting above him, and said it was shiny
and metallic and even had a green light on top of it. Ground control then said they heard
“metallic, scraping sounds” and then poof, he was gone. A huge search ensued covering
over 1,000 square miles, and neither the pilot nor the wreckage has ever been found. There
are rational theories for this strange case, such as he was flying upside down and what
he saw were reflections in the water. It was also known that Valentich was a UFO enthusiast.
Ufologists believe he was either killed by aliens or abducted. Others later came forward
saying they’d seen strange things in the sky that evening, but that was after the story
hit the media. We can be skeptical, but even so, this is one interesting case.
If you are a fan of mysteries, we want to recommend listening to an audiobook called
The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian. The novel comes from the New York Times best-selling
author of The Guest Room and is a powerful story about the ways an entire life can change
in one night: A flight attendant wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, with
a dead man - and has no idea what happened. It’s the kind of story that will keep you
up late into the night wanting to know what happens next.
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